Revisiting Shangri-La

The ivy-bound woods at the heart of Escondido Canyon hold the ruins of  "a little bit of Shangri-La" that was once Latigo pioneer T.O. McCoye's canyon retreat and garden.

“If we have not found the heaven within, we have not found the heaven without...” 

― James Hilton, Lost Horizon

For the Malibu Post's 2015 Christmas article I shared some memories of the wonderful—and to a small child, utterly enchanting—McCoye tree farm in Latigo Canyon. Last month, I had the opportunity to meet with Arthur Bradley Fowler, T.O. McCoye's grandson. He shared many memories of his grandfather and the amazing ranch that occupied more than 100 acres along Escondido Creek, as well as details about his grandfather's career in real estate in Playa del Rey in the 1920s and 30s, which is the subject of Brad's book T.O. McCoye's Playa del Rey.

That interview became the basis for an article in the Malibu Surfside News, which you can read here. 

In the article I wrote:

Thurlow Orrin McCoye had already enjoyed a long and successful career in real estate when he moved to Malibu in 1959. McCoye, born in 1893, is said to have sold the first lot in Playa del Rey, and opened the community’s first grocery store. His daughter Barbara is credited as the first child born in the newly created town in 1915. For 50 years, McCoye sold real estate in Playa del Rey and Venice, before he purchased more than 100 acres of his own in Latigo Canyon. 

McCoye transformed his Malibu retreat into his own terrestrial paradise, planting a fantastic garden of tropical fruit trees, a grove of redwoods, and building woodland pools and fern grottos. The ranch was also home to a Christmas tree farm, complete with a three-story Christmas tree-shaped tree house, that became part of holiday tradition for local families in the 1960s and ’70s. 

McCoye died in 1981, but many of the exotic trees continue to thrive, and the property is full of reminders of its owner—stone walls, a labyrinth-like spiderweb of rocks, and stones with inspirational messages carved into them—but the property burned during a catastrophic wildfire and the history of the retreat vanished so completely that when the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority acquired 86 acres of the former McCoye property in 2013, Paul Edelman, the MRCA deputy director, was quoted as saying, “No one’s sure exactly who, long ago, created a little bit of a Shangri-La on the property.” 

All throughout the old McCoye property are enigmatic ruins. This one looks enchantingly tower-like but is, more prosaically, the remains of the chimney from an outdoor kitchen. Only stone structures survived the wildfire that swept through the canyon. 

James Hilton's Shangri-La, created in 1933 in the shadow of WW II, was described by its creator as a lantern of knowledge and wisdom, one that could rekindle civilization if the war plunged the world into another dark age.

I learned from Brad Fowler that his grandfather's little bit of local Shangri-La was, in its own way, also made to be a beacon. T.O. McCoye was passionate about organic farming, medicinal herbs, and natural foods, long before they became mainstream. 

Garden walls and stone structures, like this plinth that looks like it may have supported a sundial, offer a tantalizing glimpse of the past.

McCoye dreamed of making his ranch into a botanic garden. Thirty years after his death that dream became, in a way, a reality, and the main portion of the property is preserved, if not as a botanic garden, at least as open space.

There wasn't room in the newspaper to include the photos of the garden that Brad shared with me, but he has kindly given me permission to put them on The Post, so here's a glimpse into that "little bit of Shangri-La."

A message left on these stone steps still holds an invitation to come inside the vanished garden. Here's a closer look:

The words are hard to read, but you can just make out: "Enter and become fugitives from the bondages of routine." It's signed "Marilyn," the name of one of T.O. McCoye's three daughters. 

Here's the rose garden, in full bloom, with the cactus garden beyond it and a field of tall corn in the distance. Photo courtesy of Arthur Bradley Fowler.

The greenhouse, sheltered by a pine grove, once housed exotic plants. Photo courtesy of Arthur Bradley Fowler.

