Altadena
Friends of mine used to have a piece of driftwood that they found once while camping. It was rectangular, with a little square hole in one corner. On one side, in the center, the remains of a branch had broken off, and had left slightly raised cylinder. In short, it looked like a camera. They called it their "mind's eye camera," and posited that whenever they looked at something through the square hole, the view finder of their imaginary camera, they'd remember it forever. Their house burned in the Eaton fire, and though I don't know for sure, I'm pretty certain that their mind's eye camera burned with it. In the spirit of that camera, here are snapshots of what I remember fiercely in my head, but that no longer exist in Altadena. Because I am who I am and because I notice what I notice, let's start with lost trees. 100+ year old Fuerte avocado trees. Though the Fuerte avacodo was discovered in Mexico, it was first cultivated in Altadena, and the old t...
