Driving to Pinnacles

Yesterday, I got up at 5am to drive down to Pinnacles National Monument to meet with a condor biologist. Leaving the house at 6:30am, I took Kings Mountain Road down the hill, hugging the hillside on this narrow road (a remnant from logging days) and devouring occasional glimpses of the valley as the sun was rising, a sliver of a crescent moon hanging in the corner of the sky just over San Jose or Palo Alto or somewhere in between the two. The camera itched at my side in the passenger seat, but I couldn't allow myself to scratch it. I had an appointment to keep.

South of San Jose, as Highway 101 narrowed and became less interstate-like, the urban sprawl gave way to open space. The sun was higher, but it was still casting that golden, early morning glow over everything. The hills were rumpled sheets of green velvet, shimmering in the sun in some places with shades of darker green on the west slopes that the sun hadn't touched yet.

Turning off Highway 101 and onto Highway 25 towards Hollister, I drove through a cherry orchard that was just this side of its peak bloom. The white petals fluttered in the breeze of trees in perfectly symmetrical rows that seemed to go on forever and ever. Hollister appeared like a remnant of the past, with its downtown storefronts, now offering quinceanera dresses that billow out like gowns that Southern belles wore before the war. Then the new Hollister stretched out to meet me, wider roads with fast food and the usual suspects of chain stores.

But beyond Hollister, as I got closer and closer to Pinnacles, the road got narrower and windier. The country got more country, with windmills and cattle and more remote velvet hills. Birds of prey soared above me, some type of hawk I've never seen before, larger than the redtails I know closer to home. I pulled into Pinnacles with a feeling of the most pleasant kind of anxiety building up in my chest. I was going to be looking for a California condor, a bird that had dwindled to some 20-odd specimens just 20 years ago and had almost disappeared from the face of the earth.

You'll have to wait and find out later what I discovered there, though. I'm still writing the articles. ;-)