Going out and coming back

It is a funny thing that, when walking, I will notice different things going out and coming back the same route. It is sometimes as if on the return trip I am seeing them as if for the first time. It surprises me that it is when walking, because, walking, one has a 360 degree view. I wonder if it does not have to do with attention. Going out is a different activity from coming back and it would not be surprising that the mind would tune to different things.

This afternoon I accompanied my wife K to Berkeley for her class and decided to walk up Claremont Blvd towards Grizzly Peak. Going out I saw the remains of a fawn by the side of the road. I saw evidence of several abandoned water projects in the creek bed that the road follows. I saw evidence of the Oakland Hills fire from a dozen years ago. Coming back I saw a jerry-rigged chute covered in black cloth for sending down construction debris from a building site high above the valley floor. The black cloth was obviously meant to disguise it. It looked like a gold rush scene. I would have seen none of these things driving the same route.

After this, I took some time to assay old haunts in Elmwood and upper Rockridge. The trio of South Berkeley bakeries, Bread Garden, Nabalom, and La Farine are all still there and appear to be doing well. Curiously, the smells of Bread Garden and Nabalom were as I remembered and as they were 25 years ago, they were quite distinct. The laundromat where we sent Best Man D on the eve of our wedding was still there and the same as ever (some bachelor party...). Armanino Court is just as it always was, except its sign has been changed to designate it as a "private street". Rockridge north of Claremont seemed thriving, but the hardware store in Elmwood is boarded up and gives the sense that the neighborhood is struggling.

- J