Since I was in my mid twenties, I hiked Skull Rock in the Santa Monica mountains of Los Angeles. A looming pirate-like mass revealing itself after a long sweaty uphill climb, I found solace in the eras of in my life sitting on its domed top, scanning with awe the spread of manzilla bushes and sprawling green a top the hills. The ocean, a seamless line beyond, would offer a breeze that licked my face and put me in a tropical location - I was in Panama, Aruba, Jamaica - and I would meditate in the sunshine. Often up there alone (the turn off to Skull rock is not labeled and for those in the know), this rock would provide me a sense of grounding and belonging in a world that presented as foreign and mislabeled.
The hike was 1.5 miles straight up, with a split off where most would go back down the loop past a waterfall that had diminished over the decades to a trickle, and the river bed laid dry and dormant. I would take the unlabeled path (somehow I found this path with no internet back in 1996), and make it to the rock with a few others in the know. Over the decades, the traffic would never increase. The final leg was not a cake walk, after the initial long climb so people would veer off. Once I was done with my time on the rock, I would make my way past the dry falls into a forest sprinkled with small cabins. This loop always calmed the confusion in my mind, the sadness and brought me connection with others in a lonely world. The hikers of Skull Rock (or the adjoining trails) shared the traits of fit, pleasant, and gave me a sense when I felt all alone that I was part of a community. While I may not have personally known any of them beyond a passing hello, I felt less alone on the trail.
In my twenties I hiked with a few select friends late in the day after nursing a hang over. In my early thirties I hiked with my dog, a mini Australian Shepard, who was a hearty companion. I left LA in 2005 to live in San Jose in the “kid making years” and when I returned, with two small children in tow, I didn’t get to the hike for a while. I became a long distance runner, symbolic of so much I didn’t want to face. When I was divorced and single parenting at 42, now with 50/50 custody, I found myself with weekends in an empty house.
I returned to Skull Rock and found a place again of peace.
Once sober, I found one morning at 5 AM the best solution to the nuts voices in my head was to climb to the rock in the dark. Alone, and thinking this was a terrible idea when every twig snapped, I practically ran up the steep mountain. When I arrived to scramble to the top of the Skull, I was greeted with the most spectacular sunrise of my life. Not a soul around. In a city as dense as Los Angeles, achieving this state was almost unheard of. I was on top of the world. I could surmount any problem or bad feeling that sat inside me.
For these reasons, I always returned to Skull Rock.
This Sunday, I was able to take the love of my life to Skull Rock. He mentioned it in the morning, as we lay basking in bed, sipping coffee and munching on a shared plate of eggs. I had talked about the importance of this hike in passing, and he was curious. Excited to share, we set off ready to enjoy what in my mind was a challenging dry hike.
Arriving a top the rock with him was in itself, the ending of a cycle. The cycle of seeking your person who gets you, and who loves you as passionately as you love them. We never know how long it will take us to find true love. How many times had I sat on that rock and thought, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I find someone who I gel with? Now I was with him - someone who shared my wild, and held my feelings and emotions close to him. As we sat there, the rock held us like we belonged, and now with him, not alone, I enjoyed the ocean breeze and the quiet calm of the landscape. He revealed his childhood home, where his parents still lived was a mere 1 mile walk away. So close. What we need and want is always so close but we can’t control the timing as much as we want to. But we must stay steadfast in our vision.
What we discovered next blew my mind.
As we came down the side of the canyon, the roar of water grew evident. I was perplexed. The waterfall is rushing? Not only was it rushing, but the water was forceful, constant and immense. I stood on a small bridge that had always been over dry dust, and could not believe how vastly nature had changed on a dime after twenty years. Almost to welcome the flow of water to show that the spigot had opened, and all was available now to rush and reveal. As we walked the trail alongside the rushing river, the material form of the hike changed. What I had known to be a sure guarantee, the same path year after year, was now washed away by the river, and logs and rocks made slippery paths to cross.
A field of green in which I had played with young daughters, stopped to marvel at alone in a struggle to accept the oneness and aloneness of beauty and even one time listened to a loud hum of a bees’ hive, was gone. I mean gone. The earth had swallowed the grass and instead the trees were now in a muddy sea of criss-crossing stream beds.
The whole hike was changed for the first time since I began in 1996 and I was alongside this person who was part of the arrival, the joy and the togetherness I had always craved.
As I kept reiterating to him, “This is wild. The trail has never been like this. I can’t believe this is happening,” I thought, am I over exaggerating? Had it ever had this kind of water flow. But as we heard people say, “I have been coming here since 2012 and I have never seen it like this,” I knew what I was experiencing was a truth.
The cycle of 28 years was shifted, and I was moved by nature’s party for me. I was also surprised when we were on the rock that for the first time I thought, how come I never looked at the path beyond the rock and where that goes. With him, I explored and discovered we could keep going another half a mile to another park. All these decades, I only wanted to go to the rock and down. I didn’t want variance. With so much in life changing and shifting, sometimes we need a sure thing but now with a person who offered me so much stability, who I could and have explored with, I was able to take that leap and walk a different path.
I was more tickled with myself than anything that extra 200 feet I walked from the rock.
What have you been hiking or walking for decades that has represented you in all your phases of life? How has it shifted, and what has nature spoken to you?
Listen, because nature needs no permission to change.
Thank you for reading my column. If you enjoyed and felt moved by what I wrote, please leave a comment, and share with a friend.
I participated in an important conversation this week with Leila Reyes, a fellow author and podcaster on sexual abuse denial. She was highlighting my book, and also speaking from personal experience about her own denial. If you would like to know what life can look like after doing work to push through fear and doubt of recovery, listen here.