Lifestyle

On Highway 78, I watched the valleys awaken in vibrant blooms — a dramatic springtime show

Published

2 days ago

April 7, 2026

On Highway 78, I watched the valleys awaken in vibrant blooms — a dramatic springtime show

In early spring, the California mountain town of Julian sits suspended between seasons. At more than 4,000 feet, up in the Cuyamaca Mountains, it rests among coastal live oak woodlands and Coulter pine forests. Snow sometimes dusts the surrounding slopes, melting by afternoon into damp earth as manzanita and mountain lilac begin to flower. Along Main Street, the mingled scents of woodsmoke and apple pie drift from storefronts.

It is here that my journey along State Route 78 begins, following its long eastward descent from the mountain forest into the stark badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, then skirting the southern edge of the Salton Sea, crossing the Algodones Dunes and continuing toward the Colorado River — a 140-mile corridor spanning one of the most dramatic ecological transitions across public lands in the American Southwest.

This road trip continues a series exploring California’s overlooked scenic highways, inspired in part by artist Earl Thollander’s “Back Roads of California,” whose sketches and travel notes celebrated a slower way of seeing. After tracing Highway 127 along the edge of Death Valley, the journey now shifts south.

Julian Cafe and Bakery, the start of the trip off Route 78.

(Josh Jackson)

Within minutes of leaving town, the pavement twists downward through tight turns and steep grades as the mountain air begins to warm, the vegetation giving way to chaparral and scattered juniper, then to the stark silhouettes of ocotillo and Mojave yucca. By the time it reaches the Pacific Crest Trail crossing 12 miles east of Julian, travelers have already descended nearly 2,000 feet.

Here, the highway passes quietly into Anza-Borrego, homeland of the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla and Cupeño peoples. At nearly 650,000 acres — just smaller than Yosemite — the park unfolds as a vast mosaic of mountains, badlands and open desert valleys extending far beyond the reach of the pavement.

Bri Fordem, executive director of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, said the landscape reveals itself slowly to first-time visitors. “I think a lot of people drive right by it and go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a desert there,’” she said. “But when you stop and you go a little slower and take a closer look, a whole world opens up.”

That invitation begins at mile 18, where the Yaqui Pass Road turnoff leads northeast toward the desert basin and the gateway community of Borrego Springs. The 2.8-mile Borrego Palm Canyon Trail offers one of the park’s most accessible routes into the desert’s interior. Cholla gardens and brittlebush rise from pale alluvial slopes, and a seasonal stream leads to one of California’s few native fan palm oases.

In wet winters, the valleys beyond town awaken in color as sand verbena, desert sunflower, evening primrose and pincushion gather in brief, luminous blooms across the desert floor. The Anza-Borrego Foundation tracks these seasonal displays and offers guidance on how to witness them responsibly.

The short detour returns to Highway 78 along Borrego Springs Road, where the pavement drops abruptly through the Texas Dip near mile 27 — a stark, cinematic wash where scenes from the closing sequence of “One Battle After Another” were filmed. Wandering through the wash, the mind drifts not to the film but to the flash floods that move through this channel after heavy rains, sudden torrents cutting and reshaping the valley floor in a matter of hours.

Ocotillo plants rise up from the desert floor in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

The sun hangs in the middle of the sky as I drive toward one of the most rapidly changing shorelines in California. From almost any vantage point, the Salton Sea appears lifeless — a gray expanse rimmed with salt and windblown dust. But at its southern terminus, that impression begins to shift. The basin gathers into shallow wetlands where movement returns to the landscape.

Sixty miles from Julian, I turn onto Bannister Road and bump north along a gravel track for three miles into the basin, to a parking lot 164 feet below sea level. The lot sits within Unit 1 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. A short walk along an irrigation canal leads to a weathered observation deck rising two stories above a patchwork of saturated flats where saltgrass, iodine bush and cattail take root. Here, the Pacific Flyway compresses into a living mosaic of wings, water and soil. Each spring, hundreds of thousands of birds gather here to feed and rest before lifting north again, following migratory paths far older than the farms and highways that now define the valley.

The wetlands near the Salton Sea provide a vital habitat for fish and birds.

The place overwhelms the senses: a wash of emerald against open sky, thousands of snow geese honking in chorus, orange-crowned warblers and Abert’s towhees singing in the trees, and the persistent tang of salt in the air.

