Like most people, I’m hoping that 2010 will bring a new outlook. Well, my New Year’s celebration last night did.

My wife had to work, and my older son was going to a party, and my daughter was going to a sleepover, so that meant finding something to do with my seven-year-old boy. I briefly considered our spending the night playing Oblivion on the xBox, taking turns in our assigned roles: My solving puzzles and fulfilling quests; his killing every monster and demon in sight because my somewhat older fingers are too slow to survive an altercation with an alarmed pantry cat. But then I figured that we were going to be doing a fair amount of that during the day, so instead I signed us up for a fun program run by the City of Burbank:  a midnight hike up the mountains ringing the city.

So, last night at 8, we and about 30 other people, including our friend Trey, gathered inside the Stough Nature Center. It was one of those events were almost no one knows anyone else; there was a family of four from Brooklyn, an older man and his adult son, a woman from Japan, someone from Georgia, a single mom and her little girl, a middle-aged woman with a leathery face and brilliantly dyed pink hair, and an oddly quiet blonde who kept her hood up all night even when we were inside. We played games and talked a lot and picked at the buffet and listened to music. And my son got to hold a snake and a tarantula. (Photos of which he proudly showed his squeamish sister the next day.)

At 11:30 we started the ascent up the mountain. The air was crisp and clean, with a brisk nighttime scent given off by the wild shrubs and grasses on the mountain. My wife and kids and I had hiked precisely this route five weeks earlier, on Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a wide and gently sloping path, more of a mountain walk than a hike (and certainly not a climb). About 20 minutes later, we came to a large flat rise that overlooks this entire end of the valley, where we could see countless lights from Pasadena in the east, past Glendale and Burbank with downtown Los Angeles south in the distance, and off to the west. This view was impressive during the day; at night it was spectacular.

And then, at midnight, we all made apple cider toasts and stood back and watched the fireworks. From our vantage point, we could see no fewer than six different fireworks displays simultaneously. There was one in Pasadena. There was one in Burbank. City of Los Angeles somehow found the money to do one. We saw one beyond that that someone estimated as originating by the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, 40 miles south of us. That’s what this view is like.

Then we all posed for a group shot with the lights in the distance and made our way back down the mountain.  I said goodbye to Mike, and gave the single mom a farewell hug, and shouted farewells to others, and my son said goodbye to his best friend for the evening, 29-year-old David who patrols the coast for a living and had a video of himself out in the water with dolphins and who has a way with people and animals.

In February of 2009, I made a personal pledge to do what I could to spread as little grief as possible in the world. Everyone was already so on edge about the economy, with day-to-day wonderings whether or not we were sliding into the second Great Depression, that I figured I’d do my best to let things slide, or be helpful in small ways. Last night’s easygoing, relaxed, and altogether different New Year’s Eve with strangers on a mountaintop at midnight may not prove as memorable as my best Thanksgiving ever, but it was a good way to cap off the year.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 12:03 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.