INDIAN HILL

 My week in photos..

              It was a fall afternoon when a day of wandering and driving ended up in Lone Pine, a beautiful California town with views of the steep granite face of Mount Whitney. Western movies loved the steep slopes and the tawny Alabama Hills that lead up to the trails into the southern Sierra. Light is kind to these rock formations. Sharp shadows are cut in morning sun offering a dramatic backdrop. Lone Pine is still a movie festival destination, celebrated as the location for dozens of Westerns. I’m heading east, from Olancha into the vast badlands that precede the Panamint Range and then Death Valley, if I make it that far. Traveling to Death Valley in the late afternoon by automobile isn’t a particularly dangerous adventure. But it feels that way as I pull up the grade, chugging the Jeep into steep ravines of black rock and glimpses of the upper Panamint Valley that stretch dozens of miles.             Panamint Springs is an outpost. A café and General Store, gas station and

The Packing Plant in Pomona is a live-work facility converted from an old cold storage facility next to the railroad tracks. I sneak around in dim hallways and out onto the deck where the sun slants in at oblique angles. Sometimes long haul trains rumble by just a few feet away. I feel old and young at the same time. 

Cactus Flats begins with a turnout on California Highway 18 northeast of Big Bear Lake. Roughly half way between Lucerne Valley down in the Mojave Desert and the high alpine country of the San Bernardino Mountains, the plateau features Joshua Trees, sandstone boulders, yucca and chaparral and sweeping views of this transition terrain along with panoramas to the east of the vast California deserts. It’s my favorite place in Southern California to explore and photograph.   From the turnout a dirt road leads southeast across flat ground with plenty of places to park and explore. There aren’t any marked trails but I’m familiar with the territory so I head towards a slope of rock and juniper with only my camera and hiking poles. At six thousand feet the sky is deep blue with patches of puffy white clouds rolling across the sky. The Flats gets few hikers and I’ve only seen a few further south along the dirt road. This edge of the plateau is lightly traveled and I’m alone on this mount

            “Z” Generation, welcome to the Roaring Twenties.                                                                                          The nearly one hundred year old Pomona YMCA building is undergoing extensive renovation to become the destination of choice for the Millennials, or as the Spectra Company, who is handling the construction project calls them, the “Z’ Generation.             Handsomely built in the 1920s of brick, with stained glass and large arched windows, the project will be called the Pomona Village, and will be the home of Pomona based Spectra along with live-work lofts, a restaurant, swimming pools, conference rooms, a skate park, boutique retail and conference rooms.               Groundbreaking ceremonies on November 21 allowed self-guided tours on the first floor of the landmark structure. Spectra says it will create an urban creative center for young people who need space to learn, create and flourish. Along with

            If you spend a lot of time alone like I do, at times you seek contact, friends, a familiar coffee shop for a hamburger or just to talk to somebody.             There are other times, however, when you embrace solitude. Even seek it out. Not just being by yourself while among others in a library, but being so far from civilization you hear the silence. Thick, broad-reaching, quiet. The desert is the perfect place.             I checked in with the Mojave Preserve Visitors Center in Barstow to see about road conditions, weather, and to ask about the best places for photography. The two ladies were friendly and helpful.             “Turn in at the radio tower, and climb up the ridge,” she said. “You’ll have a 360 degree view of the valleys and the mountains.” I wanted to get back before dark, and she advised me of mileages and suggested alternative routes.             Sixty two miles from the Visitors Center, Kelbaker Road is the thru-way from Interstate 40 and Int