Living With Nature’s Fury, Beauty : Carlisle Canyon: For the handful of residents, occasional calamities can’t offset the area’s solitude and tranquillity.

Elephants were walking down Carlisle Road in broad daylight last week and no one even stopped to look.

That’s because deep in the jungle that is Carlisle Canyon, a remote neighborhood near Thousand Oaks where a handful of free spirits have moved to escape the racket of city life, there are few surprises.

Those that live along the narrow dirt road that curls through the canyon say they have seen enough in the past two years that a few elephants from the nearby Animal Actors ranch can’t faze them.

They came within feet of a raging firestorm, they endured rockslides during the Northridge earthquake, and they were trapped in their homes for three days during the recent flood.

And still, they insist that the overpowering beauty and solitude of this hidden community, with its free-running gullies, its wild rock formations and its majestic oak trees, make tolerable a little calamity from time to time.

“Come here at night and listen to the animals, or look up at the stars,” said longtime resident Sylvia Pollak. “Sure we pay a price, but there are times when it becomes very clear that staying here is worth it.”

Carlisle Canyon has drawn a former Los Angeles police officer and wealthy antique dealers, aging retirees and trust-fund teens, some living in $19,000 trailers and others in million-dollar mansions.

Despite diverse backgrounds, the residents uniformly agree that the allure of the neighborhood is the solitude offered by large lots and secluded hillside homes.

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Some chose to live along the narrow Carlisle Road, the only route in and out of the winding canyon, because they enjoy firing guns into the hills or because they grew up in rural lifestyle. Others use their territory to raise and train exotic animals of all kinds, including lions, bears, snakes, alligators, wolves, tigers, pigs and elephants.

For all the residents, the one-two punch of fire and flood that came after years of peace and tranquillity was a stark reminder of the price of living in the wilderness.

Everywhere around the canyon there is evidence of the 1993 Green Meadow fire which hit the brush-covered community in a wave of flame, destroying part of a home and two trailers.

Shortly before the blaze, internal Fire Department reports warned that Carlisle Canyon was due for destruction because dry chaparral and thick shrubbery had flourished, untouched by flames for more than 30 years.

The concerns were justified.

Ron Cole, a resident since 1967, stayed with his house and a crew of firefighters on Oct. 27, 1993, the day the Green Meadow blaze bore down on Carlisle Canyon.

“I’ve seen lots of fires in my life, but this was a whole different experience,” Cole said. “The fire came over the ridge and down the hillside across from my house in about 15 seconds. It sounded like three F-16s roaring right over your head, and the heat, even from 100 feet away, was enough to burn your face off.”

Aluminum cans on Cole’s front porch melted. The grass around his house was incinerated. He was terrified.

“It was like the whole canyon had been soaked with gasoline,” he said. “That’s how fierce it burned.”

Fire crews were stationed at every house. Four firefighters from Pasadena drenched Cole’s house with water, draining 5,600 gallons from his 6,000-gallon back-yard tank in one day.

Ventura County Fire Capt. Robby Werner, a 30-year veteran who has covered the Carlisle Canyon area for the past five years, said most residents were fortunate to have escaped the blaze with their homes.

“That area is extreme in terms of the fire hazards,” Werner said. “If those residents had not cleared brush back away from their houses, there probably wouldn’t be a house left standing.”

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For weeks after the fires, longtime resident Vera House recalls the neighborhood being thick with the odor of destruction.

“It looked like hell,” she said. “But the smell was the worst. Like an acrid garbage dump with smoldering fires still burning all across the blackened hillside.”

As bad as the fire was--and it burned right up to her front porch--House said she was more frightened by the recent floods, which sent water and mud across the porch, right up to her front door.

“The rains, I think, were worse because you can fight a fire,” House said. “You can’t fight a flood.”

Waters from the January rainstorms pounded the canyon’s steep, scorched hillsides, releasing piles of mud into residents’ yards and into some homes.

A giant boulder fell onto tiny, one-lane Carlisle Road, trapping residents in the canyon for days before a fire crew could push the three-ton rock to the shoulder.

“I’ve said a lot of prayers this week,” said Pollak, whose husband had to hire a bulldozer crew to clear mud from sections of their steep, 900-foot driveway.

“Every time I head down our driveway I pray I won’t slide off the side of the mountain,” she said. “I feel like, given all that’s happened in the last two years, maybe we’re being tested.”

Just minutes from Westlake Village, the canyon is separated from the suburban sprawl by a lake and a series of undeveloped ridges.

In many ways, Pollak said, she feels tested not only in times of peril, but also during routine daily activities. The Pollaks live only six miles from the Ventura Freeway, but the drive along the treacherous one-land road, with its hairpin turns and long drop-offs, begs for caution.

The houses are so remote in this strip of county land that residents are not served by trash collectors or water or sewage pipes. Most residents take garbage to a dump in Agoura, have piping systems hooked up to nearby wells, and use septic tanks.

Vera House, whose father bought land in Carlisle Canyon in 1915, said it takes a pioneer spirit to live in the canyon.

Since she was a child, House, 81, has been trekking to the Carlisle Road property that her family named the Lonesome Water Ranch after a poem by Roy Helton.

“I’ve drunk the lonesome water,” she read from the poem framed on her living room wall. “I’m bound to the hills.”

They are choice words for the life she and husband, Robert, 83, share among the foxes, deer and badgers of the woodlands.

As a way of passing the time, while Robert builds stone walls and wooden bridges across stretches of their 80-acre property, House began to compile the rich history of the canyon that her father found while testing motorized buses on back country roads.

Thomas Carlisle was a land surveyor from Pennsylvania who was mapping Southern California for the government, House explained.

“In 1907, he found this canyon and named it,” she said. “He also laid out a generous 160 acres for himself.”

