Climbing Hills

I enjoy climbing hills, literally. I'm a marathon walker; I can walk miles and miles and at a good clip, and given the choice between a long gentle walk or a steep hill to climb, I prefer to exert more energy and sweat over the hill.

I've never really had the desire to scale mountains and go on steep hiking expeditions, but recently, I'm enjoying the challenges that come along with slopes, canyons, rocky terrain and all sorts of soil underfoot.

Today I walked up Lida Street, just west and above the Rose Bowl; my ultimate destination: Art Center College of Design. I wanted to see the city from a different vantage point and visit the place where years ago, after attending a Saturday art class at the campus, I stood on a small lawn and watched a stag, his mate and their baby walk down a narrow, steep trail and up another one. His antlers and eyes were trained on us humans on the lawn, a mere thirty feet from him, and I could feel how anxious he was to be taking his family so close to people. The silent tension was so pervasive, I could do nothing but stand motionless as they stepped purposefully and quickly into the safety of the brush.

Walking from neighborhood street onto an ever higher ascent, the sidewalk hidden under a foot of pressed pine needles, I rounded the corner, and then another steeper curve, and then turned left into the driveway. Up ahead, on one of the bluffs before the black cantilevered college, I see what used to be a driveway and a trail head that leads out onto the edge of the cliff. Stepping onto the trail, I see it leads quite a ways down and at the end there's a makeshift tepee, pieced together carefully from old branches and tree trunks.

With every step I've been enjoying the labored breath, the sweat, the burning in my calf muscles and I've been pondering over my life, as I always do when I walk. I note rabbit droppings and deer prints in the dirt, holes in the sand where tarantulas may burrow. I go inside the tepee where there are two logs surrounding a miniature tepee model. As I crouch there I feel as though I'm in a sacred space, the sun beating down on me, I get the sense that there's some special energy in the structure. The space and time collide and had I been on a bike or more likely a car, I wouldn't have seen this special hut at all. At the top of the hill, I've lost sweat and calories and found a special air underneath the powerful sun. It all comes from climbing hills.