the parsley.blog.landscape.life

I felt lower than low this morning.  I mean lower than the sea level I usually wake up at.  coffee didn’t help. my computer didn’t help, stubbornly refusing to deliver good news or anything else that would break up the black clouds.

so I headed north, and followed the scent of orange blossoms to the Santa Clara River Valley, and found myself in Fillmore, where the oranges and orange blossoms are going at it full speed, very determined to make their point about the golden promise of California, as if that idea weren’t already a little shopworn in the century before last.

but when I pulled off the road to get my orange blossom pictures at the height of noon, completely unexpectedly (I swear there wasn’t a sign)  I found myself pulling into a little parking lot that looked like something was open to the public.  I wandered into what turned out to be a state fish hatchery.

with concrete pens completely stuffed with rainbow trout, in various stages of fishy adolescence.

I didn’t know quite how to take this unexpected discovery -should I be cheered up by the total unexpected serendipity of getting to visit the fish?  or depressed by their imprisonment?  or, perhaps, hungry for a nice trout dinner?  (what a SHOCKING idea.  I would never poach an Official State Trout.  The state has enough troubles without me boosting its fish.)

but after I got done visiting the trout, I remembered that there were orange groves to look at, and maybe, I thought, I could hunt up a few wildflowers too.

first, though, it turned out that downtown Fillmore was hosting a festival of train enthusiasts, with full-size real trains on the tracks, and various scales of little trains as well.

in the shed where the model trains were racing around the track, well they were racing at whatever weird scale they were at (model train scales make no sense to those of us who are used to architectural scales…)

there were cheerful old citrus crate labels on the walls, with their visions of yellow and orange PROGRESS, and apparently lemons are speedier, wiser things than you and I ever suspected they were.

and of course there had to be tiny orange groves too, a model train Utopia would be sadly lacking without them.

but after visiting the little trains, I suddenly took a notion to head north again, up into the very inviting-looking mountains that loomed overhead.  there was a sign, just one sign, pointing north to the Los Padres National Forest; I followed it, and found myself climbing above the orange and avocado trees, on a road called Goodenough Road.

good enough to get me started into the mountains, I guess, but shortly after that there stopped being any signs, and soon after that, there practically stopped being a road.  but being the foolish and stubborn itchyfoot that I am, I kept on going, although my tiny green car has done nothing to deserve being beat up by a road that really called for four wheel drive and white knuckles.

It turns out that for getting you to slow down and pay attention, sheer terror works about as well as any other mindfulness technique.

it turned out I was in the Sespe Wilderness, near the condor refuge (and I think I did see some condors.) not very well marked or well paved.  I kept going till I hit a trailhead and a dead end, and turned around there, for once in my life obeying the directive not to hike alone.  it was seriously deserted up there.

the national forests are not very well-funded and certainly not well-patrolled; you just never know when you’re going to run across a drug operation or perhaps a satanic ritual or two.  no such shenanigans going on up in the Sespe today; I did see shotgun shells where such things oughtn’t have been, but otherwise it was pretty much just me, a few guys in trucks now and again, and the condors.  totally quiet except for the wind.  that’s southern California for you: from the traffic jams to the cozy orange groves to the windy wilderness in just half a day.

so finally, back down the canyon, back through the orange groves and the tree farms, back south through the santa susanas, then eventually back down through the santa monicas and into the malibu end-of-the-surfing-day traffic jam.

back home with a bag of oranges and a very dusty little car.  back to the gym to make up for the hiking I didn’t do.  pulled a few muscles.  good enough.