Taylor Trail

It happens no matter what, I guess.

The Taylor Trail in Santa Clarita is allegedly a two and a half mile long trail that climbs into the Rivendale Park and Open Space. It connects directly with the smaller and far more popular Towsley Trail. Both can be accessed by The Old Road, which runs parallel to the 5 Highway. The trail is advertised as “a nice way to avoid parking hassles at Towsley Canyon”, according to AllTrails.

I planned to write my next review on this trail specifically because it appeared unremarkable. While I find the experience of exploring extravagant natural features plenty enjoyable, the thesis of this project has never been about enjoyment, but about the things you find when you spend intentional time with the mundane, everyday type of nature that we are constantly surrounded by. It is more about making being an activity. Walking, breathing, and noticing. I like to believe that one day I can live every day of my life like that, no matter where I am. However, I have completely obliterated my attention span and dopamine receptors. So for now, I’ll need at least a couple trees, as well as metal signs telling me what to do, and where to go.

I pulled off The Old Road when my phone told me too, and for a moment I second guess it due to the lack of cars. However, this time, it was telling me the truth. This is the Taylor Trailhead. There was a park maintenance worker when I arrived. He was the only other person in the “parking structure”. I asked him if it was okay if I parked here, assuming the answer would be no due to the complete lack of signage. Living in and around Los Angeles for the past seven or so years has trained me to be alarmed when I do not see at least three time-based conditions around a given parking spot.

“Yeah, just wherever you want bro”.

He did not say this in a friendly or an unkind way. He said it as if I stopped existing the moment he finished the sentence, like a spell. I thanked him, but I believe I could have said nothing and he would have felt the exact same way. I am writing this not to express any specific feeling about this interaction. I just thought it was interesting.

Most of the trailheads in Santa Clarita, at least the more official ones, are marked with these green asymmetric gates. This is immediately reassuring. As some long-time readers may know, many of the trails marked on AllTrails are seemingly completely made up both in name and in path. By who, I have no idea. But this gate leads me to believe I will be on a well charted path.

The deception begins here.

I only observed two people the entire time I was on this trail, and we never actually crossed paths. They were a middle aged couple. They were not on bike, nor horseback. Therefore, it was unimportant for me to memorize the order in which yielding was supposed to occur.

The beginning of the “loop”. I cut right.

The trail begins to ascend immediately and very steadily. The occasional tree coverage was nice. There is a heat wave happening right now. I wonder if it has a part in why I am writing this right now.

Or something. Maybe the heat made me want to go outside, which made me start to regularly move my body more, which made me happy, which motivated me to keep moving my body and focus on putting more work out. Or maybe the weather made me more motivated to go out and socialize more, so I saw more people, and subsequently, saw more people living how I want to live, so I felt motivated to make changes. Or maybe I am completely beholden to my environment through and through, and no matter what I try to control, it just needs to be at least eighty five degrees before I feel normal. Or maybe it is classic seasonal-affective disorder. Or maybe I was not trying hard enough. Or maybe I was feeling too much shame about not trying hard enough. Or maybe my brain wasn’t developed enough yet. Or maybe I was just tired.

I’ve been really frustrated.

I started writing these about a year ago. I didn’t check, but I remember it was spring, I remember it was starting to get warmer, and I remember I needed a fresh start. I was cleaning a lot, moving a lot, thinking a lot, after a long period of feeling more stagnant and outside of my body. I know deep down things have changed, but there are many frightening parallels to how I feel now and how I felt a year ago when I was writing the first one of my reviews. I am sensitive to cycles and stagnation. I lived the first eighteen years of my life feeling stuck, and it was not until I began undergoing massive fundamental change in the understanding I had of myself and how I fit into the world that I began to find stability and happiness. I didn’t see a clear future for myself until I changed, or really see a future at all. When I think about a year passing and not seeing clear evidence of change, it does not feel like I am stuck, it feels like I am moving backwards.

All of this to say, as I write this, I feel happy. I am hopeful. But I am also scared. I know I need to trust myself, but I also have learned that while change is constant, there are things you can do to push it away, and sometimes the force it takes to do so is generated from involuntary muscles.

My best friend told me this project is one of the coolest things I have ever done as a writer. Aside from acts of God, I have to credit him a little in starting this back up. I think those words may have been a straw on my back.

Two paths. I consulted my map to see which to take. The right one was not charted. It ended up leading to the same place the left one did after about thirty yards.

I have decided I am leaving my home in Santa Clarita after many years. I think that also put the fire under me to finish my original goal, which is to do this for every trail in the area. I would guess I’ve got about five or six months. I love this place, and I hope these reviews show that. It has been an amazing place to change.

