Forested canyon Heavy oak limbs arched over the path shield and guide hikers bikers and horseback riders from low winter sun Like parents join hands at the end of a child's game to cheer the team the majestic trees gossip the sound of saws looms nearby this sylvan tunnel flanked by gated and guarded armed communities a passage to the mountains where the cougars roam and feed
Tag: San Gabriels (Page 2 of 10)
He walked dreaming rambling short stories (six-word stories, to be precise).
A hike and a poem met along the less-traveled path one blue sunny day and almost missed one another when the poet lost his way while the hiker took a nap. Words whispered in the cool breeze that lifted and dissolved thin cloud patches rolling in from the pacific ocean, smelling like sage, pine, and dirt. carefully pausing under an old cedar chained to a dirty picnic table, pretending to feed the poet's muse with the crunchy beat of footsteps, dangerously slow, like Billie Holiday singing Good Morning Heartache Pres smiles, shakes his porkpie hat Listen to the groovy bass line if you don't believe me like these words in the wind, wicked, gorgeous and betrayed by meaning, reason, blink and they vanish like the crooning of crows circling over a carcass in the azure sky, fading before the low winter sun reaches the end of the road. Is this what you call a poem? the hiker awakes and protests the poet, silent, has found the trail but is at a loss for words.
Raymond Queneau puts it very nicely, in a poem entitled “Un rhume qui n’en finit pas”(a never-ending cold)–somewhat timely, given the pandemic–which I read sitting at a picnic table leaning against a cedar tree, under an azure sky.
Quand on examine le vaste monde ses beautés, ses tristesses et ses aléas on se demande on se demande à quoi rime tout celà When you take a close look at the great wide world its beauty, its sadness and its perils you might ask you might ask is there any reason or rhyme to it (my translation. Note that it does rhyme in French, in a way I couldn't duplicate in English, but don't read anything into it)
My favored trailhead to Rubio Canyon turns out to be a private driveway, or so it says on the laminated sign posted on the gate next to the old disheveled miner’s cabin. I respect the sign, albeit with a question mark; I can’t help thinking about the much publicized and ongoing battle over public beach access. No ‘right to roam’ here! Given the significant increase in gun sales since the pandemic started, you never know what kind of neighbor you might run into, armed or unarmed, trigger-happy or cool and relaxed. Given the level of anger and fear in the country these days, the odds are in favor of the latter. For now the other accesses to Rubio will do just fine. Just please don’t tear down that cabin.
Under the cedar where a tennis court once sat next to a tree stump that favors Rodin's Balzac coffee and P, B & J
Yellow maple leaves dried white sage rusty buckwheat long late fall shadows dead timber snaps under my steps a landscape waiting for rain
Much needed return to this routine that is anything but. Walking and looking. Paying attention. The world is beautiful, no, the world is. I ‘is’.
Trails closed, Walk on asphalt less giving than dirt, Walk on rainy forecast, Walk on Nature is getting a rest While LA deals with the pest, Walk on (After listening to Neil Young)
It took all my civic-mindedness not to cross the yellow tape restricting access to all the foothill trails. The lure of the wild was strong, but I didn’t want to be that guy. Except I came across one they’d omitted, and I may or may not have treaded past it, for about a quarter mile into the forest. The bears, cougars, bobcats, squirrels, rattlesnakes, even the crows asked as I passed, “Where’d everybody go?”
“There’s a bug goin’ around” I answered, “real nasty, kills people, super contagious. We’ve been told to stay home.”
“Someone’s not a very good listener.” The bear admonished me. A group of curious lookyloos was gathering around me, they all chuckled.
“Well…It’s okay, you know, if you practice social distancing.” I blurted out guiltily, “if we, like, if we stay far enough from each other.” I noticed the bear and the cougar narrowing in on me. “Like six to ten feet apart!” I said louder, with what authority I could muster, and spreading my arms apart to illustrate.
“I ain’t heard nothing of the sort, have you?” The cougar turned to the Bear, then to the others, who were now also closing in on me. They were not openly threatening, just a little hungry, I guessed. The bobcat, for instance, was licking its chops lustily. The rattler slithered to the front of the pack, whisssspering, “I’ll sssssting him first.” Or at least that’s what I heard. I was rooting for the squirrel however, who scampered nervously from one beast to the other, repeating”What are you doing guys? He could be sick.”
