Author: chris (Page 7 of 17)

wilson in three acts

March 1, 2019 / chris / 0 Comments

Mt Baldy and the eastern range of the San Gabriels from Mt Wilson Observatory

A Screenplay

ACT 1 – BASTARD RIDGE

EXT. OLD MOUNT WILSON TRAIL; EARLY MORNING

FADE IN on the porch of the restored historic LIZZIE’S INN, a landmark establishment at the trailhead of the historic OLD MOUNT WILSON TRAIL, where, starting in 1864, mule packs loaded with building materials, telescope parts and other necessities would start their nearly eight mile climb to the building site of the MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY. A MIDDLE-AGED HIKER sets off on the trail and soon catches up with another hiker who’s clipped a small cow bell to their backpack that rings rhythmically, reminiscent of the sound of mule packs of yore, or the cow bells of the HIKER’s native Switzerland, although admittedly not as loud. Soon the MIDDLE-AGED HIKER veers off the main gently-graded trail. The cow bells are seen and faintly heard a few minutes later in a LAWRENCE OF ARABIA shot, a tiny moving dot in the mountainous landscape.

We hear huffing and puffing, scraping and stumbling, as the HIKER trudges up the aptly named BASTARD RIDGE. We meet GASTON, a small plastic figurine snuggled in the shoulder strap of the hiker’s backpack. He’s the loyal buddy–modeled on the classic Franquin comic strip creation Gaston Lagaffe–who accompanies the HIKER on nearly every outing.

GASTON: You okay there big boy?

HIKER: (catching his breath) I’ll live…(breath) I think.

GASTON: Are you sure about this? They don’t call it the Bastard’s Ridge for nothing.

HIKER: Bah! How hard can it be?

MONTAGE, the hiker’s boots battling the steep incline, the rutted user trail, the smoggy Los Angeles basin, GASTON napping? The beat of footsteps, counterpointed by accelerated breathing, some stumbling. Finally we reach a bench. We’ve arrived at JONES PEAK. We take in the view.

ACT 2 – TWENTY-ONE VIEWS OF WILSON

EXT. OLD MOUNT WILSON TRAIL; LATE MORNING

After a much needed refueling break the HIKER resumes his ascent, continuing straight up the ridge to HASTINGS PEAK, opting once more for the rougher road instead of the connection to the OLD WILSON TRAIL.

GASTON: (Humming an old French marching ditty) Un kilomètre à pied ça use, ça use/Un kilomètre à pied ça use les souliers/Deux kilomètres à pied ça use, ça use/ Deux kilomètre à pied ça use les souliers/ And so on…

HIKER: (VO, to himself) Why am I doing this again? Have to keep drinking or I’m going to cramp up. What if I skip the last two miles, the fire road bit? Who’s going to know? Gaston?…Okay. Fine. Carry on. Next stop, lunch with a view.

GASTON: (continues to sing)…Huit kilomètres à pied,,,

A final near-climb to reach the Mt Wilson Toll Road leaves the HIKER near dead. He takes a nap on top of a huge boulder settled on the shoulder of the dirt road before tackling the last two miles. The heavy rains have left mounds of mud, piles of rocks and trees torn out of the hillside blocking the road. Patches of snow cover the path as the road contours the mountain to the east-facing slope, the shaded side. A deer darts off in the distance. The last mile leaves the road to switchback more directly through a patch of chaparral that burned just last year. Amidst the charred remains of manzanita and laurel bushes we cross paths with a couple of hikers on their way down.

GASTON: (still singing) Trente kilomètres à pied…HEY. BONJOUR.

DESCENDING HIKER #1: Hey. How’s it going?

HIKER: Inaudible(panting heavily).

DESCENDING HIKER #2: You’re so close!

DESCENDING HIKER #1: So close! (Over their shoulder) HAPPY TRAILS!

ACT 3 – LA DESCENTE/DOWNHILL, YELLOW

EXT. MOUNT WILSON TOLL ROAD; AFTERNOON

Revitalized by lunch calories and a cup of hot tea, having refilled his water bottles at the Cosmic Cafe, the HIKER starts the familiar, easy, but long descent to Eaton Canyon in Altadena on the Mt Wilson Toll Road. A thin cloud layer announces the front end of a storm due to hit the region in the next day or two. The pace is brisk but not fast–legs are battered from the brutal climb earlier in the day. This is a path the HIKER has traveled a dozen times or more, he has the landscape memorized but the harsh alpine climate keeps reshaping it. There is always something to notice, something that was different last time, something that wasn’t there last time, or something he hadn’t noticed before, like those yellow reinforced concrete posts that line the mountain side of the fire road at regular intervals. There is also plenty of thinking time. We come across a MOUNTAIN BIKER pedaling uphill.

GASTON AND HIKER: How’s it going?

BIKER: Great. How are you doing?

The BIKER doesn’t break his stride; he’s barely breathing hard, despite the incline. The HIKER watches him quickly disappear behind a bend in the road.

GASTON: Don’t even think about it.

HIKER: Think about what?

GASTON: Getting a mountain bike.

HIKER: I’m not. But, see how quickly they can ride up a mountain?

GASTON: You mean how quickly HE can ride up a mountain. He’s twenty, twenty-five max, and in perfect shape.

HIKER: Right. But with training…Hey, wait a minute. How did you know?

GASTON: Know what?

HIKER: Just now, you knew what I was thinking.

GASTON: What were you thinking?

HIKER: The mountain bike?

GASTON: Hah, Yeah. I know everything you’re thinking.

HIKER: (puzzled) what?

GASTON: I’m your best friend; I know everything you’re thinking. It’s perfectly normal. Like right now, you didn’t say anything but I know you need to pee. Am I right or am I right?

HIKER: Yeah, I do. WTF? That’s creepy. You’re creepy.

GASTON: Not really. I can tell because you’re walking faster and looking around for a good spot.

HIKER: (shakes his head) Isn’t it time for your nap? (He ducks behind a large cedar by the side of the road).

GASTON: You start riding a bike, I’m staying home.

Eventually, GASTON dozes off, lulled by the rhythmic bounce of the HIKER’s gait cushioned by soft dirt that has been recently plowed and leveled by a John Deere parked on the side of the road. At the HENINGER FLATS CAMPGROUND, he rests just long enough for a last cup of tea and energy bar, on a bench overlooking the San Gabriel valley. The grass has grown tall all around the empty campsites. The sun peaks through the clouds. There’s about an hour left before sunset and they’re two and a half miles from the Eaton Canyon trailhead. He gets up and regrets having sat down. That fast, joints and muscles have stiffened. On the edge of the campground, he spots A DEER FAMILY, MOM, DAD and TWO YOUNG ONES, grazing. He thinks he recognizes them from the last time he came through. MOM and DAD look up, perk their ears, evaluate the threat.

HIKER: Hey there! Just me. Walking by.

DAD returns to grazing while MOM stays alert, until the HIKER waves and walks on.

thirty-two views of dtla on a winter afternoon

February 25, 2019 / chris / 11 Comments

the rose city – Petra, Jordan

February 25, 2019 / chris / 1 Comment

More than a month has elapsed since my family and I walked past the massive Djinn blocks, the Obelisk Tomb and the “Abdomanchos” inscription to enter As Siq, the narrow gorge nature carved over many millenia to conceal Petra, the rose city, the Nabatean capital, UNESCO World Heritage site, from inattentive passers-by. In the Siq the light changes by the minute, illuminating various rock surfaces as the angle of the sun shifts, sending light bouncing off the sides of the canyon like the sounds of horses, donkeys and tourists.

The Siq also hides the secret of the city, of its existence. The ingenious water channels and pipes built into the walls on each side of it were the city’s lifeline, its blood, its access to the most precious resource for all life, water, channeled from the springs of Wadi Musa. This secret will have been too easily severed by enemies, and thus brought the city’s downfall, that and earthquakes.

The winding longitudinal crack
in the immense rock wall
conceals the city from sight.
This isn’t the first sign to the city
it isn’t even a sign.
It’s a lost path
that infiltrates a mountain’s gash.
Amjad Nasser, Petra: The Concealed Rose

We’re following the footsteps of millions of visitors (nearly eight hundred thousand in 2017), and of the Swiss traveler/geographer Johann Burckhardt who in 1812, passing himself as Ibrahim bin Abdullah to avoid antagonizing the locals who wished to keep the city hidden from foreigners, was responsible for the modern discovery of Petra. This is what he saw when he reached the end of the ‘gloomy and almost subterraneous’ Siq:

An excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller, after having traversed for nearly half an hour such a gloomy and almost subterraneous passage as I have described.
JOHANN BURCKHARDT, TRAVELS IN SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND, P.418–431,
FROM HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/JOHANN_LUDWIG_BURCKHARDT

