This is a thirty second time exposure from the top of Mission Peak. It is looking down the slopes of Mission Peak across Fremont and the San Francisco Bay straight at Palo Alto and Mountain View. You can see the same clouds in an earlier exposure from the same series, focused to the south on San Jose.
If Silicon Valley is the beast, then this is an image of the belly of the beast. (Mission Peak has also been described as a beast, meaning that it is a tough hike.)
I’m ambivalent about Silicon Valley. On the one hand, I have to admire the gusto and inventivity that has sprung from the Silicon Valleys of the world. On the other hand I’ve spent a bit too much of my life working on pointless projects with bloated code and following irrational change control procedures.
You also have to admit there is something ugly about a culture that turns ranch land to a car culture wasteland of high-tech industrial parks and McMansions.
But I rant. I rave! The beast is indeed ugly, but it has beauty too. There’s beauty in the belly of the beast. And that’s what this photo means to me.
Related stories: Improv on Mission Peak; Above the Urban Sprawl; Mount Tamalpais from Mission Peak; Do You Know the Way?.