Before moving to Los Angeles on July 4, 2022, I lived in Marin County, California, for 10 years. Regularly rated as the third wealthiest county in the state (and sixth, nationally), 83% of Marin’s 520 square miles are agricultural and protected open landscape. 80-90% of the county’s 260,000 residents live along the Highway 101 corridor; or, as my Marin friends jokingly refer to it, “Main Street.” My home was a lovingly-updated Eichler, nestled in the hills two miles west of 101 along Lucas Valley Road. If you’ve ever been to Skywalker Sound, you’ve driven right by that house.
Living in Marin turned me into a hiker. Not a long-distance or backcountry enthusiast, but one of those Athleta tights and trail running shoes wearing middle-aged women who take to the trails several times per week in lieu of going to a gym. A fire road leading into the Sleepy Hollow Open Space preserve was an 8-minute walk from my front door, and, depending on the route, a hike lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. The majority of the time, I hiked alone. It was a relatively popular spot, so I encountered fellow hikers and lots of dogs on my walks; a quick, “good morning,” or “avoid the snake on the trail around the next bend,” the sole interruption to my inner monologue. Sometimes I planned ahead and put “hike” in my calendar between meetings and errands; but mostly I’d feel the urge, see a gap in my calendar, grab a bottle of water, and go.
I probably walked that route thousands of times in those 10 years. I never tired of it. Maybe the familiarity grew to be a source of comfort, a feeling of groundedness in a place. Variety came in subtle ways: seasonal blooms; shifts in trail viscosity from fog, rain and drought; bird migrations. The trailhead abutted a horse stable. Sometimes I’d walk by to the the clippity-clop of a riding lesson in progress; other times the horses stood by the fence for a hello and a pat on the nose. Birdsong, the rustle of trees and grass, and the crunch of dirt under my feet created a slightly different soundtrack on every outing. I’d see people wearing headphones – or worse, talking on the phone! – while hiking and think that they were missing the whole point: being lost in thought and immersed in nature. It’s hard to pin the smell of Marin County in words: grassy, sweet, warm, eucalyptus-y… soothing and pleasant. Nothing tells me I’m back in Marin nowadays more than my first whiff of that scent.
I hiked my way through some really rough times: my father’s health decline and eventual death from cancer, the end of my marriage, Covid lockdown. These losses were slow-moving, took years to metabolize, and I had just recovered from one when the next came barreling down. I shed many, many tears in those hills, sometimes openly sobbing when I felt confident no one was close enough to notice. I always returned home feeling much better than when I left. Looking back, I think it’s fair to say I would’ve surely lost my marbles without those walks.
Los Angeles County is surprisingly rich with hiking trails. But, like most everything here, getting to them is a total schlep. Having been spoiled with trail access from my front door, driving 45 minutes and back to a trail in Malibu just isn’t in the cards, especially on a weekday. And on weekends, forget it; too crowded. But after a little bit of trial and error, I found my spot: “only” 20 minutes away with plentiful (paid) parking, and not too crowded on Friday mornings, which became my regular hiking day. Temescal Canyon Trail had it all: a loop (vs out-and-back), enough elevation gain to get the heart rate up, panoramic views of Santa Monica Bay and downtown, a mix of shade and sun, and a waterfall following winter rain. It’s also where a tiny ember became a devastating fire that ripped through Pacific Palisades in January of 2025.
Hey, you might be thinking, what’s with all this nature talk? I thought this Substack is supposed to be about the movies. Fair point. I’m getting there.
Losing that trail put hiking on an 18-month hiatus. I didn’t give it much thought, to be perfectly honest; and, after all, so many people endured such profound loss that my losing a hiking trail paled in comparison. But on July 13 this year, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy announced the Temescal Gateway Park would soon reopen. Hallelujah! My trail was back. But no. Trails around it, yes; but the waterfall trail is still too hazardous to access. I glanced at the new map, concluded the open trails too dinky and flat to bother, and resigned to keep waiting.
But this announcement had opened up a crack in me, some kind of dormant need for nature I didn’t realize was so strong. And into this fissure seeped Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World. I am a nut for documentaries, obviously, but I’m an even bigger fan of “artist process stories,” especially about writers. So a doc about a writer is basically crack to me. And, like an addict needing a fix, I’ll get in my car to drive to Beverly Hills on a mid-August weekday afternoon to score said film in a cinema.
I’m neither fan nor foe of Oliver’s work. In all honesty, I most frequently encounter it quoted in email signature files: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? below the sender’s name and cell phone number. It’s fair to say I maybe have never read a full Mary Oliver poem, and knew almost nothing about her life before watching the movie.
It’s a vast understatement to say that Mary Oliver was really into nature. If I’d read her poetry I’d have known that; but even so, the biographical context, images, and stories shared by her friends in the film (most notably John Waters, her longtime Provincetown neighbor) provide a deeply felt understanding of her connection to the natural world. She was most content outdoors, in stillness, observing all that surrounded her, from the dramatic to the nearly imperceptible. The poetry is what connected that private practice to the public world; debates abound about the “quality” of that work. But I walked out of the theater less focused on that, frankly, than about what it must have felt like to be a human so deeply attuned to nature – whether she wrote about it or not. I totally get the attraction, and admire that she listened to her instincts, carving an unconventional path with no value in the marketplace; at least not for the first 40 years or so.
In the days following that screening, the crack widened to the point that I found myself sobbing and saying to an out-of-state friend on the phone, “If I don’t find some kind of beauty or awe ASAP I’m going to really lose it! I used to have this amazing weekly hike but it’s been closed since the fire and goddamn it I miss it.”
The next morning I woke up and thought, “You know what? You really don’t know what’s going on over there in Temescal. The map makes it look like the trails aren’t worth the drive, but what if you’re wrong? Get your butt in the car and go check it out. You might be surprised.”
This story has such a happy ending! Ok, yes, my old favorite trail is still closed; no waterfall for now. But! Plenty of open trails that warrant the mini-schlep. Tears, again (Am I a cryer? I guess so.) on this hike. Of gratitude, that it’s back; of grief, for all that was lost in the fire. I had suppressed how much I missed those trails out of respect for those who lost so much more, and as a way to rationalize its potential permanent closure. It felt so cathartic to be in the mountains again, to see the new green sprouting up in the burn brown and the lizards skittering across the trail, to hear the jays and finches cheep-cheeping over my head, and feel the ocean breeze skimming up from the coast far below.
This isn’t a story about a movie being “good” or “bad,” about craft, what it’s “about,” if you should see it or not, or its distribution strategy. It’s a story of a movie showing up exactly when I needed to see it, opening me up to a possibility I’d formerly foreclosed upon, and making a perceptibly positive impact on my life. Maybe I would’ve reconsidered my quick judgement about Temescal if I hadn’t watched the Mary Oliver film, but I more than likely, not. Movies work subliminal magic on us, and only once in a while does this magic become visible. I’m still levitating from that hike last week, and grateful for the film that got me there.
I too find my best form of therapy is walking/hiking. What a beautiful piece
I am so happy to read of your love for hiking, for silence, for getting lost in thought (and I would wager, feelings). I am even happier to read the story of your getting out there again, allowing yourself to be surprised.