Mega-Projects and Sunsets

The city still seems to end here.

Seen from Porter Ranch above Chatsworth, the San Fernando Valley extends southward in a ghostly grid of palm trees, roofs and pavement. The Santa Monica Mountains beyond ripple in a caldron of heat and smog.

Cars wail through the concrete gorge of the Simi Valley Freeway. Planes and helicopters whine and rumble overhead. In the parched empty hills, the sounds of a city afternoon converge into the sustained growl of a bloated, mechanical beast advancing.

A day earlier, the Los Angeles City Council approved the $2-billion, 1,300-acre, 20-year Porter Ranch mega-development. Opponents issued dire prophecies in the tradition of Laocoon, who long ago warned fellow residents of Troy about a big wooden horse. Don’t open the gates, the modern-day seers said; too many cars, too much garbage, not enough water.

Unlike Laocoon and his boys, the naysayers were not dragged off by sea serpents. But the unanimous council vote had the same general effect.

Now imagine the sunbaked solitude of the foothills alive with people, houses, stores, office buildings, lawn sprinklers, BMWs, 7-Elevens and the other trappings of civilization.

One day there will be a luxury hotel near Winnetka and Rinaldi; today the canyons offer a series of good spots for an ambush. Yellow brush, occasional trees and clumps of garbage shimmering with broken glass dominate the terrain. Urban sounds recede. From the illusion of silence, a world emerges.

Rabbits, squirrels and long-necked birds rustle past. Clouds of white butterflies rise in their wake, and stodgy bugs that make a grumbling noise in flight, red spots appearing by their wings. A dark bird with a prodigious wingspan hovers above. Perhaps a hawk; certainly no pigeon.

Chain-link fences and security patrols make an effort to keep the property private. But there are numerous signs that industrious humans use the place as an unofficial park.

Graffiti covers a flood-control network dotted with toothlike slabs, which connects to a concrete basin the size of several swimming pools. The arena resembles a landing spot for extraterrestrials in league with restless Valley youth. The artwork includes gang hieroglyphics and declarations such as “Team Donut” and “What Happend.”

The cement slabs also contain mini-masterpieces, notably a bright green lizard and a 10-foot Daffy Duck figure--vivid red, yellow and white--holding a spray can.

Adults have left tracks, too: hikers, mountain bikers, horseback riders, beer and champagne drinkers. And weekend warriors, according to Herb the hot dog man, who does brisk rush-hour business at his stand under the freeway at the southwest corner of the development.

“They play war games,” Herb says. “On weekends they go in there with their fatigues and their paint guns and go to war.”

Miles away at the northeast corner of the site, Sesnon Boulevard leaves sleek subdivisions and ends in a fenced compound of sheds and construction equipment. Here, in a cluttered trailer, lives caretaker Gene Prowse, 64, a picturesque gatekeeper of Porter Ranch’s future.

“Come on in and sit,” Prowse drawls, shushing a gimpy dog. “Don’t mind him. That there’s a cross between a hog and a porkypine.”

Prowse has a scraggly white beard, a red checkered shirt and low-slung jeans with a Caterpillar belt buckle. His Stetson hat is one of 25 identical Stetsons he has collected over the years and keeps in a box. A fist-sized knot of keys jangles from his belt as he maneuvers through the narrow trailer with the raffish tilt of a sea captain in a storm.

“We got lots of rattlesnakes up here,” he says. He displays an assortment of rattles from snakes he says he shot with his .22.

“Coyotes, bobcat, deer. I seen a big deer come down to the water hole we built. . . . We got blue jays, mocking birds, they sing real pretty. Rabbits. I feed ‘em.”

Prowse says he was friendly with a Basque who tended one of the flocks of sheep that graze in the hills; he bristles when a visitor makes the mistake of using the word “shepherd.”

“He’s no damn shepherd,” he hoots. “God is a shepherd. He’s a damn sheepherder, that’s what he is. Went to Fresno.”

Prowse says he and his wife, LaRene, enjoy the peace and quiet. But he scoffs at those who fought Porter Ranch.

“They all bitch about building for somebody else, but they supported it for their own house,” he says. “We’ll get some nice streets in here. Get rid of the rattlesnakes. There’s plenty of mountains for the people. Right here we’re gonna build houses.”

Think of the billions that will be spent and made. He’s tempted to start up a house of ill repute in the area as an investment, he chortles. “That’s a lot of dinero.”

Needlepoint prints of nature scenes and memorabilia of 40 years as a tractor operator surround the bearded man. His sun-mottled hand proffers an old business card for the tractor rental and repair business he once ran in Long Beach.

“It’s hot work, not hard work,” he says. “Once you know what you’re doin’ it’s like playin’ the piano.”

Prowse’s eyes widen as he describes the bulldozers being used for the development: metal monsters bigger than trucks, wheels 10 feet tall.

He looks forward to watching them pave the future from this spot on the crest of the city.

Opening the trailer door, Prowse regards evening clouds suffused in the red glow of dusk.

“We get some beautiful sunsets out here,” he says. “They can build all the houses they want. We’ll still have the sunset.”