The Morning Reading: Behind the Hills (Rebel Girl)

.    Recent IVC alum, Bradley Beylik has excelled at UCI in their exclusive literary journalism program and is now applying for grad school (Rebel Girl is writing his recommendation letters and so she knows.) Beylik was set on law school but is now purusing that white whale, the MFA in writing. Call him Ishmael. 

     "Behind the Hills," an essay by Beylik, appears in the current issue of KIOSK, the UCI Literary Journalism magazine. In it, he explores the canyon communities of Orange County. Rebel Girl and Red Emma make cameo appearances. Rebel Girl finds that she is depicted as chirpier than she imagines she really is but it could happen. She could chirp. She probably did. 

  excerpt: 

     Old Saddleback—visible from locations throughout the Los Angeles basin, the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto Mountains, Catalina Island, and the groomed suburbs of Orange County—is made up of the two tallest peaks of the Santa Ana Mountains, part of the Cleveland National Forest. Its shape looms behind all the bustle of overcrowded streets and rampant suburban sprawl like a tired old sentinel. The twin peaks have tortured, weathered sides criss-crossed with firebreaks and truck trails, mostly devoid of trees. The top of Santiago, the taller of the two, is stuck full of antennas and transmitters of all shapes and sizes, a haunting replacement for the foliage that must have covered the mountains in green long ago. 

     On Southern California’s foggy days, the dark mass is shrouded in marine layer, seeming strong and ominous in its scarred hide. It conjures Moby Dick—immense and ancient, possessing an existence that is at once brutally simple and mysterious, and decorated with the marks of many encounters with men who have sought it out. 

     The mountains seem to keep watch from their heights above the suburbs, keeping record with their scars of all the doings of humankind that unfold around their feet. Less visible than the peaks, even to most Orange County residents, is the quiet canyon-and-mountain community that has been at the base of Old Saddleback for over a century. 

     Made up of several canyons—including Silverado, perhaps the most famous—scattered with sleepy little cottages, the community seems to have resisted the tide of overdevelopment and kitsch that has ravaged the rest of once-rural Orange County. In that way, the area represents the last of its kind—a rural stronghold in a sea of apocalyptic change. 

     The issues are many: environmental degradation, disappearing wildlife populations, encroaching development, and damaged ecosystems and watersheds. And these aren’t the only concerns for residents of the canyons. Other difficulties abound: landslides, flash floods, and a special brand of political entanglements. 

     Without input from canyon dwellers, big companies and nearby city governments draw maps for future exploitation of the land. A traffic- and water-bearing tunnel connecting Riverside and Orange Counties has even been proposed to run right through historic Silverado Canyon. In the face of these struggles, Silverado, though in many ways unchanged since its days as a mining boomtown, is today tragically threatened. But more than that, this disputed landscape represents a deeply American experience of survival and change, determination and loss. 

     The rugged mountains with their shadowy canyons tell stories of weary prospectors, defiant Indians, and determined explorers. For people who spend their lives in the anonymous suburban landscape of Orange County, the canyons and mountains are a source of urban myth and local lore, deeply connected to the fading glory of the American West, and to the contradictory national narrative of frontier living and resource exploitation. 

     To read the rest, click here.