Okay, back to it. While the plan was to find a pretty run-of-the-mill trail, this one had some pretty exceptional sights. As I mentioned earlier, there was almost nobody there. The emptiness of such a beautiful place is very unusual to me. With the population of LA, and even the Santa Clarita Valley, having a place like this all to yourself is a rarity to be appreciated. As someone who is constantly toiling over how I appear to others, strangers included, experiences like this are invaluable. I felt like a child. I felt like the world inside my head that I fight so hard not to live in became the ground beneath my feet. It was not dark and swallowed, but now filled with air and bugs and dirt and trees. I was not alone. I was with myself.

The steady ascent continued. If you look closely, you can see the 5 Highway. I began to realize how close I have always been to this place. The completely unoriginal thought began to be hammered into my head once again that beauty is everywhere we look. You have to look, though. And not only that, but maybe the beauty feels more powerful when you don’t know for certain it will even be there. I think that is why, once again, the everyday overlooked trails feel more central to why I do this. If I go to a beautiful river that leads me to a waterfall, that beauty is known before my feet hit the ground. It is not that I am underwhelmed by the more “mainstream” natural beauties. But, when you look, and you find something, I think it is easier to feel a deeper sort of connection to it. Even if other people have found it. Because you did too. And not through a catalogued database of natural beauty that is ranked on a star-based system, but with your eyes, ears, hands, and heart. I think that feeling of agency and discovery is more challenging to find nowadays.

At this point in the trail, I should begin to shift direction, descend, and start looping back around. I could have cut through the Towsley Loop for some extra time, but I always do my best to stick to these trails exactly as they are written. I do this partly because they end up being wrong and leading to funny anecdotes, but also so you can get the true and honest review of what AllTrails decidedly calls the “Taylor Loop”. So I stay my course.

I quickly realize I am facing the Calgrove highway exit, one I have taken many times before. As I face a familiar place, I quickly recognize something very unfamiliar.

Hundreds of goats, visible from a road I have driven on hundreds of times, connected directly to the Towlsey Loop

I ran down the hill to join them.

My best friend believes they are “new”. However, there was an electric fence surrounding them, and hundreds of them, so it did not happen overnight. I choose to believe that I looked right at these goats and I did not see them, at least once since they have been there, though I have no evidence of this.

I guess that is the other big picture idea in why I do this. On a small scale, it is about finding places new to me and finding beautiful things within them. But in a bigger way, it is also about making the choice to intentionally look closely at something that I’d claim to anyone that I know “like the back of my hand”, my home, because even the things we know deeply, love passionately, and hate feverishly surprise us if we let them. You can let your eyes glaze over. You can miss someone growing in front of you, you can neglect the beauty and uniqueness in day, and you can miss the installation of hundreds of goats and an electric fence in the city you have lived in for close to a decade. You have to look.

I finish the loop after thoroughly documenting the goats. The path back up to the Taylor Trail is green and soft. I found this snake.

I do a double take on my map. Somewhere, along this loop, I missed the continuation of the Taylor Trail, and ended up right back to part of the path where I originally discovered the goats. Allegedly, the path I was supposed to take was back with the goats. I climbed back down again, immediately skeptical, because clearly I had found myself on another nonexistent trail.

The trail was supposed to continue directly through the pasture of goats, which was blocked by the aforementioned electric fence.

The trail, presumably. I unknowingly took this photo before I realized I had been bamboozled.

So, I could’ve hiked back the way that I came. But I was so close to The Old Road, I thought it might be more interesting to find my way to it and hike the road back. According to the map, the trail I was supposed to be on runs parallel to the road, so maybe I’d find a way to hop back on it on my way.

I also had plans later that day and thought it might be faster.

I quickly realized the only way I was gonna make it to The Old Road was to cross the river the goats were drinking out of. It was lined with the electric fence.

I took of my shoes and socks. Pleasantly, soft sand met my feet.

If anybody had interest in disabling this electric fence, don’t even think about it. It has a highly secure and high-tech system powering it.

My walk on The Old Road back to my car.

I never found the trail. I still question its existence.

A completely unmarked trail I found on the side of the road with no parking. Only marked by the same asymmetrical green gate that marked my half-real trail. It does not in anyway lineup with the trail I was supposed to be on.

Deer seen on the side of The Old Road.

Overall, I hiked five miles on what was supposed to be a two and a half mile trip. I saw beautiful places I had never been, and I saw beautiful things inhabit places I’ve seen many times. Today, I have a clear path ahead of me, lined with loud, obvious change. However, I will do my best to believe that when I do not see that type of change ahead of me, that there may be an electric fence being installed, it will be filled with hundreds of goats, and I just need to look closely to find it.

Thanks for reading everybody. I plan on completing my goal before the year is up, but no promises on anything ever, really. Lot’s of love.

My song for this week, is actually an album. I spent most of this hike listening to Charlotte Cornfields new album, “Hurts Like Hell”, and it kept me company. Give it a listen and support an amazing songwriter.

Take care.