Archive for November, 2009

View from Cuesta Ridge

Friday, November 20th, 2009

A writer captures images with words instead of a camera. I often leave mine at home (to force me to use my other senses,) and drive to a remote spot to record what I encounter. On this night I was on Cuesta Ridge. This is only 100 words of the 2500 I captured that night.

View from Cuesta Ridge

In the hour before sunset the fog slips past Morro Rock and tumbles into the Chorro Valley, filling crevices, obliterating everything as far as the eye can see.

Soon the morros, Cerro San Luis, Bishop Peak, Chumash Peak and Cerro Romualdo, disappear like shark fins penetrating the thick, dense soup.

A battle wages between east and west. Behind the ridge a full moon rises above Black Mountain, pale and bland in the waning light. To the west the sun spreads flames of red-orange along the horizon. In minutes only fading embers illuminate the blue-veined fog. Finally darkness falls. The eastern sky takes possession of the night with a luminous harvest moon.

Contributed by: Anne Schroeder

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Update On A Dream

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Growing up with hot rods and corvettes, my friends and I had one recurring ‘Someday…’ notion, that we would go to Germany and drive on the Autobahn.

The only problem with this kind of dreaming is that there are no specifics. After all, we obviously knew exactly what it would be like to go roaring down a well-engineered road with no speed limits in an eminently powerful auto.

So it was that, at the grand young age of sixty-five, I agreed to go to Germany to visit my new wife’s relatives. Arriving in Frankfort, we picked up our rental car and suddenly my adolescent dream swept in like a tidal wave as we took off down the Autobahn.

Unfortunately, I found myself driving a Fiat Punto, which only rattled down the road, trying to stay out of the way of Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes.

Contributed by: Dennis Eamon Young

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