Container Habitats

Cool Casitas

Some cool bungalows in Eagle Rock and a couple of Eichler homes in Thousand Oaks. See; Native California landscaping, minimal design, classic trucks.

Micro World of a Macro Park

River Meanderings, Near and Far

Two rivers, the Colorado and the Los Angeles, at their beginnings. One gave life to the arid pueblo of LA in 1781 and the other has helped to keep it alive in recent decades and now both are seen as integral to the survival of culture, place, and life in the West.

The main fork of the Colorado begins inside of Canyonlands National Park where the Green and Colorado meet at a powerful place known simply as the the confluence, from there it carves through the cavernous walls of Cataract Canyon bound for the Grand Canyon and eventually the Gulf of California. The LA river becomes el Rio when Arroyo Calabasas and Bell Creek converge at present day Canoga Park High School, there it begins its  roughly 50 mile journey to the Pacific at Long Beach.

Both rivers have been greatly transformed by the pour of concrete, the LA probably most famous for the straight jacket it received from the Army Core of Engineers in the late 1930s in response to major flooding, the pour that forms the concrete peninsula at the headwaters was one of the largest concrete pours in the West. And the Colorado was forever altered when the Hoover dam was constructed and then dealt an almost lethal blow when the Bureau of Reclamation damned that wild river again when it built the Glen Canyon dam in the 1960's, eventually more dams and more diversions downstream made it so that the water couldn't even reach the sea as it had for thousands of years. However, both rivers are seeing more and more defenders rise up and call for the removal of concrete and the return of the wildlife. Fortunately, there has been some reassuring news floating around and for the first time in many years the US released water back into the Colorado near the US/ Mexico border so that it could flow again all the way to the Sea of Cortez and water the once fertile fresh water fingers and lagoons before it reaches the ocean where the people of Northern Mexico used to fish and live off the river. And this weekend the Recreation Zone along the LA river is open again for the season allowing anybody to access the water without getting a permit or signing up for a paid trip. With major development and restoration planned along its banks some are concerned that we will choose major up-scale development over restoration for wildlife and increased park access for the residents that already live along its banks.

What will we choose? Or as Ed Abbey might ask, what are we willing to fight for?

Abbey writes, in  The Damnation of a Canyon:

     "I take a dim view of dams; I find it hard to learn to love concrete; I am poorly impressed by concrete aggregates and statistics in the cubic tons. But in this weakness I am not alone, for I belong to that ever-growing number of Americans, probably a good majority now, who have become aware that a fully industrialized, thoroughly urbanized, elegantly computerized social system is not suitable for human habitation. Great for machines, yes. But unfit for people."

Watch Peter McBrides audio slideshow on the state of the Colorado here from Orion.

Rewilding

Rewilding, I just love the sound of that word. And what it stands for. The definition of which depends on who you ask, and if you ask George Monbiot he will tell you that it involves bringing back extinct mega fauna like the Rhinoceros to England, and taking advantage of the large swaths of land that will be becoming available as farmers retreat and forests regenerate all over the Northern hemisphere. He also asserts the importance of large scale restoration and then stepping back, letting nature determine what ecosystems are supposed to look like and how they should function is a course we may want to try, soon. He goes on during his provocative Ted talk, asking the audience to imagine leaving huge areas of the ocean unfished so that all of the whales and the billions of krill and all of the organisms could swim and splash unmolested like they had for hundreds of thousands of years before we interrupted. These notions I can certainly agree with and rally behind, I believe, as does Monbiot, that even today we can accomplish much by establishing larger preserves and making sure that existing ones are connected through a variety of corridors. Here in southern California it means native plant yards and green rooftops that act as urban corridors. These small efforts combined with the larger more dynamic ones such as taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of the LA river flood channel and making it more inviting to wildlife through proper landscaping and corridor placement. Thus creating networks of paths and corridors for birds, butterflies and creatures like mountain lions who will then be able to move around the city and avoid major conflict with their two-legged neighbors. Most of the things Monbiot spoke about in his talk are things that I had thought of or have heard from other conservationists, but the the thing I found most intriguing, even more than the idea of bringing back elephants to England, is Monbiot's main argument for the need to Rewild our landscapes.

He makes this argument in his Ted talk and in the recent Jan/ Feb issue of Orion magazine, when asked why so many people seem to be intrigued by his ideas, whether they agree with him or not, he answers;

"My sense is that people like me are ecologically bored, that we posses the psychological equipment required to navigate a world that is far more challenging than our own- a world of horns and tusks and fangs and claws. Yet our lives have been reduced to the point at which loading the dishwasher seems to present an interesting challenge."

Well said, and it brings a whole new perspective to the question of whether or not we want to live side by side with wild nature here in greater LA. I've always said that projects like the proposed wildlife corridor over the 101 in Agoura Hills, which is a project inspired by the deaths and inbreeding of mountain lions, is a bridge we need to create not only for the cougars, but for ourselves too. We need to be able to step out of the sterilized concrete world and right back into the primeval one, while we still can.

Art from Orion Magazine by Johan Rosenmunthe

Urban Carnivores

So my roommate Tiffany has a one of the coolest jobs in LA, trapping bobcats in and around Griffith Park. She is assisting UCLA graduate student Laurel Klein trap and take blood from these bobcats, and whatever else they might find in their traps, to see how they are affected by anticoagulants, or the stuff they use in rodent poison. The bobcats, pumas, and coyotes that inhabit these urban mountains have all suffered from secondary poisoning from eating poisoned prey.

For more information on this issue please go to Laurel's site Urban Carnivores.

All of these images were captured by Tiffany Arminta or with motion sensor cameras the girls set up in the Griffith Park area.

Detritus

Can't wait to go and jump into the water!

Don't know who shot this, grabbed image from LA Creek Freak

Big Cats

[Map courtesy of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area]

The always packed with valuable information about the greater Los Angeles area blog LAist has a great post about those often talked about large predators that most of us will never see, the mountain lions. The article really breaks down all of the drama they go through very well, and there's plenty of drama in a Los Angeles mountain lions life. They are very territorial and will sometimes kill their own mate or offspring, which most likely happens more often around here becuase the lions don't have enough space to roam. One of the biggest issues facing them is that there are only a couple of safe corridors for them to pass under or over our freeways. The 118, 101, and 405 keep them from traveling as much as they would like to. These big cats need space and each one has it's own territory. I would hope that Caltrans builds some wildlife corridors soon so that the cats can navigate through this rurban jungle a bit easier. I know that there are some people talking about that happening but I don't know how far it's gone and what will come of that talk anytime soon.
Here's the link for the story.

The Big City

Knapp Park

Went up to Knapp with Toes to try and get some shots.

Griffith Observatory

Some random pics form a trip up to the Griffith Observatory I took awhile back, just thought they looked cool. One of the best places to go in LA, it's got an amazing view of the city, a killer planetarium show, and great hiking trails all around it. I've got so much stuff now that I've been shooting with my D300, it's hard to keep up with all the storage and archiving of images. So from now on I'll be pulling up old images along with the new.

Close to Home

All these images were taken during short hikes that are all very close to home. Sometimes your own backyard can be just as exciting and new as Yosemite or any other grand place in the world. In fact I'd rather shoot somewhere that no one has ever really shot before, and that's why I tend to search out my own little nooks that I find by constantly searching, sometimes all I need to do is walk out the front door.

AI in LA