On the Trail

Immense dragonflies, some striped and colorful as a Father’s Day tie, others a solid metallic hue reminiscent of silk pajamas. Masses of sawgrass coquettishly flinging their green manes against the somber gray solidity of boulders. In turn, the boulders with surfaces like wrinkled old faces possessed of shifting blotches—the blotches actually tiny moist frogs newly metamorphosed from the swarms of tadpoles in the green-tinted water. A bloated dead wood rat is loosely anchored among cattails, his body rigor mortised in a posture suggesting swimming to eternity.

Home to these creatures is a creek that flows through a wooded, secluded canyon to the sea. It reaches the Malibu coastline, forming a freshwater lagoon that’s breached by incoming tides. The creek has moods to match the seasons: frightful and dangerous during intense winter storms; enchanting and refreshing during summer months. Sycamores, coast live oaks and willows shade it.

Harmless black racer snakes, pond turtles, some juvenile striped bass, crayfish, newts, tadpoles and water striders occupy pools in summer, when clumps of sawgrass (or razor grass for its razor-like edges) erupt from rock interstices to lend the creek a vibrant, verdant aura of Shangri-La.

Dog friends who visit the creek give a five-star rating to its swimmin’ holes and human visitors thrill at pools deep and wide enough for a lazy float in an inflatable boat. On days when fog swamps the coast or a fierce whitecap-churning marine breeze is blowing, cool air is funneled up canyon, which is welcome indeed since you could roast weiners on heat-holding boulders.

Rock hopping up or down stream is sport for the limber, but watch out for "wobblers" whose instability will lead to an unanticipated creek dip. And dogs I have known have had an evil tendency to leap in sync with their humans onto a landing site that can accommodate only one guest at a time. If I were possessed of sharp rock-gripping claws and no manners, I wouldn’t always wind up the one getting bowled into the creek.

But on a sweltering day, when you look at a fur-bearing animal and appreciate that it cannot unzip and remove the heavy hair suit to cool off, then getting dunked on its account is not intolerable.

As sunlight leaves the creek course and climbs the canyon walls, the day can chill quickly. It is by that time I do not rue the "shlepping" of heavy clothing layers on the hike down to the creek, though I’d originally chafed under the burden like an ornery pack mule. I used to hike with a heavyset fellow who had the endearing ability to tote several tons of gear on his ample back: books, newspapers, bananas, mangoes, water, rubber boats, and 17 changes of clothing and several pounds of hair-styling products for female members of the hiking party.

Since this particular creek is difficult to access and thus is lightly visited, there’s not much trash to pack out but our own. However, it is downstream from a golf course, so golf balls can be found wedged so securely in crooks of trees that even dynamite wouldn’t have a chance at dislodging. It’s from the golf course’s water hazards that the striped bass have come.

Once on a rain-battered winter’s day when the creek was blasting by us with treacherous force, my friend accidentally dropped a laminated souvenir cup from Hawaii into the swirling torrent. We watched as the cup, emblazoned with "Hawaii is for rainbow lovers" and a tacky psychedelic rendition of a rainbow, was swept away. It had a nick on its rim and prominent crack, so was worthless except for sentimental reasons.

Some days later while browsing through mammoth piles of junk and debris that several creeks had dumped onto Zuma Beach post-storm, we were reunited with the cup, just slightly more scuffed up than when it left on its unscheduled journey.

"That is one well-traveled cup," my friend said, "considering it started in Taiwan."

I, for one, would like to have had some Las Vegas odds on the chances of that cup navigating several miles of the creek’s twists, turns, snags, sandbars and debris catchment basins to arrive back in our hands.