Tag: San Gabriels (Page 3 of 10)

Observations in tanka form from a walk that started in famed Placerita Canyon, traveled through a recently burned landscape in full natural recovery, and ended at the “Oak of the Golden Dream”, where in 1842, Francisco Lopez dreamed of, and then found gold, six years before John Sutter in Northern California (the full story).

(I owe the discovery of the Japanese poetical format to Harryette Mullen’s “Urban Tumbleweed, Notes from a Tanka Diary” ).

Kept moving through
cold, sun, wind on winter day
across a charred landscape
old growth oaks black like charcoal
sycamores stripped white, naked

Historical trail
they found gold near the oak tree
by the creek, blind, fooled
by the winter sun glistening 
on the water like a dream

Historical trail
creekside, by the old oak tree
they planted cross, flag 
and deed to claim land 
they then ravaged with fool's greed

Along the Path
Along the path
Singed peeled white pine trunks erect in fields of ferns
eroded boulders cradling many fingers in bloom
spiked pinecones dripping sap kick'd to mark time.
Along the path
Feasts of scents sounds textures colors
thresholds into the imagination
Bear plays a scintillating saxophone to a swarming cloud of gnats
resting crosslegged on a bed of blue-eyed grass
hosting a drone choir of drunken bees
foot thumping the air on the downbeat
while oblivious workman-like ants zig and zag in double-time
he turns to camera 
"honey-infused ursine blues is sooo much sweeter"
a painted lady weaves in approval around the bell of the horn
Oh Yeah
suddenly lizard scurries off beat crow shrieks the alarm
An intruder like a tourist walks into the alpine scenery
along the path he hums a few bars of Giant Steps
he enters the landscape like a painting a jam session a cinemascope drama an eight-hundred page romantic novel
with some anticipation much curiosity and measured wonder
long then short then long shadows drift and define 
what he sees hears smells commits to memory

Singed peeled white pine trunks erect in fields of ferns
eroded boulders cradling many fingers in bloom
spiked pinecones dripping sap he kicks to mark time
along the path in the painting he enters like a landscape   

For architectural reasons, the structures of the Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, seen from the Bailey canyon trail, remind me of California missions, like the San Gabriel Mission, barely visible in the distance through a thin layer of morning fog.

Muted bells of Bailey
Cool dawn whisper
a moment of silence...
    (for the enslaved Chumash Indians who built the San Gabriel Mission with lumber pillaged from the southern canyons of the San Gabriels)

There’s no escaping the urban rumble, the honking of trucks backing up, the many chainsaws, lawn mowers and leaf blowers prettying suburban yards below, the sirens, but as soon as the trail ducks deeper into the canyon, the atmosphere goes quiet, though not silent. Any warm body moving through will be escorted by a cloud of swarming flies, mozzies, and bees pollinating late summer blooms. Only a breeze or extreme temperatures would keep them away, and it’s a perfectly still, warm summer morning. What did the Chumash do about bugs?

Traversing soft white
buzzing buckwheat fields
A bee lands, dies in my coffee

I remember reading that, in the summer, groups of Chumash would migrate to higher altitudes in the range, places like Chilao to hunt and forage. They would thus also avoid the high temperatures of the foothills (and the armies of flying insects?). My return from Mt Wilson, contrastingly, is a long toll road slog in and out of sun-drenched, breezeless, dry chaparral. Still, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Whiny flies hover
like bloodthirsty drones
Summer trail schadenfreude
   (for the drones)

It’s the time of year when the boughs of Jeffrey pines bend under the weight of green cones oozing resin that drips on the forest floor, on a boulder, or on the hat of the occasional passer-by, like the sweat from their brow drips on the trail, on their boots, or on the pages of a sketchbook. 

Gray summer stillness
through clouds of flies
buzzing, views of Mount Baldy

Three cups of tea, three views of Mount Baldy (also known as San Antonio), from each of the three T’s (Mounts Timber, Telegraph and Thunder), and three totally trite attempts at trail poetry.

Mozzies attacking
three bites a minute
August mountain peacefulness

It’s not often I’ve reached a rugged, exposed summit like Telegraph when the breeze was lesser than what the microphone on the smartphone picks up, which made for a warm day, sweetly punctuated by a canteen refill at the Columbine spring, and a hammering cold shower under the San Antonio falls. 

Silent summer heat
ice-cold spring water 
sun, shade, nature takes and gives