I meet three birders standing quietly on the platform, scanning the horizon through binoculars and recounting the 73 avian species they had tallied over the last two days — burrowing owls, American avocets, sandhill cranes and black-necked stilts among them. For 30 minutes we watch a northern harrier on the hunt, dive-bombing blue-winged and cinnamon teal, though he always comes up empty. Between scans of the horizon, we bond over “Listers,” the 2025 documentary that turns obsessive birdwatching into both comedy and a tale of devotion.

A burrowing owl stands in the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

Leaving the refuge, the vibrant color palette and moisture give way to muted browns and the returning austerity of desert air. By mile 97, the road rises to the Hugh T. Osborne Overlook, where the landscape shifts once again, opening into a vast ocean of sand.

The Algodones Dunes stretch toward the horizon in pale, wind-sculpted ridges, a narrow ribbon of shifting terrain running south into Mexico. The highway passes directly through their center.

From the overlook, the road reads as a line dividing two expressions of the same dune system. To the south lie the Bureau of Land Management’s Imperial Sand Dunes, where dune buggies and motorcycles trace arcs across bare slopes. North of the pavement, the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness holds a quieter terrain, where sunflower, ephedra and honey mesquite anchor the sand in subtle defiance of the wind.

A person walks along the Algodones Dunes.

Here the road becomes a boundary between different ways of moving through — and loving — the same landscape: speed and stillness, noise and silence, crowds and solitude.

By late afternoon, the final miles carry me east toward the Colorado River, where it meanders past willow and cottonwood. The light softened toward sunset, an evening echo of the same violet sky that hovered over Julian at the start of the day. After 140 miles, my road trip had come to an end. Yet as I pitched my tent that night, the motion of the landscapes lingered in mind.

The Colorado continued its long course south. Snow geese lifted north from refuge marshes. Wind reshaped the dunes, erasing the day’s tracks. Wildflowers that had briefly lit the desert floor would soon fade as heat gathered strength. The road ended, but the living systems it crossed moved steadily onward, already turning toward the next season.

Road trip planner: State Route 78

The route: Julian to Palo Verde.

Distance: 140 miles (one way).

Drive time: 3 hours straight through; allow a full day for stops.

Best time to go: October through April. Summer temperatures frequently exceed 110 degrees.

Fuel and essentials:

Julian (Mile 0): Gas station, Julian Market and Deli, lots of restaurants.
Borrego Springs (Mile 18): Gas station, groceries, cafes.
Brawley (Mile 74): Gas station, restaurants.

Eat and drink:

Camping:

Lodging:

Hike and explore:

Safety notes:

Water: Carry at least 1 gallon per person per day.
Connectivity: Cell service is dependable along the route.
Wildlife: Watch for bighorn sheep and coyotes on the road, especially at dawn and dusk.

Wildflowers along Highway 78.
(Josh Jackson)
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Lifestyle

What draws people into cults? A new book tracks the journeys of two followers

Published

3 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

What draws people into cults? A new book tracks the journeys of two followers

In 2017, a gaunt, bespectacled, 71-year-old woman wearing a crisp white uniform with two stars on the shoulder was arrested in New Mexico. This was Deborah Green, nee Lila Carter, the leader and self-described general of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC) – a cult that had been operating with impunity for three decades, despite various attempts by former members to get law enforcement to shut it down.

“But Deborah looked so small, so frail – so old” when she was arrested, writes Harrison Hill in his new book, The Oracle’s Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult. And yet this was the woman who with her rantings and ravings about God and hell had struck fear into the hearts of her followers.

Hill’s book closely follows two characters – Maura Aluzas and Sarah Green – and their journeys into and out of ACMTC. It also explores the broader landscape of cults in the U.S. and how their logic and approach to religion have become less and less fringe over the years, to the point where ACMTC’s messy doctrine seems, in a twisted way, to have been ahead of its time.

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Maura Aluzas met Lila in the late 1960s, when Maura worked at a hospital and helped care for Lila’s dying brother. The young women became close friends for a time; both women were seekers, each wishing to lead a meaningful, intentional life. During the near-decade they were out of touch, both embraced Christianity, and they certainly weren’t alone in their newfound fervor when, in 1980, Lila Carter – now married to Jim Green – reached out to Maura to share that she and her husband had found God; the 1970s had seen a resurgence of religious zeal. When the Greens returned to California, the families spent time together and Maura’s husband, Steve, was impressed with the Greens’ vision of a spiritual army that would “take up arms against the forces of secularism and mainstream Christianity.” Maura wasn’t entirely convinced, but she loved her husband and still held an old loyalty to the Lila she’d once known, even if this new, born-again version was harsher and stranger. And, so, when Steve wanted to move closer to Lila and Jim Green, Maura Aluzas agreed.

