Mount Rubidoux

Author's Comments

There are higher peaks in Southern California and there are more dramatic ones, but Mount Rubidoux holds something most of them do not. It is a hill in the middle of a city, and the climb up its paved loop is gentle enough that you arrive at the summit still capable of paying attention. That matters here. The view is not the kind that knocks you flat. It rewards you for noticing. I come in late winter, usually February, when the rains have pushed the smog out of the Santa Ana valley and the mountains to the north show their snow. The granite at the summit goes warm in the last hour of light. The cross and the Peace Tower throw long shadows east, and the city below begins its slow shift from afternoon glare to something softer and more layered. Three hundred and sixty degrees of horizon is a rare thing this close to a freeway, and Rubidoux gives it to you for the price of a forty-minute walk. The crowd is real, especially on weekends near sunset. Locals know what they have. I have learned to arrive an hour before golden hour, find a position on the western side of the summit, and simply wait. The light does the work. The bridge of the Pacific, the river valley, the hazy shoulders of the San Bernardinos behind you - it composes itself if you give it time. Bring a longer lens than the obvious wide shot suggests. The compression on the distant ranges is where the photograph lives.

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