A wonderful hike, luck and reverie.

[jimboloco]

Walking along a mountain crest road one Sunday morning in the mountains north of Los Angeles, I saw a trail head off the road and down towards a canyon, Cattle Creek Canyon. I wanted a short cut to a water hole and the road up the other side towards piney woods and then desert. So, instead of following the long, winding road, I cut off down the trail. Me and my dog Popeye. Two hundred yards down, the trail ended in brush. High desert scrub. I saw a slope that looked interesting and went to the edge, suddenly sliding down and falling, landing ten feet below in a narrow strip of shade green ferns and small clear gurgling spring stream.....Popeye came down, too, and we set off walking down this cool green gully five feet across covered in shade brush over the top. Clear fresh water. We walked, tranced, for hours down and down and down and down.....not a sound just our steps, pauses, rests, hugs and dog kisses.....til at last we came around a bend and there was the mouth, a bright white rock reflected sunshine
framed by the cool shade of gully walls twenty feet tall.
In front of the mouth, trail's end, was a pool, still, clear, and a pile of rocks with a coiled rattlesnake.\

We went up the opposite side of the gully wall, holding onto tree shrubs....had the pack tied with rope and swung it across the pool and past the snake to the exit/entrance....climed across and down, looked back at the gully creek's green mouth, now dark framed by the glaring sunlit expanse of white rock large canyon wall. Said goodby to the snake and walked down the great canyon's dry bed. A huge wide dry riverbed, canyon bed, football fields of white rocks deep below the canyon walls.

Lots of driftwood there from past flash floods....built a roaring fire, me and Popeye, slept out there alone and happy.