As Good Friends Move On

The trail began in Beachwood Canyon, zigged below the Hollywood sign, crossed the hills through Griffith Park and passed by tunnel under the Ventura Freeway. It felt faintly ridiculous, riding a horse in the middle of Los Angeles. Were the cowpokes of yore forced to converse over the whine of jet traffic? Were they overtaken by joggers? Was the lonesome trail marked by graffiti taggers? Did it pass directly under eight lanes of freeway?

One reckons not.

Still, there we were, a dozen would-be wranglers, digging at the flanks of rental horses with our Nikes. These were not horses easily prodded. They’d groan and sigh and wiggle their ears and plod on, sticking to an almost funereal pace. Which was fitting. While much banter passed through the ranks, this was a melancholy event. Two of the riders were leaving Los Angeles, and the sunset trek across the Hollywood Hills was meant as a last chance for their friends to, as the dusty tune goes, bid them adieu.

“I can’t believe you are leaving,” I said to Nick as we clopped along.

“I can’t believe,” he replied, “I stayed so long.”

This was an inside joke between two friends--one a native Californian who preached incessantly that nowhere else compared as a place to live; the other a transplanted Chicagoan who countered that, having done California and, with the Northridge earthquake, having been done by California, it was time to move on. The Californian lost.

Moving on.

It occurs to me now, as I write this a week after the send-off, that “Moving On” was the title of an early Larry McMurtry novel. As I recall, much of the moving on in “Moving On” involved people vacating Texas for California. In fact, one character, an uprooted cowboy named Pee Wee, found work driving the Griffith Park kiddie train. We passed right by it on the ride, a small coincidence.

Nick and his wife, Jill--their last name isn’t important here--are moving in a sort of backward direction. Or so says the Californian. They are taking their two daughters to Texas, where presumably the horse trails don’t cut underneath trembling freeways and where, as Jill points out, maybe their natural pox--twisters--at least can be seen at a distance, before they clear out the trailer park.

“With an earthquake,” she said, “you don’t get any warning.”

Their departure, I know, does not exactly qualify as news. People move in and out of California, and particularly Los Angeles, all the time. Yes, every decade or so, the trend-watchers become panicky and weep all over the newspaper about exoduses. The fact remains, however, that people always have come and gone in cycles. And more to the point, California has never needed to work too hard to attract newcomers to replace the departed.

The coming goes with the territory, and the going comes with it, too. California traditionally has represented a chance for folks to reinvent themselves. A New Yorker once offered the theory that Easterners feel compelled to do a stretch in California, just as young Californians often are drawn to New York as a sort of finishing school. And like all mega-cities, Los Angeles will attract young people seeking to prove their professional bona fides in Big Town before moving on.

Moving on.

What’s depressing about Nick and Jill’s departure is how they finally came to be pushed out. They had an extremely rough ride in the earthquake. The flames of the riot had licked right against Nick’s studio. His sister had been attacked by carjackers in Studio City. Still, they hung in. Until their baby daughters began growing up, as baby daughters will. Then they surveyed the nearby public schools and found them all but hopeless. They priced private schools--$13,000 a year for first grade. Only then did they decide to hit the trail. They studied national ratings of cities and schools. “Almost all of California,” Jill noted softly, trying to be polite, “was pretty much down there in the rankings.”

In the end, all roads pointed to . . . Texas, specifically Austin, where they plan to be living in a month or so.

By now we had reached the crest of the Hollywood Hills. The view was a remarkable panorama. Behind us was the vast middle of the city, spreading outlandishly from the San Gabriels to the beach. Ahead of us was the San Fernando Valley, yearning to be free. Downtown high-rises. Studio towers. The near islands offshore. All were visible. The evening sunlight was filtered through smog and trail dust, applying a weird but pretty brown-red tint to the spectacle.

“Nick,” I said for the last time, “how could you give all this up?”

“Well,” he said, “let someone else have a turn at it.”

The ride was half over. He was already gone.