Point Dume

I got to Point Dume forty-five minutes before sunset. Back in the Valley the sun glared down from the sky, warming the land and tricking flowers and bees alike into thinking it was spring already. There, at the beach gusts of wind whipped across the sand.

Instead of paying the ten-dollar fee to get into the parking lot, I pulled the car over at the edge of the highway, like everyone else. Grabbing my bag and putting on a sweater, I walked the extra ten feet to the lot, then across it. Once on the other side, I took off my sandals and rolled up my jeans to make my trek down to the water's edge.

The sand gave under my feet, and I sank an inch into it at every step. I waddled my way down to the seashore. All other times I'd been there, a continuous pattern of footprints pockmarked the beach, but now the wind had chiseled them down. Grains of sand bit into my face like multitudes of insects. I turned my back against their flurry and fished the camera out of my bag.

Some people think taking one of those sunset-at-the-beach photos is a matter of timing and a camera. It's a misconception. To take pictures of any sunset that will grab people's attention you need clouds--clouds arranged in a way that the setting sun's rays refract on them and lit up the sky like a bonfire. Most of those pictures you see on stock photo sites are fakes: Frankensteined together from images of sea and sky that had never met before their blind date in Photoshop.

There were no clouds in the sky this time. It didn't matter; that's not why I was there. To tell the truth, I didn't know why I was there, other than having had an impulse to drive across the mountains and down to the beach.

Waves licked at my feet. The ocean was like ice water, yet there were surfers in it, hugging every surge like seals wrapped in neoprene. A couple seagulls stood at the edge of sand and water, picking up whatever morsels the surf washed ashore. I took a few pictures of them, but I had no telephoto lens, and the birds edged away from me at the same pace I tried to close the distance between us.

As the sun drifted closer the horizon, the bottom of the sky began to blush. It contrasted with the pool of ink stretching across the landscape that was the ocean. At the edge of the shore, where the water had soaked it through, the sand was the color of chocolate. I clicked away until the light faded away.

I drove back to the Valley under the darkness. The wind kept hurling itself against the car until I crossed the mountains.

Unknown California

I've been to the End of the World and it is called Slab City, California.


Slab City is a former marine base, current RV squatter frontier land, 60 miles from Palm Springs, 30 miles from the Mexican border, within view of the beautiful, but toxic Salton Sea, just a fence an irrigation channel across from an active bombing range.


There is no electricity, water, or any municipal services whatsoever, but there is a golf course (no greens, only browns), pet cemetery, a library that is always open and operates on the honor system. There is also a stage that hosts a talent show every Saturday.



The locals also call the place "Check Republic" because most of the residents persist on government checks. The norm is extreme poverty. Yet in the winter months the "snow birds" arrive, from as far as Canada, often in hundred thousand dollar campers.


It would be easy to write this place off as a bizarre Mad Max style site, but like most things in life, it's more complicated. I barely got a glimpse under the surface, and I will not make any attempt to pontificate about it. It would not be my place.


Just outside of Slab City is Salvation Mountain. The creator of this artwork is Leonard Knight whose car broke down at this spot decades ago. He stayed and built/painted his message at the side of the mountain.


In 2001 it was declared as a National Folk Art Site by the The Folk Art Society of America, and in 2002 it was entered in the Congressional Record as a national treasure.


Leonard is 78 years old, but he still lives at the site and works on it every day. He welcomes visitors who drop by any time of the day, he loves showing them around. He often gives the visitors gifts; postcards, puzzles featuring his mountain.

Wear Green - For Our Parks

While half a world away a nation is struggling to resolve whether it'll have its old conservative, autocratic government or a new(ish), slightly less conservative and autocratic one, we have some problems over here on our own shores.