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This began a series of incremental choices that wouldn’t, at the time, have felt as extreme as they seem in hindsight. Maura and Steve became the first members of the Greens’ church. They raised children in the harsh environment that Lila – who’d renamed herself Deborah – cultivated. And because of her lingering doubts, or simply because she refused to beat her children as firmly as Deborah thought she should, Maura was punished. She was first ostracized then exiled. Although being banished was painful, for Maura, it eventually became a relief, a way to escape.

The twists and turns Hill follows throughout this true story are extraordinary, and the author does a wonderful job of contextualizing the painful, sometimes horrifying choices his subjects made – especially those involving women leaving their children, which, as he points out, would be perceived very differently if these women had been men.

How and why do people end up in cults? Why did Maura Aluzas join ACMTC if she was never fully on board? Well, Hill reminds readers, no one really “joins” a cult. “They join what they believe to be an alternative community, or an especially devoted religious group.” Gradually, things change, but by then, the group has become a home, a kind of family.

Those born into or raised in a cult, of course, have no choice in the matter of joining. Sarah Green, Deborah and Jim’s first child, grew up in ACMTC, moving with her parents and their followers as they sought to avoid legal consequences for their various actions. When she escaped in adulthood, she left behind three young children of her own – practically speaking, she couldn’t run away with them. She tried to go back to get them, but her mother allowed her to see them only briefly before effectively hiding them away. Part of Sarah still believed that she was very literally going to hell for leaving ACMTC; she rationalized that her children, at least, could still be granted entry to heaven.

Our culture is fascinated by cults, and there’s an element of self-soothing to be found in consuming media about them. We would never join a cult, we tell ourselves. But it’s generally believed now that what makes a person vulnerable to a cult isn’t anything innate about them but rather a confluence of factors relating to their circumstances, their support networks, and the options open to them. I was often reminded, while reading this book, of a now-iconic scene in the second season of Fleabag, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character, who is grieving the death of her friend – which she believes to have been her fault – confesses to the priest she’s in love with that she wants someone to tell her what to do. She wants to be told “what to like, what to hate, what to rage about.” Most of all, she wants someone to tell her what to believe in and how to live her life.

It’s a relatable impulse, even for those who consider themselves fiercely independent. As Hill points out, the Greens were hippies, enthusiastic members of the counterculture before they became Christian extremists. “Hippies placed a premium on freedom,” he writes, “on the right to improvise their lives as they saw fit. And yet the 1960s and seventies also revealed the limits of freedom – how an endless array of options could be confusing, overwhelming, even debilitating. Sometimes it simply feels better being told what to do.”

Indeed – and it is precisely when we’re most confused and overwhelmed that we are most susceptible to losing sight of what we actually believe in and how we actually want to live. The Oracle’s Daughter is a story about the terror of losing the self but it’s also, gratifyingly, a story about finding the way back to it.

Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, critic, and founder/host of the podcast The Other Stories. Her latest novel is Beings.

Lifestyle

From Fergie to Michèle Lamy, here’s how guests showed up for the Fashion Trust U.S. Awards

Published

4 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

From Fergie to Michèle Lamy, here’s how guests showed up for the Fashion Trust U.S. Awards

Julia Fox, Michèle Lamy and Erykah Badu.

Awards season isn’t over yet.

On Tuesday evening, the Fashion Trust U.S. hosted its fourth annual awards ceremony celebrating emerging designers. The dress code, elusively: “Fashion.”

In West Hollywood, a mix of faces — actors, musicians, influencers and athletes, both seasoned and young — lined the red carpet (that was actually pink) in their own interpretations of the theme. In L.A., style is unique because it is miscellaneous. There is no better city to embody a dynamic prompt like “fashion.”

The carpet saw big names like Kali Uchis in Vlora Mustafa, Lake Bell in Rick Owens, Chrissy Teigen in Balenciaga, Bethenny Frankel in Valentino and Emma Chamberlain in Mugler, alongside fresh designs by the nights’ 16 finalists.

