Campsite at mile 423 to Acton KOA (mile 444)
Los Angeles below and the desert above and in between we traverse a green ridge scarred from a recent burn. I’m growing tired of the desert which, perhaps I’m not supposed to say. Perhaps I’d have a more popular blog if everything was endless positivity and mindless cheer, but that bores me more than the desert does on this warm day. Perhaps you, dear reader, would rather I bestow pages of nature porn for your consideration. And yet perhaps, definitely, I’m not that person, and I’m not sorry either.
By the time we reach the Mill Creek Ranger Station we’ve been descending for miles, with another eight to go. And if we can make it by 5pm there is ice cream at the KOA. Keith wants to push for it, I do not. To rouse myself into the proper mood there is only one album that will suffice: Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky. A classical composition that describes a trip through a gallery, as the name suggests. It’s a composition that I’ve loved since Keith and I saw the penultimate performance from the LA philharmonic. At once lilting and powerful, a whimsical circus of music that would make for a brilliant Fantasia sequel. Written by a man who lived a life that can euphemistically be described as disheveled – which is to say he was an alcoholic and a glutton who resented the establishment and died young. But a genius, undeniably a genius.
The music juxtaposed against a knee jarring descent takes on a life of it’s own. Marching brass, muted trumpet follow lines of mud green plants, their leaves small in this arid environment in an effort to preserve water show more bark than in proper. The hills are green and yet not. A stray oboe – Tuleries – and a burst of yellow flowers, violently bright with the saturation cranked up too high. Tumbling brutal cellos paired with dancing piano – the shock white granite that gives way to the dark black soil of burned manzanita. Further evidence that this land relies on and is grown from fire. And always with the familiar refrain of the Promenade, taking us around and around in the special, occasionally maddening, consistently circuitous way that the PCT inches it’s way north.
I just ran Mill Creek PCT for about 8 miles a couple weeks ago, a lot of climbing out of the parking lot at Mill Creek for a mile and a half or so. Probably not a lot compared to what you two are accustomed to, but when you’re running it’s tough! Happy trails!