The dirt road that traverses the Verdugo Hills from Burbank to Glendale, or vice-versa, the Verdugo Motorway, offers almost constant views of the entire LA basin and the San Gabriel Mountains. Thankfully, it also features vista resting spots, as well as a number of communication towers, a mountain bike obstacle course, a tree of life, a monument dedicated to the Tongva, and several branching roads or trails descending/ascending into the various canyons on the north and south slopes of the mountain.

Starting at the La Tuna canyon trailhead, heading east, generally speaking, I emerged onto the Motorway, thighs burning, leaning on my walking stick, a short distance before the Keith chair, a gray plastic lounge chair facing south, where I took a well-deserved water break while gazing at dtla in the distance. It was a cloudless day–you could easily discern the shape of Catalina behind the Palos Verdes hump–and ‘el-A’ seemed both endless and small, you could grasp it all, it appeared so close, like a scaled model in a brightly lit museum. By the time I reached the Willie chair, an exact copy of its westerly cousin, I was spent (there is a third cousin in the family, named the Chuck chair on Google, which I would have visited, had I known). Perfect time and place for a more extended rest. On previous visits to this spot, I’ve found it to be busy, as it marks the end of a well-frequented ‘fitness hike’ out of Burbank, the Vital Link Trail, but today I had the spot to myself. I poured a cup of tea and again lounged and gazed at the urban landscape. What are all these people doing? A light southwesterly breeze brought echoes of the city, car horns, trucks backing up, construction, the occasional helicopter, sirens, and the general hum of multiplied, overlapped, accumulated lawnmowers, vehicle motors of all sorts accelerating, braking, idling, some thumping to a west coast beat that makes windows tremble as they drive by, or to high-pitched blare of mariachi trumpets, to heavy metal guitars like the Fedex truck in my neighborhood this morning. The leafblower that lifts a cloud of dust in the neighbor’s backyard as I write this is so loud it drowns the music and the typing, and there are dozens, if not hundreds revving all over the city on any given morning. What ruckus we make as a species. A teeny spider wanders across the desk, silently.

I would like to imagine a quieter world where, lounging on one of the three chairs along the Verdugo Motorway, you can clearly perceive the sounds of children playing in schoolyards, or if school’s out, their laughter and screams at a birthday party in the park, where a clown wearing colorful, oversized overalls, a bright red nose and purple hair strums a silly tune as a shiny blue balloon, one of the balloons attached to his suspenders, floats away towards the mountains.