Knotty Pine
Of the tourists who take the road from the city of Palm Desert to the mountain town of Idyllwild, carving the switchbacks of the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway, stopping perhaps to survey the prehistoric purples and flayed magenta of the Coachella Valley, to purchase venison jerky by the pound at the campsite minimart, or pose for a photo astride the Sinclair fossil fuels diplodocus, only a small proportion may be identified as experimental physicists.
As someone who chose to pursue a career reporting on the minor eddies and bureaucratic backcurrents of the fluid dynamics research scene in Southern California, my awareness of the migration patterns of vacationing physicists may be claimed to be above the national average.
I do not yet have sufficient data to present a predictive model of physicist-presence per annum. My evidence is limited to informal observation of the offerings deposited at the base of the historical marker located at the corner of Pine Cove Road and Chickadee Lane, commemorating a failed experiment to measure the speed of light. My data is matter: the prisms, cracked mirrors, tinfoil pinwheels, and occasional DIY device for extraterrestrial communication, laid against a concrete pyramid that once supported precision instruments.
Why I remain here as observer, while others pass, their offerings incinerated by employees of the US Forest Service, I am still trying to decipher. Though methodical by nature and given to carefully calculated experiments in living, my relocation to Idyllwild cannot be traced to a conscious decision.
Yes, the glamour of Los Angeles had worn thin, the pool of my rented apartment paved over, the most cost-efficient way to remediate toxicity of airborne particulates during fire season. Yes, I had been haunted by green dreams of England – of a chalky coastline like crumbling cake, of ancient oaks, of hundreds of sheep seen strewn across a beach like sleeping seals. But no degree of disenchantment with Los Angeles or nostalgia for my homeland could account for the fact that I found myself living 6000ft above sea level, cut off from urban amenities and rent-controlled accommodation, living in a town where front-yard bear sculptures outnumber bears 3:1.
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