chantry flat

6.02 miles

god i’d forgotten how much i love hiking. i could feel a shift in my brain even on the winding drive up to the hike; sometimes i forget to put on music in the car and driving feels meditative (terribly la of me).

i’ve missed hiking. it’s easy to make excuses… it’s been terribly hot and i’ve been waking up far too late.. i usually avoid hiking in the summers anyways, but the fires meant i didn’t hike very much in the spring either.. which is an excuse because of course there are other places to hike than eaton canyon, but i’d been attached to being able to drive only ten minutes to the mountains. the fires feel so far yet so close yet so far.

this hike was a 25 minute drive from my house, and 10 of those minutes were on the mountain itself, had no idea this place existed. as i drove up, i saw families walking down after swimming in a waterfall.

i started my hike at 5:37pm, the temperature still 90 F / 32 C, but it was shady. and the mountains aren’t so bad in the morning and evening, i forget. sunset hikes are always a race against time. the sun set at 7:18 today, but i forgot, as i’ve forgotten before, that the sun sets earlier when you’re in the mountains, err or you know what i mean.

i began my walking un poco concerned due to two alltrails reviews i’d seen.

i thought the bear was a strange joke, but as i drove up the mountain i saw a ‘bear in area’ sign (i’ve never seen this before). i tried to google what to do if you encounter a bear but i did not have any signal. i have now learned the most important thing is not to run. like this advice, i similarly can never remember the poison oak rhyme and so i always think everything is poison oak and i always wear shorts.

fortunately, the only negative incident i had with the flora and fauna today was with a duo (or trio?) of flies that i swear followed me for at least a mile. or perhaps they were all different flies, i don’t know. i tried to run away at times but this was about 70% ineffective. at one point the heat and the flies made me feel a little woozy, and i felt some doubts about doing this new hike alone,

but then luckily at this point, after not seeing anyone for a mile or so, i observed a pair of women up the hill from me, which made me feel less concerned about tony the bear or falling over a cliff.

is it poison oak? i have truly no idea.

it was really a lovely little trail, not terribly overgrown, mostly shaded, easy mountain views because of the longer drive up. it’s strange, i’ve never actually written like this about hiking, like i used to write when i’d walk in manhattan. part of me wishes i had written more when i was more consistently hiking a couple years ago, but also those hikes were more therapeutic than thinky. this hike was extremely good for my rather-cloudy-these-days brain, too, but also it was weird to be quite consciously perceptive of my own thoughts as i hiked (i am referring to some scribbles i wrote down while walking as i write this).

i saw a tiny little baby, barely any hair. an older asian couple wearing fly net hat things (this made me feel less insane about the flies, is it the area or the weather or?), another hiker alone.

i reread some of my old journal entries yesterday, and while hiking was thinking about how often i re encounter the same thoughts, how easily i forget lessons i thought i’d learned, how often i need to remind myself of the same things over and over. this hike made me so exhiliratingly happy, after a week in which i felt rather discontent (and definitely spent too much time scrolling on my phone). i called my family after i ate some strange frozen tomato noodles and both of these things made me happy, too. i’ve been swimming a lot these summer days, but something about hiking is so much better at taking me out of my own thoughts. i skipped and ran part of the way down.

clouds clouds clouds

i listened to the entirety of hayley williams’s Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party on my way down, originally released as 17 singles, only now ordered by hayley, + 1 new song. i never made my own order, but it definitely felt like an experience to listen to them all as an album instead of as sporadic singles. it was kinda nice to get to know the songs a little first— i wasn’t so sure how i felt about all of them, needed a little warming up… but then now, listening to the full album, i feel that i love hayley williams and she is a genius and i love her so much.

i wrote earlier today about blog reading, and yes, yes, i have recently started reading a couple of substacks as well, which i have mixed feelings on. one of these is the molehill by viv chen, who interviewed hayley williams (i am so jealous).

i love so many lines from this album and so i have decided to put some of the here:

do you ever feel so alone
that you could implode and no one would know?

on my way to thirty-seven years
i do not know if i’ll ever know
what in the living fuck i’m doing here
does anyone know if this is normal?

carrying my mother’s mother’s torment
i think i’m where the bloodline ends

eliza tells me i’ll be fine
like there’s something better for me down the line
but nothing could compare to the potential greatest love of all time
the pleasure and the agony’s all mine

nick your hand
spit into it
shake hands
that’s how you do it
brotherly love, brotherly hate,
don’t it sometimes feel like the same thing?
however you bend, however you sway
furious roots just won’t give way

i got married once in my combat boots and
only listened to testosterone music
i had to kill my feminine just to do it
to get to you, i had to go through it

you and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals
so let’s do it like they do on the discovery channel

i thought you were gonna catch me
i never stopped falling for you

god, i love her so much. i wish i could write like this. and hearing hayley, a decade older than me, contemplate these things, hearing her speak on the personal things of her rather notorious life, life as a famous woman, so far from me,

and yet all her words hit so good, it is comforting.

at this point in the hike i became compulsively unable to stop taking photos. luckily i can put them all here.

as i trekked downhill, i thought i might not get a very good sunset at all. the problem of a sunset hike is you never actually see the sun set most of the time. but a couple minutes after i had this thought, the clouds turned pink and i could not stop taking photos of the sky. strangely so ingrained in my mind whenever i see the sun rise or set on the mountains is the line ‘purple mountains majesty’.

yesterday i met up with a friend who grew up in la but loves the bay. i grew up in the bay but love la. but we talked about how really it’s just we’ve been adults (or become adults) in these places we love, that it’s easier to romanticize the places where you didn’t grow up.

despite what i said earlier today about the book katabasis, i did like how it talked about death and life and reincarnation and religion and beliefs and culture… how does one live a life they are happy with? how do you decide? as i stared at the pink clouds, i did wonder if i’d ever believe in god again.

towards the very end of the hike, i saw the sweetest chocolately little puppy, twice.

i’ve just remembered that i had coffee and kombucha today, both for the first time in months. hopefully i sleep soon.

la baby