I stop here every year for gas, tacos, and supplies. I often spend a night in town. When I do, it’s always a burger and slice of pie at Ray’s. This time I spent a few hours wandering around town. I passed two older women sitting in their yard, with a friendly but yappy little dog. I chatted with them while I played with the dog. I wandered past abandoned houses, closed hotels, and a nice, modern school, well-tended lawns and weed-strewn dirt lots, a well-stocked market, and an aspirational train stop. Back on Broadway, I kept hoping somebody would come by with a ball so we could play. Alas, nobody ever did. Probably just as well since I doubt the beer at Frank’s Pizza is ice cold, and I’m lousy at basketball.
Urban #230611.
One day this will all change. Many of the old buildings will be razed to make way for soulless new ones if the Holiday Inn at the far end of town is any clue. When that happens, I will be particularly glad I spent time documenting the town before it was destroyed.
I wonder if Frank’s will still be here when I visit next year.
Seven women sit in the cafe. I’m the eighth person. Aside from the worker’s voice that carries, the room is quiet. One woman is writing something, her pen poised above a pad of paper. One woman reads a book. Two are working on class assignments — like most students, “work” seems to mean announce that they have assignments to finish, and then to talk to each other about non-assignment issues (e.g., “I’m looking for an audio version of that book I wanted to read” and “My Spotify smart list introduced me to lots of new music” she said as she put in her earbuds). Another woman just entered and put her stuff on the table nearest me. She ordered an iced chai.
The three workers behind the counter pass the time by telling stories.
Urban #230916
Three more women just entered; an old man followed them in. They stopped to put there stuff on a table. He walked straight up to the counter, ordered a large black coffee — “No” he replied when asked if he needed room for cream — and immediately left with his coffee. The women order lattes, one with vanilla.
So went the first hour of business. Maybe the incessant rain discouraged customers from coming in.
The old guy is asking questions, offering suggestions, and taking notes. He’s there with a young couple, planning the music for the couple’s wedding. At first glance he looks like the leader of some cover band, but he’s probably DJ. A full head of lovely silver hair, he is in his mid-60s and easily twice the age of the couple. She does most of the talking. Her fiancé sits quietly, nodding his support when she looks his way. The old guy directs most questions to the young woman. She fields even those the the old guy tosses to her fiancé, who seems overwhelmed, a confused spectator in his own life. The fiancé’s physical presence exhausts his role. His being there is evidence of his agreement with the planning decisions made this morning.
Urban #230909
She, by contrast, has arrived prepared and eager to engage. Consulting her computer screen, she emphasizes her responses with a chopping motion of her right hand. Occasionally her left hand reaches out to touch her fiancé’s shoulder, but her attention remains focused on the old man. She steps through various stages of the event: while guests are being seated, walking down the aisle, entrances, first dance, father-daughter dance. The fiancé nods appropriately. When he looks to the side to retrieve his coffee, fatigue flashes across his face. He shifts, uncomfortable in his chair. He doesn’t share her enthusiasm for this process. Will the fiancé remember this episode? Does the music matter to him? Maybe. Maybe not. The music will likely have no more of an impact on him than the flower arrangements, the menu choices, or the photographer whose serviceable but unremarkable photographs will rot in some drawer amongst a pile of other USB thumb drives filled with important memories.
As they stand to leave, the young woman hands the old guy an envelop, she looks at her fiancé who, on cue, extends his hand and thanks the old guy. They say how excited they are to be working with him. They leave. The old guy puts the envelop in his bag, walks up to the register, orders an oat latte, and sits back down.
Are we more or less alone now that we hold “the world” in our hands? Do we seek out empty places so that the real world doesn’t interfere with our experiencing the virtual world? Maybe in the 1980s Aztec Camera could remark, “They call us lonely when we’re really just alone,” but today I worry that we are both alone and lonely.
How many of these former estates get recycled, finding new life as (often it seems) institutions of some sort? The opulence and exclusivity of a century ago transmogrified into some (quasi-)utilitarian and occasionally public space. The other afternoon, rainy and cold, I wandered around one such place. If you look closely at the main house, you will see traces of its regal past, in the stonework, the (repurposed) porte-cochère, the expansive entry and stairway. On the landing, original Tiffany windows glow in the evening’s gloom, incongruous next to the window A/C unit next to it.
