128 Days In - Not so Green and Pleasant

Last I heard, the LA wildfires were 71% under control.

It seems they have been burning continuously for weeks now; one has spread over 157,220 acres. A football pitch is about one and a half acres.

Photos show bleached out landscapes where street upon street of former suburbia have been left as crumbled concrete and simple scraps of black metal. A large percentage of Los Angeles houses are built from wood.

It is another reminder, more brutal than most, that my new home is a domesticated desert.

Soon after our arrival, when in LA for the day, Chris and I decided to picnic in Griffiths Park. Wanting respite from the hazy, polluted, concrete city, the promise of wide green spaces interspersed with historical fountains is always welcome. But LA is not London, and Griffiths Park (the only sizable green space we have found so far) is not Hyde Park; or Green Park; or Hampstead Heath.

The first evidence of this is that we enter the park in our car, on a road; not by foot! We stop at the first flat, green area we come across, but it is hemmed in by steep, dusty cliffs which hamper the feeling of space somewhat. The frequent stopping of white trucks containing single men in tight white T-shirts pushes us to move on.

Not far off there is a larger picnic area, complete with tables and swings and slides. Here, also, is the famous 1920s Carousel, which is beautifully restored in places and left alone in others. The horses are all individual with differing expressions and of different sizes. They come complete with 1920s leather safety buckles, and the music pipes from it’s original organ. Apparently Walt Disney's imaginings for his "Land" came whilst watching his children ride these very gee-gees.

It is wonderful to see history, left exactly as it was.

Here we are not so hemmed in, but there is still no feeling of freedom and green and nature.
On the surrounding mounds, short angular trees barely shade scrappy, sharp bushes. The leaves are as dry and grey as the land is unforgiving. Scenes from Clint Eastwood westerns spring to mind; and it begs the questions of how and why this land was tamed.

I know that it is probably due to geography more than anything, but it makes me chuckle that the East coast of the US was colonised over 200 years before the West coast; and that the West coast was colonised about the same time as Australia was - they obviously had a thing for harsh dessert terrains that year.

As you drive around the relatively balmy Orange County coast, the deception of natural green is given away through the regular eruption of sprinklers. A sprinkled lawn juxtaposed to a non-sprinkled highlights man’s interference here.

Of course, there is currently a water shortage.

Luckily we have not been affected by the wild-fires; but they found their way to steep and rugged terrain that the forest service described as somewhere “not even the mountain goats would venture”. All we saw of it (other than on the news) were hazy skies and bright vermillion sunsets.