IN LATE FALL
Living in the hills above Escondido, 1985
by Richard Graham
Our mail is delivered to an address on Meadow Glen Way East, but the street sign one hundred yards before our driveway reads Cougar Pass. In years past, I’m told, mountain lions wandered the hills which surround the house where I live. Long ago chased out by the encroachment of man, the cougar here is now merely a memory evoked by a street sign.
The dirt driveway, scarred with gullies from heavy rains, leads down past a pond. In late September, bass fed on insects flying above the pond’s placid surface, but now, early in the new year, such activity has ceased. Often muddy from the rain, the pond is home for a few frogs, and its water occasionally quenches a cautious rabbit’s thirst.
Up in these hills avocados are king, but they still have to compete with thousands of rocks and boulders and scruffy patches of scrub brush. Grapefruit, orange and lemon trees, planted with foresight and heavily laden with fruit, give color to the otherwise green landscape.
The view from the house looks down into a wide canyon that is split down the middle by a red-dirt road. About seven miles away, Escondido, mist-covered in the morning, sits under a canopy of wind-rippled clouds. In the evening, city lights shine brightly, a carnival of color in the night.
In the wide expanse of sky above the valley leading down to Escondido, hawks soar in the updrafts. Sometimes, if the wind conditions are right, these graceful birds hover in one spot, their sharp eyes combing the earth below for their next meal. Perhaps conscious of this threat from above, squirrels, mice and rabbits scurry about quickly on their daily rounds.
Down in the valley, trees at Orange County Nursery that were so fiery with red, orange, yellow and purple leaves just a short time ago now seem muted and cold. The canyon wrens, singing vibrantly in late summer, are quiet now. Even the dogs in our neighbor’s yards bark less frequently.
Some of the animal life in the area is rarely seen in this more somnolent time of year. A snakeskin found in a rocky crevice gives evidence that although unseen, certain creatures lie hidden just out of sight.
Up until November, a green heron graced our pond, its bright orange legs and feet trailing behind it when it flew, startled by the presence of a human, into the stand of trees near the pond’s edge. Probably forced south by cold weather, our heron may now be somewhere in Mexico, displaying its beauty to more southern eyes.
The rose bushes on either side of the driveway grew impressive flowers of pink, red and yellow until early October. Now mostly bloomless and forlorn, they quietly await the next season of growth.
Lizards that used to dart out from behind stumps and rocks not long ago have almost disappeared. With less sun to bask in, they seem averse to showing themselves at all.
Their energetic yips suddenly breaking the night’s serene silence, coyotes awaken me. Just as suddenly, they stop. Sleep returns quickly and leaves the raucous interruption more dream than reality by the light of the morning.
On another night, two owls on a telephone wire trade hoots in the quiet. They leave only when I come to satisfy my curiosity and shine a flashlight beam up at them. Gracefully gliding away into the darkness, the owls will find a new perch where they can converse unmolested.
The rain comes lightly at first, like tiny tap dancers from heaven, then in a downpour, drumming a steady beat on the roof. As the rain begins to subside, water drips off the leaves of the trees like tears. Swollen by the rain, a small stream winds its way down into the valley from the pond and forms rushing waterfalls over the rocks in its path.
Days later, the stream, too tiny now to roar or rush, whispers. Flakes of pyrite reflect brilliantly in the shallow water, golden reminders of last summer. Unlike the cougar, summer will return.
This red-tailed hawk rests on a metal post in a vineyard near the Carrizo Plain National Monument, 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Todd McCormick, a high school friend of mine, introduced me to a wide variety of predatory birds and a few pronghorn antelope in California's largest remaining single native grassland. The San Andreas Fault cuts through it -- on one one side of the road is something that looks like a miniature Grand Canyon -- and on the other side of the road, there's no evidence of it at all. That's because all of the land west of the fault on the Pacific Plate moved to the northwest as all the land east of the fault moved southwest, and the miniature Grand Canyon was cut off from its across-the-road twin. Bizarre, yet VERY cool. This is all explained by plate tectonics, something I casually studied in one of my favorite college classes -- the fascinating science of geology.
I shot this portion of the San Diego skyline through an art exhibit near the Embarcadero. One of these days, I hope to return to live in the San Diego area. First, however, I need to get out of Los Angeles. I never wanted to live and die in L.A., and right now, that looks like the way things are going. Let's get past this *#!+#@ recession, America!
Morgan Potter, a long-time friend, liked this shot of mine. I took it at Yellowstone's Mammoth Hot Springs in the summer of 1994.
I've been shooting with a Nikon Coolpix L2 for the last couple of years, a camera a good friend gave to me to help me get back into photography. Most of my equipment had been either stolen (in San Francisco) or destroyed (after I rolled my Toyota RAV4 in 2001 just 15 miles outside of Victorville). A few days ago, I purchased a used Nikon D50 digital SLR that will accept my two remaining Nikkor lenses, and I'm having a blast with it. Here's a shot of a surfer, taken from the Venice Beach Pier. He rode a wave, whipped around and slid down the backside.
I haven't yet been to Africa, but I imagine that the hippopotamus there have better teeth than this poor zoo-bound brother. Get that man to the dentist!
This shot was taken from just outside the eastern edge of the Garden of the Gods, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I like the dead trees and the little bridge on the path toward what is the coolest city park I've ever seen in my life.
A vendor at La Bufadora, an ocean blowhole near Rosarito, Mexico, had these colorful clay masks for sale. I was taken by the presentation.
So much of photography, to me, is being in the right place at the right time. The most important issue, almost always, is light. I worked in a darkroom in Northridge, California, back in the mid-1980s, and I'll always remember Steve Moulton, the lab manager, telling me that "photography is light." Steve had studied photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California. He knew what he was talking about. At the same time, if you're not in the right place, with the right lighting -- and the right subject -- at the right time, you're not likely to achieve your photographic goal.
