Temescal Canyon - Secret Escape From the Smog and Tumult

We often travel to the greater Los Angeles area and have been doing so over many years, whether it be for business, to see relatives, for some family event, or on rare occasion just for pleasure. Back in the day it was to try to score some agent for the movie writing mom or to score some fancy record deal for the family band. Since we moved north from Santa Monica in 1973, we've taken the yearly or semi-yearly pilgrimage down to "smell-A" to enjoy the nostalgia, share holidays, choke on the smog, buy cheap records, stroll the beaches, hit up the entertainment biz, visit the cousins, and either laugh or get annoyed at the family shenanigans. As the years speed by and I find myself in the midst of middle age, the occasions are growing more solemn--the grandparents' funerals, my uncle-in-law's burial in the Hollywood Hills. The drive down is long, and it can feel like a lifetime spent in my vehicle, especially since just making a left turn on a major street can be a major project, let alone trying to get from point A to point-I've-never-been, and choosing the most efficient and bearable route offered by the bickering of disagreeing human maps.

There's been one consistent figure from the time it all started--the nature-loving, mountain-climbing, hiking uncle--who pulls us away from the tumult and the smog, the neurotic scenes, the noise, and the headaches to get a breath of green-tree fresh air and stretch out those overly stiff muscles. His favorite best-kept secret is Temescal Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. Park in a nice residential neighborhood off Sunset Blvd. in Pacific Palisades, and ten minutes later, you're on a sweat-inducing, heavy-breathing workout up the steep trail that climbs the canyon, on a hot southern California day.

The west side of the loop keeps us in the shade of the trees and through the nice arboretum of introduced succulent plants and flowering shrubbery that unbeknown to park officials and the visiting public, my uncle planted along the trail over the past 30 years. He also plants rocks along the trail that traveled with him from places as far away as Israel, just to confuse geologists of the future. At the top of this loop is the nice wooden bridge and the Temescal Creek waterfall--which sometimes has water, depending on the time of the year and how much of a drought there is. This trail is often well populated with young college-age athletic or nature types, or pretty young women who get an earful from Uncle Herb's overly sociable Iranian friend, Little Joe.

The west side of the loop is a bit more steep, and also more exposed to the sun. The reward after a solid, steady stride of huffing-and-puffing is to take a short break at what my uncle calls "Spielberg's Point", where we take on the lovely view of the Palisades housing tract that contains the big blue sprawl of Steven Spielberg's home next to a number of other ridiculously large mansions, and then beyond that, the green canyons and glittering sun off the Pacific Ocean. Once, I had the energy and time to keep going up the Temescal Ridge trail beyond Skull Rock, and up the trail-turned-dirt road that climbs higher and higher into Topanga State Park. Here is where I'd more likely meet up with a bobcat than the hippy record executive living down in the canyon below (that's another story), and I don't recall getting much relief from the sun. But more often than not, after only a brief half mile up and back down, there's just too much else to do in the hustle and bustle of the traffic and tumult to continue up that path, so I always save it for the next time. Now as long as the bobcats don't die off from the mange caused by rodent-controlling anticoagulants, I may still run into one during one of my pilgrimages up the great Temescal Canyon/Ridge trails.