Urban #221017.1
Beyond the main house and stately old trees, there is little left of the estate. There’s little reason to manicure the lawns or tend the gardens. Students don’t tend to pay much attention to gardens and lawns, nor do teachers. The grounds are now kept practical and utilitarian. Fountains, statues, and sundials, common on estate grounds, have been replaced by chairs and benches. Four sit empty in the drizzle and faint glow of the lamp.
Urban #221017.2
In some twisted way, I guess we can consider this a form of “recycle and reuse” bantered about so often these days even if it fails to “reduce” anything.
The runner slows to a walk each time the trail pitches up. He walks rather slowly, perhaps winded from the running. I nearly catch him, but just before I do he glances back and sets off again at a jog. Under the leaden sky we yo-yo like this for about 20 minutes as the trail climbs up the canyon. A century ago this trail would have been crowded with people hiking to the camp halfway up the mountain. Today, only the two of us. I wonder why he’s here. Why am I here?
Landscape #220909.3
Despite the drought and heatwave, the hills are alive and vibrant if not exactly verdant. Native plants, which have been banished from yards and parks below us, thrive up here in the foothills and mountains: sagebrush, buckwheat, mugwort, miner’s lettuce, occasionally yucca. They grow thick over the steep slopes. Higher up oak and manzanita, dark red trunks and branches contrasting sharply with bright green leaves.
On a short steep section about a mile up the trail I catch the runner. He nods, says nothing, turns and heads back down the trail. Alone, I continue up the trail. The sky is still heavy thanks to a storm off the coast of Mexico. Ozone, sharp in my nostrils. It will rain soon. And with that rain will come the musky petrichor, mixing with the smells of damp brush.
Landscape #220909.2
John McPhee claims that the San Gabriels are the steepest mountains in the U.S., a claim that seems both indefensible and, if you’ve ever hiked in these mountains, unassailably true. Fortunately, the trail leads at a more gentle slope up into the trees, toward the ridge, and on to the summit. I pause for a minute to appreciate the silence and the view out over the valley. As I do, I begin to hear the soft drizzle falling on the ground and the brush. There it is. Earthy. Comfortable. Somehow always familiar. That smell immediately takes me back to roaming these mountains as a kid, often alone just as I am now. What, I wonder, did that smell remind me of when I was just a child, too young to be reminded of being a child?
Landscape #220909.1
It is still drizzling as I turn to continue up the trail. I’ve got another hour or so before I reach the summit. Last time I hiked this trail I set out in the dark well before dawn. I was alone then too. Today I’ll probably get back after sunset. Last time I had a pancake breakfast when I got back. Maybe this time I should have a pancake dinner.
We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
Landscape #220312
That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
I don’t know why this feed door caught my eye. Maybe it was the contrast between the red door and the white wall — Why did they bother painting the door red? Does the color mean anything or serve any purpose? Seems unlikely. Maybe I was drawn to the traces of use in the worn and chipped paint — How many times has somebody grabbed the handle and opened the door? Why is there a large hole in the bottom?
#220424.1
I can’t say why I liked this scene. But I did, and that’s reason enough to take a picture. Not every photograph has to mean something profound or has to tell a story.
I find something relaxing about taking photographs of horses. There’s no talking and very little effort expended to get them to pose. I tend to watch them for some time, just trying to get a sense of how they are moving in their stalls. I often wonder what they are thinking, as they look out. Sometimes, when they whinny and neigh, I assume they want to go run around with the other horses. Clearly that assumption depends on equating the noises they make with those that I think humans would make when they want out. Sometimes they seem to be restless, but again if I’m being honest I have to admit that I am interpreting their movements as analogous to human actions. Maybe they are perfectly content just gazing out into the fields.
It was a miserable day. Cold and windy, and then cold, windy, and snowy. Stores closed early because the “winter storm warning.” Most people wisely chose to stay home, warm and dry. A perfect day, it seemed to me, to go for a hike. Thick leaden clouds and blowing snow created a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland of dead trees and empty spaces. There was no palette — everything shaded from black to gray. Nearly every scene was hauntingly beautiful.
Landscape #220312
On days like this I am drawn by the sirens’ songs and venture out into the howling winds. The discomfort and physical effort compensated for by the chance to be alone and the opportunity to photograph scenes few other people will experience.