And there, dear reader, is the Christmas tree farm and the tree house that made such an impression on me as a child. For me, and for the other children who visited, it was definitely Shangri-La, with the North Pole mixed in for good measure, and it remains a much-loved memory. I suspect that old Mr. McCoye would have liked that. Photo courtesy of Arthur Bradley Fowler.

Brad Fowler's book about his grandfather, T.O. McCoye's Playa Del Rey: the Homes, the Views, the People, Circa 1920s and 1930s, is available via Amazon, and offers a fascinating look at a lost chapter in Los Angeles history through dozens of his grandfather's photos and a fantastic collection of ephemera, but it doesn't include the Malibu years (despite the headline of the Surfside News article).  

It's alarming how fast local history vanishes, but at least in this instance, visitors to Weintraub Family Park, as it is called now, will still come away from the experience with memories of a little bit of Shangri-La, regardless of the name attached to it. And thanks to the Conservancy, T.O. McCoye's garden retreat will continue to welcome fugitives from the routine and ordinary world.  

Going Coastal

The California Coastal Act ensures that the public has the right to enjoy a  day at the beach, but according to news reports, including this article in the Los Angeles Times, some members of the Coastal Commission—the agency created by the Coastal Act to protect the coast—have reportedly sold out to developer interests and are attempting a coup. All photos @ 2016 S. Guldimann, unless otherwise noted.

So many key environmental issues have been in play in the first weeks of 2016 that it's hard to keep up without a scorecard, but the biggest news story here in Malibu is the revelation that  development and energy industry lobbyists are reportedly working to get California Coastal Commission Executive Director Charles Lester replaced with someone less committed to upholding the Coastal Act and more amenable to massive development. 

In the January 20 Los Angeles Times, reporter Tony Barboza wrote: "Members of the California Coastal Commission are moving to fire its executive director, touching off a fierce debate over the commission's recent shift in favor of more development along the state's 1,000-mile shore."

The article in the L.A. Times suggests strongly that the move to get rid of Lester is coming directly from Governor Jerry Brown and his commission appointees.

That would be ironic, since Brown signed the California Coastal Act into law in 1976.

"The move to oust Lester, a low-key but conservation-minded attorney who has headed the agency since 2011, is being led by pro-development members of the panel, including Gov. Jerry Brown's four appointees, said people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly," the L.A. Times article states.

The coastal zone generally extends just 1000 yards inland from the mean high tide line, but in significant coastal estuarine habitat and recreational areas it reaches inland to the first major ridgeline or five miles from the mean high tide line, whichever is less. In Malibu, the coastal zone includes much of the Santa Monica Mountains, and it's a major reason why areas like this portion of Corral Canyon are parkland and not golf courses and country clubs like the one Bob Hope was going to build here in the 1980s.

Surfrider Foundation spokesperson Stefanie Sekich-Quinn told the Times that the move is "a power grab in an attempt to undermine the integrity of the coastal program, gain control over an independent staff and make the commission more developer-friendly without any public accountability or transparency."

"It's about turning control of the coast over to development interests," Longtime Malibu resident and former Coastal Commissioner Sara Wan told the Malibu Post.

The California Coastal Commission's mission is officially "To protect, conserve, restore, and enhance the environment of the California coastline." Ensuring public access to the coast and habitat conservation is the Coastal Commission's prime directive—something some commissioners appear to have temporarily forgotten.

Although this drama is being played out on the state stage, it has a direct and significant impact on Malibu, where the Coastal Commission is often the final arbitrator on challenging development and access issues, and has been a key part of the battle to restrain out of control development and preserve public open space.

It's not the first time development interests have tried to oust the Coastal Commission's executive director, but previous attempts have rarely been quite so blatant.

The California Coastal Commission was established by the Coastal Act, Proposition 20, in 1972, and later made permanent by the Legislature through adoption of the California Coastal Act of 1976. 

Protecting endangered and threatened coastal species like this snowy plover is another major commission responsibility. Developers and energy industry lobbyists are far from being endangered species and are not supposed to receive special consideration.

