Scenery

"Most of what follows is true. " That's the opening of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," the 1969 movie about two bandits born as the sun was setting over the mesas and buttes of the old Wild West. Morally ambiguous, the movie struck a chord with Vietnam War-era audiences who stood and cheered when Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance met a hail of bullets in a dusty Bolivian town, etching the final freeze frame onto my 15-year-old heart. I didn't know it then, but the movie wrote something else there: a love of the sumptuous Western scenery, which I rediscovered on a trip last month to southern Utah.

Call it the Big Swerve: That point in one's adult life where decisions about the future - marriage, career, kids, mortgage payments - have to be reckoned with. It creeps up on us with little warning. Tramping our merry way through the marigolds of our youth, we suddenly encounter a crossroads. Priorities have to be straightened out, in a hurry. We all seem to be intent on not swerving in the wrong direction; one false move might send us down a rabbit hole of disappointment and regret that we will have great difficulty crawling out of. Michelle Huneven, a longtime L.A.-based writer whose prior novels limn the jagged paths of troubled misfits and outsiders, has created a protagonist in her fourth novel, "Off Course," who seems to be stuck in neutral or else unwilling to tread the path so neatly laid out before her. Unwilling, in other words, to swerve in any functional direction.

"Beauty and the Beast" is considered by many to be a wonderful show. I would like it captioned for the hearing-impaired. I think the scenery is wonderful, but I wish I could know what is being said. Mrs. Dorothy E. Bates, Thousand Oaks

A young sea eagle stole a wildlife camera in Western Australia seven months ago and flew it nearly 70 miles away, where rangers recently found the purloined video recorder with snippets of outback scenery and a "selfie" of the feathered delinquent. The motion-sensor camera had been set up on the banks of the Margaret River in the Kimberley area in May, intended to record freshwater crocodiles lured to the lens by food left in the vicinity, the Australian Broadcasting Co. reported Monday.

American Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker" ballet has arrived at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, filling the Segerstrom Hall stage with a 30-foot-tall Christmas tree, a chandeliered ballroom, a swirling sled and even a snow flurry or two. To create ABT's elaborate winter setting, at 3 a.m. on Monday, nearly 60 workers started unloading the dance troupe's five, five-ton trucks at the Center, installing a portable dance floor and almost 20 separate pieces of scenery.

The Perfect Sonya by Beverly Lowry (Viking: $16.95; 241 pages) In a conversation, the normal answer to "Tell me about yourself" is to talk about an occupation, or a childhood, or a marriage, or a packet of problems. For a novelist, the job is different. Fictional characters, unlike people, do not exist until written about. They won't come alive simply by assigning them problems or childhoods or dreams or occupations.

It's a warm, clear weekday morning, a perfect day to play hooky from work and meet the people of the city's most splendid street of visual pleasures. Not quite the time, perhaps, to catch the notorious people of Mulholland Drive--the hot-rod racers, the moonlight lovers and the urban elves who come inexplicably at night to deposit their trash. But, at any time, the 55-mile drive from the Hollywood Freeway to the Pacific Ocean can be counted on to yield a traveler's tale or two.

What is so important about Mars that we must spend hundreds of millions of dollars to study it? There are plenty of rocks and Martian scenery in the Mojave Desert just a few hours outside L.A. Empire-building is just that, even in the hallowed name of "science." JOHN JAEGER Irvine

The names of a number of followers of right-wing troublemaker Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. will appear on Orange County's primary ballot Tuesday. All are running as Democrats, and one, Art Hoffmann in the 40th Congressional District, could become the Democratic Party's candidate in the general election unless Bruce W. Sumner, the county's Democratic Party chairman, gets enough write-in votes to put a genuine Democrat into the November election.

I got on the water at Irvine Lake last week just before the storm hit. The west shore was lined with fishermen, the air was full of birds. An osprey swooped down on the rippling surface and flew off into the gloomy sky clutching a silvery trout, with other ospreys in frenzied pursuit. It was indeed prime time for a little fishing, for man and bird of prey, as activity within the waterways always seems to perk up in the hours leading to a storm.

The inflatable puppy in a hot dog bun was designed to turn heads and stop traffic. And no doubt it would on so many other corners, in so many cities other than this one. Even at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, it was a bit odd to see a bunned, 10-foot-long dog lying on its side, with big black eyes and a belly striped with ketchup and mustard. But was it any odder, really, than to walk through a web of Spider-Men - one rail-thin, one chubby, one wearing a bulging fanny pack?

