My Photography Tours

The list of photography ours I'll conduct in 2010 is up here, including trips to Route 66, the San Francisco Bay Area, Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Southwest.

The Sacred Circle

Photographs from my trip to the Indian Country in the southwest in early November – to Acoma Pueblo, Canyon De Chelly, Mesa Verde, and Chaco Canyon – are now up.

In the Canyon Lands of the Southwest

My photography galley with images from the second of my recent southwest trips in November – Monument Valley, Arches National Park, cowboys and Indians, ancient ruins, and dreamscapes – is online.

Photographing the Implements of Torture

This morning I headed over to my dentist to have him work on my tooth; it lost its gold crown about two weeks ago, when I was conducting the first of two photography tours of the Southwest. I'm not sure what possessed me to chomp onto a proffered piece of salt water taffy. That sticky confection pulled my gold filling right off the tooth on which it had sat solidly for many years.

Losing the crown, though, was neither painful nor depressing. That gold crown was visible every time I opened my mouth (and anyone who knows me knows how much I like to talk); I am going to prefer the natural look of the new crown I've ordered up.

Meanwhile, after an injection of a painkiller, my dentist and his aides spent about 45 minutes grinding and filing the tooth and suctioning out saliva and blood, in order to place a temporary crown that will be replaced with a permanent version in a few weeks.

During that process, I pulled out my iPhone and made a few photographs, surprising Dr. Meade and Mai. This was a first for them - and for me, too. I even made several images with the camera extended, looking back at two pairs of hands working over my mouth. It was not a pretty picture and I have wisely chosen to not to showcase it - at least not today.

My little iPhone does make for a worthy camera. I don't think, for example, I could have made the same photographs with my behemoth-sized Nikon DSLR. The intimidation factor of working with a camera like that might have risked serious damage to my tooth/teeth, worse than what happened when I made the mistake of chewing on that piece of taffy.

When Photography is Like Fishing

“Dave, you’ve been here before,” Phil Douglis, my traveling companion, told me, not long after the sun rose over Monument Valley, in the heart of the Navajo Nation. "You can afford to look for the smaller subjects while the rest of us have to look at the larger scene.”

San Juan Inn Above the San Juan River, Utah

Phil was right. I’ve been to Monument Valley several times, and I’ve made the obligatory photographs of the Totem Poles, the sand dunes, and Salt Creek. On my last trip, the week before last, I turned my attention elsewhere.

Until a couple of years ago, though, I’m not sure I would have been able to turn my camera away from the familiar scenes I knew the rest of our group was photographing. As the trip leader, I used to feel it incumbent upon myself to photograph what the others photographed. In fact, I do photograph the same things. Now, though, I’m more willing to give myself over to other subjects.

At Arches National Park

Our Guides at Monument Valley - Navajo Country

The Totem Poles, Monument Valley

It’s not so important to me now that I make photographs of a particular place, like Monument Valley, or Yellowstone, or Yosemite. It’s more important that I’m making photographs in those places, no matter what the subject

In other words, being somewhere I love, photographing in a place I love, has become more important to me than trying to photograph the place itself. It's a bit like fishing for some people, for whom catching a fish isn't paramount; it's the act of fishing they enjoy.

My new online gallery picturing the east side of the Sierra Nevada: http://www.pbase.com/davewyman/sierraeastside09

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iPhonic Photography

I'm just back from a week in Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains. We hit autumn color at its peak.

Meanwhile, I've posted a few new photographs in a new online galleryhere, each made with my iPhone. I'll do my best to upload fresh photos often, and will chronicle them on occasion here, too.

All the images in the gallery are made and will be created using only the iPhone and some simple photo apps on the iPhone itself.

My inspiration for this new project comes from a Ken Rockwell lecture and the book, "The Best Camera is the One That's With You," by Chase Jarvis.

I'm not sure how good - or poor - these images are; however, I'm certain it's the photographer, and not the equipment, that make the difference. And I'm certain that getting up close and personal with a photographic subject is often the road to a good image. The iPhone fairly begs the photographer to make that close connection with whatever it's pointed at.

I suppose it's that way in life, too: the most interesting and rewarding subjects in life - people and places - are those to whom we turn full attention.

In a week I leave for the Southwest, on a couple of photography tours. I'm tempted to put my iPhone to primary use over the fancy cameras I usually shoulder.

Click on the iPhone images here for a larger view - visit the web page to view more.

Tech: made with my iPhone.

