ESSAY: Malibu Creek State Park

The state park remains oak-chaparral woodland, with rocky buttes thrusting up beside a stream whose depth and flow is determined by the regional water treatment plant. Fittingly, it was a movie ranch before becoming a public venue.  The choppers bearing incoming wounded on “MASH” flew in low over the hills. Cornelius and Zira, chimpanzee scientists, held Charlton Heston’s astronaut character prisoner in Ape City in “Plane of the Apes”.  “Viva Zapata”s heroic rebels marched down the main road between the rollling hills.  Tarzan dived into the pond at the base of Goat Buttes.  Such a delicious nostalgia, remembering all the easy enjoyment of the medium of film.

So, I’ll go off jogging again through my neighborhood’s collection of mature trees, squirrels running about, until the autumn winds have detached the bronzed leaves with their fragile connections to stout towering trunks and outreaching branches.  They will litter the yards and streets with golden crunchy blankets, until the gardeners come and with little artifice and much energy, blow away the temporary cover of the bright green lawns.

 This autumn I yearn to see trees: really see them as sentinels, watchers, as spirits symbolizing longevity and endurance while enduring change.  My daily jogs seek out their November tones; in Southern California we don’t begin autumn until mid-October, and it’s a gentle, warm arrival at that. The trees planted by nostalgic east and midwest immigrants aren’t those that belong here.
 The home court belongs to prickly chaparral and oak species, with canyon sycamores’ dusty tan plate-size leaves and creamy grey trunks, gnarling over the streets and paths.

Wishing for their lost seasons while they endured a Mediterranean climate that gave them magnificent oaks and a 12-month growing season, sun-seekers planted liquidambars (from Australia), birches, ornamental pears, and gingkos.  Now, after 75 years, the neighborhoods are rich with russet, cadmium, deep saffron, ochre, and darkening greens.  Against a bright warm blue sky, their shapes, movements, forms weave a chuppah for daily union.