The agency plans and regulates the use of land and water in the coastal zone—the entire California seashore 1000 yards inland from the mean high tide in urban areas, and as much as 5 miles inland in biologically significant areas, including coastal mountain ranges like the Santa Monicas.

All development activities—construction of buildings, division of land, and any plan that changes land use intensity or public access to coastal waters, requires a coastal permit from either the Coastal Commission or the local government.

Here in Malibu the CCC weighs in primarily on beach access and residential development issues, but the commission has broad powers that include all development activities along the coast, including major ports like San Pedro.

In Malibu, the city council responsible for drafting a Local Coastal Program for the new municipality in the 1990s, dug in their heels and refused to cooperate. The commission eventually drafted a plan for us, but most governments opt to develop their own LCP, which is then submitted to the commission for certification.

Once an LCP is in place, a city can issue its own coastal permits, but projects in the appealable coastal zone can still be appealed to the Coastal Commission, a tool often used by activists and neighbors to contest a controversial project as a a court of last resort. 

The Commission is quasi-judicial, and is supposed to be independent. The twelve voting members are appointed, four each by the governor, the Senate Rules Committee, and the Speaker of the Assembly. Half of the voting members are locally elected officials, and half are appointed from "the public at large." Three additional ex officio (non-voting) members represent the Resources Agency, the California State Transportation Agency, and the State Lands Commission. The current roster can be found here.

The Coastal Commission meets in different communities up and down the coast throughout the year, reminding me of a modern day version of the royal progress or some kind of medieval council. Image: the Council of Clermont, from the Livre des Passages d'Outre-mer, of c. 1474, via Wikipedia

Every month, the commission and its staff, and all the project applicants and their legal counsel and consultants and lobbyists, and the activists opposing their projects and their experts and advisors and lobbyists, and the local officials and their staff, and all the concerned members of the public, gather in one of the coastal cities for the monthly meeting, moving up and down the coast throughout the year. It reminds the Malibu Post of the medieval court on progress across the kingdom or the empire, only much less grand. Meetings take place in city halls or hotel conference rooms, and instead of rich brocades and jewels, it's business clothes and smartphones.

Unfortunately, if the Los Angeles Times article is correct, the situation at moment resembles a different aspect of medieval life. Image: 1225-1249, France. 

While the commission makes the decisions, the commissioners rely heavily on their staff to review plans, and make findings and recommendations. They also rely on the public to bring issues before them, through appeal or public comment. Although executive director doesn't sound important, it is. This is the person who steers the ship and makes sure it follows the course set by the Coastal Act, the law that governs the commission.

According to the Coastal Commission website, The Coastal Act includes specific policies that address issues such as shoreline public access and recreation, lower cost visitor accommodations, terrestrial and marine habitat protection, visual resources, landform alteration, agricultural lands, commercial fisheries, industrial uses, water quality, offshore oil and gas development, transportation, development design, power plants, ports, and public works.

That's a lot of power, and it is power that is intended to be used to protect coastal resources and ensure that the public has access to our coast. Because, thanks to the grassroots effort that gathered the signatures and passed the Coastal Act, the California coast belongs to the public, not to the corporate interests and wealthy individuals who would otherwise monopolize it. 

It's not a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination, but it helps. Anyone who doubts that should take a look at Malibu's future in the alternative universe where the Coastal Act didn't pass. Here's a glimpse, courtesy of a 1970 Los Angeles Times article that proclaims "Urban Sprawl Closes in on Malibu Isolation!"

A 1970 Los Angeles Times headline warns of a future that mercifully never fully came to pass, in large part because we were able to pass the Coastal Act.

"A population of 150,000—12 times what is is now—is planned for the Malibu area," the Times author reported. "With it will come the traffic, school and other problems which plague the more populated sections of the county."

The article points out that of the 26 miles of coastline from Ventura County to the Los Angeles city limits, only "about six are publicly owned although not fully developed for recreational usage."

