The View Above the Arroyo Seco Today

PHOTO REFLECTIONS

Above the Arroyo Seco on the morning of August 18 (Photo – Reg Green)

We can all smell the smoke, see the haze.

By Reg Green

This is what it looked like Tuesday morning from above the Arroyo Seco looking straight at the invisible Rose Bowl, seven miles away.

Still, it’s only a weak imitation of Charles Dickens’ London, as he described it in his great novel, Bleak House.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.