Still Walking

Friday, January 15, 2010

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

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Originally uploaded by danguerra444

"The wilderness has its own ways"...Even where there were cities, the wilderness will always reclaim it.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Illustration Friday - Confined

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Originally uploaded by danguerra444

Inspired by Roger Dean's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'...it must seem really confining down there...

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Wonders of the World

Way back in 1982, I traveled through Europe for months, which was an experience of a lifetime, the history buff that I am...Things that I had wondered about in pictures and books when I was a kid, I finally saw them in person.

For example, when I was around ten, my dad and I would still go to the barber shop together to get our haircuts. There was a poster on the wall at Phil's, it was the Matterhorn, a very steep and majestic looking mountain in faraway Switzerland... I knew about the one at Disneyland, but no, this was the real one...and there was a small town in the foreground in that poster. I wondered what the people were like there, to live in the shadow of such a monumental thing...by the looks of the poster, I imagined the people leading donkey carts, milking cows, while blowing their long Alpenhorns from valley to valley, like in the opening notes of 'The Sound of Music'.

Images like that poster would drive my imagination...another one was Stonehenge, a neolithic circle of stones in southern England, and yet another was the Sistene Chapel, where Michelangelo painted the ceiling...on his back on scaffolding for 4 years...the Pope would ask him, "When will this be done?"

He would answer, "When I am finished."

Yet another one was Neuschwanstein Castle, in the hills of southern Germany. It's a fairy-tale looking castle that was the inspiration for the one in, yes again, Disneyland...Going on a tour through the castle, which was built by an eccentric King Ludwig, each room had a different theme. One room was done up like a medieval castle, another like a middle-eastern casbah. It was almost like the Disneyland of its day, or Las Vegas in all its make-believe surroundings. But this was all built 300 years ago. How astonishing that all must have been way back then, but even more amazing is that here we were...still gazing around. I wonder if whoever built that castle knew it would be admired by people, 300 years later.

When I visited Sainte Chappelle in Paris I was astonished. The walls of the entire cathedral were covered in stained glass. When the afternoon sun came through the walls, the interior glowed as if from within. The intricate details of the windows must have taken years to create, slowly, painstakingly, and with an obvious care and dedication. I stared at each window for what must have been hours...and, being a budding artist myself, I wondered what it must have been like to be there, creating these.

But of all the things that I saw when I was over there, even among all the art galleries, it was the stone carvings on the walls at Salisbury Cathedral. In one of the rooms, there are depictions of the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, Noah's Ark, Tower of Babel, Abraham, Moses, and on and on along the walls. The carved reliefs were all in stone, but they were fluid, flowing pictures full of movement and life. And it was all done by one person...no one knows who...way back in the 1200's. It was beyond anything I'd ever seen, first-hand, and nothing has inspired me as much since. The artist is long gone and forgotten, but here his work remains. As if he was still saying, "This is who I am, and this is what I did."

I never made it to the caves at Lasceaux, where cave paintings go back 20,000 years. But there's a bear skull sitting on a rock, like an altar, and among all the depictions of bears and mammoths on the cave walls, there's a single handprint. Before there was writing, or even language as we know it, 20,000 years ago someone put their hand on the wall and said, "I was here, this is my mark."

Since then, I've found myself moved by other sights. Some made long ago, and some only recently. I'm moved by humanity's desire to make these things, as if to deny the harshness of the rest of the world that must be daily endured...In every palace and every work of art, men and women have given great thought, effort, and care in creating them. Because they hope, I think, that sometimes against all evidence, their lives have a special meaning and in their talent lies a purpose larger than themselves.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The Grapevine

Anyone who has lived in California, or has spent time here long enough to drive from SF to LA, must know about The Grapevine, or 'grapevine hill' as the old timers called it. It's a mountain pass near southern California, named after the small town at the foot of the hill, south of Bakersfield. The Grapevine is a steep stretch of highway that climbs over 4,000 feet in less than 12 miles through Tejon Pass...Today, it's part of I-5, and with today's efficient engines and transmissions, most cars make it up the hill with a minimum of effort. But not too long ago it was the stuff of legend, for decades, when cars blew radiators trying to get up that hill. My parents remember riding to LA when they were kids, and it would be a two-day trip, either sleeping in the car, or at the motels near Fort Tejon, and this was in the early days, when it was a two-lane road, and moter hotels became an obvious necessity...

When I was a kid in the 60's, my parents would drive to LA from San Jose, with me in the back seat, and for me at the time, it meant fun times ahead...Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and visits to my cousins Larry and Gary...they had a pool, and they were always a blast to hang out with...so that's how going to LA always involved going somewhere fun, and also the grapevine experience.

I remember that divide in the road, when you could see it go uphill. My dad would say, "okay, here we go!" and even then, in the Ford Fairlane with its V8 engine, cars at that time didn't have the fuel efficiency or the ability to deliver enough torque to zoom up the hill like they do now...he shifted to D2 and even D1...as we watched the rest of the cars slow down too...some were parked on the side of the road with their hoods up, overheated...and the trucks! oh man...they crawled at 10 or 15 miles an hour...and to this day, there's still signs like, 'radiator water ahead'.

Fast forward about 10 years, I had my own car, a Pinto...all four cylinders, ha! Looking back, it was a great little car, I drove it countless times between Chico and San Jose, to Seattle even...I learned to maintain it, work on small repairs...and yes, I drove it over the Grapevine a few times.

Going up the hill it was okay at first, then I had to shift to 4th gear, still losing power and speed, I shifted to 3rd....oh maaaan...I was only going 45 with my foot to the floor, and cars were coming up behind me...I tried to move over, but the two right lanes were reserved for trucks that still carried their heavy loads at that same snail pace...other cars were going slow also, as if we were in a race through molasses, it was very frustrating as other cars still tailgated...

Then the temperature gauge I installed said the engine was getting hot, and I was at only 2,000 feet...okay, second gear, 'wawooooom' the engine kicked in a little more as I poked along...maan! I watched the more powerful cars with bigger engines drive past with enmity, as I said, "sorry car, sorry to put you through this..."

At Tejon Pass, it finally started to go downhill, a welcome relief to both me and the Pinto, and indeed, its temperature cooled. I thought at the time, no wonder they called these things Pinto's...faithful little horses in the Old West, and as I always do with my cars, I placed a faith and a certain spirit within what is just a machine...but still...my cars have always been 'friends' to me.

And so, like any roller coaster, you go up...you go down...

On the way back down, going in the other direction, it's important to know how fast your car can take curves, and how good your tires and brakes are...because before you know it, you're going 80 or 90, like you're literally on a roller coaster, only not on fixed tracks, but on a slippery downhill road with a few dozen other drivers along side going 'whoooaa nelly!' The runaway ramps for trucks are always a reminder...but it's all good if you know what your car can and can't do...and if you play your brakes like a finely tuned musical instrument, you're fine...

Even a couple weeks ago, driving up the grapevine with zero effort this time, I still remembered that part, driving down...it's still the same.