It ended up being a twenty mile hike. It left me sore and tired. I know it was hot and I know the terrain was difficult but it has still put a damper on my dreams of hiking the entirety of the pacific crest trail. I want to buy some camping equipment sometime soon. I've been reading up and a lot of places are very accessible by public transportation; Catalina Island, The San Gabriel Mountains, Malibu creek, some places in the desert and even a few places in the sierras.
I think a lot of the things people take for granted as apparent truths about Los Angeles are total lies. I say this mostly due to things in other cities I've lived have said about Los Angeles. Telling people you are from Southern California often elicits a violent reaction, sometimes empathic in tone. However, even local people I meet mirror the same attitude towards their city.
Yes you can ride the bus without too much hassle.
No it is not really that hot, (unless you live in the valley).
however
yes it is dirty, yes it is fucking polluted.
yes a lot of people commute hours daily.
yes people drive their cars to the corner store.
The problem with Los Angeles is its suburbs, not the city itself. There may never be the proper infrastructure in place to support the giant expanse of highways and clapboard mansions that blight the landscape for hundreds of miles in all directions. Peak-oil and other apocalyptic enthusiasts have a field day. Implementing sustainable practices seems impossible. Lawns need watering, pools need filling, air conditioners crank on for half the year.
The culture of materialism that runs rampant everywhere, but particularly in Los Angeles, doesn't help matters either. It has always seemed funny to me that the people who often try to appear the most environmentally conscious are moneyed. It is not too surprising considering the added costs of eating organic and "sustainable" alternatives to household products. But there's something else to it. There is a tendency for people who can afford to buy environmentally branded products to somehow think that they are "helping" the environment when in fact they have just chosen a lesser evil. This is especially true for non-essentials. People who think buying a Prius for your 3 hour commute is going to save the world. Okay, yes it is a good alternative to a standard car but what about not having a car altogether. The same goes for buying flax and hemp wardrobes, buying biodegradable disposable dish ware, remodeling your palace every few years with sustainable materials. Plastic shopping bags thank customers for "making the right choice".
It seems like so much of what is deemed environmentally friendly is completely hollow, luxury accessories and inaccessible to 9/1o of the people. I am convinced that people will have to alter their lifestyles fundamentally to really allow for any sort of sustained environmental restoration. I am also mostly convinced that this will never happen naturally as it would go against human nature. Instead just like in nature, we will compete for resources, nation against nation, class against class until, war after war until the buying power of the upper middle class slowly declines, but all of these are national if not global problems.
So keep Los Angeles out of it, its bigger than that. Its because places like LA, Phoenix, and Las Vegas have shown outward signs of lowered quality of life stemming from sprawl and environmental degradation that they have become emblematic. No matter where you live it still comes down to personal choices. Burning my trash in Los Angeles is just as bad as someone burning their trash in Washington. The natural differences in geography and added stresses of some 10 odd million additional people just make the action of more impact.
In short being a rich asshole in Portland, makes you just as much of a rich asshole as someone who lives in Los Angeles or Beijing for that matter.
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