Yellowstone Country

Skies are overcast and rain is in the forecast for Los Angeles. Yet after a week with my camera exploring in and around Yellowstone National Park, where the temperatures were around 15 degrees F a few times, it feels downright balmy here in Southern California.

Animals, geysers, grand landscapes, snowfall and sunlight, lots of dramatic light - our photography group had it all. And we survived well with mittens and knit caps and jackets and a warm van.

To view photographs of my week in and around Yellowstone National Park, click here. Some samples (click on the photos for full-size versions):

Mr. Sparti

I don't call too many men "sir." Not because I don't want to, but because I rarely have to. Today, though, even though I didn't have to call someone "sir," I did. To do it, I made two trips. One on my bike, the other back through a little more than half a century in time.

My journey began with an ending, in late May, in 1958. My time as a student at Clover Avenue Elementary School, in West Los Angeles, was coming to an end, in the 5th grade. During the summer, my family would move ten miles north, and I would attend a new school.

My teacher that semester, as he had also been when I was in the 3rd grade, was Mr. Sparti. A young teacher, and the only male teacher, with thick dark hair atop his Italian-American face, he had the ability to form a strong bond with his students, both boys and girls. He was, for many of us, our favorite teacher.

Mr. Sparti used to tell us about his adventures in the Philippines during World War Two, and would pull out his violin and play it for us during the music period.

In addition to moving, there were all those kids who were my neighbors and friends to whom I had to say goodbye. Joel Axelrod, Tim Johnson, Paul Reinhour, Billy Boggs, Steve Polivka. I would miss them all.

I lost track of Mr. Sparti. Over the long years, I wondered what had happened to him. With the advent of the Internet, I tried to find him. Four years ago, the school held a 50th anniversary celebration. I couldn't attend, but I did donate some of my photographs.

In my photo album, I have some pictures made at Clover Avenue dating to 1955, when I was in the 2nd grade. It was the year the school opened. And I had a couple of photographs of Mr. Sparti. When I went on line to view pictures of the anniversary party, there was Mr. Sparti. I contacted the school in hopes of making contact with my teacher, but no one seemed to know where he could be found. Over the next couple of years there were promises to help me find him, but nothing happened.

Flash forward to late September, 2009. A parent with kids at the school called me. She asked if some of the old school photos I'd posted online could go on the school's website. I gave my permission, but also asked her to try to find Mr. Sparti for me. And she did. She sent me an address where she thought he might be, if he was still alive. She had no phone number.

This Friday afternoon, after completing some work, I climbed onto my road bike and headed west, riding almost to the Pacific Ocean, to find Mr. Sparti. I could and perhaps should have written him first, but I decided to just knock on the door and see who, if anyone, answered. If no one was home, or if Mr. Sparti was no longer above ground, I would have still had a pleasant ride.

This was a beautiful autumn day. The temperature was probably close to 80 degrees. I rode briskly through quiet residential neighborhoods and along busy boulevards. Part of the ride took me through the Veterans Administration, which includes a fair amount of park-like open space. A cool breeze pushed against me as I neared my goal.

After twelve miles, I slowed to a halt, climbed off my bike, and, with my helmet still on my head, I rang the bell on the door of a lovely, tree-shaded home. Then I knocked. No one answered, so I turned back toward my bike, which I'd laid on the grass just inside the fence that encircled the house. I'd taken a couple of steps when I heard someone say, "Can I help you?"

"Are you by chance Mr. Sparti, who taught at Clover Avenue Elementary School?" I asked. It was indeed Mr. Sparti, peering at me out of the little open window in the front door. Soon enough, 50 years melted away, as a surprised Mr. Sparti brought me back into his life, and I brought him into mine.

Mr. Sparti's mind in his early 80s is sharp, and he in excellent physical condition. Over the next 30 minutes we shared some memories as Mr. Sparti showed me around his home. He's been in the same house with his wife for 41 years. He took me outside and into his studio, too, where we viewed a collection of his paintings.

"Perhaps I should have been a painter," he mused.

"You are one now," I answered.

Later, he told me he rarely answers the door. "I don't want to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses or salespeople," he explained. "But when I saw you with your helmet, I had to know who you were."

He was surprised I had traveled so many miles by bike to find him. In my mind, it made my discovery that much sweeter. "When you reach your 80s," Mr. Sparti warned me, "you slow down quite a bit." Apparently I have a few good years left.

