A Scattering of Ashes

A Scattering of Ashes

We gambled on the preserve being empty, which wasn’t a great bet on a Sunday afternoon in late August. But then again, all of us had been pulled into  a web of encounters that was characterized by wildly unlikely coincidences. I was in the truck with my wife Mary. Bob and Jeff went with Richard and his wife Gerri in the rental car. We turned off the boulevard, rolled up the sweeping four lane that climbs over the Puente Hills, and made the the quick, sharp left just past where the houses end. There was one car in the tiny lot, and the owners were just getting in to drive away. Our luck held out. We had the world to ourselves.

Appropriate to the task at hand there were six of us: Pete’s brother Richard and his wife Geri, me, and my wife Mary, Bob Diaz, and Jeff Goslowski. Jeff and I were Pete’s closest friends. We walked slowly up the steep dirt pathway into the hills. We’re all in decent shape, but none of us is young anymore. I carried the back pack. 

The trail was formerly an access road for the oil wells, but the pumps and drills have been gone for decades. It climbs out of the parking lot, and turns on a little plateau before sliding down the wall of a deep south-facing canyon. 

It’s always dry in the Southern California summer; the hills are yellow, spattered with dark green sumac bushes, pale gray sage, and the dull green of the prickly pear. The view takes in everything from Downtown Los Angeles, to the Port of Long Beach, and all the cities on the coastal plane down to Laguna Beach in South Orange County. The sky was late season pale, hazy, and streaked with wispy clouds. Catalina island was barely visible, floating like a ghost in the ocean. Even in the heat of the day there was wind enough to keep us cool, and make our task difficult.

Nobody said much except to take note of the absolute perfection of the moment. We had solitude above the noise and traffic of the city. The yellow hills, the turquoise sky sprayed with wispy clouds, the gold light in the late summer afternoon. This was the place and the beauty that Pete had captured so often and so well. For those minutes we stood in one of his paintings. This was exactly how he would have wanted it.

Richard, Jeff and Bob gathered around. I opened the back pack, took out my pocket knife, and we all took a hand in the scatter. It’s a hard, messy business. We gave our prayers, and returned to the cars with dust on our hands, and the bitter taste of death on our lips. Our timing had been perfect. Just as we reached the parking lot three cars had pulled in, and people were getting set to go hiking down the trail.

Life rebounds in us, and hunger always follows a funeral. Richard and Geri took us to dinner at El Cholo, La Habra’s finest. We came back to my house, but no one stayed long. Rick and Geri had an early flight home to South Carolina. Jeff and Bob had a long drive ahead. We said our goodbyes, they drove off, and I set about finding space for box after box of paintings, drawings, writings, tapes, slides—All of Pete Hampton’s work: everything from his early childhood drawings to his thousands of paintings, to his shows, to his last mad ravings was here.

Now it’s my job to sort it all out.

So, who was Peter Wade Hampton? What did he do?

The short answer is that Pete was a wildly eccentric, some would say ‘mad’ artist. I believe he was a genius. He was a painter of nature, and most of his work is of the Puente Hills in Whittier, and La Habra Heights, California. He created shows of his adventures in the hills to make people aware of their beauty so that the hills would be saved. His mission in life was to see the Whittier hills preserved from development. 

Pete and I go back to 1963. He was my oldest friend.  The blog title, “Lost Canyon Project” refers to Pete’s master work, his multi-media slide show, “The Lost Canyon Trip”. This blog will be a chronicle of my project- cataloguing, photographing Pete’s artwork, writings, and shows.

 Through Pete Hampton’s art you will get an intimate look at one of the untouched pastoral corners still remaining in mid-century Southern California, a world that is indeed lost. You’ll get a look into the strange world of this most eccentric genius, a world of breath taking beauty, and gut wrenching horror. 

So let us begin.

NEXT: Archive One, the unsorted paintings