The mausoleum in question is Al-Khazneh (The Treasury), and “extraordinary impression” is a mild way to describe the feeling you get when you first catch sight of it. For me, the whole experience was a sensory overload; the sheer beauty, the awe at the human accomplishment, the din of guides attempting to convey the grandeur of it all in a cacophony of languages, the bedouins offering camel rides, photo ops and a hike to ‘the best secret view in the city’. I had watched youtubes and read travelers’ blogs but nothing could have prepared me for this, and even now, I just don’t have the words. So instead of spewing out yet another awed description, I’ll quote the poet again:

We will read about you in more than one language.
And bring along an expert guide in antiques
or a magician specialized in astronomy and amulets.
We will use sound probes, infrared eyes, carbon dating,
We will join excavation circles, join rhetoric and curiosity, and distribute the
tasks.
But we won’t make headway into the camouflaged hide
of your name, body and story.
AMJAD NASSER, PETRA: THE CONCEALED ROSE

We are still learning about the history of Petra, still unearthing its mysteries, but the story of the city is elusive and still being written; the story of its people, its fig trees, its monumental tombs carved into rose sandstone cliffs, its deep canyons and peaks, its ancient trading routes, its theatre, its treasures, its light, its “stop and shop” souvenir stalls, “everything is one dinar.” The deeper we marched into the city the more lost I felt. We passed the Street of Facades, the Royal Tombs, the Colonnaded Street, the Greek Temple, Qusar al-Bint, and finally Ad-Deir, the Monastery. What to make of all this? The best I could do is point a camera at what I saw on the way back to the car, and hope to return someday, perhaps in another life as a bedouin, or a camel–I like the camel idea, they’re pretty chill. In the meantime I’ll once again refer to the poet (always a good idea to refer to poets):

…Thus we can say to Burckhardt or Ibrahim bin Abdullah as we leave him here: Thank you. Not because you discovered this secret beauty, but because it shook you in a manner you couldn’t bear, and you started talking as if you were hallucinating or reciting poetry. Another narrator would take over. I mean, hallucinate like a poet. He could be any one of us, we the visitors of this intentionally concealed city. In reality, we are in no need of an author or a poet. Anyone who enters the city would speak the same words. Tone might differ, but speech is one. Because it isn’t the speech of man, but that of the present-lost carved out of a mountain’s rib, a female rib, in fact. It isn’t necessary to wear imagination like an ornament. What’s one’s need for it here?
AMJAD NASSER, PETRA: THE CONCEALED ROSE

