Photoessay #2564 - UCSC Quarry

I'm interested in places rather than sites or locations.  Much richer, the place itself only exists because people have experienced it, maybe more than one person, maybe more than one time, maybe at more than one location.  The place has context and texture. 

Anyway, I'm planning on re-writing my piece on the San Gabriel Valley as it is my birthplace.  I felt there should be some connection but I never could quite get the idea but now I may have my hint.

When I started writing memoir, I thought I would write about UCSC in 1970.  I started with the Priscilla Parkin story.  Limited success.  I found out that I couldn't access enough details, I couldn't remember enough.  Too fuzzy.  But that doesn't mean that I'm giving up on it.

I think I've written about looking at my parents slides and how everything fit together spatially, I knew where everything was and how it was put together.  Yeah, I thought, in 1963.  And I had a picture of McHenry Library, yeah same thing.

But here's a picture of the Upper Quarry at UCSC.  I took it completely for granted, like everything else about that extraordinary place.  Now I find out that the design of the seats and their orientation was carefully planned and designed with interesting spaces and angles.  Completely wasted on the 18 year old me.  It was there, events were there, you could go there and sit.  Never occurred to me that it was a designed engineered place.  Yes, it's familiar, looks right.

Now I find out that it's fallen into disuse, closed in 2006 for safety concerns, now full of weeds and lizards.  They hope to restore it.  Crazy.  A place is there for me, and in the picture, it all makes sense.  And then it doesn't.