The Porcupine Mountains rise up on a spit of green land sticking out into Lake Superior, so named because from a distance – say, from my beach — they resemble the quilly creatures that also munch the bark there. I’ve been spending even more time than usual in these woods this summer, as my son has been working there. (I’ll post about our Escarpment Trail hike shortly.) The great conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold argued for the preservation of “the Great Uncut” in 1942, helping to lead to the founding of the state park. With their old-growth forests, cerulean ponds, and Superior beaches, the Porkies inspire. That was evident at an exhibit of artwork created by participants in the artist-in-residence program that was on display over the Labor Day weekend at the performing arts theater in Ontonagon.
The Porcupine Mountains, as seen from my beach.
Full disclosure: I was one of those artists in 2009, when I spent two unforgettable weeks in Dan’s Cabin in the woods. Dan is a reference to Dan Urbanski, the late photographer whose painting-like images of Lake of the Clouds, the Northern Lights, Superior stones, etc., adorn many a Porkies visitor’s wall, including my own. The cabin memorializes the muse he found here in the Porkies, and that clearly visited the many painters, printers, writers, musicians, photographers, drawers, sculptors, etc., whose work was on display this past weekend. I’ve been to cutting edge galleries and historic museums around the world, and I was impressed by this show of diverse talents. (Again, admittedly, I’m biased.) A delicate, detailed watercolor of an angel-wing mushroom by Erin Duff, a medical illustrator. A whimsical oil painting of bears frolicking outside Dan’s Cabin by Joe Heywood. (I have seen black bears in the Porkies, but not partying like this.) My iPhone snapshots here don’t do them justice. The show was temporary but you can check out, and even buy, some of the artwork online at the Friends of the Porkies website. The Friends also produce the music festival I wrote about last week. Even better: Come see these hills and lakes yourself, and show us what you see.
At the celebration for the late catamount P22 at the Greek Theatre on Saturday, tribal elder Alan Salazar spoke about how his people – the Chumash and Tataviam – divide themselves into different animal clans. Since I can remember, I have felt myself to be a member of the mountain lion clan. As a child, I read and watched everything I could about the mysterious, majestic “ghost cats,” with their tawny fur, striking Gen X-worthy facial hair, silent stealth, deadly strength, and ridiculously cute spotted kittens. I even started my own novel about one (the first of too many unfinished manuscripts to come). I had feline fever in general – the cat child to grow up into the cat lady. But I was particularly drawn to pumas, in part because they are the only big cat found in multiple areas of the United States, but mostly because one of the places they have long thrived is California. I am a third-generation Cali girl who was abducted by my parents and relocated to a small Midwestern town when I was just four years old. Panthers were my people; I went to the library and visited them in books.
It took me four decades to come back home. Just a few years after my return, LA welcomed another new resident, this one with a Los Angeles Times front-page story: a mountain lion rather dorkily named P22. The P stood for puma, one of the many names given to Puma concolor. The number indicated his ranking in a study of his breed taking place in the Santa Monica Mountains. Except this handsome fellow wasn’t with the rest of his kind in the hills between the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific Ocean: He was in the middle of Griffith Park.
Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation spoke at the P22 celebration.
Over the next 10 years P22 became a cause celebre and a celebrity. Instead of freaking out about an apex predator in their midst, Angelenos rallied around this cat of mystery who somehow snuck through suburbs and across multilane interstates and past In-N-Out Burgers to shack up in a park that’s ample for humans but litter-box-sized for a big cat. Amazingly, for a decade, he sustained himself on park deer and the occasional house pet and koala – a long life for a cougar. The world rallied around P22. He became the poster kitty for the preservation of this imperiled population of pumas, his image used to raise funds for the biggest wildlife crossing in the world, now being built across Highway 101.
Like so many of us, I watched all the stories about his sightings and misadventures, his sickness and his chihuahua snacks. I even got to write one of those stories, for LMU Magazine, interviewing Beth Pratt – the National Wildlife Federation organizer and writer who has led the efforts to create the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, and Jeff Sikich, one of the NPS rangers leading the study that gave P22 his moniker.
I knew that at 12 years old, P22 had probably lived out eight of his nine lives. So I wasn’t shocked in December when he was found in a back yard in Los Feliz, injured from a car crash, emaciated, dying. Still, I cried when I heard he was euthanized. And I wept a couple times yesterday, at the celebration in the park that was his home.
