Ronald’s job required him to travel all over the world. His career was hectic, sometime chaotic, and he was constantly on the go. He was always surrounded by people. When Ronald got a much-needed break from work, he wanted to spend his time somewhere peaceful and quiet. His favorite hobby, fishing, provided him the perfect escape.
And so it was early one evening in the 1980s. Ronald and his dog, a toy fox terrier named Tuffy, boarded Ronald’s bass boat and headed out onto Lake Shasta in northern California. Ronald was sure to find solitude in the 30,000-acre lake whose shoreline spans some 365 miles. Ronald motored his boat into a cove on the lake near a grove of tall pine trees which jutted out from the depths. Some of the pine trees, the Sugar Pine, grow to a height of up to 200 feet, but about half of the height of the trees Ronald anchored his boat near that day were underwater. There was hardly a ripple on the water. He could hear a slight breeze blowing through the trees and the calls of a few birds. A dog barked in the distance. Ronald cast his bait into the water. As he slowly reeled it back in, he glanced at the beautiful snow-capped Mount Shasta, the second highest peak in the Cascade mountain range. He scanned the shoreline and took a deep breath. When he exhaled, it was as if months of pressure was released from his body and mind. With each cast, he became more relaxed. The catching of a fish was beside the point. There were no other boats in sight. Nothing, he thought, could interrupt the tranquility that he was experiencing.
Suddenly, without any buildup or warning, the silence was broken by a sound he described as being “as loud as a hundred freight trains.” Ronald was born and raised in a refrigerated boxcar that his father had converted into a home just about a rock’s throw from the main line of the Santa Fe railroad. The noise was instantaneous and deafening. Ronald thought someone had thrown a case of dynamite into the lake. He was sure it was the end for himself and Tuffy. One of the tall pine trees near his fishing spot, a tree he estimated to have been about 110 feet tall, “was released by mother nature from the bottom of the lake.” With so much of the tree underwater, when its deep roots let go it shot up into the air like a rocket to a height of about 300 feet then broke into three pieces. Ronald said, “millions of gallons of water flew from its branches.” The tree shattered when it crashed back down onto the lake’s surface near his boat. Then, there was a deafening silence. The sounds of the birds singing, the distant dog’s barking, even the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees had stopped.
As Ronald looked around in stunned silence, he realized that he had survived. Tuffy was also visibly shaken but uninjured. He thought about what he had just witnessed and understood how lucky he was once again. He had spent much of his youth in juvenile detention centers, and as a young adult, he had survived a stint in the notorious San Quentin prison. Ronald concluded that if the trajectory of that hurtling waterlogged tree had been slightly different, he would have been killed, and the cause would have remained a mystery. After his shocking fishing trip, Ronald returned to work performing his hit songs including “Mama Tried,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” and “Okie From Muskogee.” You see, Ronald was the middle name of Merle Haggard.
Sources:
1. “Trees of the Shasta-Trinity,” United States Department of Agriculture, accessed October 26, 2025, https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/legacy-media/shasta-trinity/Trees%20of%20the%20Shasta-Trinity%20ROG.pdf.
2. Merle Haggard and Tom Carter, Merle Haggard’s My House of Memories, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 1999), 209.