“He doesn’t look sick.”
“He could be asymptomatic.”
“A superpreader!”
“So, if the trails are closed,” the cougar persisted, brushing the squirrel to the side, “they won’t come looking for you, right? ’cause you ain’t even supposed to be here.”
That’s when the reliable crow swooped overhead, croaking vigorously, a good indication, if any was needed, that some kind of game was afoot. That’s also when a cool wind gust floated into the canyon, sending a chill down my spine, made all the more chilly by the sweat accumulating on my neck, back and forehead. I shivered and sneezed loudly–into my elbow.
“AAAA – TCHAH!”
Before the sternulation had echoed even once across the canyon, the pack of animals had dispersed, scattered, vanished.
I seized the opportunity and bolted for the nearest trailhead, not the one I had come from, and it was of course blocked by a large plywood board with “COVID19 HEALTH ORDER TRAIL CLOSED” painted on it in large red letters.
I climbed over the board, and emerged into a neighborhood. I walked on, feeling the silent stare of citizens sheltered in their home bubbles, thinking rightfully “Who does he think he is?”
Hiking during a pandemic
The afternoon sky, dotted with a vanishing field of clouds, is so clear that from up here, about two thirds of the way up the eastern ridge of Rubio canyon, you can see ships leaving LA harbor. Beyond that, Catalina island cuts a jagged line on the horizon. To the west, the falling sun bounces off the ocean in golden hues. You can hear dogs bark in yards somewhere in the foothills, two thousand feet below, and sirens. I counted four since leaving the car at the trailhead and can’t help thinking: is that four more covid cases? But I remind myself that sirens are common, aren’t they? Though it is true I never payed attention to them the way I have today.
It all feels unreal
Is the city hum fainter?
the sunlight dimmer?
On trail the chaparral sings
with scents of sage and wild thyme
I encountered only one other hiker on this rather steep and forgotten trail, which is more than on the many previous times I’ve walked it in the past fifteen years. We followed city and county orders and maintained adequate social distance, exchanging a cursory greeting. Everyone must do their part.
Travel fast head down
don't breathe in when passing hikers
there's a bug going round
between late afternoon rain
showers the day before spring
The ‘Sam Merrill Highway’, or thoroughfare, busier than ever despite the wet weather, now that people are ‘sheltering at home’, was the perfect place to enjoy a late afternoon escape. The rain stopped on cue–not that it would have kept me at home–and the sky opened up over the LA basin, with shafts of light illuminating JPL and Long Beach like in an eighteenth century landscape painting with transcendental overtones. Then the clouds rolled in again, bathing the hillside in an aura of mystery and uncertainty, think London fog, more fitting to the trying times.
Where'd you come from?
asked the hiker to the rock
how long you been here?
The rock pondered pensively
then said how much time you got?
Round yellow blooms
a million strong, brighten
the arid slopes and floor
of Pacoima canyon in late
winter, they're named bush poppies
(which I didn't know)
The big storm is coming, five consecutive days of rain according to the iphone weather app, and it’s definitely much needed. I am already looking forward to walking in it, and especially after it, when the hills are bursting with scents, the ground is moist, skies dotted with trailing white clouds the sun plays hide and seek with, and the air cleansed. Until then, with dark clouds laden with moisture ready to pounce, a short ramble into Pacoima canyon was in perfect order. Seize the day. And what a day. There was a creek, pretty flowers, a little bit of climbing, total solace, no pesky mozzies, a constant cool breeze, and a great deal of bushwhacking along a largely abandoned trail. It’s number six in the 1999 edition of “Trails of the Angeles”, but I doubt it made the latest edition–note to self, check at the library or bookstore–because it is clearly unmaintained. If this were a guide, this is where I’d warn: map and compass, GPS, mandatory, involves route-finding, and wear long sleeves and pants. On that note, thank you to the considerate souls who erected cairns through the years, without those lovely rockpiles this walk would have been considerably harder. That said, even the cairns were often hidden by rampant vegetation, difficult to spot, and I’m sure I missed a few. However, the trail follows the floor of the canyon, so it’s hard to get lost or make a wrong turn, but it’s considerably easier to follow someone’s previous foray through the dense vegetation that lines the creek, especially in the narrower sections, than to have to carve your own. Whether one is more fun than the other is up for debate. At least, unlike in recent scrambling adventures, I had the presence of mind to capture some of the experience, and even found time to admire the millions of yellow flowers that blanketed the canyon slopes. I learned later they’re called bush poppies or Dendromecon rigida, to be scientific.