At some point, I pulled out my iPhone, showed Mr. Sparti a few of the Clover Ave. school pictures I have online, and made a photograph of him. "That's an amazing device," Mr. Spart averred. "I'm computer illiterate, and I intend to stay that way."

I wanted to know about Mr. Sparti's life, both before and after I knew him. He sketched the outlines of his life for me. "I was a child of the depression," he said. His parents moved his family across the country. "My mom really held the family together," Mr. Sparti related. After the war, he attended UCLA, where a chance conversation with a friend led him into teaching.

It was there he met his wife, another teacher. And because husband-wife teams were forbidden to teach at the same school - no longer the rule - he left the Clover Avenue school, eventually serving for a few decades as an assistant vice-principal.

In his studio, he pulled out a ten-year old newspaper clipping with a story about the students in his first class, in 1999, throwing a reunion party for their beloved teacher. "I'm still in contact with some of them," Mr. Sparti said. I'm not surprised. I'm only sorry that I didn't find Mr. Sparti sooner. There was, for me, something cathartic in sketching out the way my own life turned to someone who had a hand in helping me set my course.

We parted, with a promise from me to take Mr. and Mrs. Sparti to dinner, perhaps at my home, or anywhere they would like to dine out. It was time to ride the dozen miles back to my home, to ride fifty years into the future on my bike, my time machine.

As I mounted my bike, I called out to my teacher, "Goodbye, sir."

Bonus photograph: I'm on the left, and my first main squeeze, Debbie Sills, stands next to me. The kid on the far right is Ted Sykes, my next door neighbor when I went to Clover Avenue Elementary School. Debbie passed away a few years ago, but not before living a superbly full life.

Point Mugu State Park

Until a few days ago, it seemed that many state parks would be closed to help ease the budget crisis in California. A public outcry and the realization that it might cost more to keep the parks closed than open apparently deep-sixed the closures. There is no good brought by a false economy during an economic recession.

Point Mugu State Park, along the coast and just north of the community of the Los Angeles - Ventura county line, is a beautiful enclave, a natural retreat from the nearby and ever-encroaching megalopolises. The park includes a beach tucked between a pair of ridges that run from the mountains to the sea, the reasonably-sized Sycamore Canyon campground, and the northern reaches of the rugged Santa Monica Mountains. There are miles of hiking and mountain biking trails, too, for those who would like to penetrate the park's backcountry.

Each year I conduct at least a few camping trips to Point Mugu on behalf a variety of family groups. This year the groups included families from public and private elementary schools, a synagogue, and a family reunion.

Usually I bring my mountain bike and my camera, too; I did last weekend. We snagged most of the tree-covered campsites in a cul de sac of the campground. In between setting up the commissary, feeding over 50 parents and kids, and organizing activities (all with the help of my loyal staff), I made a few photographs and in the company of my friend Carlos, I took a couple of rides on my mountain bike.

One of the rides was at night. For early autumn, the evening was unusually - and pleasantly - warm. With about half a moon unable to light our way, we resorted to bike lights as we made our way out of the campground, along a flat road that leads through Sycamore Canyon into the interior of the park. With the branches of giant sycamore trees silhouetted against the night sky, we were surrounded with the sounds of insects splitting the air with the cacophony of their chirping.

When we finished our short ride we sank into our sleeping bags. In the morning, we would nourish almost 60 people with breakfast. For now we were lulled to sleep by the repetitive slap of the waves echoing off those ridges that bookmark the beach.

Next year, it will apparently cost more to camp than it would to stay in a comfortable motel. The cost to just park a car and hike or bike in the park will probably double. Will that just be a sign of the times, or a false economy?

As usual, click on a photo for a larger-sized image.

Below: a snippet - and some sounds - of our night ride

"This Seems So Wrong"

Last night, I joined my neighbor, Mike, and his band of merry cyclists on a ride along the Ballona Creek bike path. Mike had invited me to join the ride the previous evening.

"Mondays and Wednesdays we've got a shop ride going," Mike said. "It's a little faster on Wednesdays." Mike owns a bike shop, which specialized in retro-bikes and wool cycling jerseys and skate boards.

Since it was too hot to ride Wednesday during the day - the temperature was about 100 degrees in Los Angeles - I thought, when I remembered Mike's invitation yesterday, "why not?"

Mike, who is also a commercial photographer, has a strong personality; he comes across as confident, perhaps even brash. And he may own more bikes than Imelda Marcos owned shoes, not counting those in his shop. Those bikes he pedals around the neighborhood are gems. I often seem him after dark, making laps in the neighborhood, astride a vintage road bike, dressed in bike shorts and a classy wool jersey.