by the river Jordan – Qar el Yahud, Jordan

February 17, 2019 / chris / 17 Comments

We’re like a flock of sheep. Except not really, because we’re tourists, not pilgrims. They, the pilgrims, are being herded to the baptismal site of Jesus in large charter buses and led by orthodox priests in long black robes. We’re under the not so watchful eye of a tour guide who tells me I cannot walk the two miles, I have to wait for the shuttle under the bamboo canopy, with the rest of my kind, the tourists, and that even if I could walk, I probably wouldn’t want to he says pointing at the heavy concentration of policemen and soldiers that the uber driver told us were a normal sight this close to the border. I remember reading that the newly developed tourist and pilgrimage site had to be de-mined before opening since it was located on a military base, which makes sense since the site is also located on the Jordan river and that since 1967 is the sensitive border between the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Anyhow our flock is led into a small shuttle and given a rapid spiel about the significance of the place as we barely slow down to look at Jehova’s Hill then down a narrow road bordered on one side by a barbed wire fence and guard towers and on the other a deserted rocky landscape from which a series of seven–if I remember correctly–christian churches of various denominations stand out, the last being a Russian orthodox church and that’s where the parking lot is where we get to get off the bus. Now we walk. Finally. Follow the leader and stay together the guide tells the group and we join the flow of pilgrims already engaged on the pathway leading to the river only a smoking policeman picks us out of the crowd and stops us before we actually step off the pavement of the parking lot and asks us questions we don’t understand because he’s speaking Arabic which makes sense because we’re in Jordan but doesn’t help because we don’t speak a word of it but we try to gesticulate our answers while stating loudly that we’re with the group which we point at only it has already proceeded down the pathway. Someone comes to our rescue speaking Arabic and the policeman reluctantly lets us through. We then hurry to rejoin our small herd so we don’t miss the sparse but helpful insight provided by our leader regarding the fact that the flow of the river has been diverted and therefore the actual location of the ruins of the church where John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the river Jordan is now dried out and sits a few hundred yards away from the more recent course of the river where a modern church has been erected and is the location where most of the pilgrims surrounding us are aiming to take a dip in the muddy waters or at least get their craniums sprinkled with them. Of course there are more policemen stationed along the shaded pathway and I’m thinking it must get really hot here in the summer months because it’s January and it’s not cold even though it’s overcast and sure enough it happens again that one of those guys in uniform splits us away from our group at a fork in the trail and since he’s very serious and very armed we don’t argue but we’re lost sheep now and when our path seems to reconnect with the main path people are traveling in both directions and we’re confused we think our group must have passed already but that doesn’t make sense because the main path seems longer than the one we were forced to take so we wait but they don’t show up so finally we backtrack along the main path and run into them. And then we get there, to the river and we have to fight through a thick crowd of pilgrims with a service or sermon of some kind belching over loudspeakers in what sounds like a mix of Arabic, Russian and Latin church bells ringing and our guide screams that we have twenty minutes to enjoy ourselves and don’t be late because he can’t wait but it would take at least a half hour to follow the queue that descends to the river because that’s the whole point of being here for most folks, the water, the same water that Christ was dipped in only of course it’s not really the same water since that was a long time ago and anyhow it was written in the bible which is just a collection of short stories more or less loosely based on true events but certainly embellished and editorialized by writers of the time because that’s what writers do and at any rate the real site of the baptism they think, they being the archeologists who dug it up, is a few hundred yards away, a dry river bed and some old stones. On the opposite bank of the river, the west bank, the chaos is just as grand with pilgrims flocking there through Israel and they’re only twenty meters away, twenty meters you could easily swim because the current doesn’t seem that strong and we can see people on that side wading waist high in the sacred waters and they have no trouble standing up but of course if you actually tried to cross you would most certainly get shot or sent to the Jordanian or Israeli version of Guantanamo or some other form of highly unpleasant treatment. Then the twenty minutes were up we found our fellow tourists our leader and headed on home as a marching band struck the familiar melody of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

after the snow storm – Amman, Jordan

January 31, 2019 / chris / 0 Comments

It didn’t stick. The storm passed overnight, leaving us with a bird’s eye view of the construction site outside our window blanketed with a good inch or two of wet white stuff. All gone by morning.

I read a short story by Elias Farkouh, “The Birds of Amman Sweep low”, in which a group of friends from East Amman descend upon the wealthier, more posh West Amman for a night ‘invasion’. We rambled, mostly in bookstores and cafés, somewhere in between, near the Citadel. No real destination, no trail–just our friend Google–under a near-full moon peeking through the clouds, and the joyful dance of the Birds of Amman.

before the snow storm – Amman, Jordan

January 31, 2019 / chris / 0 Comments

The storm moved in forcefully, blasting the seven hills of Amman with dust, floating plastic bags, and a winter chill that went straight to the bones.

“Nobody here but us fools,” one tourist said to another “it’s going to snow later on”. They were both peering over the large map of the L-shaped National Historic Site, the Amman Citadel, Jabal Al Qala’a, displayed on a freestanding wall across from the entrance, where an oversized faded color portrait of King Abdullah of Jordan welcomed visitors with a friendly face inspiring confidence.

“So I heard,” the second tourist said rather coldly–let’s call him the photographer on account of the elaborate camera and enormous lens that hung from his neck.

“We can always hide in the museum if it starts to come down.” The first tourist offered, pointing at a rectangle near the center of the map labeled Jordan Archeological Museum. The photographer remained silent, leaned closer to the display, ran a finger across the map as if following a carefully researched route. A powerful gust blew across the hilltop, the only thing not visibly shaken were the remaining columns of the temple of Hercules that dominated what was known as the upper terrace. “You must really love Roman ruins to be out here in this weather,” the first tourist said.

The photographer, clean-shaven, short cropped silver-hair, steel-gray eyes, cheeks blushing from exposure, wrapped in an aztec blue Gore-tex jacket looked up at his interlocutor for the first time, “I don”t mind the cold so much, I’m used to it.”

“Oh yeah?” The first tourist was younger, late thirties maybe, a black beanie tucked over his head revealing only brown eyes, neatly trimmed dark mustache and beard framing a smile in a chiseled face that matched a fit body, “where are you from?”

“Minneapolis.” The photographer replied, then he abruptly trotted away up the same stone-paved trail Nabateans, then Romans, then Byzantines would have tread starting some two thousand years ago on their way to the temple on the hill.

