Walking

through an alpine forest buzzing with the sound of generators powering antennas, relays and telescopes on Mount Wilson and a cloud of tiny flies and mozzies escorting the heat radiating  from my body that’s working so hard to maintain its temperature within the narrow margin of survivability.

through a sun-drenched valley where crowds of tree carcasses spread their charred, arching limbs over renascent chaparral while my whining companions, in their infinite wisdom, remain under the protective shade of the pine forest canopy, hoping to ambush some other warm-blooded life form.

over a ridge the flames struggled to cross and into a less ravaged oak forest where the still abundant dead trees aren’t burn or lightning victims but losers in the struggle to suck enough moisture up their sinewy, evocative, majestic trunks from a depleted aquifer.

through a deserted campground guarded by an army of ants busy turning a stump into a pile of rust-colored sawdust.

through another stretch of alpine forest at higher elevation on a trail that, thankfully, alternates between breezy, exposed switchbacks and long traverses on the northern, shaded slope of Wilson where, for some dare I say mystical reason, the flies and mozzies are fewer, the sound of generators almost inaudible, and the number of deer encounters outnumbered that of humans four to none.

Walking Project 126_walking through – Mt Wilson-Rim trail from chris worland on Vimeo.