There’s always been some dream-like quality in films from Tarkovsky, Lars Von Trier or Kurosawa which I found attractive beyond the visual dimension, and it has to do with the way scenes flow, details and locations reveal themselves.
I used to dream this way: I would find myself going from one somewhat familiar location to a completely different one, a construct of my imagination, which could not possibly belong next to the original place in the real world, like going from day to night by the flick of a switch.
Living here in California means zooming by unknown treasures at 75 mph.
Exploring a city like San Francisco makes you wonder whether it was conceived by Morpheus. Take Mountain Lake Park, just off Highway one at Lake street, the park borders the Southern edge of the Presidio, and I’d never have known it was there, hadn’t we in fact looked it up.
The trail which starts at the Lake goes on for several blocks, seemingly forever.
Within a large city, suddenly you find yourself in the woods, starting with a lake which once reportedly had an abandoned albino alligator as a resident.
San Francisco is also known as the City of a 1000 Hills, and well, some folks make it a work out or a game of sorts: walking uphill backwards. I used to walk from lower Nob Hill down to the Wharf on Leavenworth street and back for exercise. But it’s the perhaps lesser known elevation points which attract us now.
Not to mention the stairs leading up and down those hills. Out of respect for the privacy of the neighborhood residents I won’t map or otherwise describe how to get there (Mountain Lake is rather well known as opposed to these spots which locals work hard to keep pristine, and which would suffer from increased traffic).
How do we find them? We spot a promontory far away and between our maps and homing instinct, find great spots, sometimes more than just one in the same area, almost by accident. Climb a trail, perhaps those long winding stairs and a panorama of the City by the Bay reveals itself. The experience is not at all unlike that of Ofelia as she explores the enchanted woods of
“Pan’s Labyrinth”. Unless you chose to stop, get out of the car and walk, you’d never know Glen Canyon or even Stern Grove, concealed as they are behind rows of trees.
The discovery, walking down a grassy canyon lined with ferns, of towering redwoods finally revealing themselves around a pond, and the old Trocadero, which doors still have bullet holes from the old, old days…
Of course, Golden Gate Park has many of those treasures which reveal themselves only to walkers, like this tree of fire one early morning, rounding a curve around Stowe Lake.
Flowers, trees, plants, bodies of water, and yes, occasionally a dead body. Or just a severed arm as in a few weeks ago. Monsters live here as well, it appears… The City has such sights to show you…