What would the ride be like tonight, what kind of riders had he attracted?

After the abatement of the heat of the day, the summer evening was pleasant. Dressed in my full regalia - bike jersey and shorts, carbon-framed road bike, helmet - I had also tucked arm warmers into the back of my jersey, but would never need them.

I arrived a little early at Mike's shop. The second to arrive was Martin, age 14, on a yellow, brakeless single speed bike ("I burned out the coaster brake two weeks ago so riding without brakes is kind of new to me; actually, this is my first bike"); he sported a couple of gold rings punched through his lower lip and wore a sort of blond Mohawk haircut on his otherwise close-shaved skull.

Jesse showed up, a young, impressively large man, on a road bike tricked out with bull-horn bars; he was dressed in cargo shorts and a t-shirt; he placed a mini-boom box in his day pack. "I like to hear the cars and the music," he explained.

Next: Dylan, probably in his mid-20s. He was in shorts and t-shirt, on a mountain bike with fat tire, the rear of the frame fringed with rear panniers. Abstractly designed tattoos ran the length of Dylan's arms and legs. To suggest he was enthusiastic - about the ride and about life in general - is to describe "War and Peace" as a book about Russia. If we'd have been inside a room instead of outside, behind Mike's shop, Dylan might have tried to bounce off the walls.

Dave was next, slowing to a stop atop a classic-looking road bike with down tube shifters. "My neighbor gave it to me," he explained, when I complimented him it. And then the conversation drifted to Las Vegas and the upcoming Interbike show. "I'd like to ride to Vegas for the show!" said Dave, who seemed so sane moments before.

Surreptitiously, I sent a text to my wife. "This ride seems so wrong!"

The guys , though were fine; each was friendly, unassuming, helpful. A bit later a couple of other riders in lycra rolled up, and I didn't feel completely the odd-man out. I was, though, the old man of the group.

Eventually we were all assembled. At least half the group had earphone dangling around their necks, plugged into mp3 players. As darkness spread over the city, we pushed off, headed toward the bike path about six miles away.

It wasn't a race-fast ride, but it wasn't slow, either. When some of us got caught at lights, the others waited. At one stoplight, Mike pulled an earbud out of one ear and began extolling the virtues of his extremely compact bike light. It was a USB-powered LED, fairly bright, with no dangling cords.

"Ride it to work in the morning while it's still dark," Mike enthused, "charge it on your computer during the day, and it's ready for the ride home. Check it out, I can bounce a reflection off a license plate two blocks away!" He was beginning to sound a little like Dylan.

I have a small collection of my own powerful lights, but they include heavy batteries, and long power cords. The light I carried this night, pallid in comparison to Mike's, made it seem as if I suffered from a pernicious form of macular degeneration.

Riding down Venice Blvd., however, made bike lights unnecessary. We were on a broad, concrete river, flowing toward the sea, with a bike lane to ensure we were separated from motor traffic. There were bright streets lights overhead and the beams from cars lit the street in front of us. We lost the light, though, when we cut through a quiet, and darker neighborhood in Culver City, to reach the southern edge of the Baldwin Hills, and the start of the bike path.

As many times as I've ridden the Ballona Creek bike path, during daylight and dusk, I've never ridden it after nightfall. Much that would be visible during the day was now invisible. Yet the concrete-lined creek itself seemed to glow in the dark, reflecting the last light of the sky off the top of it's shallow waters.

Everyone had bike lights, front and aft. They blinked red in the rear, and in front white light showed us the way forward. We passed other cyclists, in both directions, most with their own lights. But there were some people, on bike and on foot, who foolishly traveled in darkness, endangering themselves and us.

Riding in the dark with my new friends, even with the help of our lights, I felt my way along the path more than saw it. Without a doubt it was the most exhilarating ride I've had along the creek, and I experienced it as I've never experienced it before. The sense of forward propulsion, the occasional drop and rise beneath an overpass, the warm air flowing over and around me, all of it moved me in a way to make me, this night, feel lucky to be alive.

Eventually we reached Marina del Rey, with the creek on our left, and the channel leading from the marina to the sea on our right. A few more minutes and we reached our goal, a bridge over the creek. We high-fived, turned off our mp3 players, and Dylan broke out a variety of beer in bottles that had been concealed within his panniers.

