Personal Perspective : In the Beginning Was the Land . . .

LAGUNA NIGUEL — I was born in Santa Barbara 40 years ago. I live in Laguna Niguel. The two places, then and now, have little in common--except the land.

Last summer, I experienced a dream-like state of unemployment when the management of the giant corporation I worked for decided I didn’t fit into their future plans. I sought solace through running with my dog, a black sheep dog mixed breed, which needs at least two miles of hard running a day. We searched out places where a middle-aged man in seemingly permanent contemplation and a dog joyful to run unleashed could be alone.

On clear, hot days, we would head up the hill from where I live to a bluff overlooking the ocean. The view from there was west to Catalina, north to Long Beach and south to San Clemente. We ran through the lunch hour, past the tacky million-dollar houses crammed on top of the bluff, down a steep hill inexplicably paved as a cul de sac, where a red-tailed hawk would regard us silently from its perch on a telephone pole; through an ancient sand pit and along a hard trail winding through fragrant head-high native scrub brush.

First, South Laguna Beach, then, Dana Point would spread out below us. The houses pressed up against the beach, the breakers white, the sea shaded from turquoise to midnight blue.

We rarely met anyone. A young woman asked which trail led to the beach. An old man walked his old golden retriever. Occasionally, carpenters working on new houses would pause from their hammering and wave. My dog chased birds and rabbits but never caught any. I would grab a piece of fennel to chew as I ran, as I did as a boy in Santa Barbara.

The new houses going up on the bluff filled the blue gaps in the wall of older houses, as a bridge fills in the smile of a hockey player. I noticed a sign that marked the end of the county-maintained trail and wondered who owned the land where the scrub brush was as tall as I.

On weekends, I took my family up to the bluff’s top trail. The kids excitedly ran ahead to scan the horizon for sailboats from Dana Point Harbor and big ships leaving Long Beach. My wife thought the land along the trail would be a perfect place for a house.

The summer wore on. I was still unemployed. One day, as I ran down the trail, I noticed three men in shirts and ties walking toward me. They looked out of place. They were heavy-set men, office men of the type who fired me, the type who laugh loudly in meetings at things that aren’t funny and smell of paper and fear. They were not the type to go for a walk in the hot sun to smell the plants and feel the salty wind. My dog would not pass them on the trail. They laughed about scaring her, but she was not the one who was scared.

Soon I saw white plastic poles with fluorescent markings. They bore street names like “Ocean View.” They were the battle standards of growth, progress and wealth. I ran on.

One recent day, I went for a run: The bluff had been transformed. I recognized almost nothing. The trail with its head-high scrub brush was gone. There was just brown dirt, on which was imprinted the tread marks of heavy equipment. Sprinklers tied to fat fire hoses soaked the dirt, turning it into mud. Some children, already coated with mud, danced in the sprinklers. My dog looked at me oddly, and we ran on over the rough, spongy dirt, laced with exposed roots and a few branches sticking up, like the hands of drowning people emerging from the water.

I had been back to Santa Barbara that spring. Alone, I climbed the hill in back of the house where I’d lived. No path led up anymore. I guess kids today don’t explore, or maybe they’re afraid of things that didn’t exist 30 years ago.

At the top of the hill, an early ‘60s developer had scraped the land for a subdivision, laid out dirt streets but had been stopped, for whatever reason, at that point. I walked around where I’d caught alligator and blue-bellied lizards, and quarried mica and quartz out of the open wound of the hill. Then I sat in the ancient pepper tree I had first climbed at the age of 7 and looked out at the ocean, far, far below.

Now, on that hot July afternoon in Laguna Niguel, I stumbled over the gouged and torn earth, and tears came to my eyes, mixed with sweat and dropped onto the muddy dirt.*