On a Trail, in the Dark

Posted on November 17, 2003 in Hiking Neighborhood

Yesterday afternoon, Lynn and I braved the partial cloud cover to hike along the lowest ridge on our skyline to a place called “Vulture Crags”. Condors, not vultures roosted there and they are all gone now, thanks to hunters who thought both cleaners of carrion were predators.

From the arete I saw two lakes — a higher one following a lower one — shaped like guitarfish or banjo catfish that wriggled down to the Pacific Ocean, which had turned a brilliant lemon chiffon in the light of the descending sun. As we turned around to head back, the lights came on in the multiple cities beneath us. I could see flea-like cars down at the last light before Cook’s Corner making their turns on to Ridgeline. This was my intersection, the turn people needed to make off El Toro to get to where I lived. It stood maybe a mile away. A silvery, kidney-shaped swimming pool leaned over the terrace of the last house in the last subdivision. Beyond that, the darkness began erasing all detail from the mountainside and the street lights failed to fill the hollows between the houses.

I saw no moon. The trail was a blanched brown underneath the lights that bounced off the thin clouds following after an early morning storm. I was able to make my way down the last slope almost without tripping. Once I put my goot in a dark mahoghany streak that proved to be a crevice: I lost my balance, barrelled forward for two or three steps before stopping the tumble of my whirling feet with my staff. That is how I saved myself from my blindness, my poor timing, and my slow rate of ascent on the trail to Vulture Crags.

A single light mounted on top of the gate of an estate called “Cheral Blanc” drew us down the right course. When we got to the trailhead’s iron gate, I tapped a boulder for gratitude, left Lynn standing there, and braved the road to fetch the truck.

That’s the story, gutted of a moral and a mind, told from the moment when the mistake of starting out too late and travelling too slowly was evident. I survived and so did Lynn. Summer must have spoiled my sense of timing.