Valentine Memories in Palos Verdes By Photographer, Author & Contributor Don Hurzeler
Growing up in Palos Verdes, oh so long ago, my memories of Valentine’s Day were pretty simple. If you brought a Valentine card for that special person in class, you had to bring a card for everyone. No problem…30 cheap cards and one good one..and that good one I presented, along with a peacock feather, to whomever I thought I was in love with at the moment.
The school room was always decorated with red hearts on a string. At noon, there was a short Valentine’s Day dance in the Auditorium. Life was good.
I still celebrate Valentine’s Day, together with my wife of 55 year, Linda. Actually, we celebrate it everyday…by doing our best to capture RED images from all over the world.
This lava heart I shot at about 5am in the morning out on a very hot lava field. When I saw the hand (look above the heart for the thumb) and heart, I pushed my face down into a crevice to get just the right shot. Good composition and bad idea. That crevice was hot as heck and it burned all the hair off of my face.
I took this northern cardinal photo last week in my garden. I’ve been known to feed them peanuts from time to time. They pay me back by pretending to be excited to see me.
Linda found some February red, also in our garden. This is a red torch ginger with a gold dust day gecko exploring the flower.
Our Hawaiian skies (we now live in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii) get some amazing red colors about a half hour before sunrise. This particular morning featured a comet moving up from the horizon as the earth rotated.
A night sky we do not want to see too often…the volcanic glow from a new eruption on Mauna Loa. Three big earthquakes woke us up at about midnight and this was the color of the sky near our house. We live on the side of an active volcano (the Hualalai Volcano) and my very first thought was that I should have bought that lava insurance. Thankfully, it was about 35 miles away, erupting massively from the summit of Mauna Loa.
On the day I took this photo, I had taken one of my oldest friends from PV out on a boat to the lava flow as it hit the water. John Schmitt and his wife, Evelyn. were keen to see the lava. Be careful what you ask for…there was an explosion and a lava bomb the size of a baseball landed in the water about two feet from their seat in the boat. They remind me of that day from time to time. I had assured them it was perfectly safe.
We find red all over the world…with the Tanzania sunrises being some of the best.
We have plenty of peacocks here…this is not one of them. This is an indigenous bird called an I’iwi. Pretty in red.
This Valentine’s Day may well feature an eruption for us. We have had seven episodic eruptions in the last month. This one sent lava up to about 330 feet on the right and 250 on the left. Quite the sight.
This photo was taken by our gallery partner, CJ Kale. I hired CJ to take Linda and I out to where the lava was flowing over a 65 foot cliff directly into the sea. It was our first day of retirement…first full day living in Hawaii…and we wanted some excitement. It was beyond exciting, it was terrifying…beautiful and life changing. That was 16 years ago and we are still exploring the world with CJ…and we are partners with him in our Lava Light Gallery in Waikoloa, Hawaii. He may get a Valentine from us this year…we love the guy.
I get to visit my old home town of Palos Verdes on a regular basis. Our daughter and her family live in Rancho Palos Verdes, safe from the devasting slide. In June, her son, Nathan, graduates from Palos Verdes High School…60 years to the day from when I graduated from PVHS. We will be there.
Happy Valentine’s Day. PV will always be one of the loves of my life.
Don and Linda are “lucky to live Hawaii” for the past fourteen year and claims to have never experienced an unhappy day on the island.
However, he does admit that he thinks of PV often…as it stands today and as it was. And what he misses most from those early days on the hill are growing up with a great set of friends and neighbors and the unimaginable freedom enjoyed in those days. He claims that he was raised like a free range chicken, able to hitch hike to get around town, to go out in surf that would scare any parent and to carry around a bow and arrow or small caliber gun to protect himself from rattle snakes when he hiked the canyons…not as a highly trained, accredited, licensed gun owner…but as a 12 year old kid whose dad treated guns like tools…there for protection and to be treated with respect and care.
And the best part of his freedom, no cell phones. Don was basically on his own and no one could track him or reach him until he decided to come home. Don always knew when dinner was served and he made sure to sneak in the door a few minutes prior. And, get this, dinner always included beer for Don…from about age 9 on. Or a milkshake made using 31 Flavors Baskin and Robbins ice cream from the Hollywood Rivera store mixed with crème de menthe. His dad felt the alcohol would whet Don’s appetite and help him grow from the skinny kid he was in those days. That did not work, but it did make him (temporarily) unafraid of orcas.
You can catch up with Don Hurzeler on Facebook. He is also on Instagram @donhurzeler. His book writing website is donhurzeler.com and his photography website is lavalightgalleries.com.
For a kid who grew up on the mean streets of Palos Verdes Estates, parented in a way that would land everyone in jail today, but supported, coached and loved…Don came out alright. A PV boy who fully understands how lucky he was that his parents built their dream home on a hill with a million lights sparkling below…or a fog bank a thousand feet thick.