I met a fox today, hiking home on the Ridge Trail. This is our first truly sunny day at the Djerassi Ranch, and I chose, perhaps unwisely, to pack a lunch and go exploring for natural pigments. On the way back, I was struggling with an incline, drenched with sweat, stopping for rest at every small pocket of shade along the path. I came over a small rise and there he was, three short paces away, frozen in the middle of the path. He seemed as surprised as I to share this moment in the woods.

While writing a novel at Djerassi, I've been drawn sideways to create a phootographic work capturing the creative fire and awe induced by this place.

You know you’re desperate when you start writing a screenplay. But that seemed the only option left to Frank Malina and Jack Parsons as they struggled to build their rockets in Pasadena in 1937. Malina, a Caltech aeronautics grad student, was just 25 years old. Parsons, a self-taught chemist, was only 23. They had been brought together two years before by their shared belief that rockets were the only technology that could transport mankind into outer space. In this belief, however, they were quite alone. No university, corporation, scientist, or politician in America thought there was any future in rockets. Most believed that travel off the planet was impossible. There was no money, no facilities, no textbooks to help them. But there was Hollywood.