Outside magazine, July 1997
Dark Behind It Rose the Forest ...
Into the beautiful Angeles we go, into the most dangerous national forest in America
By Randall Sullivan
Arrests are common in
Angeles National Forest
I'm barely half a mile from the Foothill Freeway, looking over my left shoulder at the gorgeous lie that is Los Angeles after a rainfall. I steal a parting glance toward the most magnificent racetrack in America, laid out in geometric verdure, its lush grounds fringed with palm fronds that wear sunlight like a coat of lacquer. I can't see the hyacinths blooming, but I know they are, in a hundred festive colors.
The government-green Ford Bronco in which I am riding (the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun hard against my thigh) continues its climb up Santa Anita Canyon Road along a center divider growing philodendrons with leaves the size of elephant ears. On each side of the road between cross streets with names like Hacienda and El Vista are low-slung, ranch-style homes. The lawns are so perfect they look as if they should be maintained not with mowers but with vacuum cleaners. In every other yard stands an orange or lemon tree, heavy with fruit. A white picket fence, freshly painted, surrounds the last house.
Just beyond, the road is straddled by a scabrous steel gate that closes each evening at 10 p.m. We pass through and enter a wide curve where I lean into a deadfall drop, looking down on red tile roofs and kidney-shaped swimming pools. The Bronco is still in second gear, but there's an abrupt sense of acceleration — almost of time travel — as the landscape is transformed in an instant....