Two years ago, I interviewed for a job at Loyola Marymount University, which is high on the bluff above Ballona Wetlands, the open marshy land just south of Marina Del Rey. This marsh is actually a flood plain of one channel of the Los Angeles River Delta called Ballona Creek.
While there, I took time to walk around the campus. The most interesting discovery was that one could stand on the extreme edge of the bluff looking out over the savannas of swale grass and sandy roads of the Ballona Wetlands&emdash; and enjoy a view all the way down to the ocean. Quite wonderful. Angelenos have to take their nature in small doses amid the concrete, but here was a pretty spot.
While standing there drinking in the view and the late afternoon sunshine, I saw some movement down below. A red fox bounded playfully out from a clump of creosote bushes and trotted up one of these sandy roads toward a big mound of pampas grass with white feathery plumes. Always fascinated by wild creatures, I watched him going about his business unaware that I was standing motionless a hundred feet above him.
I wondered how a fox could make a living on the deserty scrub, when suddenly out popped another fox flouncing its bushy tail and acting totally carefree and ready to go hunting with his pal. Then surprisingly a third fox appeared from a nearby tangle of gorse, and they all started nosing around happy as a meeting of Airedales.
Here were three very healthy looking, bushy and frisky red foxes living in this corner of the city that nobody had built on &emdash; the only open space on the entire Westside until you get way out past Malibu. There must be a lot of rabbits and other wildlife down there, I thought, to support this family of hungry foxes. I watched them for a long time, until the sun started going down. They weren't really hunting, they were just playing around in the agaves and the swampgrass. Eventually, I went back to the parking structure and drove home.
I have lived on the Westside of Los Angeles since 1966 when I came here after getting home from Viet Nam. I have watched it grow and prosper, getting more crowded and expensive, but always this little corridor of land below the bluff on Lincoln Boulevard on the way to the airport was left alone. I liked that. It was a little patch of wetlands where I might see an egret fishing in a swale or a red-tailed hawk gliding on the thermals, as I drove on my busy way to pick up a friend or relative at the airport. I always took the Lincoln Boulevard route past this little piece of semi-wild nature, because I did like it. Something about unmanicured nature is refreshing to the human soul.
Now the bulldozers have come, as always, as usual, here in Fat City. And I'm annoyed when I drive by on my way to the airport. I'm more than annoyed. I'm irritated. In fact, I'm damned angry! Why can't we have this one little piece of The Commons left as it was? It's a flood plain, for Pete's sake! Flood plains are part of the river, common property, owned by all, like the ocean. I didn't say it was all right to sell it to some fat cat developer. It's not all right! I want it bulldozed back the way it was and left alone for the foxes and egrets.
Posted 9/11/99