And then it was October. It begins to cool down. Wind shifts off the ocean and drapes the southland mornings in fog that burns off before noon. The lovely smell of the rotting leaves; the coldstone feel of the canyon mornings.
I've hiked Mt. Wilson on mornings like these. You get up past first water and the trail clears out. You curl around the bend and forge upward and soon you're in the silence of the California wilderness--if this part of California can still be considered wild. You stop on the trail and listen. Not even a jet overhead. Far below, the valley floor but you're deep in the canyon at that point and above the smog levels, and so can't see it.
Up here is where I would go to clear my thoughts, where I could hear nothing but my own mind reading along whatever ideas I had. When I was writing Dryline Rhapsody, I would take to the trail to dislodge all the clatter that existed below. The air is cool and clean; the smells decidedly non-Foothill Blvd.
The first time I took to the trail was actually on a rainy spring afternoon. Someone (a co-worker) had mentioned the place and vaguely told me how to get there. It raining like all get-out and the shoes I had one were casual weekender things, not trail boots, but I started up the trail nevertheless. I didn't get too far before I realized that the trail was more a stream and that I ought to make my way back when the weather clears and I have better shoes. The following weekend I did just that, and so began my trail-watch.
It's quite literary to hike. Many of us sad city folks and suburbanites might forget what it's like to see the woods in the autumn or to follow a springtime brook. I had. (I'm originally from New Hampshire where it was occasionally more than wild) But having found this outlet, I could now converse and organize whatever thoughts I had, and at the time it was more or less geared toward Dryline Rhapsody, my novel project about post-postmodern California.
Then there's West Coast Hearts. It has a life of its own and I admit I haven't really extended myself to it that much; been marketing the other two manuscripts, one of which, North of Here, has been submitted to a competition recently.
All mountains take time; all writing takes time. But I'm glad I've given over the time to it, and someday you'll thank me. Someday you'll thank the mountain, too.
