Ben has spent the last week in Tuscany looking at possible new itineraries to add to our portfolio. This is a land which has seen many groups traipse across her clay soils (and much of the mud has been exported on the soles of boots to points across the world). Nevertheless it is an area of continuing interest from many of our walkers and we are interested to see if there is a new or better way to approach what is available.
Ben has at least spent the week in a sunnier place than I. It is now official that this was the wettest November on record in England and the announcement has certainly not been greeted with cries of “surely not?” from Somerset. But I have been able to escape myself from the terrible weather that has been our lot as yesterday I flew to Los Angeles and drove out the delightful town of Claremont on the eastern edge of that great conurbation.
It is on days like this that the pleasures of Southern California are at their most obvious. Even in the depths of winter the days are sunny and temperatures reach the sixties. It seems as though it might be hard to persuade the residents to abandon this for the pleasures of Europe in the spring but that is what I am attempting to do.
We have a number of friends from this part of the world who have walked on trips in the past and one of the great attractions of some of those trips has been my host for the last couple of days, Ken Wolf. Ken is professor of history at Pomona College, a highly prestigious university in this area, and has accompanied several trips as a lecturer and hugely entertaining travelling companion. His specialty is medieval religious history which chimes well with the trips we have been on – Saint Francis in Umbria – The Camino de Santiago – Islam and Christianity in Southern Spain – and the Heretics of the Languedoc. Wonderful walks all.
This evening I sat on the red granite benches that surround ‘Dividing the Light’, a part of Pomona College which is known as Skyspace. James Turrell, the artist and a graduate of Pomona College, defines a Skyspace as a precisely engineered architectural installation that heightens the viewer’s awareness of light, sky and the activity of perception.
What it is, is a square metal canopy raised up on a stone framework and metal posts with a square removed from its centre which acts as a frame for a section of the sky. The architrave of the stone framework hides a series of lights which which change the colour of the , by day, canopy. By cycling through a series of luminescent pure colours, perception of the central space alters and the sky turns from azure to aquamarine to bright violet and gunmetal grey.
The architecture around is a very modern interpretation of classical motifs. Simple square doorways with lintels and jambs made of mere incisions. The square frame and the square sky are all linked elements in the wider structure.
The changes of colour speed up dramatically as dusk is followed by the rapid diminution of light and purple is followed by yellow is followed by grey. To my side the real sky continues its slow metamorphosis through the tints of dark blue; above me the strk yelow frame has turned my bit of sky into an inky purple square.
At times the sky is lost completely and the frame ceases to act as a mask for the rest of the sky and becomes a solid sheet to which someone has attached a sheet of colour, raised slightly from the background so as to be slightly closer to the viewer below than the canopy itself. Infinity is internalised into the courtyard. The light changes again and we are thrown into a confusion of black and white.
This is a remarkable experience shared with a pleasingly large number of students. The American ability to create beauty where Europeans would expect to have it provided by previous generations is at the same time revealing and humbling.
