Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Category: Hiking
Walking with Trail Bikers
Posted on December 9, 2013 in Encounters Hiking
A red jacket or shirt serves to show them that I am there. My ears stay pricked for their sounds: snatches of rapidly approaching conversation, a circle of clicks from their wheels, and a whine not unlike the wind blowing through electrical lines. I watch out for them and they watch out for me. One hit me a few weeks ago. A shout and the scream of brakes told me that he was coming in an uncontrolled sloping fall down the trail. I stepped up to the raised dirt siding to avoid him. Alas, he had the same idea. His handlebars punched my lower back. He fell sideways. I took two steps forward and bit down so hard that I cracked a temporary crown. There was no animosity between us afterwards. The day was hot and salved my spine. I walked off the pain and the surprise.
Black Beast
Posted on December 9, 2013 in Creatures Hiking
I stopped in the middle of the road to shake my pack off my back and look in it for the red self-charging flashlight so I’d have the torch in hand should night fall before I was off the hill and out of the canyon forest. As I re-shouldered my bag, I looked down the dirt fire road. A small black creature which seemed in my hasty glance to be a dwarfish black bear cub scurried to the right ahead of me and climbed the steep road cut. What was it? I considered many possibilities including a bear cub, a badger, and a tail-less skunk. Then — could it have been a bobcat? I did not know if jet bobcats existed: the size was right if the shape was ambiguous. I cursed my distraction — I had had a camera. The mess that entangled me prevented swift action. The animal had got away and with it the hope of a picture. Several hours later, I checked the facts: black wildcat was a real probability. A photo could have proved the rare sighting and given me a gloat.
Accident
Posted on November 4, 2013 in Dentition Encounters Hiking
The other day a trail biker ran me down. Not out of malice, but due to ragged chance. I heard the brakes screaming and a voice shouting behind me, so Instinct had me step to the right onto the grassy siding. Alas, he had the same idea. The handlebars caught me in the small of my back. I gnashed my teeth because of the force rather than out of rancor and stumbled a couple of steps forward until I found my balance again. He was lying under his bike on his side, so I gave him a hand and pulled him up. His new brake pads had failed. We both marveled at our lack of injury, so we shook hands and went on our ways. Some hours later, I found I’d cracked a temporary. Instinct told me nothing about how to handle this, so I spent the weekend eating soft foods and snaking my tongue around the pillar of tooth left naked by the absent crown.
Edison Trail
Posted on October 19, 2013 in Encounters Hiking Mountain Lions Prose Arcana Recent Uncertainty
Death showed me one of its faces here, where the dust holds a track until the next strong wind. The sun did not warm me on that day. The cold chewed on my hands and dusk shoved the light aside to make way for the darkness. A clump of toyon bushes stood at the high point of the hike. I stopped at the sound of their branches cracking as a mountain lion hefted itself out of the shrubs and landed on the dirt road in front of me. We two stared at each other for an endless second before the cougar bounded away, his paws pounding the ground as he fled. I did not follow. Now when I go there, I look to the source of every rustle of the leaves, every shake of the branches, every whisper of the grass. This is uncertain country.
Note: Two months later, this same cougar slew one biker and mauled another. The incident made the national news.
Hot Day
Posted on October 17, 2013 in Hiking Prose Arcana Weather
When my footsteps came too fast I felt a burning in my lungs like I had swallowed a mouthful of chlorinated pool water. I stopped and let my body find the breath and heartbeat that restored its calm, then start more slowly, my eyes on the diminutive, grass-crowned peak that was my object. The sun warmed my torso and shoulders: a hat kept it off my head. Later I felt the reddened skin burnt by the penetrating afternoon light. It, too, burned, but only when I stroked it.
Herd
Posted on October 14, 2013 in Creatures Hiking Neighborhood Prose Arcana
Seven mule deer gathered near the dead end of the trail.
Mustard Road: The Race
Posted on August 19, 2013 in Body Language Coronary Hikes and Trails Hiking Reflections
The bikes come singly or in pairs or triplets or, sometimes, squadrons. I listen for the whirr of spokes behind me and try to guess which way to jump when they get closer.
Flaming Fog and a Red Sports Car
Posted on June 25, 2010 in Anxiety Campaign 2006 Encounters Hiking Loneliness Weather
Yesterday was as momentous as being wedged against a smooth, unshatterable pane of glass: forever in the sight of the world but engaging with none of it. Went out to find the stars using Google Sky Map. For the second night in a row, however, a crazy, burning thatch-roof of orange-tinted fog prevented me from seeing Vega.
The mist had cleared by late afternoon when I took Drake hiking. On our way back from the Point, I saw two men standing in the fire road. They walked down the hill as soon as they saw me, leading me by a couple of hundred yards. They could not get to their red sports car and drive away fast enough. I took stock of a meadow strewm with pale cream Weed’s Mariposa tulips and stop counting the hurts.
Plugged in, Tuned Out
Posted on June 16, 2010 in Encounters Hiking
Are they on the trail or are they just using it as a treadmill?
Down a Cliff Under Fragments of Cloud
Posted on April 20, 2010 in Dogs Hiking Weather
What made him do it? Had he gone to the edge and just slipped? Was he testing me? Or had he decided to hell with the road, he was going to take a short cut?
