A woman's attempt to satisfy her wilderness longings in an urban context; or, Camping in L.A.

Spontaneously last Friday night, a couple of women invited me to hike up a small hill in Pasadena and camp out for the night. "Oh, I didn't know you could camp up there, " I said. They informed me that there were no signs explicity saying that one could not camp there. So, we set off Friday night about 7 p.m. The night was heavy with a damp mistiness that gave the whole experience a ghostly feel, and I could imagine that I was in another place(except for the wide expanse of flickering LA. lights below, but that's beside the point)

The evening was wonderful...I made us hot chocolate, and we snacked on wheat thins and cheese. Unfortunately, after we went to bed, things went downhill. First, being so close to the city, I was a bit uneasy about the possible presence of a "midnight marauder". I knew that Nattie would alert me, but when I heard the footsteps in the bushes a few meters from my head, that thought did not give me much comfort. I threw myself out of my bag and stayed semi-crouched, all senses on alert(the other girls were cozily snoring in the tent at this point). Finally, I determined that the movement was not a human, or even a cougar(stories of terrorizing cougars in L.A. were echoing in my head), so I crawled back in my bag. The next few hours were a blurry attempt of trying to forget about the constant rustling that continued to move around the periphery of the camp.

Morning came all too soon when the first runner of the day huffed by on the trail at 6:30 a.m. Shortly thereafter, the steady trickle of people(who are these people that hike so early on a Saturday morning?) converged into a loud and boisterous gathering at the picnic table next to ours. We all got up at about 6:50 and shook our heads resignedly. I mean, there were other picninc tables out there(of course, we technically probably weren't supposed to be camping, but let's not make a mountain out of a molehill!).

We asked one of the men if there was a special occasion going on. "No, "he replied quite cheerfully. "We're just getting together!" Getting together? Before 7 a.m. in the morning 2.5 miles up a mountain?(mountain in L.A. terms). Highly suspicious if you ask me. Ahhhh, well, we curbed our sorrows at a little breakfast nook on the way back home. Such is the camping life in L.A.!!