I kick off from home in Silver Lake at 6 a.m. in near-pitch blackness. Quiet streets and a good headlamp make this a nice run - so far.
I cruise up Commonwealth Canyon, beneath trees hulking black against the blue-black pre-dawn glow, and follow my headlamp's dim tunnel of light.
The air smells of rosemary, sage, creosote, smog ...
I crank to the top in near-silence (gotta get that creaky bottom-bracket tightened).
I pull up into this little grove of live oaks where I always do my stretches. And then I roll down to a huge paved platform hanging off the edge of the fire road (it's probably used for chopper refueling or something similar) where you can get a 270-degree view of sunrise over L.A..
Standing there for a few seconds usually clears my head for the day, but I set the alarm way early this morning, so I have time to kill and the landscape is deliciously quiet. So I stretch a bit more, and sit down to meditate.
One minute later, a nattering couple of hikers walks up and sits down too.
Not 30 feet away. Not 10 feet away. Five feet away.
The whole of Griffith Park stretches out before them, the concrete landing pad we're on is easily 500 feet long and the only other people here are doing calisthenics way down the other end. But this is where they sit.
And say "Good morning" amicably to me - and keep chatting full volume with each other.
And unfold their crinkly plastic sit-mats.
And chat on and on about whatever the hell it is that's so important.
And then they take out rattling glassware and clinking cutlery and ...
Aw, the heck with it.
So I hop on the bike, move down the ridge 500 feet and park my butt in the dirt for a few minutes more of quiet, and then bomb back down the hill toward a shower, a bite and the workday.
And at the bottom where Commonwealth meets Los Feliz, I see it: An adult coyote, lying down between lanes of rush-hour traffic, still.
Windblasts from passing cars riffle its tawny fur. It almost looks like it's sleeping.
Until I notice the huge smeared pile of guts 12 feet beyond, and the cars and trucks gingerly picking their way around the whole mess.
I shake off the towering "bad-omen" twitch that comes over me, the urge to yell at the drivers to be more careful. And I stifle my bile down to a manageable kernel of fatalistic clarity:
It's just another ugly reminder that we're not exactly the best custodians of this wilderness we inhabit. Just another gorgeous wild animal that didn't get to die the way it should have. Just large road kill.
But the image sticks. Damn it.
Two wheels good. Four wheels bad. Are we not men?
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