But when he settled here, Carlisle made his name by claiming that generous alcohol consumption was enough to render harmless the bite from a rattlesnake.

“It turned out he was wrong,” House said. “He was bit by a rattler in 1913 and it killed him.”

In the 1920s and ‘30s, as they do today, film companies began carrying gear back into the deep parts of the canyon to film movies and later television shows.

During World War II, House said, a pesticide company built a manufacturing plant for chemicals used to kill weeds. Located at the end of the six-mile road, the plant smelled up the area for years.

“Long after they shut down you could smell it in the water all throughout the canyon,” she said. “But I’m sure by this time it’s washed itself out.”

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It wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s that people began building houses in the overgrown hills.

The winding road, which residents say was at one time maintained by the county, stretched well into the hills, dipping deep into the canyon and climbing high onto the slopes.

Many, like electrician Ron Cole, set up with just a trailer, are hoping to escape the increasing bustle of Los Angeles.

In his first few years he ran an extension cord for nearly half a mile to the next house to bring power to his home.

“It was worth it because this place was untouched,” Cole said. “It was totally out of the way.”

In 1965, animal trainer Hubert Wells picked out a piece of land for himself at the very back of the canyon for two reasons.

“For one thing, I grew up on a farm in Hungary and I like this kind of living,” he said. “But also, my business requires seclusion and lots of privacy.”

Behind tarp-covered fences, Wells has a virtual zoo--lions, tigers, chimps, bears, an aviary with exotic birds--that he trains for appearances on television and in films.

“Next to the nuclear business, this is probably the most regulated business in the country,” he said. “We have government officials from the federal government down to the city dog catcher checking up on us constantly to make sure the animals are secure and well cared for.”

As for Wells’ neighbors, they are far enough away that they don’t find the collection of animals to be a nuisance.

Wells explains wryly: “They’d rather have us than someone with 10 kids. That’s just the kind of people that live out here.”

One nearby resident said the Animal Actors have always stayed out of everyone’s way.

“He’s a great neighbor to have,” said Morris Pollak. “They are very generous in helping to take care of the roads, and they even let us take kids around from time to time to look at the animals.”

It is a treat because Wells said visitors to his training grounds are not a welcome sight.

“We like this location in part because it is so hard to get to,” he said. “This is difficult work and having people looking in can be a real hindrance.”

Wells is one of many residents who keeps animals on Carlisle Canyon property. One of his neighbors raises snakes and alligators for the movies, and another, who lives in a very remote portion of the canyon, raises wolves.

Carol Lynn who lives next to the Animal Actors, has fields crawling with creatures.

A film producer and longtime city dweller, she expected to find the countryside too quiet and too distant to appeal to her.

“The first night I was here, a group of coyotes came right up to the window of the house and stared in at me,” Lynn recalled.

“I thought it was amazing how close we were. We’re right in the middle of nature here,” she said. “Since that moment, I haven’t even thought about living anywhere else.”

After moving to the canyon, Lynn decided her 42 acres should be put to good use. She bought dozens of animals--a giant pig named Daisy, a horse, a goat and baby pot-bellied pigs that are so small they look more like piggy banks than animals.

And in 1990 she started a nonprofit group called the Adolescent Creative Transitional Center, which brings out underprivileged teen-agers from Los Angeles to make films and enjoy the countryside.

“We have hundreds of kids out here every summer,” she said. “They play, they hike in the hills and they use the film equipment to make movies.”

Lynn said the hardest part of living in Carlisle Canyon has not been the fire and floods, it has been the hassles of bureaucracy.

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In the mid-1980s, Ventura County decided to stop repairing the final four miles of Carlisle Road, giving residents the responsibility for maintaining it.

In a community where residents are bent on privacy, the road brought them together.

During the 1980s, residents fought long and hard with the county over who would repair and maintain the long and narrow street. For now, the residents have been unable to gain ground.

County officials smacked a moratorium on construction in the canyon, saying nothing could be built until $3.7 million in improvements were made to the road.

Former County Supervisor Madge Schaefer explained that the county’s demands were fair and reasonable, given that all developers are asked to provide utilities and roads before getting permission to build.

Residents of the canyon disagree.

“Most of us don’t get utilities up here, and yet we pay taxes like everyone else,” Cole said. “It seems like we should get the services from the county that most others get.”

What’s more, the lack of improvements to the craggy, rut-filled road has created a hazard for emergency crews.

Fire officials from the station that services Carlisle Canyon said their response time to most areas is five to 10 minutes. To Carlisle Canyon, it can take as long as 25 to 30 minutes.

Not only is the road too narrow, there is no second route for fire crews, so if people are trying to escape the canyon, the fire trucks cannot get in.

“Up until now, it hasn’t created a problem,” Fire Capt. Werner said. “But certainly it should be the cause for concern on the part of the county, especially given the fire hazards that we already know exist there.”

County officials said the problem may be resolved if developer David H. Murdock extends his Lake Sherwood to an area near Carlisle Road. As a condition of that project, approved in 1993, Murdock has been required to build a second access road linking Carlisle Road to the outside world.

Until then, residents say they will try to continue the spirit of cooperation that has kept them going this long.

They have shared road and farm equipment when mud blocks driveways or roads. Hilltop residents have helped alert canyon residents to approaching fires. And recently, a group of neighbors banded together to find a trash collection service.

It is cooperation that comes easily, despite the fact that most residents came to Carlisle Canyon to avoid their neighbors.

“We all know that the people who live here don’t want to deal with other people,” Cole said. “But we also know that to live out here successfully we all have to work together.”

Vera House said that is the way Carlisle Canyon has been since the beginning.

“Despite the fact that this is a lonesome canyon,” she said, “this is very much a community.”