The Indian Trail footpath runs down from our Thousand Oaks Berkeley neighborhood to The Alameda. This shortcut makes walking down to restaurants and shopping on the top of Solano Ave very quick. The kids and I often wander down The Indian Trail to get to the Thousand Oaks playground.

There’s not much evidence of anything actually and historically Native American along the Indian Trail, although there is a shallow cave under a low overhanging rock that the kids love to inspect.

These days, the Indian Trail winds past elegant mansions and luxurious gardens on its way down to the so-called “flats.” The tumble-down garage shown to the left of this 5-shot HDR composition is an exception to the pervasive sense of order and entitlement around here.

Without this ramshackle out-building, the composition would not work—proving once again that what Lewis Carroll called sweetly pictaresque in rags beats clean modernity anytime, provided we don’t have to live in the rags.