Picks and Pans – From Arcata to Burney Falls, CA

Highway 299 winds along the Trinity River for most of the way to Redding, so our trip was punctuated with glimpses of great swimming holes and wildlife sightings, including a bear drinking from the river.

I was first introduced to Calatrava’s architecture by my good friend, Tim, whose excitement convinced me that any opportunity I had to view Calatrava’s work should be seized. And I must say, after crossing the Calatrava footbridge over the Thames at London’s Tate Modern and, years later, spending hours exploring La Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias in Valencia, Spain, I may rival Tim in my admiration of Calatrava’s work. So, obviously, when Sean found that Calatrava had designed a footbridge in Redding, we had to see it. The bridge is constructed using materials common to Calatrava’s work: thick glass blocks for the walkway, white metal pipes for the main structure, suspension cables supported by a single off-center point and decorative mosaics of glossy bright white tiles (perfect for sunny Valencia and sunny Redding). The bridge also is the dial of an enormous sundial that tells time in 15 minute increments, as read by shadows falling on raised domes of white tile on the far side of the bridge. Sean and I had great fun experimenting with creating shock waves and interference on the suspension cables of varying lengths and dodging the scorchingly bright sun by hopping from shadow to shadow.

Thanks to a suggestion from Ian, we made sure to stop at Burney Falls on our way to Lassen. The state park sits on the rim above the falls and seemed very well maintained, although once again the campground was way above our price range due to California state budget issues, but the falls alone were certainly worth the stop. It was a quick walk down the side of the gorge to the base of the Burney Falls, with the dense mist making it progressively cooler as we descended. We were surprised that the falls were actually quite a bit wider than the creek above, like a weeping wall of water covered with moss on either side of the main falls. We discovered that this was because the ground was composed of volcanic rock which is so porous that as the falls erodes the rock away it allows the ground water to seep out in trickles around the falls. I would really like to return sometime in the winter to see if the deep green moss would be covered with a veil of frozen water, the way I imagined it.