The Trail Guide
Posted on April 5, 2010 in Dogs Encounters Hiking
He was just lying in the road — not dead, but lounging as dogs do before a fire. Lynn passed him first and Drake followed. The two dogs introduced each other with a little friendly butt-sniffing, then the stray spread himself out again just below a bend on the Harding Truck Trail.
A couple of bikers came around the corner. One of them stopped to pet the red-haired mix. As they came towards me, I asked “Is that your dog?”
“I don’t know whose dog that is,” said the biker. “There’s a lady up there with a dog. Maybe it’s hers.”
“That’s my wife,” I said. “We only have the one dog.”
As Drake trotted ahead, his butt as tight as a jockey dressed for a race, the red dog came toward me. I didn’t know what to make of him. His short hair curled against his back. A pink tongue lolled out of a blocky, houndish head and a pair of silver eyes sized me up. I pulled a biscuit from my pocket and gave it to him out of pity. He took it politely.
We rounded the corner together and caught up with Lynn.
“Is there anyone up ahead?” I asked her.
She scanned the trail. “No, I don’t see anyone.” So we had a new companion. Drake tolerated him and the two of them sniffed the flowers that lined the road — blue lupines, blue dicks, and even a few California golden poppies.
The trail went down and then climbed up again in a kidney-shaped switchback, ground that I knew well. A cold wind was not matched by the bright light of the afternoon. If it had not been for the steady breeze, we would have been sweating. Instead, I rubbed my hands against my thighs to warm them and quickened my pace to warm my insides with blood.
We came to our destination, a lone eucalyptus tree that had been burned to a stick by the Santiago Fire of three years past. Lynn and I had a problem: there was a picnic bench where we fed Drake his dinner before turning back. The strange dog complicated this simple repast. I called him to one side, offering a biscuit, but Drake ran over, too. Lynn tried to call Drake back to her, but he was followed by our red guest. Finally, Lynn placed Drake’s feeding sack on the table and lifted Drake to the surface so he could eat unmolested. The red hound accepted the distraction of a few biscuits while Drake ate. Lynn lifted our Boston Terrier down so we could eat. Drake yipped and snarled when the stranger sniffed his butt, but mostly they got on peaceably if not entirely amicably.
No owner appeared, so we let the well-testicled mutt accompany us on the way back. The two dogs bounded through the uncut, undulating meadows along the side while Lynn and I stuck to the broad, rock-strewn dirt road.
Near the bottom of the hill, we asked one of the neighbors of the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary if he knew whose dog it was. He threw up his hands and laughed when I suggested he take the dog for himself. “We’ve already got a dog.”
A family with a white West Highlands Terrier met us at the trailhead. Our companion ran over to their girl and made friends. “He’s a nice enough dog,” I said to the father. “We met him about a mile in and he’s been following us all the way.”
Our companionship ended when we put Drake in the car for the ride home. The red dog tried to jump in with him, but I forbade him using what we call the “game show noise” — a throaty call that told all dogs and cats that they had transgressed. As Lynn carefully backed out the car and drove off, we exchanged hopes that the dog would find his way home. As we reached the top of the parking loop for the turn-around back down Modjeska Canyon, we saw the dog beginning to climb the fire road in the company of the family.
“Well,” said Lynn, “I guess he’s appointed himself trail guide.”
Knifeblade Ridge
Posted on February 7, 2010 in Hiking
The clearing of the two-day long storm made a walk along the skyline beyond our condo complex seem like a good idea and it was. Drake was enthusiastic as he always is and I set myself a reasonable goal of a mile in along the Santiago Truck Trail to a gate and then back again. I felt good, so the temptation to take a side journey along a ridge running alongside and above the main track got the better of me. And this wasn’t a bad idea either. The slope to the top wasn’t bad. I wasn’t winded or dizzy when I arrived at the cairn whose cross had been burned out by the fire. The slope down the other side required a little careful footwork, but the one time I slipped I was able to catch a burnt branch of something or other to brake my fall. My dog loved it. He dashed ahead and then back again, checking the landscape to our right, listening as I called to him to stop or come back for one of the biscuits I held in my left hand.
Then we came to it. The trail narrowed or rather the hill narrowed. Where we had had an ample ten feet on either side of the track before, there were now only inches. I looked ahead. Drake stood on about twelve inches of ridge. I found my body starting to shake. Don’t look down were the first words and then I’m not going any farther. The wind wasn’t blowing very hard, but the ground was soaked. I could easily imagine the dirt — and that was all there was — giving way on either side. A hundred feet down on the left and a thousand on the right is my guess of my danger. So I did a pivot on the spot where I stood which was already too narrow — mark about two inches on either side. The fear shook my legs and I took the smallest steps until I was back on broader ground. Perhaps in manic days I might have traipsed along, but I had my wits about me. I went back the way I came, the distance of about a third of a mile of backtracking.
The slope that I slipped on proved hard. My head and chest pounded by the time I reached the top, so I sat on one of the stones circling the cairn. Doggy thought this the finest of adventures and stood close to me, eager to get moving again. I caught my breath and then took an easy slope down to the main trail. Lynn waited for us at the parking area. I didn’t want to discuss the precipice or my terror.
