On the Trail





On the outside looking in

On a bright, clear and warm winter’s afternoon in the Las Virgenes Valley, being on the outside looking in is not so hard to bear—especially if what you’re looking at happens to be the entire breadth of Malibu Creek State Park as viewed from Mulholland Highway between Cornell Road in Agoura and Malibu Canyon Road in Calabasas.

Since state parks forbid dogs on trails, and my favorite hiking companion happens to be a dog, I came up with a way to partake of this park’s visually accessible scenery: on foot along a broad dirt shoulder that keeps us safe from traffic.

Our road trip begins at Mulholland’s junction with Cornell Road and opens with some grand “Animal Planet”-type footage. The park’s vast, undulating meadows have been cut back to stubble, creating acres of pale gold carpeting that lap at the verdant oak groves fringing these grasslands. Adding a touch of flaming color to the parkland’s subdued palette is the foliage of deciduous native sycamore and walnut trees.

Out for a midday stroll is a coyote. It spots us. My dog has not yet caught sight or scent of his wild kin and is oblivious to the fact that we are being observed.

As a student of the natural world, it is interesting to me to find the tables turned this way. The coyote—which is quite a distance away— becomes so engrossed in studying us that it does something I’ve never witnessed a coyote do: It drops to the ground to recline in a most domestic dog-like pose, with front paws crossed and head slightly tilted.

As with many folks whose dogs have been threatened by coyotes, I’m usually not sentimental about them but wary and vigilant. Yet there is something so lovely about this wild creature, as if it appreciates—just as I do—a beautiful day and a beautiful setting in which to relax and enjoy it.

Fittingly, pockets of coyote brush (a tall, woody evergreen native shrub) erupt throughout the meadow, reminiscent of coral atolls or islets showing above a becalmed sea. The shrub’s winter complement of ivory-colored flowers is borne in fluffy, silken, flyaway clusters. the opposite side the

Onroad the rocky slopes of are a chalky beige, thatched in withered gray chaparral. Road cutting, erosion and time have worn horizontal layers in the massive swath of stone that resemble rows of deliberately stacked bricks in off-white and mustardyellow hues.

It’s hard not to conjure comparisons to the ancient architecture of indigenous peoples unearthed in sites throughout the Southwest.

These Mulholland forms are not building foundations or supports. All it takes is a lizard’s passage to trigger a shower of pebbly debris signaling further disintegration of the precipitously angled “brickwork.”

A road crew noisily depositing and smoothing fill dirt at a turnout up ahead causes us to quit for the day, as the machinery’s incessant warning “ding” is at odds with the sprawling landscape’s hushed quality.

On our walk back we hear a loud rustling and, peering into a mix of vigorous and desiccated chaparral shrubs, we expect a deer herd to break cover. Amazingly it is just tiny ground birds, animatedly hunting for grubs among brittle, towering weed stalks, that are producing the mysterious ruckus.

With a stockpile of images such as these, we do not feel cheated one whit to have been “outsiders” today.

Glasser is a writer fascinated by the flora and fauna surrounding her home in the Santa Monica Mountains. Reach her at ranchomulholla@hotmail.com.



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