MAMMOTH LAKES - On the banks of a jutting little river, I'm trying to think like a trout thinks: Did I pay the mortgage on time? When do the Kings play next? Whatever happened to that sassy Helen Hunt? No, wait, those are my thoughts. Then, WHAM, something takes the lure and I'm officially a fly fisherman. Constantly looking for an activity where my deficiencies aren't quite so apparent, something outdoors where I don't have to run a lot, or strip down to my skivvies, or maintain eye contact for more than a moment, I am drawn now to fly fishing, not so much a sport as a Christopher Guest movie.

The forward did not have to ring twice. In this case, Dwight King only had to knock once. Last week King was able to break the news to Manchester Monarchs teammate Jordan Nolan that they were both being called up from the minors by the Kings with a quick knock on his door. "He said to wake up, pack up. We're leaving in an hour," Nolan said in El Segundo on Tuesday after the Kings' practice. Said King: "He'll get to remember that forever. His first call-up, I was the guy to tell him. It's a good story.

With mild temperatures, calm water and minimal fog, this can be a good time of year to visit the Central Coast , and there's no better place to see it than on the water in a kayak. For those prepping for a "big year" of bird-watching, this section of coast, with its diversity of waterfowl and shorebirds, is possibly the finest in California . If you've kayaked only on lakes and prefer water on the tamer side, Morro Bay is the place to paddle. Open-ocean kayaking is a whole different ballgame, and launching from just any beach shouldn't be attempted by novices (as we learned on a recent trip; more on that in a bit)

If you want to travel to the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, you will need two days, minimum, travel time on several planes and thousands of dollars. Or you can come to El Paso. Since 1917, structures on the campus of the former Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy have been built in the unique style of Bhutan's majestic dzongs, fortresses constructed with sloping 8-foot-thick walls and red-colored roofs. The school, now known as the University of Texas at El Paso, or UTEP, has grown to 77 buildings, all constructed or retrofitted around the theme.

I am standing atop Clay Head, a 70-foot-high bluff, looking over miles and miles of open ocean on a clear summer morning. It is an ideal way to greet a day that will include hiking, biking, birding, skimming stones and eating my weight in fried clams. And I have to smile. Back home in St. Louis, my wife, Nancy, and I had told a friend that we were heading for three days on this glorious island. Blank stare. "Block Island. Where is that?" Exactly. And fine with me if Block keeps a low pro. For all its craggy grandeur, Block Island has never been etched into the nation's consciousness quite like its big sisters Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts.

Travelers leaving this beach resort pass under a sign on U.S. 50 that reads "Sacramento CA 3,073." Some drivers never have noticed. Others think it's a joke. The reality is that Ocean City is the end of the road for Highway 50, as it's affectionately known by those who study it, those who seriously travel it and those who just plain love it. At the other end, or exactly 3,038 miles later, according to the Federal Highway Administration (hey, signs can be wrong), is Sacramento.

Our first brush with the killing grounds of youth was the cap pistol. It made a noise and a satisfactory amount of smoke. But there was no such thing as a hit or a miss, and an adversary didn't have to fall down unless he felt like it. That kept it nicely obvious that it was make-believe. Water pistols were higher technology, and you could actually hit a target if it wasn't moving too fast. But those, too, were harmless enough, except for the occasional friend who was allergic to water.

I am sitting on the balcony of the Grand Hotel Timeo eating almond-flavored granita (a kind of Italian sherbet) for breakfast and thinking about Lady Chatterley. More accurately, I am thinking about the real-life inspiration for Lady Chatterley — an upper-class Englishwoman who had come to Taormina and carried on a steamy (think R-rated behavior in an olive grove) affair with a Sicilian farmer. Part of the reason I am thinking about this uninhibited British woman is that D.H. Lawrence wrote part of his frequently banned novel while staying at this very hotel.

On a towering cliff overlooking the sun-sparkled shores of Carlsbad, Calif., Dawn Santos watched a squadron of pelicans fly past the campsite where she and her family were staying for four days of campfires, bike rides and splashing in the surf. "It's gorgeous," the Rancho Cucamonga mother of three marveled as the afternoon sky turned bright pink. Here at South Carlsbad State Beach in San Diego County, the Santos family took a break from work and school by renting a 26-foot trailer to enjoy one of California's most valuable economic assets — its outdoor riches.