Used to enjoy flying, I did; enjoyed airports, even. And Gilligan’s
Island, The Beverly Hillbillies and Gomer Pyle reruns after
school. Enjoyed the crude stench of diesel-soaked air overcoming me as doors
from baggage claim opened into the street; the relentless repetition of Gertrude
Stein’s epic “White Zone Is for Immediate Loading and Unloading” issuing forth
from somewhere nearby and above but unseen as, unwittingly mesmerized by its
pulse, citizens below rush all Samsonite elbows and anger into queues for tickets
and gates and bathrooms; the standing-room-only waiting areas drenched in that
familiar stew of fermenting Old Spice and English Leather — ungodly, sinus-searing;
and the defiant snores of the exhausted who, having collapsed between stacks
of coffee-stained newspapers, have missed their flights and will soon be fired
and divorced.

Where once I would enjoy a half-empty flight to anywhere that
would have me, I can no longer bear spending six hours listening to the Patriot™
buckled in beside me explaining why, even though I have no money, I should borrow
$50,000 to invest in his inflatable-Jacuzzi company in Pittsburgh, or at least
consider joining his (“Here’s my card!”) sales staff.

So I began experimenting with traveling directly upon the planet’s
surface. Trains, buses, cars. Mostly cars. Half a million miles and more I’ve
roamed, suffering hundreds of failed town-leaving attempts. Drove north, drove
south, east, even west into the water and along the ocean’s floor, but every
artery I could find was clogged with idling Avalanches, Navigators, Explorers
and Expeditions. And Excursions, Rangers, Rovers and Mountaineers — all barely
in motion, burning a million barrels a minute, waiting in line for refuge from
each other’s presence; escaping to the same Elsewheres. The average law-breaking
citizen could once shoot up Interstate 5 and arrive in San Francisco in under
six hours (this at a time when San Francisco was worth driving to); the same
drive today can take as long as six hundred hours, and cost an equal
number of American Lives™. Gradually the citizen began to notice
that wherever he drove, by the time he arrived at his destination there’d be
some of the same artery-cloggers there, too. And when we returned, it was at
the likely peril of meeting up with ourselves yet again, in just the same way
— as toxin-spewing motorturds crawling through the desert, burning a despot’s
ransom in fossil fuels for the privilege of reading each other’s bumper literature.
(This week’s finest: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE NOT THE PRESIDENT.”)

I’ve found that one of the most productive ways to spend life
is sitting on a small bridge in the rain, dangling one’s legs over a stream,
facing a waterfall. To spend time in such a place I’d gladly travel by air or
sea, even by bus or car; by any means necessary.

But I’d rather just walk. That way I can get home in time for
dinner.

On sunny summer weekends, when the sky is blue, when the winds
are light and clear, when everyone everywhere is healthy and optimistic and
never has to work and has plenty of everything he’ll ever need and more — on
these sorts of weekends, stay away from the Temescal Loop Trail. Because all
of these plenty-of-everything people are already there — in droves, if not hordes
or throngs. Many of them, for reasons unknowable, are off-duty attorneys and
TV-commercial directors wearing hip-mounted CD players, with headphones blasting
Queen’s News of the World, Bad Company’s Bad Company, Styx’s The
Grand Illusion or that Frank Stallone song from that film about John Travolta
doing aerobics (can’t recall the title; forgive me). You might as well be hiking
at the airport.

So go on a rainy weekday; late morning’s best. Quit your job
(it’s really not what you want to be doing with your life, anyway, and the sooner
you realize that the happier we’ll all be) and walk from anywhere in Southern
California until you reach the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Temescal
Canyon Road. Shouldn’t take more than a day and a half. Head uphill into Temescal
Gateway Park via the Sunset Trail (the dirt path alongside the asphalt road
and the parking lot). A quarter-mile up and off to the left, where the parking
lot ends, where the foliage grows wilder and more promising, quaintly rough-hewn
signage and a roll of Ralphs doggie-poo bags mark the trailhead to the Temescal
Loop.

It took about 180 million years of planetary fidgeting for some
nameless deposits on the Pacific Ocean’s floor to rise above the sea, to be
quaked and flooded and wind-carved into what we now call Temescal Canyon, whereas
hiking the Temescal Loop Trail should take no more than three hours — the same
length of time most of our employers allow us for our summer vacations. Apart
from the generic pleasures of escapist exercise, the Loop Trail, which comprises
two subtrails — the Temescal Ridge Trail to the northwest and the Temescal Canyon
Trail to the southeast — affords breathtaking views of poison oak, newts, rattlesnakes
and the Pacific Ocean. Depending on your eyesight and astrological forecast,
you might see mud, mule deer, bobcats, coyotes, raccoons, and even stoned Palisades
High School students emerging from the underbrush, reeking, asking you for directions.
(Answer: just around the bend, up that way maybe half a mile, tops.)

As the term loop implies, your vacation will end at the
same trailhead from which you embarked, which means you can embark in at least
two directions. I prefer starting up the steeper northern route — the Temescal
Ridge Trail, which ascends about 1,000 feet in the first mile. Gorgeous arcades
of coastal chaparral. Incredible views of the Pacific. Just over the crest,
the Ridge Trail intersects the Canyon Trail. If you’re not yet ready for the
downhill, the shade and the waterfall, you can continue another half-mile along
the ridge to Skull Rock, a boulder resembling no particular skull; and if, at
Skull Rock, you’re still not ready to return, I believe there’s access to the
dreaded Backbone Trail, which cuts all the way to Topanga. Knock yourself out.

Better yet, screw Skull Rock; head downhill, into the thick shade.
Perhaps a quarter-mile down the Canyon Trail, you’ll hear — unless it’s still
raining — the waterfall, and soon you’ll be there, dangling and meditating and
so on. If you followed the no-weekend rule, you’ll probably have very few human
visitors, and these will most likely be benevolent. Everyone seems to be friendly
near waterfalls.

If you’re an experienced hiker or an inexperienced thrill seeker
who’s lived a long, full life and has enough money to pay for the emergency
airlift, you can lower yourself off the downhill end of the bridge and onto
the rocks upon which the water falls; you can then clamber upstream to a few
more waterfalls and trails to the south and east that dip down into Will Rogers
Park.

After you’ve had your fill of the waterfall, the lazy green Canyon
Trail will guide you gently 1.2 miles downhill through a densely wooded path
along the banks of the stream. Ancient towering sycamores, oaks and eucalypti;
cross-creek boulders and hopping stones; sage . . . something that looks like
rosemary but isn’t . . . something else that looks like mint but isn’t . . .

And ticks. If you go climbing trees near the stream, you might,
as one of my friends discovered a few weeks back, provide a last meal for some
down-on-their-luck ticks, which, upon discovering, you might wish to burn to
death with a hot knife or needle, or suffocate with a handy blob of peanut butter.

When you return to Sunset Boulevard, the rain will stop, the
clouds will part, your shoes will dry. The sky will grow blue, the winds light
and clear, and everyone everywhere will have plenty of everything. Another alarm,
another traffic jam, another long, long way back home.

How to get there: Take the 10 freeway west to the Pacific
Coast Highway. Turn right on Temescal Canyon Road and continue one mile to the
trailhead; or take the Metro 2 West from anywhere on Sunset Boulevard to Via
de la Paz and walk one long block northwest.
What to do: Hike, picnic, enjoy the view.