Last week I had a chance to meet with one of the most inspirational people I know: Christine Marie Bryant, founder of Coffee House Writers’ Group and an incredibly astute critic of writing, with whom I shared a cup of coffee and a great conversation about the story behind Upstream. Of course, few conversations with Christine are less […]
I started this post to the background noise of a washing machine as it cleansed our clothing from the dirt of the past week. The last four days of the LA River Trek come as a swirl of mountains and vistas and gentle creeks, threatening to pour away, and I need to capture these memories […]
After almost 60 miles of cycling, Glenn and I have finally made it to the official start of the Los Angeles River! Today was our third day, in which we biked from Griffith Park to the junction of Bell Creek and Calabasas Creek in Canoga Park, and it took us through the Valley and out […]
A surprising thing happened when we woke up in Frogtown this morning: we found ourselves beside a river. Not the river we had followed yesterday, which awed me with its oddity and imagined space, but an honest river, with trees and rapids and ducks. The oddest thing of all was that this was the same […]
Route: Long Beach to Elysian Park Distance: 32 Miles
In just a matter of days, Glenn and I will stand atop our bikes beside the calm stretch of water where the Los Angeles River meets the ocean, about to start the LA River Trek. On our left, the black hull of the Queen Mary will censor the sky. Lorikeets from the Aquarium of the […]
The ending of a river such as the Los Angeles River is a complicated affair. I cannot sit on a boat and point towards fresh water on one side, saltwater on the other; the river slides through these categories in the shifting forms of wetland estuaries. Today, years of development have meant that the wetlands […]
In a land of dusty chaparral baking beneath the ubiquitous California sun, the Los Angeles River in history was a beacon of life, forming a corridor of aquatic habitat from the Simi Hills and San Gabriel Mountains all the way to coastal estuaries. Each phase of the river molded a home for new groups of fish, their […]
“The river talks. Breathes. Moves. Sometimes, it even makes music. I know that sounds insane, but it’s true.” I wondered at the clarity of the man’s eyes as he talked, their color set against the massed brown of his hair and beard. He made a modest outline against the trail, his clothing colored with the […]
Growing up near the beach in Long Beach, CA, my first experience of the effect of rivers on the ocean came from my feet. Whenever I waded out into Long Beach’s pocket of beach down-current from the Los Angeles River, the precautionary shuffle of my feet on the ocean bottom usually surprised, not stingrays, but […]