Kelechukwu Mpamaugo, a finalist in the graduate category, wore her high school prom dress. “It’s the first design I ever made, before I even went into fashion,” she said. “I’ve only worn it once, so why not?”

The fishtail halter dress, made from an African wax Akara fabric picked out by Mpamaugo’s mother, was a medley of shapes, patterns and colors. “It’s giving Afro-futurism,” she said.

Some of the Fashion Trust U.S. Awards finalists on the pink carpet.

Keith Herron, a finalist in the ready-to-wear category, was head-to-toe in Advisry, his own brand. Fashion, to him, is simply waking up and getting dressed. “Hopefully I’m on theme,” he says, “I wore clothes today.”

Josefina Baillères, a finalist in the jewelry category who took home the award later that night, wore a simple mesh tunic. On her neck sat a hand-carved quartz crystal in the shape of the Virgin Mary. Encased in blue chalcedony, set with diamonds and hung from a black silk ribbon, the piece is a contemporary interpretation of Baillères’ Mexican heritage. To her, jewelry completes any look as “the cherry on top.”

The ceremony honored achievements in fashion across several categories including ready-to-wear, jewelry, accessories, graduate design and sustainability. Winners took home a shared grant of $600,000 and will receive ongoing mentorship from Fashion Trust U.S. and Google.

Tory Burch won designer of the year, presented by her longtime friend Pamela Anderson. While Michèle Lamy, who was FaceTiming husband Rick Owens during the ceremony, was recognized for lifetime achievement in design and culture, and accompanied on stage by Travis Scott and Erykah Badu, who called her “the poster child for avant-garde, for exceptional freedom.”

Tory Burch accepts her award for designer of the year.

Arthur Jafa, left, and Michèle Lamy FaceTiming with husband Rick Owens.

Michèle Lamy accompanied on stage by Travis Scott and Erykah Badu.

Hosted by comedian and actor Ego Nwodim, the emerald-walled ballroom saw Lykke Li perform beloved classics, including “Little Bit” and “I Follow Rivers,” while guests, in true L.A. fashion, dined on pasta and meatballs from Jon and Vinny’s.

Bobby Kim, recently named global creative director of Disney and a judge on the Fashion Trust U.S. 2026 advisory board, was excited to see the work of emerging designers. “I’m here to listen to their stories,” he said. “And get some direction on where the future of fashion is headed.” He wore KidSuper, who he called the epitome of art. “Fashion is art, anyways,” he added.

Rei Ami embodied “divine feminine” in a look by Joseph Altuzarra featuring an abstract imprint of the female form. Her stylist, Ayumi Perry, said fashion is “free.” “You can truly play and explore your personality through clothing,” she said. “I have no limitations when it comes to that.”

Stylist Bea Åkerlund dressed herself and her “bestie” Fergie. “I don’t go by fashion,” Åkerlund said. “I go by feeling.”

Emma Chamberlain in Mugler and Bobby Kim, right, in Kid Super.

Jodie Turner-Smith, center left, and Tory Burch, center right

Yara Shahidi in Mugler and Miguel Castro Freitas.

Evis Xheneti and jewelry designer Loree Rodkin.

Stylist Ron Jeffries, left, and Vic Mensa.

Francisco Escobar, center, Ruska Bergman, right.

Lifestyle

Hilariously caustic ‘Big Mistakes’ drags Dan Levy into organized crime

Published

15 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

Hilariously caustic ‘Big Mistakes’ drags Dan Levy into organized crime

Dan Levy as Nicky in Big Mistakes.

Spencer Pazer/Netflix

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Spencer Pazer/Netflix

Big Mistakes, the new Netflix comedy co-created by Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) and Rachel Sennott (I Love LA), opens with Laurie Metcalf yelling at a dying old lady. Episode one, scene one. It’s the proverbial jump, and Laurie Metcalf is already screaming her fool head off.

“Welp,” this critic wrote in his notebook, “I’m in.”

It may help to know that the tank in which I have long found myself, when it comes to the great Laurie Metcalf portraying a woman feeling her feelings, is miles wide and fathoms deep.

When we meet her, Metcalf’s character Linda is tending to her dying mother, whom she’s convinced is hard of hearing, despite the poor woman’s repeated insistence that she’s not. Linda is in take-charge mode, lovingly(?) hectoring two of her offspring, Nicky (Levy) and Morgan (Taylor Ortega) while heaping praise on her perfect golden child daughter Natalie (Abby Quinn).

