Outpost of Nature Where a Freeway and a River Coexist

Just northeast of downtown Los Angeles is a magical tear in the fabric of the urban wasteland.

At least that’s how Silver Lake resident Steven Peterman describes the Los Angeles River. He means the new Los Angeles River--the one with glistening water, thick stands of trees, blue herons and mallard ducks--the paradoxical flood control channel that just may be this city’s strangest new public space.

Peterman gave his spin on the river while strolling with his wife and young son up its banks off Los Feliz Boulevard last Sunday, talking over the muted roar of the Golden State Freeway and burble of rushing water.

“There’s something magical about the juxtapositions,” Peterman said. “You are in the middle of the city, and then you slip through this crack in the concrete facade and into a space that’s more human.”

The contrasts are so bizarre that the place feels a little unreal--even illicit: “It’s like you are stealing something,” Peterman said.

Peterman’s presence was itself a statement. Years ago people laughed at the notion that the Los Angeles River could be a park, that it would attract young families like this one, looking for a Sunday outing. People thought the river was too dangerous, too gross and too ugly.

Even today, the most ambitious plans to improve the landscape are years away, and changes have come only in bits and pieces: a bench here or a stretch of bike trail there.

But it’s enough. A weekend trickle of cyclists, skaters

and baby strollers is proof that a park is being born.

The new river users come despite the freeway, the 20-foot-high graffiti panels, the barbed wire and dank smells, and the concrete, concrete, concrete.

They come to walk dogs, watch birds and fling pebbles into the rippling sheets of green water. They bring toddlers to watch the ducks. Or they drape themselves on benches to gaze across this peculiar urban landscape.

The so-called Elysian Narrows of the river run southeast along the east side of Griffith Park from Victory Boulevard to Fletcher Drive, and have been the focus of recent revitalization efforts.

Decorative gates, pocket parks and picnic tables dot the area and a 2-year-old bike path runs along the west bank. Such changes are the first signs of increasing efforts to transform the river into recreational space.

But the river’s functional soul remains embedded in the landscape. Concrete banks and bulkheads crouch like ruined monuments. Electrical towers loom like giants.

In Atwater Village, the river is dominated by the freeway, which bathes the scene with noise and fumes, and lies within a few feet of the bike path.

And yet, glance into the riverbed and what you see looks a lot like wilderness. The river bottom is soft here, spared from concrete by welling ground water. A belt of trees flourishes midstream. Water swirls around powder white boulders. Swallows fly overhead.

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Millions of gallons of fresh water, the byproduct of modern sewage treatment, have increased the dry season flow in the river, and in recent years an ecosystem has sprung up. Nearly everyone who walks these banks comments on the abundance of life: herons, egrets, cormorants, stilts, hawks, frogs and crabs. It’s a little zoo, just across the freeway from the real one.

Five-year-old Jasmine Fernandez, walking with her father and sisters, instantly bought the notion that this was open space. “I think it’s pretty,” she said.

Not everyone was such an easy sell. A few, like Sean McLaughlin, left disappointed. “It’s pretty man-made,” said the new Atwater Village resident, looking skeptically around at the asphalt and power lines on his first venture to the river.

His companion Dina Strada was harsher. She used to live at the beach, and prefers nature to look more natural. Pointing down toward some razor wire and industrial yards, she said: “It gets really gross down there.”

But on this late fall Sunday, they were the exception. Far more people were surprisingly passionate about the river, and more than willing to stretch conventional notions of beauty to embrace it.

“It’s just awesome,” said Andrea Horwatt, who had brought her skates from Silver Lake to attack the bike path. “It’s hard to believe you are in Los Angeles.”

The sightseers talked about their hunger for open spaces to bike and walk. They talked about the frogs and the moonlight on the bike trail, about the snowy egrets they had seen, and about the surf-like sound effects of the freeway.

They talked about the weird peacefulness of the river--how it is noisy and silent at the same time--and the even weirder tension between its wildness and the sheer intensity of industrial development bearing down on it.

Kathy Self of Van Nuys combats the freeway by pretending she does not see it. She focuses her gaze carefully toward the middle of the river as she pedals her bike, thus maximizing the impression of wilderness.

Self has been musing about improvements--for starters, an extension of the bike trail to the beach would be nice, she said. Other people gave ideas for kayaking, parks, water slides and various bike path extensions. Something about the ragged imperfection of the place seems to bring out the urban planner in everyone.

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Of all the people who offered their views, it was Marietta Kernstock of Atwater Village who tried the hardest to explain the river’s magnetic draw. Kernstock was loading her bicycle into a pickup on Los Feliz after cycling the trail.

In a soft, intent voice, she related how she had lived in Los Angeles for nearly 30 years, watching the urban environment encroach more and more on nature. She had grown accustomed, she said, to seeing things go away, seeing things die.

“But then I saw the river come back to life,” she said. “It is so reassuring. This is a big city and there is all this pollution, but there is also the most incredible beauty.”

To her, the contrasts are exactly what makes the setting so affecting. “Do you see? That a freeway and a river can exist side by side--it means we can live together. We can have life here. . . .

“It is so beautiful,” she said. “It is the most beautiful thing.”