“Nice to meet you.” The first tourist said more to himself than to the photographer who soon rejoined a half-dozen other sightseers who immediately surrounded him with questions. The wind carried their hushed conversation to the first tourist’s ears. “What did he want?” asked a woman who grabbed the photographer by the arm, his wife maybe. “Is he with us? I don’t recognize him?” said another woman. “Did he ask you were you were from?” said a very tall man wrestling with a map. The photographer nodded. “I knew it. That’s how they get you. Next thing you know you’re buying a carpet.” “Where’s your bag?”The wife said. Someone else chimed in, “Let’s make sure to stay together.” Suddenly, their words were warbled by another violent gust that made the Jordanian flag flutter furiously over the first tourist’s head. He watched the group climb towards the temple, shook his head and turned away from the wind and started walking to the southern end of the site to soak in his favorite view of downtown Amman, the busy Al Hasham street, the roman amphitheater, the artsy graffitti peppered on the hillside retaining walls, and to the southwest the fashionable Rainbow street area where he liked to sit on the terrace of the WildJordan cafe. He followed the scantily fenced contour of the citadel, took a couple of panoramic photos of the city with his phone, but the wind was blowing so hard, he found it difficult to keep a steady hand. He then cut across the temple of Hercules, which reputedly would have been larger than any temple in Rome had it been completed, and the often photographed three fingers and elbow, the only remains of a marble statue of the mythological hero that looked like two boulders from a distance, and were estimated to have stood more than forty feet high–among the tallest marble statues ever erected–before it was toppled by an earthquake, and ultimately pillaged to furnish the homes of distinguished Ammanians.

He looked up at the sky, the clouds rolling in were getting darker, heavier, threatening to burst. He decided to continue along the perimeter of the citadel before the weather spoiled the views. He was now walking into the wind, fighting it at every step, yet completely invigorated by the effort and the static energy overcharge. Palm trees and cypresses bent like inverted commas. On the opposite hill, the expanse of western Amman, with its modern glass buildings rising over even the green neon-lit minarets, and the lower profile urban sprawl of sand-colored limestone habitations that gave the city its unique, quasi-monochrome tint. Directly below, a fruit salesman hauled a cart of oranges along the citadel’s retaining wall, peddling his fruit as he passed houses and apartment buildings. A group of children kicked a soccer ball around in an abandoned lot. From above, they moved like a frantic swarm of sheep, or better, like the flocks of birds swaying over the city, swooping down, up and around in large circles. Having reached the northwest corner of the site, he stepped down into the maze of the ruins of the old Roman city, eventually emerging onto a large plaza facing the Byzantine church topped with its new wooden dome, built, as was the custom, right on top of a Roman place of worship. The victors get to write history and, more often than not, erase the ideology of the vanquished.

Finally succumbing to the cold, he followed his own advice and sought shelter in the museum, where he found the photographer and his cohort, huddled by the entrance where the guards had placed a sizable electric heater. The photographer and his wife were rubbing their hands together facing the glowing orange resistance coils. “Hey, we meet again. I hope you are enjoying your visit,” the tourist said without malice, “despite the weather”, he added, with maybe a little innocent jest. The photographer looked and immediately straightened up. He also grabbed his camera, as a defensive maneuver presumably. He mumbled something. Then his wife stepped between them.

“We don’t need a guide thank you”, she said curtly, “come on Archie,” She whisked the photographer away, whispering not so quietly derogative complaints about the locals to which the photographer contributed “it’s a different world honey, at least they’re not dangerous.” The group followed them into the exhibit halls, chattering away. “Yeah, well, Martha did get her purse stolen.” “That was in Paris.” “Maybe, but the thief was an Arab.” The other woman, trailing, cast a forced sideways smile.

The first tourist didn’t say anything this time. He clenched his jaws, shook his head to his left just once, as if to suppress a larger reaction. Gradually, his expression relaxed. He laughed quietly to himself the kind of laugh that makes people ask why are you laughing? He watched them disappear behind display cases featuring, among pots, pans, vases and jewelry, some of the earliest found statues of a human figure. He was struck, and almost distracted, by an armless, earless, heavily cracked two-headed bust, a mere foot high, whose four bulging eyes stared at him across the centuries. The small figures reminded him of something he’d sculpted out of Playdo with his daughter Julia last time he was on leave Stateside. They had named their statue La Llorona, after the ghostly Mexican weeping mother, and added blue teardrops running down her face. When he suggested they smooth out the bumps and cracks between the different clumps in all colors they’d molded together, Julia had refused, saying, “she’s perfect like this, broken, but still together.” He smiled at the clay figure and thought of a remark his friend Lee had made. They’d flown from their base in Bahrain to Amman for a weekend of sightseeing and other debaucheries. That was when he’d seen the Citadel for the first time, and, at the end of their visit, while they waited for their Uber in the small snack bar by the entrance, Lee had proclaimed “You know what Martinez? People at home need to stop watching television and open their minds. This place is fucking awesome.”

