South LA, while shedding the connotations that come with the "Central" part of the area's identity, retains a general malaise that floats in the air like the smell of dog fart and asphalt, a malaise that's still angry with police brutality and social injustice, but tired now and worn down and mostly devoid of hope. The threat of violence is mostly gone.
The work I'm doing makes up for the visceral day to day experience of biking or walking through the 'hood, but still...sometimes you need a break.
So that leads us to a few weekends ago, and a camping trip to an ancient grove nestled between two canyon walls, and old-school fern and redwood forest relatively close to us.
By "relatively close" I mean a hundred miles north...of San Luis Obispo.
Limekiln State Park is the name of the campground we went to, and it is unique in that it combines the rocky coast of Big Sur:
...With the fern and redwood forests of the forest moon of Endor:
And they're, like, maybe a thousand feet apart. Maybe less. A quick walk from the sand and boulders to our tent site. "Would you like the beach or the redwoods?" the lady at the camp's entrance asked about in which campsite region we'd like to be. We answered correctly, it turned out: redwoods.
The beaches sites were so windy and miserable at night that the cover the redwoods provided were well appreciated.
Since this is the late autumn, the day ends and the night begins, and you better be done with heavy lifting work of the evening by that time; no matter what time-pieces tell you the "time" is, your day is quickly coming to a close. You find yourself tired and ready for bed at quarter after seven.
So, as dusk approaches, we'd make dinner, get the fire going for warmth and desert s'mores and a connection to the most advanced technology from ten thousand years ago.
After dinner and liquid warmth, we'd head back over to the beach for sunset:
And be set for the next day's walk:
The reprieve from the everyday ugliness of my little circles was great, and I invite everyone to our little slice of Endor.
The even have giant kilns, like the name suggests:
