Until I visited it on a hike through Griffith Park this April, I had no idea Dante’s View even existed.  And when I found out, I became quite partial to it.  After all, my real name is Dante–it was nice to have a view named after me.

But Dante’s View is no more.

Now, it’s early May.  We should be having nice spring weather.  But no.  I live in the Miracle Mile region of L.A. and it has been in the mid-90’s the past couple of days.

And we’re also treated to news like this:

Downtown Los Angeles is close to setting a record for lack of rainfall. County officials issued a report earlier this week that found the moisture level of hillside brush was 50% lower this May than a year earlier. The brush is expected to dry considerably more during the summer and early fall.

And this:

The fire was the park’s worst in at least three decades and was the latest of several to strike the Hollywood Hills in what has been the driest year on record.

I was going to take my mom to the poppy fields by Lancaster for Mother’s Day.  But–what do you know–there aren’t any.

It’s true that we had record rainfall in 2005–but that was an aberration.  We’ve been getting increasingly drier down here in Southern California.

Our climate is changing.  I don’t know why it’s so hard to convince people that we ought to do whatever we can to at least slow it down.

How much more beauty and life will we need to lose?