In the handful of seconds it takes for this scene to unspool, years of family history reveal themselves in murmured asides and silent glares and frustrated grunts. We quickly learn that Linda is running for mayor of her tiny New Jersey town, and she’s worried about her chances. We learn that she’s disappointed in both Nicky and Morgan, albeit for very different reasons, and that she’s the kind of woman who manages to convince herself that her family is happy and perfect, despite decades of evidence to the contrary.

Nicky, for example, is an uptight pastor who feels compelled to hide his boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez) from his congregation. Morgan tried to make a go of it as an actor in New York before fizzling out and retreating to her hometown, where she joylessly toils as an elementary school teacher while getting lovebombed by her pathetic lovesick puppy of a high school boyfriend (Jack Innanen).

Taylor Ortega as Morgan and Dan Levy as Nicky.

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Nicky and Morgan are wildly unhappy, so when an improbable set of circumstances drags them into the world of organized crime, you’ll be forgiven for wondering if they’re not better off. That’s the sandbox that Big Mistakes sets out to play in, and it works, mostly.

Co-creators Levy and Sennott have made a risky calculation, however. They’re betting that viewers will find the characters of Nicky and Morgan, who bicker ceaselessly throughout the season, caustically funny and recognizably fallible.

And there’s certainly precedent — Levy’s previous extended tenure as creator/star was on Schitt’s Creek, where he also played the uptight queer brother to an irresponsible party-girl sister with whom he frequently clashed. But between Schitt’s Creek‘s first and second seasons, the writers strove to sand down its characters’ edges. From then on, David and Alexis Rose might argue, but they always had each other’s backs. It became a TV relationship that you knew could only ever end in a hug.

'Schitt's Creek' Won Our Listener Poll, Because Our Listeners Are Wise

Moira Rose (Catherine O'Hara) appears in a commercial for Herb Ertlinger's fruit wine in an episode of Schitt's Creek.

Not so Nicky and Morgan. Big Mistakes establishes that there is real gulf stretching between the two characters, one filled with resentment and long-nurtured grudges. I was grateful for that, because it meant that the show was forced to honor it and repeatedly account for it — decades of bitterness couldn’t get waved away by a single act of kindness here or a thoughtful word there, a la Schitt’s Creek, because that’s not how families work. (Later in the season, that yawning gulf does get bridged, but it does so only with the aid of illicit substances, in a hilariously artificial and fleeting way.)

As a result, whenever Nicky and Morgan find themselves in extreme circumstances — which, given the show’s crime-centered narrative, is relatively often — their bickering grows venal, spiteful, petty and mean. Me, I find that funny. But I suspect fans looking to this show for some echoes of Schitt’s Creek‘s doggedly determined warmth and cuddlesomeness will be left cold, possibly even angry.

(The black-hearted villains among you might wonder if, perhaps, Levy witnessed the fandom that metastasized around Schitt’s Creek, which became so much larger than the show he made — remember all that squeeing over Patrick and David? — and thought to himself: Yeah, not that. Let’s make sure not to do that again.) (No? Just me?)

While we’re busting out perfectly unfair comparisons to Schitt’s Creek, let’s close with a biggie. The Laurie Metcalf aspect.

There is a tendency, if you’ve been watching her for decades, to see that Laurie Metcalf’s in a given project and think to yourself, “Well, I mean, it’s Laurie Metcalf. Just wind her up and let her go, and whatever happens will be fun to watch.”

And while that’s true to a certain extent, Metcalf is an actor like any other. She needs to be written for.

Laurie Metcalf as Linda.

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I’d argue that what Levy, Sennott and their team of writers are doing for Metcalf on this show is akin to what Levy and co. did for Catherine O’Hara on Schitt’s Creek: They know the actor, they know what she’s capable of delivering, and they’re writing to that capability by giving her the room she needs to absolutely kill it.

In the case of Linda, they give her an outer hardness to play, which is very funny. But they also outfit her with something she desperately wants — to become the mayor — and throw countless circumstances at her to frustrate that want. And while that’s all played for laughs, they also take pains to ground it with a brief, late-season monologue about why she’s seeking an elected office, which only makes it resonate even more.

Metcalf’s already earned four golden Emmy statuettes; she doesn’t need yet another. But that doesn’t change the fact that the work she’s putting in on every episode of Big Mistakes is pure comedy gold.