I remember it’s Friday.
“I feel like working out, Aid.” Fridays are for working out, no?
“You want to go on a hike?” she offers. I accept. What better way to spend Friday evening during quarantine? We decide to leave our cell phones at home, understanding that we are sacrificing gaining possession of Instagram-worthy photos of the Los Angeles skyline in return for a few hours of peace of mind, and agree that it’s a tradeoff well worth taking.
“Wait, is this legal though?” I ask casually but sincerely, as Aida eyes my question in disbelief. “Governor Newsom issued an executive order – aren’t trails off-limits?” Aida knows it’s useless to argue with me at that point; she lays out a matter-of-fact “yes, parks are ok” which falls upon my listening but muted ears as I pull up the original text of the order and start scanning it on my phone. Content that there’s enough gray area to console my legal compass, I shut off the phone and we head out.
The destination is Brand Park, and it’s around 5pm. Pulling up to park, Aida notices that she’s taken her phone with her. A moment of hesitation fills the car; eventually, I pop open the glove compartment, she throws the phone inside, and I slam it shut. Doors closed, car locked, we make our way toward Seven Trees Trail.
At times in strides, and at times in inches, we make our way to the middle plateau, where a small chamber audience of Angeleno toddlers, teens, and seniors has gathered along the edges of the shaved hillside, as if celebrating this golden city with its rolling mountains to the North and the pacific waters to the South, its homes sprinkled with sapphire pools and emerald lawns twinkling against the incipient evening twilight, its multiple freeway arms spread in sprawling splendor, patiently awaiting their public rendezvous with the resting sun, as if two lovers who cannot keep their tryst a secret from our curious and marveling eyes.
The sky as though a dome of gradient blue, stretching from midnight navy to my East to velvet purple at my West, the freeways as though fluid arteries, missing their traffic clots of red and white blood cells, the skyscrapers downtown as though amber coals, still burning orange as the rays ricochet off their surface, never before has Los Angeles ever been so marvelous.
And the air.
The air… it was as if an Instagram filter was lifted off of the face of Los Angeles to reveal its true beauty hiding beneath and within. My eyes wandered across the peaks of downtown’s towers, floating along the white caps of the Pacific’s waves and along the edges of Griffith mountain, chasing the lone car racing up Interstate 5 Northbound, finding abode on the runways of Burbank Airport and finally losing itself somewhere where the Sun was to meet the Earth.
Far above and beyond the struggling commerce populating the fronts of our busies streets, nature lay itself bear and victorious for me to engulf. All I had to do was to put away my phone and look through the best cameras I had available: my eyes.
Chronicles 
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