Berkeley, Friday morning. Cold and grey, not exactly hiking weather, but I went hiking anyway. Not that I wanted to go, but a few days ago I had bought new hiking shoes ($59.99) and felt the nagging responsibility - lest I've wasted my money - to try them on. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my new hiking shoes wanted to go hiking and, having nothing better to do, I just tagged along. My binoculars wanted to go hiking too, so I had no alternative. Up Derby street, up Claremont Canyon Recreational Area, up the steep trail that cuts through a grove of giant eucalyptus trees with their bark coming down in strips like old wallpaper. In January everything is more or less in a state of disrepair, California included. Even the green of the evergreens has an unpleasant air about it - dank, oversaturated ivy green that poisons the eye. Up the trail, beyond the eucalypti, stands the field of dry coyote brush, a mini-desert of sorts on top of the Berkeley hills. Turkey vultures drift in the air currents above, biding their time, waiting probably for an exhausted hiker to collapse. I kept on walking. Two middle-aged women with their golden retriever passed me by. Then, a panting man with a panting golden retriever, a panting man with a panting black labrador. I guess the dogs wanted to go for a hike and their owners just tagged along.
Except for the transparent view of San Francisco Bay from top of the hills, there isn't much to see. But the view is worth it: the quiet colony of Berkeley houses basking on the shore, the water's far-off sheen somehow airy and rarefied, as if fog. Foggy water. In the distance, the cargo cranes of the Oakland harbor looked like a herd of prehistoric animals quenching their thirst. I kept on walking. Three hours. Then back to my room.