Racing Against the Sunset

I managed to get my hike in yesterday, though I almost didn't make it.  But I'm glad I did, since it's been quite a while since I've done a race against the setting sun.

I woke up with a headache, and so it was nearly 3:00 before I set out;  I also nearly gave up on the coast when I saw the fog, but I persevered, glared at the grim, fog-bound coast, dealt with slow trucks and Chevvies (it is a fact that no matter what the model of Chevvy, it will always be driven 5 mph below the speed limit on any winding scenic road, suchh as Highway 1), to end up at Pescadero.  I was too late for the local BBQ, but I couldn't resist freshly baked garlic-herb-artichoke bread that made the car smell like an Italian bakery.  I got a variety of oddball beans and lentils at my favorite farm store, then drove up to the ridge-top road; exiting the fog felt like a benediction.  So when I arrived at Castle Rock  I decided to take a nap in the sun instead of hiking.

I could have napped in a half-awake, half dreaming state until sunset, but I pushed myself outside.  I nodded at the kiosk ranger who warned me that the park was closed at 8:15; I had no water and wore bad shoes, but I was only going up to the Castle Rock, on the easy path.  In the forest it was quiet, bone dry, and everything was covered with a thin layer of dust.   I reached the Castle Rocks to find them deserted, the climbers and children long gone.  I paused to cool off and catch my breath, while  I listened to the hum of millions of insects among the trees, and studied the outcropping, which has always looked to me more like a deformed giant's head.  In a crevice on one side, bees had made a hive, so I watched them go about their business for a time.  

On an impulse, I decided to take the roundabout path back, down to Saratoga Gap, and back.  After some confusion as to whether the path was really going where I wanted it to go, I set off in a steady lope, not running, but racing the sunset to the parking lot.  I used to do this quite a bit; late afternoon was always the best time to hike for me, but this would mean I would reach the top of a canyon in Santa Barbara, and see the westering sun only a few degrees above the horizon.  Then it would be a fun scramble down the trails at full speed to get down before it became dark.  Usually I didn't quite make it, and the last legs of my trip would be in deepening gloom.  It had been nearly a decade since the last time I did that sort of run.

This time, I set off at a steady casual pace, seeing the sun edge the redwoods with orange, listening to the scuffing sound of birds and small animals in the brush.  The trail wound around ridges and small creeks, and I reached Saratoga Gap just as the first early night insects started singing.  I wasn't even winded, so I took the last uphill section to the parking lot with a quick stride, surprising and passing some elderly tourists.

It wasn't a fair chase at all, really; I made it back to the parking lot nearly 20 minutes before sunset.  It was also an easy hike, but I was inordinately pleased buy it; it seemed to justify the weekend for me.
 

From the 1867 Miskatonic Wonderlands Expedition...

...we have this recently unearthed collection of items from the Wonderland Expedition Kit.Many thanks should be given, first and foremost to Mr.

absinthetic for assembling this kit. The true honor though should go to Professor John Lake of MIskatonic University for his heroic efforts to catalog and preserve for posterity some of the remnants of the vanished world of Wonderland.


(Translation: I am utterly, totally blown away by this incredible piece of work. Just...wow.

 

 

Sci-Fi Mags: In which I shed no tears

In his recent "Ruin Everybody's Day" post, Warren Ellis posted the numbers of the (at one time) major science fiction magazines, And boy, the numbers don't look good; you can barely call the mags mass media at his point.  To many many people's minds, this is a crisis. that's related to the general decline in the popularity of SF/Fantasy.  In response, Jason Stoddard has five small and five big things that can be done to improve SF's image.  

As for me, I have a hard time being worried, at least about the possible failure of Analog.  No, the truth is I don't care if it fails or not.  That's because in the last era that I read that mag with its reactionary engineering technofetishism bent, it had:  a story that justified slavery as a tool to increase intelligence, another that had a courageous harpist struggling against a evil rock producer, another with ridiculously poorly thought-out genetic engineering, and lastly, the musician Slash arriving at the moon to destroy the moon-base with his moral turpitude.  

This is back when Analog writers were riffing on each other's notion that Rock and Roll was going to usher in the decline of western civilization, and that the rock musicians, being modern Visigoths, were actively promoting this by encouraging disrespect of authority, drugs, and um, music with drums. In other words, this was some time around 1988 or so.  It was all very silly. I actually had the suspicion that the writer had never even heard of Guns and Roses, but had picked the name Slash as an appropriately menacing "metal" name.  The story with the harpist was actually worse, because IIRC it had the evil rocker type dominating the poor harpist because with her talent he could , dominate the world's radio stations or something and degrade the world even more. Or something. It was really silly. 

So, I don't miss reading Analog at all, and honestly, I'm not surprised at those subscription numbers.   If it goes away entirely, I won't cry.