The Coastal Commission, and its executive director are supposed to be committed to upholding the Coastal Act. Their purpose is to prevent any more of the coast from being transformed from the scene in this photo to the one below.

In Malibu, much of the ugliest development slipped through in the late 1980s, when the Coastal Commission was still finding its direction and before our community was successfully able to break away from the county and incorporated. We're still living with the aftermath of that era. It's a reminder that we need checks and balances, and a fair hearing when a problematic project needs to be appealed.

"A heavy demand—other than residential—is being placed on Malibu's coastline," the article states. "Proposals in the works include an off-shore causeway to carry the freeway, a nuclear power plant and a marina...no constructive thought has been given to preserving Malibu's rural charm and at the same time providing large blocks of open space for future generations. Planning for the area seems topsy turvy."

That may be the understatement of the past century. But the author was wrong on at least one major point. Constructive thought was being given to the future of the coast, just not by the developers. Take the name Malibu out of the article and it could have been just about any coastal town—San Clemente ended up with the nuclear power plant in its backyard,  Marina del Rey and Oxnard got the marinas. The causeway mercifully sank under the weight of engineering costs, but the struggle against coastal exploitation was going on everywhere.

Things could be a lot worse in Malibu, but we still face issues that require Coastal Commission intervention, like enforcing beach access, protecting public views, finding ways to cope with coastal erosion and sea level rise, and protecting open space—problems that are too big for our city, or any coastal city, to manage without oversight.

The L.A. Times article stated that Los Angeles County Superintendent Burton Chase, and his deputy for the Malibu area, Robert Potwin, "Admit they look to the chamber and the realtors for guidance on community affairs," instead of to the residents or the public. 

That attitude and the push for insane projects like the freeway through Malibu Canyon, fueled the battle for a separate Malibu city, enabling this community to eventually charter its own future to some degree, but we still need the Coastal Commission to help us meet our goals and keep us on track. That's why it's so important to have a Coastal Commission executive director who serves the Coastal Act, not the lobbyists. 

Like communities up and down the coast, the city of Malibu needs a fair, unbiased Coastal Commission to help it meet the goals of its mission statement and the requirements of the Coastal Act. If a pro-development climate has truly begun to pervade this agency in the way the Los Angeles Times article suggests, then maybe it's time to take a closer look at the six elected officials who sit on this panel. For those of us in the South District, that's Long Beach City Councilmember Roberto Uranga, but the full list with contact info is available here. A gentle reminder that the executive director isn't the only official who can be removed might be timely.

If energy and other development interests are given control of the agency that enforces that act, it's a loss not just for the people of California, but for the global fight against over exploitation of natural resources.

The executive director's fate will be decided on February 9, at Coastal Commission hearing in Morro Bay. 

Comments can be emailed to the commission at:

StatusOfExecutiveDirector@coastal.ca.gov. 

There's also a Change.org petition in support of Lester.

"Save Our Coast" was the slogan for the signature-gathering effort to put the California Coastal Act on the ballot, and it's still a relevant rallying cry.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

A ghostly image of ornaments evokes Christmas past in this detail of a Kodachrome slide shot by my father, circa 1970.

Christmas is nearly here, and the frenetic bustle of the season is shifting into high gear.  At the Malibu Post that includes finding and decorating our Christmas tree this year, a tradition that was left to the eleventh hour.

For years, my family had a succession of live Christmas trees in pots. Some of the early ones grew into massive trees, others flourished in their pots for years, carted into the house in December and back to the garden in January. However, the most recent specimen didn’t fair well during the drought. Last year, my mom and I purchased the first cut tree we’ve had in a long time.

In a spirit of carpe diem, we purchased the Christmas tree equivalent of a butterfly chrysalis—a fir neatly cocooned in a sort of string hammock. Alas, it didn’t look large at the tree lot, but once it was freed, it expanded like mild-mannered Bruce Banner transforming into the Incredible Hulk. 

