Welcome to Star Trekking, my attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.
That tweet brought up memories.
Truly a glorious day, when I put my sweater on backwards, placed my insignia patch onto it (relying on the inherent cling factor to keep it there long enough) and held my wallet as a communicator. Finally, I had found the location of Kirk’s glorious battle.
I’d long been fascinated with these rocks, not just because of their use in Star Trek, but because I’d also spotted them in various westerns (including episodes of The Lone Ranger) over the years. So when I moved to Los Angeles in the late eighties, one of my goals was to find those rocks.
Now let me just say that I did not have access to anything like the internet, not even some kind of dial up message board (that was strictly my younger brother’s domain and beyond my comprehension). So I had no idea where the rocks were located or even how to go about researching the answer.
What I did have was a folded paper map of the greater Los Angeles area and one day my eye was drawn to a spot labeled Paramount Ranch. It seemed to be in the hills over near Malibu somewhere and by gum if that was not the location of those super iconic rocks, where else could it be? Trek was a Paramount show, surely they shot outdoor stuff at Paramount Ranch! So my friend Stephen and I went off on a scouting trip.
I brought along the only camera I owned at the time, a little gem called The Amazing Minicam which was not much more than a pinhole camera to which you attached a role of 110 film. (I know I am essentially speaking gibberish to any reader younger than 40. Or maybe 50. Ay yi yi.)
It looked like this (except without the Kellogg’s logo).
Anyway, we arrived at Paramount Ranch and wandered around for a bit, finally located a small western town.
It was at the bottom of a sort of valley and we figured the famous rocks must be on the other side of the hill.
Awfully scrub brush-y, but surely those bare rocks were very nearby. We got to the top, surveyed the horizon, saw only more scrub brush.
But then we did not know our exact route back to the car, and we ended up actually hiking through the scrub.
That was our view, and when we lost our footing and began sliding through these brambles and over a six foot-ish cliff, well, we were then 100% certain we were not in the right place.
But we both managed to get poison oak all over our legs (hello days of calamine lotion) and many many scratches and scars, some of which I can still point out to you today. Like that big one.
We had survived our own battle without accomplishing our goal.
Many months later, I was chatting with an actress named Linnea Quigley, telling her about this adventure and she said, “Oh, you’re looking for Vasquez Rocks. It’s up north. Great place to hike!”
By this time, Stephen was gone, so I drove out there with my girlfriend, Nancy, who kindly documented the adventure.
No new scars were created during that trip. Nancy did later inflict some emotional scars, but that’s a different story…
I tweeted an abbreviated version of this last week, and one of my favorite replies came from Joe Fordham.
Read Joe’s whole story about this wonderful footage here: B5News.
More Vasquez Rocks content.
MEANWHILE…
One more time…
The ongoing thesis of this newsletter is that Star Trek is everywhere, whether you’re actively looking for it or not. My son recently discovered that truth for himself.
DIRECTIVES
Too bad action heroes don’t know CPR.
How to watch the franchise in Chronological Order.
An overview of recent Trek comments from Paramount.
JessieGender’s video interview with Mike McMahan.
Until next time,
LOVE long…and prosper.
Scars are a great way to keep memories alive! This is definitely a story of success after failure. In fact, I propose that there is no such thing as failure because: "There Is No Bad News; There Are Only Blessings In Disguise" 🤗
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/there-is-no-bad-news-there-are-only