NOT a spa weekend in Palm Springs

Head east out of LA on the Transcontinental Highway (by way of the Pamona and Moreno Valley Freeways), and just beyond Gorgonio Pass cut right through the wind farms onto North Palm Canyon Drive. You'll hug the mountain until eventually shooting straight through the heart of "main street" Palm Springs, as the name of the street you're on turns to South Palm Canyon at Tahquitz Canyon Drive.

Turn left here and you'll hit the airport. Continue on, and you'll reach a sharp left bend that would take you down 111's canyon-cutting push through Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert en route to Indio. Here, though, go straight, to where South Palm Canyon Drive ends at the Indian Canyons trailheads. Pay the Cahuilla Tribe rep at the toll booth (it costs a little less than 10 bucks) and hike as far as you like, up through Palm Canyon itself, taking the wilderness roads and trails from canyon floor to high desert until reaching highway 74 somewhere in the Piñon Flats.

Imagine cutting through wind farms, NOT on a spa weekend in Palm Springs

You'll need to camp somewhere along the way before hiking back to your car - or hitch a ride I suppose. So while I realize logistics may keep you from actually doing this, I hope if you do that you'll post a comment about your experience with attempting it on HikeyHikey or at my HubPages. If you think I should figure it out and report back to you, let me know that, too.

NOTE: This post is the first of 30 in 30 days I'll be making to the MyLifeinMegalopolis blog that I'll be using as fodder for my upcoming book, My Life in Megalopolis: At the intersection of geography and human propensity.

Grit Makes Cities Great - revisited

I wrote the essay below, "Grit Makes Cities Great", eight years ago after moving from the gritty streets of the original megalopolis - Metro New York/New Jersey - to the tropical megalopolis of South Florida. Now, as I'm weeks away from moving to yet another megapolitan area, my first on the West Coast, I thought I'd re-post it. I don't know why, but I have a feeling I'll find grit in SoCal, even though I plan on spending much of my time above the clouds hiking the Transverse and Peninsular ranges.


Grit Makes Cities Great
Originally published in Tongue Twisted Traveler blog, summer 2004

For the past year, since my return to Miami after a two-year stint in Newark, I've been looking for signs of a mature city, something that would draw memories of the Northeast. I came south to escape the snow, but I'm really missing the grit of a city with some miles on her. In Miami, so much of history lies in the last 50 years, and the focus is more directed to one glaring aspect--its chance relationship with the cold war and growth as a transnational suburb in exile of Havana--while tourism has flourished to disguise this fact to the rest of the country. There is also a visible history here, from 20th Century architecture to a unique blending of Latin American nationalities. But Newark, which has lived a sort of transnational existence itself, hosting wave after wave of newly arrived immigrants throughout each of the American centuries, is somehow more deeply layered, more complex.

Newark, arguably the downtown of metro New Jersey, has a tight, defined city center, with brick buildings dating back to the 1600s, interspersed with structures of varying degrees of modernity and use, and roads leading out in all directions to cities of major importance to both the colonial and industrial eras. Major routes run in eight directions: north through Passaic, Paterson and Hackensack; northeast through Union City, West New York and the Bronx; east through Jersey City, Manhattan and Brooklyn; southeast through Bayonne and Staten Island, south through Elizabeth, New Brunswick and Perth Amboy; southwest through the Plainfields; west through Irvington, Summit and Morristown; and northwest through the Oranges, Bloomfield and Montclair.

Built up before cars and trucks came to clog northeast Jersey's network of roads, Newark, as a city in constant evolution and transition, has an urban landscape that came alive during industrialization and all but died in the wake of suburbanization. The highways here were built as afterthoughts, along rivers, through blighted neighborhoods and atop long bridges of rusting steel. Roads curve and dip, one below the other, emerging again out of cold, cracked cement marked sporadically with graffiti and stained with chemical runoff. In the midst of all this, a new urbanism is taking place that does little to sweep aside the scars characteristic of such a harsh history, so they remain visible, unique marks of progress for current generations to marvel, to learn from and to admire.