The sold-out event featured speeches from Pratt, Sikich, and many of the scientists, activists, artists, citizens, politicians and schoolchildren who loved him, including the musician Diplo, representatives Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu, and actors Rainn Wilson and Julia Butters. It was so LA. And I loved it. With people – okay, mostly women – dressed in cat ears and tails, I felt a little like I was at Cougar ComiCon. Like I had found my clan.
The Tokens perform “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Sure the event was sappy, goofy, long. Exhibit A: The descendants of the Tokens played their hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” But the overall message was important and timely. As Sikich said, this wasn’t just a memorial for a Hollywood star: it was a “celebration of coexistence.” That was the theme sounded over and over, that there is no such thing as wild, as one speaker remarked; “it’s all home.” As Salazar said, we have to move from a policy of extermination to a “policy of living in harmony.”
Cougars have always symbolized the place of my birth to me, but I would never have imagined that one would become the most famous animal since Lassie, as P22 was called, in the years of my homecoming. The king of Griffith Park is dead, but long live the mark he made on the world – including an in-progress safe passage for his kin and other animals, and a changed understanding of human’s relationship to our fellow animals.
He was a handsome, mysterious, Hollywood recluse who kept mostly to himself except sometimes at night, when Ring alerts would warn that he was lurking in driveways. He was a loner by force, maybe by choice. He was a bit of a bad boy, probably dining on koala at the Los Angeles Zoo one night, definitely making off with a pet chihuahua recently. P22, the world’s most famous mountain lion, was a magnificent animal. When I heard that he had been euthanized today, I wept.
Illustration by Matthew Twombly for LMU Magazine
I wrote about my lifelong infatuation with panthers a couple years ago for LMU Magazine. P22 was the poster boy for the endangered Santa Monica Mountains population. He was the rare Hollywood political beast who effected real change: The saga of his voyage to and isolated plight in Griffith Park captivated people around the globe. Because of him, and the tireless advocacy of people like Beth Pratt at Save LA Cougars and biologists Jeff Sikich and Seth Riley, the world’s biggest wildlife crossing is currently being built across Highway 101. It will hopefully not only prevent animals from being hit as they cross this dangerous roadway; most importantly, it will offer a connection between the animals that are stranded on the west side of the 101 — and are facing extinction through in-breeding — with the larger, healthier population to the north and east.
Pratt wrote a moving eulogy to the animal she dubbed “the Brad Pitt of the cougar world”; you can read it here. As she says, P22 taught us how wild animals and humans can coexist — until he was hit by a car, that is. Injuries sustained from that and a series of other ailments forced his caretakers to make the heartbreaking decision to put him down. He lived an unusually long life for a puma: 12 years. But that he lost his life in part because of a moving vehicle is especially tragic — and so LA.
Hopefully his heritage will not just be his individual fame, but a recognition of the magnificence of all these American felines — and of their vulnerability. Goodbye P22. Pass gently over the rainbow bridge, and apologize to the koala and chihuahua!
Little by little. I keep telling myself that. Take it slow. Patience is not this patient’s virtue. I want to run, dive, swim underwater as long as I can hold my breath, and then do the crawl straight out to the horizon until I don’t feel the cold of the Pacific anymore. That’s my usual mode of immersion — well, okay, I do more of a shuffle-for-stingrays than a run. But lately, nothing has been usual.
My biggest fear about having surgery was not being able to swim. You might as well lock me up in a dungeon if you are going to deprive me of water. It’s my exercise, meditation, therapy, habit, and habitat. Keep me on land too long, and I dry out like a slug.
So when I first stuck my toes back in the Pacific after four weeks of exile, I could feel my flesh rehydrating. As I walked gingerly through the wash, the life force ran up my legs to electro-charge my failing heart and douse my brain with dopamine. Two days later, when I had worked up the courage to submerge, I lifted my feet from the earth and lay my body horizontal on salt water. The pain in my core vanished. Freedom from gravity, from the planet’s pull on mass, from the weight of the upper half of my body stacked on the lower half, released my poor, pulverized nerves. The cold Cabrillo water, with its healing salt crystals, worked its medicinal magic. I had been worried that swimming could hurt me, but instead — like it always does — it was my cure.
When I returned to shore from my first wade in the water, a shiny white object beckoned from the wet sand. I thought at first it was a shell, but it turned out to be a different piece of animal: the bone of the top bill of an aquatic fowl, like a duck. Of course, there aren’t generally ducks in the ocean. Gulls, herons, cormorants, pelicans, egrets, sandpipers, and willets — the local species — all have very differently shaped beaks. The mystery bone is a strange, macabre gift but beautiful: delicate, ivory, dotted with pinhole calligraphy. Another masterpiece by Mother Nature.
