I leave Topanga Canyon at dawn. When I pull over and step from the car, the call of birds litters the dimly lit scrub forest. Lights from the densely populated LA Basin twinkle in the distance. On the cusp of day and night; metropolis and canyon, nature is alive. I head north on I-5, climbing […]
Travel
Landscape Under Fire
In the past few weeks, I have driven nearly the length of California. Not long after I crossed the Oregon border, I encountered the devastated landscape of the Delta Fire. Before the blaze was contained, it had consumed over 50,000 acres of Trinity National Forest. It burned so hot that highway guardrails melted. I drove […]
Reversing Rivers and the mystery of Cones
Near the end of 2016, I rolled La Tortue into a nearly deserted campground at the mouth of San Simeon Creek, near Cambria, on the central coast of California. Surrounded by the undeveloped landscape of the Hearst Ranch, this place harkens back to a long-ago sort of California: uncrowded, more sparsely populated and filled with […]