Miami, too, has its history, its unique built environment, its culture. But one must look harder to see it, study more deeply to understand it and ultimately be willing to go off the beaten path to discover what lies beneath its glossy skin. While geography won't permit such a radiant existence for Miami--the Everglades hem in the west, the Keys are the end of the road just a few hundred miles to the south, and in the east there is just blue ocean, with paths only known to ships and sailing vessels--the city radiates in other ways. Within these natural boundaries a city has formed with distinct design. Above the surface, it seems Miami is jailed within an inflexible grid, with Miami Avenue on the x axis and Flagler on the y. But on the ground there is variation as the Miami River, Biscayne Bay and an old network of canals, as well as the Interstate 95 and several freeways, cut off parts of each quadrant at irregular intervals that defy logic or reason. Through it all, neighborhoods survive in a sort of organized chaos among the constant beauty of sky, plants and water even as half-century old cement structures in some places beg for paint and a little more care.

For better or for worse, redevelopment is underway in select neighborhoods of both Newark and Miami. Their characters will evolve, as Miami sets to open its doors on a new cultural center and opera house and Newark works to expand its subway and light rail network. But what makes the future for each of these cities so interesting are the roots of their respective pasts. So I'll keep on searching for grit in Miami, because I know it's there. It's in Overtown and Liberty City, Opa Locka and Hialeah. I've seen it in Allapattah and Little Havana, too. Hell, it's even in Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and Miami Beach, if you know where to look. So Miami may never compare to the great cities of the northeast, just as U.S. cities could never compare to the great gritty cities of Europe. But in time Miami's own brand of grit will become fully known, and it will truly earn its position as one of the great cities of the Americas.

Hiking: Cat Rock - A T-accessible wilderness in Boston's western suburbs

I lived in Boston for several months last year, staying with family in a western suburb replete with conservation lands. While I found hiking at the sprawling urban wilderness sanctuaries of the Middlesex Fells and the Blue Hills to be exceptional, there were also many smaller gems to be found throughout the city and surrounding suburbs. Cat Rock is one of my favorites, and the best part is that it's accessible by public transit from Boston's North Station and Porter Square in Cambridge.

Cat Rock in Weston, Massachusetts is a tiny slice of preserved wilderness in the midst of suburbia. This granite-topped hill scratches up to the sky from within the suburban landscape about half a mile's walk from the Kendall Green T station. This passive park, or reservation as it's called, has a loop trail that links it to the rest of 80 Acre woods that surround the western, southern and southeastern edges of Hobb's Pond. The pond is fed by the Cambridge Reservoir farther north and empties via Hobbs Brook to the south into the Stony Brook Reservoir and finally releases into the Charles River by the Waltham-Newton divide. The waterway dissects the hiking loop, so two shorter loops may be followed by sticking to the brook's east or west bank.

Cat Rock is on the west side loop. To get there I'd suggest taking the Fitchburg Line to Kendal Green, walking north on Church, taking a left onto Route 117, and then a quick right onto Drabbington Way. Trail spurs are at the end of Drabbington, on either side of the ball field. The quickest route to Cat Rock from here is taking the left trail spur. Take it into the woods and veer left in the clearing to ascend the old abandoned ski run, and then down the mushroom-clad hill that leads downhill to the west and north here and do the entire loop toward an open meadow, and Hobb's Pond.

The trail to the right of the ball field will take you away from Cat Rock, to a footbridge where you can cross to the east side loop and into the woods. Within, you will find street exits: 1) Lexington Street to the east, which runs north-south and forms much of the eastern edge of the woods, and 2) Page Road, to the south, which curves once exiting the park and also leads to Lexington Street.

To return to Kendal Green, take Lexington south to Route 117, where you will take a right, and then a left onto Church, which slopes down toward the station.

If you're living in the Boston area, I'd really recommend checking this place out. It's a lovely diversion from the fast pace of city life. And if you're close enough, it's a great spot to enjoy regular hikes without having to venture too far from home.