California dreaming on such a winter's day. On a particularly cold, wet, grey and dismal London day my thoughts drifted to memories of my hike through the Castle Crags Wilderness in July of this year, also hiking round Crater Lake in Oregon in July 2017 and Mount Shasta in June 2016, another NorCaL landmark. Temperatures in the high 30s, blue sky and bleaching sunlight seem like a dream compared to old London town.
 Then again news of the wildfires still raging across California gives me pause for thought. The haze in the first photo is not mist or some artistic filter; that day the air was pungent with smoke blowing downwind from a major wildfire burning 40 or 50 miles to the North. I'll write an entry on this subject in the near future because the volatility of these monumental landscapes is fundamental to appreciating them.