It was sunrise in Southern California, January 11, 1949. Something drew me to the bedroom window. I looked out to the front yard and for miles beyond. The familiar scene of my childhood was gone. Our front lawn with its towering evergreen tree, the vacant lot down the hill and the boulevard leading to Griffith Park were luminous. My world, where the landscape had been a constant was transformed-covered now in a pure white blanket of what appeared to my five year old eyes to be diamond dust. It was a scene beyond my comprehension and my response was visceral. That moment is as immediate to me now as it was decades ago. My wife summed it up. “That first snowfall set in motion both the search for a view of equal enchantment, as well as a visual memory in search of meaning.”
As I walk in the landscape I seek to cross a threshold between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
