The lord of the underworld, lucifer, the prince of darkness, shaitan, the devil himself may or may not have parked his posterior on the large mass of white rock that dominates the southern edge of the geological formation known as the Devil’s Punchbowl. In fact, that fiery pesky horned mythological figure must have been extremely active in these parts, judging by the number of valleys, backbones, rims, chairs named after it. And if I were to rate those devil-named attractions in sheer spectaculareness, this narrow bright white rocky promontory that juts out of the north slopes of the San Gabriels, with sheer cliffs dropping hundreds of feet on three sides would take the cake. Thus, I braved the heat, and embraced the solitude–the only humans I encountered were two campers packing out at the trailhead–to claim the spot for a quiet sit-down lunch with stellar panoramic views of the Antelope Valley. You can’t beat that. I even got in a short nap, thanks to a constant breeze that made the unavoidable sun exposure tolerable. It was a profound, dreamless, restful sleep leaning against a fence that kept me from sliding to a certain death. Rejuvenated, I made my way back, occasionally glancing at the site, thinking my imagination wasn’t vivid enough to picture the devil sitting up there. Instead my mind flashed back to the bighorn sheep I’d encountered near Bighorn peak, a couple of weeks ago. It had laid down on a smaller, less spectacular, but similar rock formation–with sheer cliffs on all but one side–and remained cool as a jazz drummer when I appeared. We exchanged a look and it returned to its meditation. I want that life, I thought, and moved on.
Eventually, I ducked into the east-facing slopes of South Fork, losing sight of the “chair”. The breeze couldn’t reach me, the afternoon heat reflected off of a scrubby landscape that offered little shade. It wasn’t quite ‘hotter than the devil’s ass’, but getting there–felt like. But then all signs of having been anywhere near purgatory dissolved rapidly into the very cold and abundant snow melt that still feeds the South Fork, where I may or may not have skinny dipped, parking my own ass on the sandy bottom until it stung from the cold.
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