Update (June 20th, 2017):
I recently had two weeks off of school between Step 1 and the start of rotations. With a couple of free days post-Step in LA, I traveled down to Stories in Echo Park to find something light and poetic and esoteric to read to keep my mind off of the test. I picked up Visions from San Francisco Bay by Czeslaw Milosz, mostly because of the beautiful drawing on the cover of SF in all its glory from the viewpoint of the East Bay. I love stories about the places I love, especially from "back in the day."
On the beach in Varadero, Cuba, I finally found the time and place to crack it open. Exactly what I was looking for. Esoteric and easy to enjoy and about California. One passage struck me in particular, and it is because the thought was once my own, on this very trip to Death Valley. Something, usually the only thing, I describe to people regarding this trip, was the enormous silence that rests inside Death Valley, so silent so that you feel as though you are inside a vacuum. And here within this book originally published in 1969 is written regarding Death Valley:
"A silence so mighty it reverberates with the shifting sands in the dunes, the crunch of the petrified salt underfoot, a sky without clouds or circling birds, the horizon closed in on all sides by mountain ranges the color of their own mineral deposits - verdigris, an aggressive gall, a dreary red with a touch of 'bulls blood.'"
Lovely!
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| Will, kickin it in the valley |
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| Dunes for Days |
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| Trying out some dune skimboarding |
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