New Chapter: Topanga

Well a lot has happened in the three months since I wrote last, and this will be one of my last entries from the first year in L.A! It’s been a very transformative time, on a very deep level, especially these last three months. I’ll start with the external changes. First of all, I found my spot in L.A. Everybody loves to hate L.A., but in order to stay here, you gotta find your neighborhood that you CAN love. Some friends of ours love their work project of an edgy/artsy neighborhood in east Hollywood. My youngest stepson’s mother, no matter how broke she is, will live nowhere but the palm lined high rent shopping areas off Montana Ave in Santa Monica. There is a fierce pride amongst my new Chicana artist friends for their neighborhood around Cesar Chavez Avenue, where many of them are third or fourth generation residents. I have fallen in love with Topanga Canyon, our new home, and it is my sweet spot in L.A. First of all, I think I partially love it because it is so NOT L.A. Except it is. We have the same school district, the same water system, have to drive the same freeways etc. etc., but we are separated from the smog and the glare by the largest preserved track of wilderness this close to a metropolitan area in the U.S., Topanga State Park. The park stretches up over a mountain range, ending a corridor of wilderness stretching to Oxnard and is home to countless coyotes, deer, mountain lions etc. When we drive up off the Pacific Coast Highway toward home now we pass along a narrow, windy road through the canyon in between mountains and bare rock outcroppings and see no houses or sign of people for several miles. It’s only about five minutes in the car up to the town, but in those five minutes it feels like you pass into another world. Topanga is known for its heyday in the sixties as the L.A. hideaway of various famous musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and for the herds of dirty hippies that flocked up here around them. Being close to Palisades, Santa Monica and Malibu, it has gone up a bit in price and esteem around here as the years have gone on. It’s still dusty, and you can still find plenty of hippies, but now they’re mostly old and rich, and intermixed with famous actors, young families, artists and ultra pure living yoga instructor types all at home in their houses and compounds tucked into ravines and the sides of mountains. There are so many Om signs and Buddha statuettes in this canyon that archaeologists are going to be very confused someday. Topanga has a small town feel and takes community very seriously. When we moved onto our street we got several welcome visits and a community roster with everyone’s names and contact numbers on it for communication and for coordinating the shared green space at the end of the street. We found a car pool to Nick’s school, and it seems like there is always some community event or festival going on that is much anticipated and well attended. It’s nice. Most of all though I think I love the mountains, the coyotes at night, the wild parrots, and the feeling that the natural world here is close, right outside your door, fluttering in your window. As the seasons turn and spring has passed into soft, beautiful summer in my beloved Maine, the lush greenery and regular rains of winter here have given way to Santa Ana winds and stronger sun, to browning hillsides and dusty roads. It’s harsh summer in L.A., and I am ready to be back in Maine. But I know it will be all too soon before I come back again in the fall, and I am glad to feel at least that I’ll be happy to dig in more deeply to this landscape and community when I get back here again for year number two in L.A!