neurotic New Yorker moves to LA — my photo diary
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Growth vectors
Crowding, cutting, branching, cloning / Owens Peak Wilderness
2013-05-23
Make tracks
2013-05-22
Bump in the night
2013-05-21
Flower shower
After spending Easter weekend in the Owens Valley desert, we traveled from the driest through the wettest surroundings on the way home. Still seeking wildflowers, we took an incredibly scenic drive down Caliente Bodfish Road. On this country road, remoteness bred friendliness—everyone we passed waved to us.
A true spring downpour broke over us as we drove through Arvin’s flower fields on highway 223, the type of pent, cleansing rain I haven’t been caught in since I moved to Los Angeles nearly two years ago. Not wanting our vacation to end, we made a final stop at Wind Wolves Preserve for a canyon hike. Can’t wait for this drenched beauty to reflower…
2013-05-20
Nor any drop
10,000 years ago, the Owens Valley was underwater, covered by a glacial lake. 100 years ago, a river ran through it, fed by Sierra streams. Then Los Angeles sucked it dry. We’re assholes. And we’re thirsty.
2013-05-18
Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown
The inflorescence is a short panicle of greenish-white bells held close to the foliage. The flower petals often don’t open properly. Flowers are said to have a slightly unpleasant perfume, although it’s not easy to get near enough to find out. —R.J. Hodgkiss
Destination unknown, we resolved to chase wildflowers on our Easter trip. There were no carpets of poppies and lupine this year; dissuaded by their sparse flowering, we headed to the desert before it got too hot. Within the Owens Peak Wilderness, and traversing Walker Pass, we witnessed an altogether more rare phenomenon—Joshua trees in unexpectedly profuse, desperate bloom.
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The land where the South Fork of the Kern River leaves the mountains to greet the valley looks like paradise, even when it’s not hard won. I can only imagine the astonished rejoicing of California settlers who survived the trip through Death Valley to see this. Joshua trees and verdant ranchland—these two things shouldn’t go together, and yet they do, at Canebrake Ecological Reserve, an oasis we discovered by accident, when our dog was getting carsick.
2013-05-17
Randsburg isn’t a place you end up by accident—we missed inconspicuous turnoffs twice. The defunct mining town (aka living ghost town) was actually bustling on a Friday afternoon, revivified as a hub for off-roaders. This form of recreation was completely off my radar, so it was interesting to see who does it—mostly ruddied families wearing plastic gladiator gear—and to notice the number of parks and trails available (we saw more dune buggies from our hike into the Owens Peak Wilderness).
I found the town gorgeous and curious. I couldn’t really tell which businesses were open or closed, which houses were lived in and which were abandoned (my explorations were curtailed by my dog). There were shiny new cars and No Trespassing signs. I felt nosy. Most of all I admired the art with which the townspeople had arranged their gardens, their storefronts, their trash, their past—
The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses ‘the means at hand,’ that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there … not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenous… If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one’s concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur. —Jacques Derrida
2013-05-16
Fake panorama, Stewart Falls / Provo Canyon, UT
