Guest Essay | Kathleen Clary Miller: Crossing the Arroyo

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  David Thoreau

“Nothing good happens down there,” my mother warned when I told her I liked falling asleep to the howl of coyotes from deep within the Arroyo Seco Canyon while she tucked me into bed at night.  By contrast, as I snuggled deep beneath the security of my covers, their eerie screams filled me with gratitude for the solid walls that shielded me from that inky darkness just beyond the glow of our streetlamps.

My mother was protective, superstitious.  She did not grant permission to explore, so I possessively guarded the secret that I would sometimes push aside tall reeds of mustard seed to hike to the top of the vacant lot across the street from our house on South San Rafael Avenue.  From there I could peer down into the canyon that was forbidden territory in her tally of allowable destinations:  school, the tennis court down the street, the San Rafael branch of the Pasadena Library.  

These days trails weave their way through natural vegetation and steady foot traffic lends the Arroyo a welcome, park-like atmosphere.  Not so through the eyes of a child in the 1950s. In contrast to our meticulously manicured dichondra lawn, symmetrically trimmed trees, and tended colorful garden, what little I could see appeared desolate and dirty.  Mysterious and untrodden, it was a snarl of twisted, decayed, and dusty branches where I dared not go. 

On the hilltop precipice of what I only knew to be danger, I froze, quiet and still: Could I spot the dart of a skittish coyote, might the ghosts of those who had lost hope and their lives from what Mama called “Suicide Bridge”—the Colorado Street crossing—wander still, beneath that tangled brush below?  What irresistible siren song had beckoned to them from this shadowy abyss?   

One Spring I persuaded my mother to enroll me in horseback riding lessons. I had sat saddle once before on a family vacation to Yosemite and had been a frustrated cowgirl ever since.  Besides, the Pasadena Star-News advertised that the curriculum included a ride into the Arroyo. At last, I would have the answers.

Our group assembled at the Arroyo Stables and after nailing down the basics, I saddled up “Lucky” and we ambled in single file down a dirt trail that led into the gap I’d to date only traversed on the bridge in the back seat of the station wagon, my window rolled down to try to see what lay beneath.   From the horse’s back, I could look from left to right to witness a kind of raw and lovely landscape—an entirely different perspective than from above.

For the reason known only to horses, mine decided to break free from this predictable pace and gallop at hell-for-leather speed while I clutched the saddle horn for dear life and tried to interpret the distant cries of advice behind me, muffled by Lucky’s quickening breath, then lost in the thunder of hooves.  My five-year-old vision of myself as Annie Oakley had not included any rip-roaring chase, and now, at twelve, the dream involved no more acceleration than that of a pleasant equine stroll on the Ponderosa alongside Little Joe Cartwright.  I was in way over my head— and nearly over my horse’s.

By the time the instructor reached for my reins I had crossed the length of the canyon and was face to face with the arches of the infamous Colorado Bridge. After recalibrating my senses, I swiveled from side to side, seeking whatever restless spirits roamed here.  I felt the whisper of a breeze, watched the flurry of a few small birds flushed by my trespass from nearby sagebrush, and heard a rustle in the buckwheat of something feral seeking enhanced protection from my intrusion. Wild rose bloomed alongside the trickle of water from a recent rain; a hawk soared overhead; the wary coyotes I sensed rather than saw remained hidden from daylight, leerier of my presence than I of theirs. 

This was not some forsaken and unearthly graveyard, but to my astonishment, a thriving society teeming with life.  There was no haunting, nothing disconcerting.  Contrary to my mother’s admonition, everything happening here was not only good; it was extraordinary.

A stone’s throw from concrete and city lights, right in my own backyard, this was, quite simply, where the wild things are.

Kathleen Clary Miller is the author of stories and essays that have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country for two decades.  She is a second-generation native, born and raised in Pasadena, where her family lived for nearly 50 years.