Before us, the moon reflected off the channel and lit the sea beyond. Behind us glittered the myriad lights of the city. In a little while, done with beer and high fives, with mp3 players switched on once again, we headed back to Mike's shop. I resolved two things: to buy a new bike light, and to return next Wednesday for another night ride with the same group of guys.

This ride seemed so right.

Beyond the Snapshot

Point Reyes National Seashore beckoned me a little over a week ago. I would be on a mission there, to take a group of photographers to a realm beyond the snapshot. In the process, I think some of us also made a journey that took us in search of ourselves. That is the power of photography, that's the power of and perhaps the point of art, of creative action.

Above: A male elk stands in the middle of a dreamscape.

It's a long way to Point Reyes from Los Angeles. I started the drive about 3:00 PM and traveled as far as San Francisco, where my friend and fellow photographer Christine Krieg put me up for the night.

Above: Cyclist's Legs in front of the Bovine Bakery, Pt. Reyes Station

The drive into San Francisco that night was exciting, particularly the drive over the Bay Bridge, with The City a gleaming metropolis on my right, and the black expanse of the bay to my left. I made my way to my friend's home; Christine lives in an old neighborhood on the west side of town, in a lovely and comfortable apartment that she's decorated with much art, including her own photographs. I sat up too late talking, working on my opening comments for the workshop, and reviewing the photographs for my slide show. For the next several days I would find myself far short of the sleep I needed; however, there's plenty of time for rest in my grave.

Above: Reflection of a man painting his boat at the Marshall Shipyard along Tomales Bay.

The next morning we walked to a coffee shop, and sat outside, where I watched innumerable cyclists glide by us. The riders were mostly young, on road bikes, mountain bikes and fixed gear bikes. I was sorry I hadn't brought my own bike for even just an hour's ride. San Francisco, hills and all, is a wonderful place to cycle, and I'm sorely tempted to return to the city by the bay, and soon, with my bike.

Above: The eyes have it, at the little park in Point Reyes Station.

By noon we were off, to conduct a photography workshop for the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. We were headquartered in the Clem Miller Education Center, which is tucked away deep in the wooded interior of the Pt. Reyes peninsula. From the front and back porches we watched quail, deer, and a bobcat who put in a morning and evening appearance.

This workshop was conducted on behalf of the Pt. Reyes natural history association. A few days later, in the company of photographer Ken Rockwell, I conducted a second outing, this time staying at the comfortable Abalone Inn, which is in the little community of Inverness Park, alongside Tomales Bay.

Above: Photographers along the Tomales Point trail.

Friday evening, I shared some of my photographs and spoke my thoughts about the nature of photography with our workshop participants. I told them I believe we can transcend ourselves through art, whether it be with a paintbrush and canvas, hammer and hunk of marble, or a camera and lens. This, I suggested, was the weekend to go beyond the snapshot, to search for beauty, for ugly truth, for meaning, and even search for ourselves, with our own photography.

We would do so by photographing the people, the architecture, the landscapes and seascapes at Point Reyes. We would have to develop our our skills with our equipment, and let the subconscious bubble forth to help guide us. We would have to lose ourselves in our photography to find ourselves. Borrowing something Christine had said earlier in the day to me, I suggested we would have to have the courage to understand ourselves.

After my opening remarks, I assumed we'd all head off to our rooms for a good night's sleep. Instead, most of us stayed up talking and looking at photographs until about midnight. Some of us spent time on the back porch making time exposures of the cloudy night sky, illuminated by an almost full moon. Even then I had trouble falling asleep, wondering what the day would bring to us at Point Reyes.

Above: A Turkey Vulture sails by, near the Point Reyes Lighthouse.

While not as well known as Death Valley, Yosemite or Yellowstone, Point Reyes is none-the-less one of the most beautiful places on earth, set aside for in perpetuity for everyone to enjoy. Long before the Europeans came to claim the land as their own, the Miwok people inhabited the area around Point Reyes; in fact, they were there for thousands of years. Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino sailed his ship, the Capitana, anchoring it in Drake's Bay on the Day of the Three Kings (Epiphany, or the end of the 12 Days of Christmas) on January 6, 1603. Vizcaino therefore decided to name Point Reyes, Punto de los Reyes, "Kings' Point." Later, the land was settled by Europeans, and several historic working farms and ranches from the mid-19th century survive today, as well as at least one ranch set aside as a museum.

Now, Point Reyes is usually meant to include the entire Point Reyes Peninsula, which is bounded by Tomales Bay to the northeast and Bolinas Lagoon to the southeast. Most of the headland itself is part of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Above: Sandpiper Curlews?

