Tag: San Gabriels (Page 8 of 10)

Walking Project 036_purified air – Mt Baldy from chris worland on Vimeo.

When I return home from day-long walks I often get asked seen any wildlife? The short and most common answer is nah. But that’s not really true. In fact, it’s a gross understatement, a little white lie that means I wasn’t mauled by a bear, eaten by a puma, bitten by a rattler, chased by a pack of coyotes, rammed by a deer or hissed at by a bobcat. On any given day, there is an abundance of life out there and it’s wild. Even on neighborhood walks, I will come across an assortment of birds, none of which I can name, except for the ominous raven, the occasional coyote licking his chops after feasting on someone’s beloved kitty, and squirrels of course–those guys are everywhere. In the San Gabriel Mountains, where I do a lot of walking, the squirrels are grey, and as you gain altitude, they are replaced, in the nut-collecting family, by skittish chipmunks that chirp as you walk by but never let you film them in close up, smart I guess. There also there is a variety of birds I cannot name, whose calls often sound familiar and friendly, and ominous ravens that appear larger than their urban cousins, although I could just be making that up. If you’re lucky you’ll get a rare Nelson bighorn sheep sighting, but don’t count on it; I’ve only seen two in fifteen years. There are deer, naturally, otherwise what would the pumas eat? This list is obviously not exhaustive; I am not a biologist, merely a distant observer, but it is missing one particular quadruped. Often seen doing push-ups on a sun-drenched rock, scurrying up the trail or simply surveying the landscape with nervous head jerks. I am talking about the gazillion lizards that you will not be able to avoid, especially if you, like them, don’t like cold temperatures.

We’ve recently had one of the scaly beasts take up residence in our backyard. I often notice it scaling a magnolia tree, our principal source of shade, twisting its diamond-shaped head this and that way, looking for bugs, dinner, but I can’t help seeing a domesticated dragon, from an ancient line of dragons, far more ancient than humans, watching over us, protecting us. Evidently, as I walk past our friend’s relatives on the trail, I am not to be trusted, and why should I be trusted, as a representative of the first species capable of self-exterminating? But I am allowed to pass, and therefore given a chance to breathe the purified air at the summit of Mt Baldy. For that I am grateful.

Or you could say it’s a walk in two chapters, or two parts, or a main narrative and a subplot, an aside, a divergence, a footnote.

The first inspired by the last lines of John Keats’ very famous poem

In “The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel” (also known as “The Knapsack Notebook”) Matsuo Bashō admits,

“that my records are little more than the babble of the intoxicated and the rambling talk of the dreaming, and therefore my readers are kindly requested to take them as such.”

Makes me think of Oscar Wilde, “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” Or Boris Vian, “Cette histoire est vraie puisque je l’ai inventée.” (This story is true, because I made it up).

At Mount Kazuraki:

            God of this mountain,

            May you be kind enough

           To show your face

           Among the dawning blossoms?

After visits to Mount Miwa and Mount Tafu, I climbed the steep pass of Hoso.

          Higher than the lark,

          I climbed into the air,

         Taking a breath

         At the summit of a pass.

…

Every turn of the road brought me new thoughts and every sunrise gave me fresh emotions.

 

Matsuo Bashō, “The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel”

 

WP034_chronicle of a well-traveled backpack – Mt Baden Powell from chris worland on Vimeo.

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.