Photo Essay: On a Mission in the Santa Ynez Valley

Edith came to visit me from New York last weekend, and although I would've liked to have spent a bit more time in my hometown showing her around, we took a road trip up north.

We revisited Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley - the lower Central Coast of California - where I got into my first California car accident last year after only having my car for a month, where it rained so hard I had little desire to return.

A year later, the weather was more or less...the same.

But Edith and I were on a mission to explore. We were on a mission to outdrive the rain, overcome the rain, and in some cases, completely ignore the rain.



Despite threatening skies, we decided to drive to Lompoc to visit La Purisima Mission, a sprawling state park featuring a number of historic and restored adobe buildings that comprised the original compound, including the actual church...





....the Cuartel, quarters for unmarried soldiers who protected the mission...











... and various areas for workmanship including a blacksmith workshop, an oil press, and a tannery.



Outside, there's also a cemetery...



...and a ranch...





...featuring sheep, a burro, a bull...



...some turkeys...



...some cocks and an empty pigpen.

Farther afield from the animal yard, there are some restored Chumash Indian tule huts...





...and a Spring House, surrounded by several goopy cisterns.



There are actually 25 miles of trails around the Mission, so even though just a few minutes before it had been hailing while we sought shelter inside one of the buildings, we set afoot along dirt paths, across planks, and through trees.





I hate the rain so much that normally in LA, I would cancel all plans and just stay home. But Edith and I had arrived to the area through dense fog, and had started the day riding bikes through the rain, so we were already out.


And when we saw another storm in the distance, swiftly blowing towards us, we squealed "Get in the car!" and drove off, to our next destination.

Related Post:
Photo Essay: Past the Mission
Not What I Moved to California For

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That Which Haunts Me

I was actually relieved to leave my Manhattan apartment after seven years in August 2010.

I never slept very well there.

Mostly because it was haunted.

Or so, I thought.

I would wake up to the craziest sights: a man standing by my stove, a figure sitting on my couch, things flying through the air by my lamp. In half-sleep, I would bat away at the curtain hanging on the window next to which I slept. Through dreams I would pound my fist at the foot of the bed atop my comforters and blankets at something scurrying underneath.

I saw light and dark through my sleep-bleared eyes. I blinked time and again to see, and not see.

My therapist at the time suggested Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which probably first set in sometime in childhood as a result of being terrorized by my mother in waking hours and asleep, being dragged out of bed for rounds of accusations, inquisitions, punishments and beatings. Despite my protests of hauntings, my therapist thought PTSD had been exacerbated by the recent trauma I'd undergone at work, which was working its way through my subconscious, manifesting visions.

That didn't explain why I would return to my apartment in daylight and be greeted by an entire bookshelf's contents emptied on the floor, but I shrugged, and moved on...to Queens, a residency whose five months went by without incident.

And then I moved again, to LA.

A little over a year ago, I moved into a historic property in Beverly Hills, a 1929 Art Deco gem. It had charm. It had character. And it was unfamiliar. So I often woke up not knowing where I was, disoriented, batting at the gauzy curtains that enshroud my murphy bed tomb.

But a little over a year later, it's still happening. My apartment is familiar now. I barely remember New York City. And yet, I'm still waking up. And I'm starting to see things again.

I'm a creative person. I have an active imagination, and experience vivid dreams. So it's easy to dismiss the visions and the visitors that the night brings.

But then a couple weeks ago, I came home from Death Valley late one Sunday night, and after unlocking my apartment door with my key in the top lock, the door was still locked. I pushed on it, relocking and unlocking the top lock to no avail. Somehow, the bottom lock - the lock in the original hardware of the door, the lock that even my landlord doesn't have a key for - had become locked...from the inside.

I of course imagined that someone had broken into my apartment through the open window, ransacked the place, and camped out in my bed, locking the door to prevent other intruders' entry. I wondered who might have gotten access to my apartment, locked the door from the inside, and jumped out the window, just for spite.