Our first field session on Saturday morning was at Limantour Beach. We warmed up our photography skills with the help of wildflowers, waves, an elk and a bobcat. After breakfast, we explored the farmers market in the quaint community of Point Reyes Station. It was one thing to try to artfully photograph a bunch of carrots. We had to challenge ourselves, though, to make a connection with the people we encountered that morning.

For myself, the way make those connections is to relax, to let go of fear and shyness. Easy to say, more difficult to perform. Practice, of course, helps.

Beyond the market we found ourselves gravitating toward the wonderful Bovine Bakery and just beyond that, the little park where there were a few artisans with their craft on display. There were also a lot of bicyclists, who are drawn to the Point Reyes area like so many iron filings to a magnet. I managed to photograph Vince, who'd wandered over to the bakery, and whose powerfully muscled legs proved he is no poseur on a bike.

Above: A great blue heron dines on a snake.

Although the day had begun with a hot sun shining down on us, it rapidly began to cool down, and as we headed toward the coast after lunch, we were met with the incoming fog. A serendipitous encounter led us to a free range chicken ranch. At first, our presence frightened the chickens. They scattered at our approach. By remaining quiet, by respecting our colorful subjects - and the were both colorful and beautiful - we gained their trust. In just a few minutes the flock flowed around us.

We spent some time at one of the historic ranches, and then tracked the movements of a couple of herds of tule elk that range across the peninsula.

As we prepared to return to our headquarters for the rest of the evening, one of the herds wandered close to the road, and we made photographs in the misty conditions that resembled a dream world as much as reality.

Above: Fern near the Clem Miller Education Center.

Back at the center we enjoyed a pot-luck dinner and then viewed the images of participants. The next morning a few of us wandered out for a short walk, and after breakfast and cleaning up the education center, we said goodbye to each other, all of us, I think, finding more than the ordinary to photography, and perhaps finding more of ourselves, too.

Above: A wave breaks at Limatour Beach

I met our second group at the lovely Abalone Inn in the little community of Inverness Park. Having said goodbye to Christine, my co-leader this trip out was the inimitable Ken Rockwell, of kenrockwell.com fame. After introductions we dinned on oysters and other delicacies in Point Reyes Station before calling it a night. The next day, we traveled out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, which was constructed in 1870. A journey down to the lighthouse from the parking lot above included 308 steps. There was much more to photograph than the iconic lighthouse, from a fawn perched atop a cliff above a crashing surf to cypress trees bent landward from the frequent winds that can howl up from the sea, to a flock of massive turkey vultures that flew right over our heads.

Above: A pastoral scene above Drakes Bay.

After visiting the lighthouse, we found ourselves in the middle of a milking operations at one of the historic farms on the peninsula. A little later, bright sunlight lit two large bull elks who seemed content to pose for our group for a few minutes, before turning away to browse for their dinner on the ample ground cover. These animals are usually so skittish, yet these two seemed to welcome our attention.

Above: Reflection of farm building in a barn window.

The next morning, we picked up a local, John Sundberg, who acted as our excellent guide. We made our way northeast along Tomales Bay, and then in the late afternoon, we headed to Abbot Lagoon, back on the west side of the headland.

Here we found a lone great blue heron, seemingly frozen in place in the freshwater beneath tall green stalks. These birds will usually fly off at the approach of a human. Not this heron. Eventually, it turned and walked two or three steps into the depths of the stalks, then was imperturbably still again. And then, in an eye blink, the bird struck downward with its long beak, and emerged into the soft light of this early evening with its dinner, a most unhappy snake. Although the reptile fought vigorously for its life, it found itself about three minutes later on its way into the massive bird's waiting gullet.

Above: A tunnel of trees leads the eye towards a park service operations building.

There was so much to see and photograph at Abbot Lagoon that we didn't return to our cars until well after 9:00 PM. We had the full moon to light our way back from the sea. We stopped at the first open restaurant we came to, Vladimir's, which specializes in Czech food.

We photographers mellowed out on the tasty meals. A young woman performed on the guitar, the staff was friendly. We returned to the Abalone Inn contented and ready for a good nights' sleep. On our final morning, we photographed an old boat, too perfectly named the Point Reyes, beached on the shore of Tomales Bay.

Home beckoned me.

--

Tech note: The photographs here were made with a Nikon D300 and a D40, and a variety of optics, but mostly with my 18-200mm zoom. As usual, click the photographs to view larger versions.