The unexpectedly enormous 2014 Christmas tree looms like Charles Dicken's jovial giant Ghost of Christmas Present.

Furniture went flying. The cat and dog, forgetting the rivalry between their species in the terror of the moment, both attempted to hide behind a smallish Celtic harp. I abandoned my mother as she grappled with the massive tree and leapt to rescue the toppling instrument instead.

Fully unfolded, our seven-foot noble fir ended up being nearly as wide as it was tall. It looked lovely when we finished decorating it, but there was no way of avoiding the fact that it is like having Charles Dickens’ giant Ghost of Christmas Present in residence in the living room, and it gave me a shock of surprise every time I saw it, even though the animals completely forgot that they were afraid of it, and spent the rest of the festive season competing for who got to sit directly under it.

We didn’t know then that it would be the dog's last Christmas. This year is tinged with sadness, despite the presence of a new dog in our lives—an endearing but mannerless beast adopted a month ago from the Downey Animal Shelter. She’s a far cry from her dignified, saintly predecessor, a lifetime member of the Order of Good Dogs.

This dog has not yet learned that cats are not edible, and is new to the concept of house dog, necessitating a smaller and preferably higher up and out-of-reach Christmas tree, however disappointing that may be to the feline contingent.

Recalling the Adventure of the Noble Fir and contemplating a more Charlie Brown’s Christmas-sized tree made us think about the ghosts of Christmas trees past here at The Malibu Post, and the first trees I remember came from the long forgotten McCoye Christmas Tree Farm in Latigo Canyon.

The author, her big brothers, and the family dog pose in front of a live McCoye Ranch Christmas tree, circa 1972 or '73. You can see the edge of the large pot holding the roots on the left. My brothers remember helping my dad dig the tree out of the ground at the Escondido Canyon Ranch once the family made their selection. I was too little to do more than get under foot. 

Thurlow Orin McCoye—better known as T.O.—was born in 1893 and made a fortune in real estate in Playa Del Rey in the 1920s and 30s, selling land during the first housing boom, and moving on to homes and oil leases. McCoye bought a large piece of undeveloped land in Escondido Canyon in the late 1950s, where he planted fruit orchards and a fabulous garden of tropical plants.

No trace remains of the Christmas tree farm at the old McCoye Ranch, and even the name is forgotten—the property, now parkland administered by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, is officially named Weintraub Family Park, for the developer who sold it to the Conservancy, but many of the trees planted by the original owner still survive, including evergreens like the ones sold to local families at Christmas time in the 1960s and '70s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, McCoye grew and sold Christmas trees. It was indescribably exciting to walk into that miniature forest, smelling the exhilarating tang of pine and looking for just the right tree, i.e., the biggest one we thought we could talk our parents into buying.

A sort of hippy commune on the ranch provided cheerful if haphazard assistance with the long, hot, difficult job of digging up the trees and stuffing them in or on top of the car. 

There's a Sleeping Beauty fairytale quality to the old McCoye Ranch. Something of the same magic I felt as a child is still present, a sort of exhilaration that comes from stepping outside of the everyday world and into something extraordinary.

However, the highlight was a visit to the three-story tree-house, shaped like a stylized Christmas tree and decorated with round, colored plastic windows that were illuminated from the inside to resemble Christmas tree balls. Inside of this green-painted plywood folly were two steep ladders.

I was only allowed to go up to the second level, but my big brothers were permitted to climb the ladder to the forbidden third level, where you could look out through the red plastic window and see a strange pink landscape spread out below. 

Old Mr McCoy always said “next year you will be big enough to go up there, too.” I was convinced that climbing to that third level was somehow an extraordinary experience on the level of climbing through the wardrobe into Narnia, but I never had the chance to find out. I was, alas, never old enough or big enough.

Stone walls and the old ranch road are just about all that remains of the old McCoye Ranch in Escondido Canyon. The property is an essential link in the Pacific Slope Trail and is preserved as open space. 

