"Hello, old friend." That's the phrase that popped into my head at the start of my favorite walk recently. It was a warm October evening and the swaths of black mustard weed on the trail had completely dried up, leaving the towering stalks spindly and bare.
Some were more than 8 feet high. They lined the path as it curved to the right, swaying and rustling in the breeze, like an overeager welcoming committee. L.
A. really is a walking city. Explore our ground-level guide to the people and places keeping our sidewalks alive.
Read the full guide It had been several months since I'd returned to this trail, which is highly unusual for me. This 5.4-mile trek in Griffith Park is a staple of my life in L.
A. To date, I've traversed it about 400 times, at nearly every time of day, in every season, snaking my way up the hillside as it's bathed in golden hour sunlight, ensconced in early morning fog and even lit up under a full moon. But recently I'd been traveling, and then healing a gym injury, and I hadn't been able to make it for a while.
Returning to the trail, with its soothing chorus of crickets, velvety laurel sumac shrubs and feathery wild grasses, something inside me loosened. If you had told my 20-something self that my happy place would come to be a quiet trail in the urban-adjacent wilderness, I wouldn't have believed it. I'm a city girl through and through.
I grew up in Center City, Philadelphia, and spent my first few decades in Los Angeles covering arts and culture, food .