At the changing of the season...

People joke about the uni-season in LA, but in fact, on or around November 1st, there's a moment where the nights become noticeably chilly (even though the days are still 80 and sunny). Today, I happened to be ideally situated for the arrival of this moment.

Tired of noodling around the house this afternoon, I lunged myself up Sandstone Peak, the highest point in the Santa Monica Mountains. At the top it was cooler, maybe 65 or 70. Perfect given how overheated I was from the hike. I was greeted by the spectacular, sprawling, smog-free view of mountains and sea and deep blue sky you see above. It is mesmerizingly stunning in person, so you gawk.

After some sublime timelessness, and literally out of the blue, I was stabbed right through my wet shirt deep into the meat of my back by an icicle of freezing wind. I thought I'd been shot. I turned around and where there had been sunshine and blue sky was a dark wall of dense fog coming straight at me (see it here). Before I could make sense of it, I was enveloped. The sea was gone, the mountains were gone, the sun was gone and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. The wind picked up. The golden California cliché become the bleak howling moors of Wuthering Heights. It was exhilarating and terrifying and chilling to the bone.

Returning to sea level after sunset, the temperatures stayed strangely low. The moment had arrived.

(photo and film clip, taken moments apart, by Pablo Gazpachot)