Everyone knows California is in deep doo-doo. We ran out of money, in the hole for, oh, about $24 billion. There will be big budget cuts and they will all hurt, but there is at least one that doesn't make any sense at all: Legislators plant to shut down 220 out of 279 of California's state parks. Which would account for a whopping 0.62% of that budget gap. Even less if you count in that it would also cut the income that the state parks directly generate. Also hurt would be numerous local economies that would lose income from tourists attracted by and to state parks. Overall the loss to the California economy is likely to be bigger than the savings to the budget. It's nonsensical.

Additionally, the closure promised to be temporary (I would sure hope so), but reopening, restarting parks that have been without maintenance for some time could prove far more costly than maintaining them. There is another aspect to this that is hard to put a price tag on. Our parks are our treasures. The closure would mean that iconic places, like the big redwood forests, beaches, camp grounds, deserts and all sorts of wilderness areas we take for granted would become off-limits to all of us.

There have been one proposal to cover the cost of park maintenance: A once-a-year $15 charge added to license fees of non-commercial vehicles in California. To me that seems like a great deal.

If you care at all what happens to our park you might want to visit the California State Parks Foundation website or facebook page.

A few articles to read:

State Parks on Chopping Block - video - Wall Street Journal

Closing California State Parks: Is this the answer to the budget crisis?

Proposed California state parks closure list includes Calaveras Big Trees: Locals anxious

Proposed state parks closure list is not for the faint of heart - LA Times

State parks access pass might be key to preventing their closure - LA Times

Road Trip

Something I love about LA is that if you know what you are doing, you can drive for twenty minutes and find yourself somewhere where you feel million miles away from civilization. I was feeling stir crazy yesterday, so I headed for the mountains. I did a nice long ride up on Little Tujunga Canyon Rd to Bouqet Canyon Rd to Palmdale, and back down on Angeles Forest Hwy to the 2.


I drove past the reservoir. I like driving on little roads, at places I've never been before. There is always something interesting to find.


This weird piece of faux classical architecture sits on an otherwise deserted stretch of Vasquez Cny Rd that connects Little Tujunga Cny to Sierra Hwy. People build the weirdest things at the weirdest places.


Bouqet Cny Rd had a real nice stretch with hardly any traffic, a babbling brook right along the road, and occasionally odd little houses perched on or nestling against hills and rocks.


Palmdale failed to impress me. This is a spot on the edge of town where I wandered off.


In this is what happens when you use camera flash against highly reflective traffic signs.

From the whole trip this is probably my favorite image. It got a bit rainy and the hills in the back are wrapped in fog.

Duck, Duck... Turtle?

November 13, Thursday is the big California earthquake preparedness day. They call it Shake Out. At 10 am we are all supposed to duck and cover. Bert over here is from those other duck-and-cover days.

Postcards

In the 1930's and 40's this peculiar postcard style was very common in the US. The pictures are BW photographs that are color tinted, and printed on a textured paper. The resulting image has a mostly, but not entirely photographic look. The reason for their being is technical: The advancement of printing technology allowed printing on high rag content paper that was also cheaper. Hence the textured feel. Color photography already existed at the time but the technology for its easy and cheap mass reproduction didn't become available till the early 50's. I picked up a stack of these cards in an antique mall in Indiana. I got more in L.A. later. I'm pretty sure this set of four is from Indiana however. What made them especially interesting for me is the commentary meticulously typed on the back. It doesn't seem like they were ever mailed, but rather that were kept as a sort of travel diary.

Instead of scanning and post the back of each card I decided to enclose the commentary in type.

"This shows how California irrigates. They are fined if water is allowed to overflow the ditches and waste."

"This shows some of the many kinds of dessert plants. We saw many, but not all of these - the prickly pear, Joshua tree, yucca, Spanish bayonet, the ocotillo etc."

"Looking in from the Pacific Ocean across the Golden Gate bridge in the foreground, with San Francisco pininsula (sic) at the right and center of the card and the San Francisco-Oakland bridge in the distance."

Personally I find these cards much more visually appealing than the "Photochrome" cards that replaced them in the 1950's. Interestingly I haven't yet seen similar cards from Europe - though I'm hardly a postcard expert.