The next day, I told Maria the tale of waiting for a locksmith, spending almost $300 on his visit and generating a new key, and my theories of how it happened.

"It was a ghost," she said.

"Oh geez, I thought I was done with that," I said. "I spent seven years in a haunted apartment. I really hoped this one wouldn't be haunted too."

"It's not the apartment!" Maria exclaimed. "It's you!"

And then the truth settled in: I'll never rid myself of that which haunts me. It follows me. No matter where I go, I can't escape the watchful eyes, the sleeplessness, the terrorizing, the depression.

The hauntings are coming from inside of me.

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Photo Essay: Los Liones to Parker Mesa, In Daylight

About a month ago, I hiked the Los Liones trail to Parker Mesa Overlook in Topanga State Park in the Pacific Palisades - at night.

I couldn't see much but the city lights emerging from the Santa Monica seaside below.

It's apparently one of the more scenic trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, through the Los Liones canyon and up to the mesa, so I needed to go back and really see it.



At first, it looked familiar enough, because I'd started my last hike at dusk, with enough remaining light to get my bearings.



But soon, the trail became decidedly and excitingly unfamiliar, revealing the lush flora and fauna of the single track trail overgrowth.






Having hiked the trail before, it was easy enough to navigate - at first - especially with the aid of some state park signs that I could actually see this time.

But when I emerged and started to take the fire road trail up to Parker Mesa, I became disoriented.



Was this the way I had taken before?



Had I already passed the turnoff? Was it this far - and this steep - last time?



Yes.



And yes.



Stunned by the breathtaking view, I turned around and attempted to go back down the way I came.



Except I met a Y intersection, giving me a choice of two trails to take back down. I was pretty sure I had come up the trail now on my left, but I was pretty sure that in the dark, three weeks before, I had descended down the trail now on my right.

Both were labeled Topanga Fire Road East. Each bore signs to different destinations.

But ultimately, if they were both going downhill, wouldn't they lead me essentially to the same place? Or, at least, close?



As I was walking down, I kept thinking that I had both not been there before (on the way up) and that I had been there before (on the way down). I ran into a friend, who huffed his way up, asking, "Did you go all the way to the top?"

"Yeah but I'm not sure I remember coming up this way."

"I don't remember it being so steep this way," he laughed, and we parted ways.



Eventually, I ended up back on the familiar Los Liones trail, looking even more familiar now that the afternoon sun had waned and dusk approached, mimicking the light that I originally saw the trail by several weeks before.



And when it comes down to it, it doesn't even matter if I went up or down exactly the way I had before, because everything looks different in different lighting.

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Open Letter to the Missing in Action

Dear Date Who Has Gone Missing:

I liked you, and I showed it.

OK maybe I didn't like you that much, but I liked you enough.

And you seemed to like me too.

And then you disappeared.

If you didn't like me, just tell me.

If you liked me too much, just tell me.

If you weren't attracted to me, just tell me.

If you got freaked out, just tell me.

If you're otherwise spoken-for, just tell me.

I can handle it.

I've heard it all before.

And I'd rather know than not know.

It's my fault either way.

It's not you, it's me.

I'd just rather hear that than wonder.

Yours Truly,
Miss Saturday Night

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Photo Essay: Secrets of Death Valley

There's an area of Death Valley National Park that's so fragile, so archeologically significant, that the National Park Service has erased any trace of its existence. They've removed it from the maps. They've omitted it from the guides. They've filled in the roads leading to it and dismantled the signs pointing to it.

But every now and then, a park ranger or a paleontologist takes a small group of people through the area, and points out what the casual traveler might miss, or accidentally step on and destroy forever.

As it is, the dryness of the desert, the hotness of the sun, and the erosion of time has rendered the rock paper-thin, peeling away in layers of time.

For the preservation of the area, I'm not going to say what it is, where it is or how to get there. But I will show you what I saw.































Life was once more robust in Death Valley, around its many lakes, than one can ever imagine. And few traces remain of it...but not for long.

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