[I wrote this several days ago, before I flew to Wisconsin. I’ve become an even worse blogger than diarist: I don’t always upload what I put in my journal. This post is for my incredible students in Nature Writing. Somehow, despite Zoom, we created a community that was welcoming, supportive, and entertaining. I thank our Waldens for giving us sanctuary and freedom.]
We’ve arrived late and mishap has preceded us. A helicopter hovers over Point Fermin, sequel to the sirens we heard earlier. Another body rescue, or recovery, I presume. Did they fall, jump, or were they pushed? A month or so ago, a young man and woman — the ages of my students — were found at the bottom of the cliffs. It wasn’t known if it was a double suicide, a murder suicide, or a selfie gone horribly wrong. These bluffs are treacherous. The crumbling sandstone shifts constantly. Most city folks don’t understand this natural terrain. It’s illegal to climb the cliffs, but ever since the internet discovered Sunken City, urban explorers and teenage taggers come here in droves. Followed by sirens and helicopters.
It’s the last week of the semester. I’ve become a lousy, erratic diarist. My early enthusiasm for journaling was displaced by all the other urgent concerns of my multitasking identities.
Or I just failed to prioritize me again.
Coming here and writing about nature was my refuge when the year started. I felt like I found my center, my safe place, my sweet spot — after a year of so much horror. The tide pools were my muse. I had purpose again.
So, where did my love go?
It’s still here. I sit down and immediately the words pour out. Poor Alex whines at me to get a move on: “The tide is rising. It’s windy. It’s cold. It’s boring.” I bribe him with doggie treats and scribble furiously.
I am so grateful for this class, this project, this Walden. When we began, the pandemic was still raging. Our country was in chaos. It seemed like 2021 was just going to be 2020 prolonged.
But peace, and vaccines, and health, and spring came. I’ve gone beyond hope to happiness.
Maybe, I stopped needing to write. But I haven’t stopped wanting to. And I won’t stop writing, again.
The helicopter is gone. At the old Spanish wall a man is trying to fly a trash bag tied to a string. Four surfers wait in vain for their waves. Tonight a “pink” moon is supposed to rise with the sunset. Maybe, I’ll come back then.
Post Script: The moon is/was spectacular. We watched it from the living room. It’s not pink, or even orange: It is white, bright like the sun. It lit up the eastern sky and the ocean below. I can see it now, peeking out over the neighbor’s roof. It will probably slip around to the west window over our bed and wake us up in the wee hours, as it likes to do. I don’t mind.
A drum circle and fire jugglers greeted the moon down at the beach, just like in the old days. The unusual is becoming usual again.
And now, the third helicopter of the evening. According to the citizen journalists of Facebook, there was a suicide at the lighthouse. For some, the rising comes too late.
Whales aren’t the only creatures in the harbor these days. The port is full of birds: grebes, gulls, cormorants, herons, willets, coots, terns, hawks. It’s an ornithological orgy. The other morning we watched an osprey snatch a fish out of shallow waters, shadowed by gulls. Last year, a rare black swan was wandering inner Cabrillo Beach. Native to Australia, it had probably escaped years ago from some suburban farm or millionaire estate; our birder neighbor excitedly explained it might be the same one he had spied years ago. Another day, the neighbor and my son caught a guinea fowl across the street — also probably an agrarian runaway. And one day, and one day only, there were a pair of pea hens on our roof — migrants from nearby White Point, where they are as common as squirrels.
Source: The Daily World
Surf scoters are among the most populous winter birds. There are whole families of these ducks floating just downstream from the cargo ships and cranes. The males are mostly black as oil, with pure white patches on the front and back of their heads matching their white eyes. Their bills are like Halloween masks: a great big bumpy honker decorated in black, white and orange. It’s a beak that makes a statement, a blinking beacon.
But my favorite thing about the surf scoter is the sound of the wind beneath its wings. When a scoter takes flight, the rapid pumping of his wings makes an incredible high-pitched whistling noise. It’s a sound as animated as the bird’s bill, straight out of a Carl Stalling cartoon soundtrack. I love it when I’m out there on the kayak and suddenly I hear that “whor-whor-whor-whor.” The surf scoter’s flight is all sound and fury; for all the racket, they barely rise above the water and usually stop 100 yards from where they stopped, where they resume fishing for mussels and herring.