51 Foothill views of Mt Wilson – Pasadena

January 5, 2019 / chris / 0 Comments

A tramp along Foothill boulevard between Allen and Rosemead can be fairly pedestrian; car dealers, car repair shops, fast food restaurants, thrift shops, pet clinics, gas stations, self storage warehouses, a shopping center, block after block of mostly small businesses housed in generic commercial real estate. But if you keep your head turned left, north, you cannot escape the comforting view of the south-facing slopes of the front range of the San Gabriel mountains. If you like that sort of thing, mountains, and I do, you can keep gazing at it through trees, fences, freeways, and occasionally catch its reflection on glass buildings on the other side of the street, looking right, so as to give your neck a break. It can feel like a fixation after a while, but who cares? Cézanne painted countless views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, Hiroshige did thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, and one hundred views of Edo, which inspired Barbara Thomason to paint her own one hundred ‘not so famous’ views of LA. In the end, it’s merely an excuse to look at, depict, document a subject that tickles your fancy while putting one foot in front of the other, to keep the blood flowing.

artjunkdadawalk – Noah Purifoy Museum

January 5, 2019 / chris / 0 Comments

As can be expected of any museum that earns its name, the Noah Purifoy Museum is too much to take in during one short walk through, and certainly too detailed and absorbing and downright wonderful to attempt to describe here, or show in the video above. So, we’ll call this “First Impressions”, and vow to return, before time does its work on the art and erases it, before sun, rain, wind erode it, return it to the sandy desert floor so that it may, one can always hope, in turn become source of nutrition for future generations of creative spirits that feed from the earth. And may those spirits, one may also hope, prevail in the end.

Baby it’s cold – Echo mountain via Rubio Canyon

December 29, 2018 / chris / 0 Comments

For the third time in a row, I walk into a sunset in the Altadena foothills. It’s a nice habit. It’s trash day, after christmas, the bins are full of cardboard boxes, colorful and glittery wrapping paper, and a pair of soccer cleats that look unused–it may not be what you asked for, but did you have to throw them away? Dejected, imported trees will line the sidewalks a week from now. The deflated cloth reindeer, penguins and snowmen will be returned to an attic, garage or closet. The ornament someone hung on the bell rung by joggers and hikers who reach the top of the concrete stairs at the ruins of the Echo Mountain Resort will most likely have disappeared. I’ll have to remember to write 2019 until it becomes automatic, which can take a few weeks. But I bet the flock of peacocks who’ve found a home in the neighborhood I walk through on my way to the Rubio Canyon trailhead will still hang out in the great cedars, and lazily make their way up to the shelter of its upper branches after sunset, as I walk by, and long after.

late fall sunset – Altadena Crest Trail

December 20, 2018 / chris / 0 Comments

Chasing the magic hour light from Eaton Canyon to Rubio Canyon

For the second time in eight days I witnessed, from a trail in the foothills of the front range of the San Gabriels, the chaparral turn ochre then deep amber as the sun inevitably sunk into the ocean beyond the San Rafael and Verdugo hills. The brown crust that hangs over the Los Angeles basin during the daytime faded into the warm magic hour light while simultaneously, in the east, the moon, nearly full, rose over Mt Wilson. I stared directly into the vanishing ball of fire and it vibrated, or danced, though I could have imagined it because I don’t see it in the video. You had to be there, I suppose.

Tip for watching: the money shot, the sunset, plays for about two minutes. Relax, take off your shoes, kick back and enjoy. If it starts to feel long, put on some music, I played “Woman” by the John Carter/Bobby Bradford quartet while viewing the footage, and the effect was kind of cool, but ultimately i suggest taking a few deep breaths and soaking in the live soundtrack; the rumbling suburbs, a truck screaming in low gear as it navigates the windy, hilly foothill roads on its way home after work, a neighborhood dog and a rooster barking and crowing dutifully to awaken the night creatures or signal the passage of prowling joggers, and whatever else your imagination conjures.