I didn't want to die wearing cargo shorts. There was ridge after ridge, sharp rocky outcroppings that jutted above the disorienting trails which stretched miles beneath canopies of dry brush forest. I had no cell phone. Nudity from modernity, in the name of spiritual clarity without technology. It was my decision. I go hiking a lot without my cell phone. So what did I have? A rapidly diminishing twelve-oz bottle of Vons generic-brand water, cargo shorts with blue Dodgers t-shirt hanging out from the waistband like a tail, sweaty torso (especially my back, caked in a very discernible layer), a stupid wide-brimmed safari hat I bought as a joke in the clubhouse on the golf course years ago impulsively worn on my head, and then my damn five-toed frog shoes, holes in their bottoms and my feet getting bruised by the uncertain terrain with each step and it kept getting worse.
There were many steps.
Not initially, initially it was my hike as usual with a twist up to Danielson Monument. This guy, this Danielson (a Junior it said on the memorial plaque) he donated all this wilderness and he had a commemorative monument framing the nature, a monument that spoke of peace, love, Christianity, and it had a hunting Rifle adorning the left vertical pillar, a Rifle, cowboy spurs, roses, everything to portray a man of the West and it was all painted white and it was a remembrance. And I tried to pray or meditate. Standing there, it felt like I should try to do something observant, standing there, thinking of peace and love and light for all the people in and out of my life. And that was a good ten seconds before I wandered away. Three miles, according to the signs, into this monument and I still had an abundance of energy and the Pt. Mugu State park encompasses over 70 miles of preserved nature. Like a challenge, omen, mind-blowing recognition, ten minutes before arriving at the monument, two tall distant peaks hovered somewhere far above me like Cathedral ceilings. I figured that up there, perhaps they wouldn't be too unreasonable from a path that could lead down to the ocean on the other side. I had often dreamt of reaching the Pacific Ocean from this Hidden Valley side of the trail and I figured above and beyond them was the way to the shore, figured, though I'd never cared to look up the correct route.
The difference between a thirst for adventure and an act of self-idiocy, lives only in the fashioning of the results.
I turned from the monument, a chimney remained intact, alone under sycamore trees. To its left was a not so obvious trailhead. I followed it curiously at first, baby steps turning to determined ones uphill and uphill and soon my stride became something like obsession and I kept pushing and pushing and thinking I'd arrive at the roof of this mountainside to asses my array of options. But the trail kept going. Fragmenting soil would rise up overhead on both sides leaving a flood chute for phantom rains to sparsely arrive and create a river. But it was dry as a ghost. Then the brush grew over me, a tunnel, nothing to do but keep going through a tunnel. There is always light at the end of a tunnel, supposedly. Then more brush, altered in its shape, this brush but taller than me. Newbury Park and Hidden Valley was getting smaller through peeks between this dense brush. Yes, I could have turned back. One hundred more paces and I'd turn back. I kept saying that to myself but then would lose interest around the count of thirty or forty. The numbers were useless but I kept telling myself that I'd turn back and I'd mean it, but then the compulsion, curiosity, and indestructible belief in my physical ability, pushed and pushed and pushed me upward and upward up into the unrecognizable.
There is a lot going on in my life.
Everything was foreign, in myself and the terrain. Here in ancient native soil. It was foreign, planetary even, but I didn't think about it being planetary at the time. But yes, planetary. My breathing had changed, as did the altitude on this planet. It was no Kilimanjaro at only 2500 feet above sea level. And I never fancied myself Sir Edmund Hillary, just a hiker. Furthermore, I was not venturing into virgin territory anyway, there Was a trail (albeit a vanishing, dead-ending, straight through sharp vegetation at times trail), footprints, coyote shit, unnervingly fresh. And there were no people. Not for miles. I was the most isolated man in the greater Los Angeles area.
You couldn't have found me if you wanted to, if I wanted to, and that was the danger and probably the purpose.
Somewhere along the way I figured I'd just keep going to the ocean. That I'd find Sandstone Peak and everything would be familiar. My ex-girlfriend and I had spent two New Years Eves watching the sunset from Sandstone Peak together, huddled beneath loud hiking groups. We drank wine from the bottle and ate cheese from Trader Joes. Years ago, but I knew it well enough. I'd get there, admire my tenacity and then I'd take those trails down to the parking lot and I'd borrow a cell phone and call Trav and we'd write off my eccentricity in our mumbled fragmented conversations through Decker Canyon or something. Only, I couldn't find Sandstone Peak to save my life. The tallest point in the Santa Monica Mountains was nowhere to be found. In fact, there was no guarantee I was anywhere near it. I thought I was, but apparently I wasn't. I've checked the maps online since yesterday and still have no idea its relation. But I kept going. The terrain angles down and then back up, bare earth, one particular lonely stretch feeling especially like a good place for a predator to sabotage its lonely prey. With sparse enough bush for the predator to hide but also enough free space to maintain its stalking pace. Was I being stalked by a predator?
