Meadow Lark

Old maps and older memories stuff my backpack. Occasionally I turn the thing inside out and upside down, shaking out old Cheez-It and dog biscuit crumbs, stray paper clips, and crumpled sticky notes that peeled off my swaybacked notebook before I could read them and glean what it was they were supposed to remind me of.

As a solitary hiker-and on state park trails that precludes even my ditzy dog from sharing the miles-I find lots of room to reflect as I dodge poison oak and check for "wobblers," treacherously loose rocks that will pitch one into a stream during a careless crossing. Because this spring has had a weather pattern of deep soaking rains and cool temperatures, pockets of the Santa Monica Mountains have been transformed into little Edens that will persist until we experience a significant run of blistering aridity. Dusty gold is the prevalent color scheme of meadows and grasslands in summer, but for now there is verdure, there is lushness-at a price.

In the quest to visit one of the sweetest sites/sights in the western region of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation

Area-the grasslands (or vast meadows) of Serrano Valley- hikers navigate a creek-crossing trail that can be slippery and hip deep in rampant vegetation that is alternately attractive, thorny, scratchy, or itchy rash-inducing. Clinging to foliage of wild rose, meadow rue and blackberry, an onslaught of ticks awaits the hapless human trekker. Stinging flies and no-see-ums join the assault once the open grasslands are reached. If it is parching hot, add "watching for rattlers" to the list of critters to contend with, especially tricky to discern in grass that will brush past one's shins.

Located within Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County, Serrano Valley is often an unpeopled place-not counting ghosts. It was the destination of one of my earliest hikes in the Santa Monicas, an astonishing surprise after the long detour from the wide-open, bicycle-busy and chatty-campers aspect of Big Sycamore Canyon, where the Serrano Canyon Trail diverges. This trail is open to hikers only and that makes a difference; you can walk at a lollygagging pace, which was the pace I proceeded at long ago when a man I was falling in love with and I rambled back. Without horsemen or cyclists to interrupt us, we could take smooching breaks dead-center of the rutted trail and frolic in the brisk clear creek below the trail where the icy water refreshed us and briefly freed us from the plague of infernal insects.

But romance had its price: welted hides from futilely swatting at bugs nonstop; slipping splat on one's keester in the mud; accidentally getting socks and shoes wet at creek crossings, requiring endless miles of hiking in sopping squishy footwear; a frozen bottle of water that refused to melt. When we stumbled out of the woodland and reached the valley, however, all the travails became irrelevant.

In the old days there was still the vestiges of the Serrano family's homestead in the valley, abandoned and one day to be consumed by a wildfire. After the hike through the shadowed, cloistered woods, here was openness and brightness with Boney Mountain forming the backstop to acres of billowing grasslands. There was no sound but the voice of the wind. We rested on the porch's warped steps.

My companion squinted for a long time at the grasslands, unblinking, the corners of his mouth taut. I laced an arm through his, brushing off a button-sized tick that was scrabbling across the wristband of his watch in search of the flesh of his forearm.

"I am in love with you," he said. This announcement knocked the breath out of me like a blow. Absorbing the impact, I studied the profile of Boney Mountain, its asymmetrical pinnacles flaring rosy-mauve at sunset.

The Great Omniscient Narrator of Life interjected,

"But it won't last," or maybe it was the sibilant sound of a breeze surging through the grasslands, briefly turning the acres of green to a shimmering silver.

"We will live together in a little place just like this, white clapboard with green shutters and a porch, tucked deep in a mountain meadow filled with wildflowers and with a view to Boney. Or the sea." He spoke this assuredly, a college-educated and well-read man who was past 30 by then and

only had $100 in his bank account because I'd lent him those funds, who worked part-time shelving books as a library page, walked people's dogs for spare change and lived as a squatter in a derelict cabin he'd discovered far back on private property off the Pacific Coast Highway. His hand closed around mine and he turned to face me. His smile was boyish and sincere.

And the Great Omniscient Narrator of Life intoned,

"It's never going to happen." But I was young and a dreamer and the wind was in my ears and I didn't listen.