The farm closed and later burned. After McCoye’s death in 1981, the property was at the center of a legal battle between his daughters and his caregivers. Eventually it was sold. After years of half-baked development plans that at one point included a conference center and self-catered vacation yurts, the property was purchased by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in 2013. 

I suspect that Mr McCoye might have liked the idea of yurts. He had a grand vision for his farm and the gift of blarney. His trees came with assurances that they would thrive and grow and bring luck upon the house and long life. Ours invariably died, but they came with memories that continue to live on even after the trees and the man who sold them have been forgotten for decades.

Old Mr McCoye always wanted the property to be a botanic garden, open to the public. More than 30 years after his death, his wish has been realized in part.

Although the gardens are neglected and overgrown, and the tree house that so fascinated me as a small child is long gone, many of McCoye’s trees are still there, having survived devastating fire and continued to thrive. Among the oaks are redwoods and pines, still fragrant with the scent of holiday enchantment.

A message left behind on a secluded garden bench reads: "His strength is the rock on which our fears are shattered into nothing." The inscription is signed "T.O. Mc."

I couldn’t find a single photo of the tree farm, but there is a Youtube video of McCoye’s grandson recalling the Escondido Ranch in its heyday. You can watch it here:

For several years after the McCoye Tree Farm closed, my family purchased cut trees from the tree lot in front of the Colony Market, and later, from in front of the Market Basket grocery store, located where the Malibu Village shopping center is now. 

Early Malibu residents had few shopping options in Malibu, and Christmas trees  were not one of the things that were readily available, but this 1946 ad, rather pessimistically advertises that the proprietors of "The Little Store" had at least "a few Christmas tree lights." An ad for the following year advertises not just any tree lights but "fluorescent Christmas tree lights." I had no idea there was such a thing.

By 1949, Malibu residents had the option of  buying a Christmas tree at the Malibu Nursery on Malibu Road. According to Google Earth, the Perenchio family's private golf course is located on the site today. 

In the early 1980s, Calvin’s Nursery began stocking live trees in pots. They were Monterey Pines, just like the trees McCoye sold. 

My brothers were grown by then, but Dad and I would always go together to pick out our tree, just the way we always went there together on the way home from weekend errands in the summer to buy flowers for the garden.

Once again, although I can shut my eyes and smell the scent of exotic flowers in the greenhouses and see the rows of bedding plants and orchard seedlings and the nursery's motley family of barn cats, there isn't a single photo of those visits in the family collection. 

You might meet a rock star or an A-list celebrity at Calvin's. We often saw Dick Clark there, chatting with the proprietors, Gloria and Polly, about growing pansies or petunias. There wasn’t much those two ladies didn’t know about plants, for all that Gloria spent more of her time in the greenroom than in the greenhouse as a young woman. She and her identical twin sister Patty were performers who toured with Spike Jones and his City Slickers in the 1940s and 1950s. 

Gloria and her adopted sister Polly took over Calvin’s after Patty and her husband, Joe Calvin—a trombonist for both Les Brown and Jimmy Dorsey and the founder of the nursery in 1953, died. Joe and Patty’s daughter, Casey, stepped in to run the nursery for its final years, when Gloria and Polly retired. It closed in 2012. 

The pine tree under the span of the rainbow is the last surviving live Christmas tree, purchased over two decades ago at Calvin's Nursery.

Later, our pilgrimage for a live tree took us to Treeland in Woodland Hills. Unlike McCoye’s Farm or Calvin’s, Treeland is still there, and still family owned, but it isn’t the same going there without dad.

All of the trees my family purchased from the McCoye farm are gone now, but there is still one big Calvin’s tree in the garden here at The Malibu Post. It's a living reminder of Christmases past.

Wishing you, dear reader, a very happy Christmas, one that will be remembered with affection in years to come.

Suzanne Guldimann

20 December 2015

The Malibu Post's helpful cat assists with decorating the 2015 Christmas tree.