Many more of my photographs from my six days in Point Reyes are here, in my online gallery.

Return to Heartbreak Hill

"O brave new world, that hath such people in it." - Shakespeare's The Tempest

Old people always seem consumed with thoughts about their bodies. Damn, I'm no different. But I'm getting a little tired of writing about my heart, so after this post I'll leave the topic alone, at least for a while.

In an earlier post, I wrote about my last climb to the sign, and told about the chest pain that led to my hospitalization and angioplasty a week ago Monday, which removed an 80%+ blockage of plaque from my coronary artery. Three days later, I was back on my bike.

Having ridden five fairly easy rides since last Friday, the time had come to test myself more rigorously. I reasoned that if I could ride to the top of the Hollywood Sign with a serious heart problem, I should now be able to repeat the ride with near-super human power. Or at least with recovered power. Yesterday, therefore, I headed out for a return match with the Hollywood Sign.

Some inadvertent delays kept me off the bike until 6 p.m. The sun was a low-hanging lemon in the late August sky. Thin coastal haze made the sunlight turn a warm yellow on this unusually cool day. What with stop signs and traffic lights, it probably took me about half an hour to reach the base of the climb; those first miles served as an easy warm-up.

I crossed Fountain Ave., Hollywood, heading north on Gower Street, which was home in 1911 to the first movie studio in Los Angeles, the Christie Studios. The Hollywood Sign, with its 45-foot tall letters, loomed above me, jutting out off the southern, chaparral slope just below the summit of Mt. Lee, a high point in the Santa Monica Mountains. The peak is named for pioneer radio and television broadcaster Don Lee, who put a t.v. transmitter on the summit in 1931. (Three years later he died suddenly at the age of 54, from a heart attack.)

As I pedaled up the canyon, I passed the little commercial district, with a grocery store and the Hollywoodland realty office. The sign itself was built in 1923 to advertise the Hollywoodland housing development that grew up below Mt. Lee. A little farther I turned left, onto a brutally steep but mercifully short stretch of Ledgewood Drive, then switchbacked up Deronda Drive, with its collection of houses crammed for the most part closely together. If I was going to feel any chest pain or suffer some unknown after effect of my angioplasty, this would have been the time. But I felt no pain.

Authors Aldux and Lauara Huxley lived on Deronda in 1961, when their home was destroyed by fire, that great leveler in the mountains of Southern California. Aldous Huxley's best known work, the novel Brave New World, is a prophetic, futuristic tale written in 1931 about a dystopia that seems to describe much of the world as it presently exists, a world where mind-numbing drugs, immorality, eugenics, genetic engineering of humans and loss of individual freedom prevails, the end result of the over-reliance on technology. It's a world where the worst elements of capitalism - with it's unbridled consumerism - and communism - with its soul-killing dictatorship for the common good - are ironically, tragically and comically fused together. (In an ironic twist, in real life Huxley would later in his life take and then extol the virtues of mescaline and later LSD as a way to enhance, rather than deaden, the perception of transcendence.)

The book, which I read when I was 13, had a profound effect on the rest of my life. I think I was too young when I first read it; it inculcated what I thought it taught, even as I misinterpreted much of it. Each time I've re-read Brave New World I have found more to learn from its pages and, with the maturity of my years, I grasp its meaning far better than I could as a teen-ager.

Do I not bow down to technology to make me happy? I want the best bike, the newest computer, the camera with the most megapixels. I have looked to drugs to assuage my pain, physical and psychological. At times I have looked to others to give my life meaning.

Huxley would die on November 22, 1963, the same day C. S. Lewis passed away, and the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Lauara Huxley, also a child prodigy with the violin and a documentary film maker, died two years ago, at 96.

The public road stops at the top of Derondo Drive. Here a cyclist must dismount and walk through an archway to reach the roughly paved Mt. Lee Drive, which serves as a service road for the transmitters on the summit. It was here I'd borrowed a nytroglycerine tablet on my last trip. No need for that now. So I walked through the arch and climbed back on my bike.

Except for one short stop for a photograph of my bike in silhouette, with the city of Los Angeles behind it, I rode without stopping to the top of the sign. The first third or so up the service road was fairly flat, or seemed so after the tortures of Ledgewood and Derondo; my cyclometer measured a 5% grade. Then the angle pitched up steeply, and I wondered, as I rode through the light now turned almost orange in the 7 o'clock hour, if I could push a higher gear and push it harder than I had the last time up, even with the help of the nitro tab. Listening to the music pumping out of my earphones, in my middle chainring, switching back and forth between my 24 and 27 cogs, I made my way up the hill, working hard, under control.

