Author: chris (Page 14 of 17)

On the tail end of the hottest week of the hottest recorded Summer in history, the Verdugo Hills, a few miles West, are burning (La Tuna Fire).  A few thousand miles away, Harvey, soon to be followed by Irma–what’s with this habit of humanizing hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, floods–have dumped, or will dump, ‘unprecedented’, ‘catastrophic’, I even heard someone say ‘biblical’ amounts of water on the land. Are we being punished? Have the gods finally had enough of our stupidity and decided to teach us a lesson? Afraid not. Too easy.

Humanity right now is like the hiker who finishes a bottle of water and a protein bar and tosses the wrapper and bottle into the bushes next to the trail. They might hesitate, even feel an inkling of remorse, but ultimately they’re thinking “one bottle and one wrapper can’t possibly destroy the environment.” They look over their shoulders to make sure no one saw them loiter and hastily walk away, thinking they got away with it, one more time. But did they?

Think of it this way: one theory is that the recent presidential election was decided by confident voters who opted NOT to vote, because there was no way…, it was inconceivable…, all the polls showed…Did they get away with it?

Walking Project 032_late summer blooms – altadena crest from chris worland on Vimeo.

The Lower Sam Merrill trail climbs the southern face of the San Gabriel Mountains from the Cobb Estate, at the top of Lake ave in Altadena, to Echo Mountain and the ruins of the “White City.”  The “White City” was the brainchild of Thadeus Lowe and David Mcpherson,  a resort, painted white,  that once featured tennis courts, an observatory, a ballroom, and a narrow gauge railway that transported guests, visiting from all over the country, to the summit of Mt Lowe. Sadly, the whole enterprise had a short life.  Today, it is one of the busiest trails of the San Gabriels, and even in the wee hours of the morning, you’re sure to come across joggers, dog walkers, hikers and the occasional rambler looking to have breakfast with a view.

watch an old documentary about the Mt Lowe Railway.

Walking Project 032_breakfast at echo – lower Sam Merrill from chris worland on Vimeo.

It’s late summer, warm even in the early hours of the morning, not a breath stirs the air, and the bugs, mosquitoes and tiny flies are swarming everywhere on the trail from Chantry Flats to Mt Wilson. When a warm-blooded body passes through the shaded alder, pine and oak forest they go on an orgy of buzzing and biting that had me walking head down and mouth shut most of the way to avoid swallowing the annoying buzzers. Seventeenth century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō has inspired a great many wanderers with his foot travel narratives. He walked all over Japan, recording what he saw and experienced in texts that blend haikus with prose, a form he called linked verse. I love this idea of walking a few miles, jotting down a few impressions, then moving along until inspiration strikes again. Bashō visited temples, gates, old friends, climbed mountains, marveled at cherry blossoms, observed cuckoos, and wrote haiku, often with other poets. I’m not sure if he ever dealt with armies of bloodthirsty insects, but, in my heart, he embodies, in his delicious writings and ramblings, the value of stopping to reflect on what one sees, and then making the effort to share that experience. It means something, it has value.

Walking Project 031_linked verse – Mt Wilson from chris worland on Vimeo.

“The Saunterer”, short story, coming soon.

Walking Project 027_trash day – Bridge to Nowhere 2 from chris worland on Vimeo.

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, do to speak, for sauntering…”

Henry David Thoreau, in “Walking” (essay)

Walking Project 024_yuccas to nowhere-bridge to nowhere from chris worland on Vimeo.