There is a streak of green at Wildwood Park, a short drive north of Thousand Oaks. In the parched summer in the San Fernando Valley, nature curls away into a wan dried shade of brown, a color somewhere between ash and soil. But there’s enough water here, enough for a tiny gurgling creek, and a generous belt of bright green life.
Vivacity is suffocating here, different from the even-topped rosemary hedges and manicured palm trees and the rolled-out carpet grass watered punctually by sprinklers peeking out, coughing into a screech at 10-pm, the circles of violas and birds of paradise that I have grown used to on campus, grace a the multi-million dollar landscaping budget.
It reminds me of the clump Californian poppy, flowering orange, forgotten in the center divider of a 2-lane road. I wouldn’t have noticed it, I’m afraid, if not for the driver who beat my right-of-way at the stop sign, zooming pass, shaking up the thin stems in a breeze.
I take a picture, point my camera right into the swaying branches of a nearby tree, young green leaves budding. My sunglasses, clipped to the front of my sleeveless tee-shirt, drops on the soft dusty trail.
I will not notice it for a while, and then I will retrace my steps back here.
Back to this tangled mass of branches and green.
I follow the creek forward. My destination ends at its end, a tiny waterfall lies ahead, I am informed. It has a pretty name — Paradise Falls — it is called, like the magical one in the movie Up, although I suppose it looks nothing like the Angel Falls in Venezuela, not a majestic flat-topped bed of impregnable rock and a outlet for a spray of descending foam.
No, just a little pout of water, downstream, if you follow the footpath, first down, then up, along a narrow bit carved into the cliff, with wooden posts and frayed cables on the side. There are a few steps here and there, slippery now, already darkened with footprints, and some picnic tables, in disuse, covered with fallen pieces of cones and stems, cigarettes butts stamped into the loose soil.
But there is the waterfall. Surprisingly enough, there’s still enough water for a bubbling spray, for the sound of gushing, of splash.
It has not rained for the 10 weeks I’ve been here, I remind myself, but somewhere in the bowels of the Earth, there’s enough moisture, enough tears to fill up a pool.
Or perhaps just enough runoff from city waste, a notice warns, no swimming, no diving, water is toxic.
An untouchable piece of paradise, it is, after all.
But the algae love it here, love the chemical energy in the waters, happiness imbued in streaks of bright yellow and green, on the rocks, on the pool, crowding, crowding.
Three teenage boys scamper by, rowdily, long narrow limbs and dripping wet hair, flat smooth skin iridescent with health and youth.
They find a way up to top of the fall, strong fingers and toes gripping little outcrops of rocks. Loud voices, full of daring jests; laughter, pushing shoving disregard.
It didn’t take them long to get to the tip, and then you can catch a glimpse of sun-kissed skin, or brown curls in the background of ashen gray.
There remains a moment, too long, when the the body leaps from the stone background, and floats through the air, weightless. I cringe, fearing for the sound of bone smashing against stone, waiting, almost getting into a prayer.
plonk. It stops. Then the head re-surfaces, shaking big drops of water.
Then another.
Then another.
Three dripping wet bodies, their trajectories now reunited, again scampering up for their individual fall.
Follow behind them, on the narrow trail along the cliff. A little clandestine, a little guilty, stalking.
I emerge behind them, far enough to be invisible, tall enough to see over their shoulders, to the pond. I realize it’s more inviting from this angle, a soft green carpet, cushy like a soaked bathmat. The tall green grass, a forest to be lost within.
And I can’t help noticing, beneath the curvature of the bands of ribs meeting the backbone, the vertebrae peeking up, like little polished bosses cased below a tender sheet of velvet, an orderly unruly being, pulsating.