Until they’re ready for summer vacation, that is. Surf scoters are snow birds. They winter along both coasts, in warmer climates like San Pedro Bay. Come summer, they fly home to the Arctic, where they nest, give birth, molt, and fly south again. For birds, and butterflies, and whales, and so many animals, home is not a singular place; homes are seasonal. They know nothing of borders or passports, but they know how to fly hundreds, if not thousands of miles, from one side of the equator to the other, year after year. I envy their nationless identity and freedom of motion. What a wonderful world it can be.
The whales are back. I saw the boats before I saw the beasts: the harbor cruises all making a quick buck by never even having to venture out to sea to satisfy the looky-lous. I knew by the way the boats were just sitting there, inside the jetty, that the grays were on their migration back north, mothers and calfs and yearlings ducking into the relatively safe harbor of the port of Los Angeles to escape orcas, find some shallow grub, and scrape off a few barnacles. Sure enough, a heart-shaped wisp appeared in between two power boats. Thar she blows.
There were hundreds of birds on the breakwater near the Angels Gate lighthouse.
It’s a thrill to see a whale up close. I’m as guilty of enjoying it as anyone. I was out there Sunday morning, right where the tour boats had been. Only I maintain a respectful distance in my kayak — 100 yards is the law — with no noisy engine or toxic fumes disturbing the environment. You really don’t have to chase them: If you are patient and calm, they will probably, eventually come to you.
That happened Sunday. I got there early and paddled out alone, stopping to photograph birds on buoys, to sip my coffee and pour a ceremonial cetacean offering in the bay. I saw blows pretty much right away, but I also saw the paddleboarders and boats that were already crowding the whales. So I stayed in my lane, aiming toward the lighthouse. Pausing in the middle to see if my friend Laurie was catching up, I heard it: the exhale of a whale surfacing to breathe. It was a few hundred feet to the north, but I could see its white back. Immediately I heard another blow, the same distance south. Their surfacing seemed so timed I assumed they were traveling together, probably a mother and child. They passed on either side, heading inland, and I kept paddling toward the ocean.
Laurie caught up with me just before the lighthouse, right after a third whale surfaced in front of us. She doesn’t believe in stopping for whales, and I followed her to the open water, where it was suprisingly calm, more so than in San Pedro Bay. Maybe we should have kayaked on the outside, I thought. But ironically, it’s a lot harder to see a whale out here in the wild than in one of the world’s busiest harbors, at least in the spring.
We had just started paddling back when a whale surfaced in front of a nearby fishing boat. We stopped, and I managed to shoot it in slow motion on my iPhone, though we were too far away for a clear image. It dove, and we stayed motionless, drifting slowly in with the current. They can’t go very deep in the shallow bay so they usually don’t stay under long, unless they are running away.
I was sitting with my camera ready when suddenly the water bubbled a few yards in front of me, and I was looking right at a baby gray whale. It was so close that I had to drop the phone in my lap and paddle backwards so as not to drift over it. I brake for whales. It lay on the surface in front of me, a perfect recently born calf, white as a sheet. Then it bowed its head, diving down again, giving me a full body view from baleen to fluke. I was giddy with laughter, stoned on cetacean: it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and I feel like it came to me, checked me out, and went on its way — I did not give chase.
It surfaced a couple more times, close but not that close. Laurie had paddled away, surfing the wake of a passing boat in her slender sit-inside kayak. She does not like to get close to the whales and feels like we are intruding on them. I respect her opinion, especially since she is a first-nation American. But I feel differently. These whales choose a busy harbor for their day care center and rest area. They are clearly curious about humans — I’ve had several close encounters in the the three years they’ve been visiting San Pedro Bay — and I think we should treat them as old friends who are returning to waters that were once full of whales, before human hunters wiped them out. I think we should welcome them back, give them their space, and help and protect them. Don’t run toward them, but don’t run from them either.
I have heard different versions of why they have been coming to the harbor the last three years: there has been extensive pollution mitigation there and they may feel like it is safer than it was for decades. They may also be starving and looking for food; they have appeared emaciated, and some were found dead in the unusual mortality event of 2019. But I also know that scientists have observed some of the same whales from previous years returning. So when I see them, I like to think of them as old friends. Sharing the water with these magnificent, gentle creatures, as we must share the planet, never gets old.
Populism 