The House in the Clouds
Twenty-six years ago, Keanu reeves made a little movie that didn’t get much attention, only scores a 6.7 on the IMDB index and co-starred Anthony Quinn and Giancarlo Giannini. It was Alfonso Arau’s (the guy who made Like Water for Chocolate and Three Amigos) A Walk in the Clouds. It tells the story of a man who meets a woman in need after he returns from WWII. She is part of a family that owns and runs a vineyard in Northern California. They are traditionalists and their daughter has gone and gotten herself with child. Reeves comes to her salvation and becomes part of the family walking in the clouds to save the vineyard after a tragic accidental fire.
One of the great natural aspects of the location of this house is that several dozen days of the year the weather presents itself in the morning with low-hanging mist formed as clouds that linger in the valleys below and stops somewhere several hundred feet below our elevation. It creates a magical sense that this house in the clouds is a special place. A place that feels mysterious on those mornings. A place that feels isolated and above it all. A place that feels like our own kingdom in the clouds. This morning was one such morning as we planned to set off for a visit with friends and family in Pasadena. I noted that the clear, crisp air of Autumn gave way to the mist on Mountain Meadow Road about half-way down to Rt. 15. As we got on the Freeway and headed north, we left the mist and clouds behind in a mater of a few miles and it was clear sailing from there. That reminded me that our little hilltop enjoyed a unique and special place where this meteorological phenomenon existed for our sole pleasure…or at least for the sole pleasure of the few dozen homes that sit on our hilltop.
We constantly remind ourselves how fortunate we were to find this hilltop and this home those ten years ago on a Christmas Day. Few people will buy a home without setting foot in it first, but we did. I only got into the home on the day we closed the purchase and Kim only came out several months after that. Just as I knew on meeting Kim for the first time that she was the one, I similarly knew this house was the one on that Christmas Day. Tonight as we drove home from Pasadena, thanks to L.A. Basin traffic (one of the banes of our existence), we came down the 15 past Gofer Canyon Road just as the sun was setting and Kim’s favorite time of day was falling with its red and orange hued rays on our Casa Moonstruck up on the distant hilltop. There is nothing about this house that we do not love. It’s look from down the hill reminds me of the Getty Museum from the 405. Unlike many hillside homes that stick out, our house blends with the landscape in the most natural way and being only one story, does not infringe on the hillside in an unnatural manner.
In retirement, one’s home becomes all the more important as a central place of life. There are days when I never leave the hilltop at all. There is certainly plenty there to keep me amused with the projects in the yard and the wonderful places to relax and enjoy the views, both from inside and out on the patio and deck. Being a morning person, my day is determined by my mood in the morning and nothing inspires me like a cosmic view of the world when I am sitting in the clouds. Man has always wanted to fly with the birds and this is probably as close as I’m likely to get to that. I know the mist will wear off, but that doesn’t matter. There are days when it actually appears to roll visibly down the hillsides and even when it just disperses, the feeling is one of having some degree of power over nature, even though we all know that is the furthest thing from the truth. I’ll bet nature knows all too well what it is doing to us and is probably snickering about it all to itself.
At night, when I wake up at 3am or so (which happens all too often), I can see out the bathroom picture windows, which look out to the West and North, if there is a fog setting in. Our hilltop is mist-shrouded at night probably 20% of the time, but some time between 3am and 7am it either settles in or disperses altogether. That means the clouds linger only a third of the days and I always think of those as special days. Days when I am meant to stop and remember how lucky I am to be living in the clouds. On another three dozen nights each year, I get to enjoy the full or near-full moon. So long as those nights don’t coincide with the misty ones, my nighttime wakefulness gives me a lovely view of the hills out toward the Ocean. On those days I find myself wondering if the nighttime predators like the coyotes like the moonlight or prefer the shroud of darkness for their hunting. It’s never occurred to me to wonder is predators care about morning mist conditions. The only thing that occurs to me is that to the extent coyotes compete with hawks for small rodents and such, I could see aerial visibility interference as benefiting coyotes. But that assumes that all else, including the natural mobility or foraging habits of the prey are unaffected by the weather. That all becomes too complicated for someone who has a casual interest in the local weather and its impact on the view.
Another thing I must admit I don’t completely understand is the extent to which our local drought conditions are affected by the morning mist conditions. It seems logical that anything that adds moisture to the ground and vegetation is a good thing for drought tolerance, but mist and dew still comes from the limited quantum of water in the atmosphere that might otherwise add to the rainfall that truly addresses drought conditions. While morning dew from mist does help reduce plant transpiration or loss of water into the atmosphere, the root systems of plants are impacted by the way ins high water is given to them. We gardeners learn early that its important to soak plants, particularly newly planted or transplanted ones so that their root systems can properly develop deep into the soil versus creating shallow root systems that are both more vulnerable to reduced water availability and can suffer from root rot and related disease from to frequent watering. This all implies that a morning mist that occurs to frequently is not a good substitute for less frequent and more intensive rain.
Clouds are wonderful things. I remember when studying earth science in ninth grade about the different types of clouds, from cirrus to stratus to cumulus to nimbus and every permutation and combination thereof. The sort of clouds that linger at low altitudes San form the valley layers that I look down upon are stratus clouds. They form horizontally rather than vertically and are generally the result of ground temperature and moisture rather than things occurring further up in the atmosphere. The specific subtype that I think I find most intriguing are called Stratus Undulatus and they seem to roll over the hills.
Man has always been intrigued by clouds. We see shapes and scenes in the clouds. The Rolling Stones told us quite firmly to “Hey, hey, you, you, get off of my cloud…” That was while the Beatles saw Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” But meanwhile, as Joni Mitchell taught us… “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now , from up and down and still somehow, it’s cloud illusions I recall, I really don’t know clouds at all.” Joni has my number. I just like to look out and see clouds around and below me. That doesn’t require full understanding as I drift off into my overthinking-induced haze in my house in the clouds.