The Walk

The arrival of spring had endowed Runyon Canyon with thick, new greenery, rendering the park nearly unrecognizable. I had to stop to gather my bearings at multiple points, because I found the newly wild and fecund path to be unfamiliar and strange.

The trail has recently suggested itself as an allegory of the years of my life: the easy stroll of my childhood, leading to the fierce ascent of my twenties, and then the stunning, revelatory vistas of the present day. Fittingly, I used to get winded hiking the park, but now my lungs and legs can easily traverse the hill without upset or complaint.

Runyon Canyon is an off-leash park, so grinning canines roamed the park with glee, willfully ignoring the voices of their masters to sniff at other dogs and root in the dirt. The air was thick with orange butterflies, twirling around in pairs. A hawk circled in the sky above me, the air crackling under the force of of its wings, as it swooped so low I could reach for its tail.

I walked into the park exactly an hour before sunset, which meant that as I climbed to the peak, I saw the entire city from above, thrown into sharp relief by the fading light. The first street lamps had just lit up, jewel-like in their color and radiance. At the top, I paused to remember how overwhelmed I was by Los Angeles when I first moved to the city as a film student, and how tame and pretty and small it seemed in the twilight.

By then, the sky was plummeting into a dark lavender. As I began the climb down, negotiating the sand and rocks and brush, a tall, young woman climbed past, smiling at me. It was a particular kind of smile that I’ve come to recognize from female strangers: the kind of smile that suggests that she knows something you don’t.

At that moment, as with the others, I had to wonder what that something could be.