There is a lot going on in my life.
I put my water bottle in my pocket (almost empty) and grabbed two sharp rocks, gripped them in both hands, and dropped them when I had to climb anything steep, then picked up new ones. And I had to pick up new ones a lot. I had to climb away from the brush. I didn't have to but I was climbing. The full-bodied experience of climbing. I began climbing with an alarming frequency. These big huge collections of sharp boulders resting high above trail, leading to what I'd surely hope was the final plateau before my rescuing descent into paradise, but the arrangements were confusing and their passages narrow and cave strewn and if mountain lions didn't live in these parts of California then the poor bastards are extinct because this was remote and the energy severe. Markedly severe and indifferent. This was a strange part of land, rolling waves with unfriendly growth and blind distances. Somewhere up there, between collections of tall-steep rocks and dramatic angles of land, I happened upon a small circular collection of stones, resting alone high above a one hundred-foot drop above barren hillside. The organization of the stones, alone, signalled the presence of a forgotten campfire, alarming because half the state park was still scorched black from last year's wildfire. This must have been after the fires and safely contained because above these stones, there was a 3/4 full big gallon bottle of Crystal Geyser. It was that tall, ridged, vertically rectangular bottle of Crystal Geyser. You know? Sometimes they sell 10 for 10.00 with your Ralph's Club Card? Sometimes they have those cheap handles? I wanted to gulp gratefully from the bottle after these several hours of demanding ascent and had little water left in my own 12 oz container, but I had seen too many survival shows to know something about bacteria. I didn't actually know much about bacteria but I was paranoid enough. So instead of drinking, I dumped a bunch of the water over my head. It was both cool and then warm from sitting out in the wind and heating in the sun on top of that cliff-side. Which reminds me, I haven't mentioned the sun, the ever-present sun, yesterday it was hot, intense, all day, but I didn't mind. The sun felt good and consistent. Actually, it was the shade up there that was terrifying. The moments I'd spend on the dark side of some gigantic thirty foot rock or another that would sink my spirits. The shade would reduce me, everything growing dark. Night could be like this if I was out here long enough.
The sun was my companion, the shade my fate. I feared.
No one knew were I was. I had either screwed myself or gotten my wish or maybe each was one in the same. The shade reminded me that things were bound to change. I'd begun my hike at noon and now the sun was, not inching, toward the ocean, footing, like, markedly inching, toward the ocean - which I could see fully now. I had scaled the tallest heights, arrived in the middle of jagged lands, and couldn't tell how much more I had to go to get to the ocean, the perspective sucked with all those ridges and down-phases in the land mass, but there was the ocean distant. I still had all this land. I was buried in all this land. Mired in all this land. There was so much land and it was all indifferent. That is what struck me, was how indifferent nature was to anything but itself. I began to project my own selfishness upon nature. And the ocean was a shade lighter than my already shade lighter Dodger Blue Dodger t-shirt and it, the ocean, was being pounded with a weighty glare from the sun and the reference of my viewpoint altered the appearance and it was the first time I can remember looking at the Pacific Ocean and feeling like it didn't contain anything resembling some kind of wholeness and/or peace. It was was the first time, outside of the ocean, I felt afraid of the ocean. Like it was only a pond, a grand pond. That the ocean was a grand pond with its own concerns. That it, and the forces it abides to were separate from me, and that hurt. And maybe now, thinking about it, I was being warned by that mother of mine. And it was further than I perceived. I knew it. I kept looking for a route, with reason and eyesight and my steps, my pained steps. But I couldn't find Sandstone. I'd glance far away South through my location and something like it, appeared. My feet throbbed. I wasn't sure I knew how to return. There is a lot going on in my life. I never stopped to sit down. I knew that stopping would weaken me. Gazing straight ahead, due West, there was another distant ridge that looked as though it preceded an unfathomably steep face and the trails were zigzagging across the mountains and hills and appearing and evaporating and so I finally convinced myself that I had to turn around. I had to turn around. There would be no phone call from the other side.
(part one)
