...nor Egrets

The Los Angeles River was a favorite “back yard playground” for me as a kid. Vicky Garcia, Sharon Cordova and I used to ride bikes there.

One memorable day, the three of us friends, with our brown bag lunches of bologna, pickles and PB&J sandwiches, set off from Los Feliz Blvd, zig-zagging down the steep incline of cement to the bottom. We found that the river had accumulated a lot of sand since our last visit. Trees and marsh plants were growing right there in the river! Statuesque Egrets and Blue Herons mimicked the tall straight bamboosa.

As we pedaled up stream, the sand, mud and water got deeper and it was harder and harder to make the wheels move. Each of our bikes got mired and stopped moving forward at all. Balancing was tricky enough while moving so slowly and impossible once we stopped.We were a sight with feet lifted high so as not to touch the yucky water. Vicky’s bike was the first to tip. In slow motion she toppled over sideways –landing in the mucky murky water… a fate worse than death for a 12 year old girl. The splash startled a beautiful tawny tan snake which jumped in the air and began scooting incredibly fast up the slope by configuring and reconfiguring its body into “S” and reverse “S” shapes as it moved… like a side-winder. 

Sharon and I, in one motion, dropped our bikes and leaped out of the water as fast as we could go. All three of us ran screaming as far away from the snake as we could get but also up the concrete bank. A whole flock of long-necked gawky birds rose skyward - their cries drowning out the squish of our shoes. By the time we got to the top ledge we were laughing and gasping for air. Two of us had managed to bring up our lunch bags. Vicky’s was impaled by the fallen handle-bar so it didn’t float away, but no one was going to eat whatever touched that "snake" water!

For years we laughed about that day the snake drove US out of the river. Of course, we had to go back down and retrieve the bikes after sharing lunch. We never saw the snake again but it’s length grew with every retelling of the story.

Yesterday, driving up the 5 to Oakland I passed a good sized pond on the East side of the road about fifty miles out of the Gapevine.  Snowy, long-necked birds so graceful in flight look dorky and clumsy coming in for a water-landing. The sight of them brought me back to those times as a kid when my friends and I were allowed to have real adventures. 

If I were raising kids in today’s world there’s no way I’d feel comfortable setting them loose in a natural area without first securing it – at least visually. By that I mean I would check the wild area for a different kind of “wild life” - vagrants, drug dealers, gang-bangers and thugs. I used to do that for my kids in a nearby stream-bed. I'd take them there after scouting it out and stay at the mouth of the creek so they could have their own direct experience with a riparian ecosystem. They'd find delicate fox skeletons, read the patterns water made in the sand, wonder at the force of the wind and marvel at how high the water rose during a storm as determined by sand and algae displaced to the tops of the trees.

The world has gotten so complicated. Maybe video games ARE the only way today’s city kids can get adrenaline rushes without getting into too much real trouble. It makes me sad that so many of them will never know the scent of white sage or green clay or a skunk in the wild, nor recognize the sound of a red-tailed hawk or owl calling to her mate.

Seeing those Egrets as I drove north today made me happy and a bit nostalgic for simpler times when we kids could have a direct experience in the natural world, build forts, manipulate our environment, change the course of water and learn about sun, wind, mud and critters without having to read about them on flat pages of a book or see them reduced to two-dimensional scan lines on TV screens.

I’m grateful for those years spent close to Mother Nature. I worry that my grand-daughter may never have a close encounter of a bird kind… neither with flocks of Blue Herons nor Egrets. I have no regrets nor Egrets to show her. But we did manage to see a vibrant green grasshopper last evening on a leaf in the front yard. Her curious finger reached to touch its strangeness, but stopped shy of making contact. Blowing on it she learned the effect wind has on grasshoppers. They HOP! Perhaps Mother Nature reveals her treasures even in this overly complicated world - bringing us again to her breast.