Sweat dripped off the bottom of my bearded chin like water drops from a very leaky faucet, bouncing off my top tube and spilling down to stick - like the gummy plaque inside my coronary arteries - to my front derailleur and cranks, each sticky drop attracting its own collection of road grime. The road topped a little north-south rise, giving great views out over the east before turning sharply left, with no let-up on the grade, which was by now hitting 13%.

Pulling my digicam out of a jersey pocket to video the final few yards of the ride, I pedaled my way to the top. As I was at the end of the ride a dozen days before, so I was now, spent, this time in a good way, with the power of dynamite supplied by my own heart rather a drug.

I'm back, in a brave new world.

Tech notes - Camera: Panasonic Lumix TZ5; top photo from Wikipedia; the photo of me nearing the top of Mt. Lee is a recreation of the actual event (thanks to a lovely pedestrian); my amateurish video below is as painful to watch as it was to make.

Testing the Waters

On the road to recovery, I cycled down to Marina del Rey and back this late afternoon, about 20 miles. So far, I'd cycled only easy miles. Now it was time to mix metaphors, time to put the hammer down and see if the ol' engine under the hood was still capable of putting out some horsepower.

The route led through West Los Angeles and Culver City - the latter home to a number of movie studios, including Metro Goldwyn Meyer (now Sony) and the Culver Studio (where "Gone with the Wind" was filmed) - before reaching the sea. Along the wasy, I would have chance to assess the effectiveness of the catheter that had been jammed up my artery seven days earlier.

This time, I made sure I had my nitro tabs with me. My ride began, as so many for me have of late, from the beautiful South Carthy neighborhood of Los Angels, midway between downtown Los Angeles and the coast. A number of homes in this area are going green by not going green, their owners pulling up the grass as well as the crabgrass to create gardenscapes that require little water.

The Ballona Creek Bike Path seems oddly named. Ballona Channel might work, or Ballona Waterway. Certainly at its headwaters near La Cienega and and Jefferson Blvds., the creek is constrained, sometimes barely in wet years, by walls of sterile concrete. What a pity the landscape stills suffers from this visual insult. Humans, though, deemed it more important to stave off periodic flooding of the Culver Studio's backlot and surroundings developments than to allow nature to takes its course. Even so, the concrete can sometimes exhibit an industrialized beauty, especially with the right props.

Westward along the creek, the harshness of the concrete facade softens a bit. Tidal waters pushing inland mix with the fresh water flowing out of the city, creating a habitat for salt-tolerant vegetation and bird life - gulls, pelicans, herons, great egrets. A pair of snowy egrets didn't mind me peering down at them. Not so long ago, the Ballona Creek wetlands paralleled the bike path.

During rare wet years, even the wetlands could not soak up the rain; the rising water table created a passel of pools reflecting the sky in their shallow depths. I can remember marveling at the sight of those pools, and marveling that the wetlands survived in a city built that had built itself on concrete and asphalt. Today, most of the wetlands have been paved over, and those sparkling pools are gone forever. Or at least until the coming of the next Great Deluge, and not the deluge filmed on the back lot of the Culver Studio.

Nearing the Marina, and now under the leading edge of an incoming cloud deck, I picked up my pace, pushing myself against the typically strong afternoon headwind. The chest pain I'd experienced eight days earlier was gone, gone with the wind.

Eventually, the bike path becomes a narrow causeway, with the creek on the south, and the main Marina del Rey Channel on the north. With a few hundred yards or so to the halfway point of my ride, I began to wonder at my aggressiveness on my bike. I was supposed to be testing the waters, not drowning in them.

A bridge leads across Ballona Creek as it enters the sea. Once there was an estuary where the Marina sits. Now this is a place for cyclists, pedestrians and skaters to take a break; it's a place to fish, and to people watch. It's where I stopped for a break, to people watch, and to make a few more photographs.

A California gull had something to say, but the meaning of its utterances was lost in translation.

After a few minutes making photographs and enjoying the view, I turned my bike around and headed for home, the wind at my back. Ten miles later, I pulled off my helmet. Its straps were soaked with perspiration, proof that I hadn't cut my heart too much slack on my road to recovery.

Technical note: my camera was, as usual, my little Panasonic Lumix TZ5. As usual, click on a photo for a larger version.