Every walk tells a story
Three little Dragons (for Bob Marley) Walked up to echo to smile at the setting sun Three little dragons sunning themselves silent as the rock their eyes winking at me saying, this is my message to you Don't worry about a thing 'cause every little thing is going to be alright...
Three dragons soaking fading orange winter warmth Big Black, Silver Stripes and Yellow Belly, content we share afternoon Fika (Fika: Swedish social coffee break)
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’.
Discarded blue purple black orange surgical gloves and celeste face masks alongside blooming jasmine and california poppies
Spotted two signs during this ramble around West Altadena and Northwest Pasadena: the first, at the taped off trailhead where West Altadena Dr. dead ends, full of fear, anxiety and aggression, threatens to call the sheriff on anyone spotted crossing onto the trail, “stay in your neighborhood”. The second, hangs next to a driveway, appeals to the passer-by to “care for yourself and others”. Two very contrasting attitudes in a health crisis that affects us all, to various degrees for sure, but indiscriminately. I’m tempted to use the contrast as more evidence of the divisions exacerbated by our current political climate, and all the anxieties it has brought forth, but I prefer to walk on, return home and prepare a meal for the family.
Listen: lawnmowers hedge trimmers and leaf blowers weed cutters hip hop rancheras a live drum beat rattles the windows as I pass
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?
Like many of the canyons on the front range of the San Gabriels, Rubio harbors vestiges of past human activity: at the turn of the twentieth century, a train brought travelers from downtown LA into the canyon where they boarded a funicular that climbed the incline to “The White City” resort on Echo Mountain, there was mining too, before that. Abandoned to the inclement elements of this rugged eco-system, human endeavors have not fared well; thankfully, little remains, just enough concrete, wood and metal to remind visitors that while their ancestors may have been crazy, and ingenious enough to build a funicular on this steep, forbidding ridge, their efforts were ultimately futile.
If you follow the creek beyond the site of the funicular base, you’ll notice, clinging to the sidewalls of the canyon, sticking out of the sandy dried out creek bed, mingled in dense networks of dead branches, two networks of pipes. The old cast-iron, rusty, bent, mostly buried, useless, unless you use it as canvas for tagging, or, as I’ve seen done, if you recycle it as trail-building material. And then there is a line of white and blue PVC pipes, evidently still maintained, and still used to harvest the most precious thing the canyon has to offer–besides a cool getaway for hikers–namely water.
The pipes of Rubio
PVC or cast iron still
harvest fresh water
you can hear it flow gently
like the dripping from the falls
Meanwhile, on the Sam Merrill ‘Highway’–the gentler and much-used trail to Echo on the other side of the mountain…
Oh, there are other trails? Yes, many
i'll have to come back for that
Hi, Hi
Hi, hey
Are we almost there? The hotel? one more switchback
thanks man
Are we there yet? close, one more switchback
great
Hi, hi
It's like you stepped up your game,...Hi...How's it going?
After a while I was like, I can't do this work...Hello...
She's just scared, here, hold on to my arm
thank you
You want to go first, I feel like we're blocking you?
Thank you...
The walking project has been on forced hiatus for a while–injury, work, life–that’s also prompted an identity crisis of sorts. What exactly and why exactly am I doing (with) these videos? The answer, as should have been obvious from the get go, lies in walking. I had to ramble a few miles in the foothills overlooking the buzzing city bathed in a filtered, soft winter afternoon light to rekindle the passion, and if not find the path forward, at least understand anew why I am walking it in the first place. It’s a way of coping with the constant brouhaha, the visual carpet-bombing, the sensory warp speed of life in laid-back Los Angeles; it’s an escape, but not an avoidance. It’s a way of absorbing the landscape, of growing a sense of place and belonging. One step at a time, I fill in my own map of the world, charted with idiosyncratic observations, chance encounters and an ever-increasing belief in the power of looking up and around, listening to the wind and the birds, slowing down.
“When the yellow leaf dropped from the tree…it struck me how that will never happen again, with that particular leaf.”
Jerry Ellis, “Walking the Trail, One man’s journey along the cherokee trail of tears”.
In Passing
Metro still runs buses along millionaire’s row, East Mariposa street, but the tram line headed for the base of the Rubio canyon funicular has been paved over, a familiar LA story. A few landmarks remain, among other imposing properties, the Rand McNally House, the Zane Grey Estate, the Altadena library, the Waldorf school. A film crew tows and films a ‘moving’ red pickup, flanked by police cars, another familiar LA story.
Turn left on Fair Oaks, across the liquor store parking lot, Abounding Grace Ministeries and the Altadena Church of Christ, then a few steps south, Hillside Voz de Esperanza; La Venezia court leads almost directly to the Pizza of Venice pizzeria. Where else but Altadena? reads the bus bench ad.
West on Ventura, the Charles White park, named after the painter just recently celebrated in Museums all over LA–nice to name places after local artists–and although the site isn’t exactly memorable, it does boast a detailed fitness panel, including a chart that tells me my BMI is 29. Walk faster.
Sheriffs hang out at the entrance to Franklin elementary, an all too common sight and sign of the times. A man–musician?–carries a sitar case to his car. Toy trucks parked along Ventura, dead end at the Arroyo Seco, where a constant flow of semis haul away dirt from the Devil’s gate reservoir, destroying a wildlife habitat itself a result of damming the Arroyo, which was done to prevent floods that swept away houses built too close to the water in the first place. A human story.
Crossing over the heavily fenced ”suicide bridge”, looking for a path to descend into the arroyo. On the west bank of the arroyo, tucked in the shade of small scrub oak, a homeless encampment–another LA story–towered over by the Batman Mansion.
Defenders Parkway, traverses Defenders Park, ending at Orange Grove, where Pasadena was founded, where the founders ‘picked out their lots’, home to plaques honoring Founders and Veterans, and the statue–“Enduring Heroes”–of an unarmed, ungeared, soldier walking and waving a flag at the Elks Lodge across the street.
I salute another statue, Rodin’s “The Thinker”, less that a block away, hovering over passers by on Colorado who’ve just left the Norton Simon Museum.
I’ve been thinking about trees…You, the trees that keep me company on these walks, with your anthropomorphic features, your textures, your resilience to cling to the side of an eroding cliff and at the same time hold that cliff together, with your roots, the pain that my imagination transfers onto your knife-carved, lightning-torn, chainsawed and otherwise disfigured structures–by man and nature alike–the music you whisper under the caress of a breeze or the bending force of a gale, the fragile world that each of you feeds on, protects and nourishes which includes ours–the delicate balance of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and organic matter that makes our air breathable and our soil fertile–and I wonder sometimes as I walk by and hear or see something about you that catches my attention: are you trying to tell me something?
© 2024 chris' walking project
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments