A Trip Up

As I think I mentioned the other day, I had cause to be in Sylmar, which Wikipedia reports is a district of Los Angeles located within the San Fernando Valley. It is not too far from where I am, and yet it is worlds away. This is a very common thing in Los Angeles, where things change wildly over distances as short as a block or two. The area where I live is regarded as a vibrant haven of artists, for example. The area just south is populated by major celebrities. The area that far north is the source of regular gang violence.

It's interesting to see how things change over the course of an hour-long bus ride north. You start off in my neighborhood, and things get gritty fast from there. In a matter of minutes, it's one dusty block of run-down industrial enterprises after another, and each seems less promising commercially than the last. An awareness that these are the streets from which gunshots I heard when I lived nearer to them does not fade from my mind.

You pass by those neighborhoods and soon enough are in a place quite and remote enough that it is hard to believe anyone would quarrel over control of it. It seems like a million miles away from where I live, and my imagination fails to conjure an imagine of what day to day life there is like. I suppose it varies from what I witnessed seldom. I don't mean to denigrate the area and its residents, but I confess that living there is not an aspiration of mine.

The conclusion of my ride, beyond what might be called the regular boundaries of Sylmar, was at the top of a hill. At its bottom, nothing natural seemed to live. At its top, a lush oasis of vegetation seemed to thrive in cool, shaded air. It was a striking contrast, and the ease with which one forgets the territory just passed through is an evident relief. I'm glad that I was compelled to make the trip, and not sorry that I saw the area that I have been describing really. I just would have been sorry if I hadn't been able to return home.