A different drumbeat

After a year of living in a downtown L.A. loft, I started feeling oxygen-deprived. I dreamed about chain-sawed trees thundering to the ground, a river of concrete flowing like lava. This prompted a trip to Costa Rica, where I saw a flock of scarlet macaws cut through the sky like a ribbon of red.

Back home, on a whim, the boyfriend bought a hand-raised baby Severe macaw. The bird was jungle green, and I was stunned to learn that macaws could live 40 to 50 years in captivity. The boyfriend and I were not destined to last so long in our relationship cage. I called the bird Lima (one who speaks), and taught him how. Soon he had a 50-word vocabulary and spoke in complete sentences.

One evening, the boyfriend and I went to dinner at a home in faraway Topanga Canyon. Bounded by Valley Porn Central to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south, Topanga was a tie-dyed trip to yesteryore. Or so I always thought when I drove straight through, freaked by the crystal shops, Birkenstocks and DIY shacks. But here I was. In the heart of the heart of canyon country. Fairy lights winked from pepper trees, coyotes yipped in the hills, tree frogs filled the night with cicada sounds. There was partial nudity, homemade wine and air so delicious you could drink it -- I was spellbound. When the boyfriend and I broke up, I moved to Topanga Canyon with Lima.

In those honeymoon days, six years ago now, my jury-rigged Japanese car barely made it up the steep hill to the small cul-de-sac I live on. With Lima clutching my left shoulder, I would walk 20 minutes down the hill. Then I entered the Mimosa Cafe, which boasts a “French atmosphere,” portal to this new canyon cosmos. Inside, people were throwing runes to seek guidance for their day. If the runes didn’t work, a 6-foot, bald German horsewoman wearing Ugg boots and a Pucci minidress pushed psychic readings while you drank your coffee.

Lima became one of the town’s mascots, along with the cafe owner’s boxer, Harley. “Best butt in town,” said a regular, patting Harley’s prize rump. She was part of a flock of wealthy, lusty divorcees always prowling for beaus. Out on the garden patio amidst pink bougainvillea and potted palms, you could often find Drummer, smiling in his camouflage jumpsuit and bare feet, sitting lotus position on the painted wooden bench. Lethally allergic to the insides of buildings, he lived in the woods with only a tarp to his name, and crafted customized drums for a living. A light-footed hippie chick glided over when I was writing an IOU, having forgotten my wallet. In the Midwest, her name used to be Mary, or Julie, but now she was Ishtar Butterfly. “Ask for angel money,” she said, waving her fingers as if to pluck coins from the air. “It’s everywhere if you know where to look.” Over the pastry counter, I met a man dressed in purple sandals, a purple robe and a purple cowboy hat, who told me he’d trekked all over Africa, Asia ... and “other dimensions.”

On the sweaty hike back up, I would pass Grand View Drive, where Charlie Manson used to park his bus. There was a dark side to Topanga too. Sometimes I faced off with Dollar Bill. Fresh out of the clinker with only a piece of string keeping his pants up, he would walk the roads, regularly exposing himself to young canyon girls. A year later he was busted and disappeared from the canyon.

For half a dozen years, I’ve lived off Observation Drive in the lower level of a house. My modest feng-shui disaster zone of a one-bedroom rental looks out on leafy green Topanga State Park, the world’s largest wildlands within the boundary of a major city. No house in sight. An old torrey pine grows right through the deck, dropping pine cones as big as babies’ heads, and sap thicker than tahini. Aggro hummingbirds buzz the windows of my office. Red-tailed hawks soar over the live oak treetops, scanning for spaced-out ground squirrels.

Topangans seem more bonded with the environment here. We can see the stars. Comets. Even UFOs. Across the street, they have parties to celebrate the solstices and new moons. Guests bring their bongos. All are welcome. “I need a place to grow pot. How big’s your closet?” asks one man, a former Playgirl centerfold who paid bills for years by supplying sperm banks. Now he lives in a station wagon with five yapping dogs. In the yard, a skinny, blond goddess in belly-dancing finery and Egyptian makeup blows a mournful didgeridoo. A man wearing only a sheepskin loincloth writhes and twirls fire clubs that blaze hieroglyphs against a moonlit sky.

I SLOW DOWN THROUGH TOPANGA. That’s what the bumper stickers say. You’ve got to navigate treacherous blind curves, overhanging palms and jutting prickly pear to get to the mountaintop where I live. Staked along the way are colorful hand-painted signs like: STARS ABOVE, KIDS & PETS BELOW or LOOK 4 LIFE! One winding mile down on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the bumper stickers are another gentle reminder to the estimated 30,000 daily commuters that there’s still a small town here.

When I landed, there were rock ‘em-sock ‘em community meetings over putting up the first traffic light. After battling traffic along PCH, leaving the glittering ocean behind as I head north toward home, I relish the imperative to slow down. Over time, this natural imperative has seeped into my bloodstream: Zen by way of the environment.

But nature isn’t always kind, the solitude isn’t without its price, and Zen has lessons about the dangers of attachment. There are also the dangers of living right next to untamed wild lands. Anyone who lets a cat out at night rarely sees it survive the year. Coyotes eat cats for snacks. One day the Labrador retriever next door disappeared. There was a mountain lion in the area. I made the fatal urban mistake of thinking my exotic, pampered companion pet was safe during the day. What did I think, that this tiny bird was, shazam!, SuperParrot! with machine-gun beak and ear-splitting squawk, his bright feathers a virtual flak jacket?

Four years into Topanga, a bobcat snatched Lima off the deck in the middle of the day. I’d left him for a moment, decimating peanuts on a manzanita perch, while I answered the phone. His startled cry shattered me, and will always haunt. When I ran outside, he was already gone. The neighbor said she’d seen a bobcat tearing down the hillside with something in its mouth. I searched for hours, calling out his name, sprinting past the live-oak stand and through dense brush. I found no trace. Not even a feather. I built a makeshift shrine, even solicited an online animal preacher to say a prayer. After four miserable months, I adopted a homeless Scarlet macaw as a tribute to Lima. I never post Ajax outside without supervision. Nature taught me a new respect and understanding. If Lima had to go, there might have been worse ways. What if he’d been crushed by a car, fed the wrong food? Maybe there is more nobility in being seized by a bobcat and returned to nature. Maybe this is what Robert Stone, in his classic novel “Dog Soldiers,” meant by Cold Zen.

No matter how many grueling, trafficky hours I burn through to get home, once I arrive I am awed by the sweet scent of jasmine, the blazing stars in the night sky, the kneeling silence. In the presence of that immensity, something always takes flight.

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Rachel Resnick is a contributing editor to Tin House magazine and the author of the novel “Go West Young ... Chick.”