The Natural Side of Urban Life

One day last week nature guide Nelson Takayama led a band of curious youngsters from East Los Angeles through oak trees, then grassland, then the chaparral of Topanga State Park. The children watched a lizard “doing push-ups” as its method of scaring off intruders, heard why one should not touch poison oak plants, checked out the holes of pocket gophers and learned about plants the Indians once used as food. The outing was part of a plan of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to bring youngsters to the mountains and, in the process, create a new following for urban parks.

On this particular day, the children were from the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks’ summer day camp at the Lou Costello Recreation Center on East Olympic Boulevard. About 40 of them, plus parents and staff members, traveled to Topanga on a school bus provided through a joint city and county recreational transit program. The nature program itself is financed by the conservancy. That state agency also provides similar walks for other groups.

The conservancy’s goal is giving all public schoolchildren in Los Angeles County one trip tothe Santa Monica Mountains during their 12 years of schooling. To do that, the program would have to serve 100,000 youngsters every year. It now has funds for only 20,000 or 25,000 a year. Esther Feldman, who works for the conservancy, believes that the program benefits not only the youngsters who visit the park today but can help the park tomorrow. Only if people know firsthand the advantage of having a park so close to a big city will they support preserving that open space.

The children who visited Topanga last week gathered around Takayama and other nature guides who told them that the park was a “home for animals.” The youngsters danced away from occasional yellow jackets, watched a scrub jay flutter through nearby bushes, saw a woodpecker overhead and saw traces of horses, deer and coyotes that had traveled their dusty trail. They tested “cowboy’s cologne”--the California sagebrush that Indians used for insect repellent.

Rebecca said she liked the Indian food best. Robert favored the lizard. One can only speculate what memories of the day in the mountains they and the others carried home to East Los Angeles.