Malibu's December Gold

The trail through this Malibu Canyon cottonwood grove evokes Robert Frost's "path diverging in a yellow wood." December cold has brought autumn to the Santa Monica Mountains. All photos @ 2015 S. Guldimann

When milkweed blows in the pasture
And winds start spinning the leaves
And out by the wall the cornstalks
Are neatened in packs called sheaves;
When apples bump on the roadway
And over the road and higher
The last of the birds, like clothespins,
Are clipped to the telegraph wire.

I suddenly think, "Horse-chestnuts!"
And, singing a song, I go
And find a tree in the meadow
Where millions of chestnuts grow;
And underneath in the grasses
I gather the nuts, and then
As soon as I've filled my pockets,
I sing along home again.

And singing and scuffing homeward
Each year through the drying clover,
I feel like a king with treasure,
Though-now that I think it over-
I don't do much with horse-chestnuts
Except to make sure I've shined them.
It's just that fall
Isn't fall at all
Until I go out and find them.

—Kaye Starbird

The other day I went looking for autumn. Not, like poet Kaye Starbird, in search of horse chestnuts, but on a quest instead for autumn leaves. 

There was frost in the canyons overnight all week, and it brought the most fleeting and transitory beauties of the year to the Santa Monica Mountains. This gold can be neither bought nor sold, and like the fairy gold in stories, it turns from treasure to withered brown leaves overnight.

To find autumn gold you have to look deep in the canyons for the riparian woodland that is home to deciduous willows, sycamores and cottonwoods. This golden wood is located above the old Rindge Dam in Malibu Canyon. The area is closed to hikers, but the three tiny pullouts along Malibu Canyon Road offer a dramatic overview.

The frost was still on the grass at 9 a.m. on Saturday at King Gillette Ranch. Malibu Creek is the only stream in the Santa Monica Mountains that cuts through the entire range. It carries more than water through the canyon. In autumn and winter cold air drains as well, and it's not unusual for the temperatures to dip into the teens in and around Malibu Creek State Park.

The old King Gillette Ranch estate was once the mountain retreat of razor baron King Gillette, and later a Cistercian monastery and a Japanese University. Today, it's owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and is home to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Visitor Center. The old gardens, half overgrown and on their way to being wild again, are a perfect place to look for signs of autumn.

A massive sycamore carries an entire symphony of autumn colors on its twisted boughs.

Bright leaves transform the still pond water into a golden mosaic.

Hooded mergansers—the females are brown, the male spectacular in black and white and red (just like that joke about a newspaper) plumage, glide on gilded water.

Sycamores, walnut trees and willows in the visitor center native plant garden offer an appealing fall palette of ochres, browns and golds, but the cottonwood is the tree that really stands out in autumn.

Cottonwood trees, found only where they can have their feet in water, are transformed from dusty green to pure gold for a few brief weeks in late autumn.

This is the view from the Tapia Creek Bridge in Malibu Canyon.

Directly beneath the endless stream of cars, is a magic mirror of still water that reflects living gold.

Only the scrawl of graffiti reminds the viewer that this view is right next to Los Angeles, one of the largest urban areas in the country, and not some remote corner of California backcountry.

Malibu's autumn gold is a fleeting joy, soon transformed by nature's alchemy back into earth. It's a reminder to take time to breathe during this frantically busy season, and to stop and look at the beauty around us.

There's another kind of December gold, even more fugitive than that of the leaves. It's the gold of the sun, setting at midwinter over the ocean and transforming the sea and sand into the colors of the rarest and most vivid jewels in nature.

December offers some of the best sunsets of the year in Malibu, followed by dark clear skies ideal for star gazing—the Geminid meteor shower peaks December 12 this year. And, if you know where to look for it, there's even a taste of autumn color, without the short northern days and piercing cold that makes the turning of the leaves a bittersweet joy in other parts of the county. 


These are treasures that cost only one thing: the time it takes to go and look for them.

Suzanne Guldimann
9 December 2015

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