The new track of this section of the Pacific Crest Trail is a gently graded, wide cut through the manzanita and chamise fields blanketing the northern slopes of Sierra Pelona, that eventually plunges in and out of an oak grove, before landing on the barren ridge. It’s as good as a trail gets, and very different from some of the bushwhacking I’ve been involved in lately, not necessarily better though, but definitely very pleasant.
A manzanita crown
floats over a chamise sea
red bark, green leaves
silvery in morning sun
bright yellow at magic hour
The walk along the broad rounded ridge to McDill follows a dirt service road, I’m told often blasted by strong winds from the seemingly endless desert to the north. On this sunny winter day, the persistent breeze was cool and refreshing, though it did blow my hat off a few times.
Wind battered live oaks
line the shaded slope of the
Sierra Pelona
young and ancient survivors
whispering words of wisdom
I lunched under the canopy of a big old oak, whose original trunk was hollowed out by fire, giving room for younger limbs to grow around it, and whose leaves danced to the soothing melody of the softening breeze. Under my feet, a carpet of fallen leaves and acorns covered the soil and grass that will soon turn brown. Exposed roots dug into the dirt like the fingers of an ageless hand, anchoring the tree to the mountain floor and giving it structure and stability at the same time.
On a mission to explore new terrain and faced with the daunting multitude of paths on the Alltrails app, my navigational tool of choice, I resorted to John Robinson’s classic “Trails of the Angeles, 100 hikes in the San Gabriels”, for this outing to the northwest corner of the range. As of its 1999 edition, you could drive all the way past Templin Highway, to Cienaga campground, and hike deep into the canyon, as described in Robinson’s hike #3. That is no longer true. The road through the lower reaches of Fish Canyon is eroded, washed out, or covered with large boulders, and you have to walk it. Not a problem. We like walking.
It’s actually comforting to witness nature reclaiming territory over human asphalt ribbons, and other abandoned concrete structures that lace and dot even our reserved wilderness landscapes–the Mueller tunnel, the bridge to nowhere, several ski lifts, the Echo ‘White City’ resort. To read the dusk of the anthropocene into these ruins would be tempting but pessimistic. I’d rather imagine that, whatever lies next in the history of the planet, may not include that much concrete or asphalt or glass or metal or even humans, since we are so hellbent on self-destruction, but Life will march on.
In the canyon, alive, well and merry swarms of mosquitos partied and drank around my warm-blooded ankles, knees and wrists. To escape them, I took an overgrown, largely abandoned trail leading up a slope thickly covered with chaparral. Again, not a problem; a little dose of bushwhacking adds a dose of excitement to any ramble in the woods. It also serves as a reminder that this habitat is not friendly to lonesome, untooled bipeds in shorts, t-shirts and trail runners.
The untrimmed yuccas
rhyme with prickly motherfuckas
spill blood on the trail
which rhymes with breathe climb exhale
beats the mozzie armies below
The northerly was blowing strong again this morning, climbing out of the Deukmejian Wilderness on the trail to Mt Lukens.
A two inch cricket
basking in the winter sun
chirps just once before
hopping away out of sight
due to unsafe conditions
The roar of a child
carried by a winter breeze
floats to the ocean
people smile as it passes
let the inner demons out
By the time I reached the summit it had calmed considerably though it still made a door slam repeatedly on one of the relay tower bases, while another tower whined incessantly. And then the breeze stopped. And I ventured onto a trail that was faint at first, then severely overgrown, and finally disappeared, just late enough in the game that I was committed to not turning back though I probably should have. The next mile or so was a sever bushwhack through some of the densest chaparral I have ever crossed. The effort of finding an acceptable path, without loosing footing, and scraping, pushing, crawling at times, shoving, tripping, through an endless field of branches, thorns, rocks bent on NOT letting me pass, prevented me from recording any of it–so much for my multi-tasking skills.
Lesson: when the Alltrails app fails to guide you to a passable trail, turn around, retrace your steps, or start filming and go ahead, bleed for your fun.
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