Down The Mountain

Volume 4, Issue 10, Nov/Dec 1997

We wrap up Volume 4 of BIKE with the Photo Annual. After a topsy turvy year with some not always successful (from a sales perspective) theme issues, the Photo Annual was a guaranteed hit. Imagery was what BIKE was known for, more than anything else.

Back on the word side of the fence, this particular column is one I can look back on and still feel. I was beginning to grok the first signs or mortality and aging, and at the same time was living in awe of nature. I still am, and still stand by what I felt back then:

“Hopefully, stupid people won’t screw up this mountain. And hopefully it’ll be here after I’m gone, and after the next generation of children have learned to play and have grown up on it, and their kids have, too, and all the way on through the next million sunsets, at least. Because it’s a good hill, and the trails on it are both sweet and hard, and they help people grow. And there are more than a few prime spots to watch all those sunsets from.”

The hill in question was Loma Prieta in Aptos, California. For a couple years I lived right at the base of it, and the 11 or so mile fire-road climb from the entrance of Nisene Marks up to the Santa Rosalia lookout was my twice a week or more personal barometer, the price of admission into the trails of Soquel Demonstration Forest or the feast of poaches on the frontside. It’s a mighty fine hill.

Nope, this is not Loma Prieta. But it is a beauty of a shot by Colin Meagher, and it is a mountain (Mt Hood? Mt St Helens?), and it gives the feels, and I miss Colin every day.