Great Oak Must Be Sacrificed to Atone for L.A.’s Past Sins

On Day 19, I say the tree’s got to go.

It’s not that I don’t like vegetation, and the gnarly old oak on Pico Canyon Road near Santa Clarita is a beauty. But here’s the question: If you’ve got to fight insane traffic, squeeze past a strip-mall gantlet, and turn left at Chuck E. Cheese’s to get to a tree, isn’t it already too late to save it?

For a moment Tuesday, I thought the Santa Anas would resolve the issue. I was talking to tree-sitter John Quigley by cell phone, and the wind was whistling past him with such a fury I thought he might be blown off his perch.

“I can’t talk too long,” he said, explaining that he needed to secure his little treehouse.

Quigley told me his protest was never about anything but protecting this single tree, which stands in the way of a road-widening project that could eventually serve a gargantuan housing development. But now he realizes his being up a tree means something more.

“I understand people need places to live,” Quigley said. “But if you’re going to bulldoze the hills and trees for a subdivision that hasn’t even been approved yet, and then plant tree saplings, it’s not the kind of community I want to live in.”

Then he should come down out of the tree and get out of town. Greater Los Angeles was built on the principle that no legal, moral or natural force should stand in the way of growth beyond all reason.

Why should this tree be different from those that were long ago destroyed? “This is incredible, that they would even consider removing a tree that’s been here for 400 years,” Gloria Jenne, a retired high school secretary, told me under the oak in question. Besides, she said, it’s already too crowded in Santa Clarita to keep building mammoth subdivisions that further destroy the quality of life.

She and her husband, Russ, drove from six miles away in Saugus to have a look, and for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, I asked if they grew up in Saugus.

No, they said. They moved up from North Hollywood 22 years ago to escape the city.

Well then, how are they any different from the people who will live in the new subdivision? I asked. How are they any different from those who became tree huggers after moving halfway to Bakersfield, only to congest the freeways and foul the air on long commutes?

Gloria Jenne said they moved to an established community 22 years ago, and it was rural back then. But she understood my point, and agreed that too many people were able to follow them north because there has never been any attempt to control sprawl.

They used to be on the edge of wilderness, but now they’re an extension of the San Fernando Valley, and the overdevelopment they tried to escape has swept past them in waves.

“This breaks my heart and hurts in the pit of my stomach,” Gloria said while looking at the tree. Her husband said if it comes to a showdown with developers, he’ll gladly lock arms with compatriots and stand in the path of the bulldozer.

I once wrote about a tree that some people tried to save by claiming they had seen the form of Jesus appear on a limb. The face of Jesus has also been known to appear on a tortilla, and the Virgin mother has made appearances in unexpected places as well.

But I scoured the oak on Pico Canyon for an apparition and saw only John Quigley’s shadow moving through the branches. From the roadway, he could be confused for Zacchaeus, or maybe one of the 12 disciples, but I don’t think Quigley can save the tree.

This is the first pro-environment vigil I’ve been to in which half the rubber-neckers are in SUVs, but part of the crowd seems to be drawn to the spectacle rather than the cause.

“It’s a freak show,” said a man who comes by for daily entertainment. He pointed to a minivan that stopped near the tree and picked up several towhead kids who’d been playing along the roadside.

Jordan Szabad, a dance major at CalArts, said she came to see Quigley rather than the tree.

“I wanted to see a man who wouldn’t bend under pressure,” she said admiringly, but she was confused as to why so many people are drawn to this development issue and not others. “I don’t see people complain when they put in another Target or an Albertson’s or a Starbucks.”

They’re not anti-growth, said Jim Nicoson, who wore a Save-the-Tree pin and said he used to hike in this area before deer and other wildlife were driven out.

“It’s about balance,” he said. When I asked where he was from, he said he was “of the Earth.” The same cannot be said of L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose solution to this standoff is to transplant the oak.

I’m no gardener. But this thing is the size of a Ferris wheel, and I’m here to guarantee you it’ll be dead as a Christmas wreath in two weeks.

If Antonovich and other public officials had stood up to developers, rather than roll over like lap dogs, there might not be an existing subdivision so close to the tree that it has to be chopped down to make way for the next development.

A development that could add 75,000 new customers for the local Chuck E. Cheese. If there were a halfway intelligent effort to link housing development to job centers and public transportation, we wouldn’t keep adding more pain to our daily migraine.

But unlike John Quigley, I see little hope.

The tree has got to go. Like Jesus, it must die for our sins.*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes. com.