by Richard Risemberg
Out of the multitude of fitful ironies that constitute Los Angeles, one of the most compelling is our river: home to the homeless, it is itself a homeless river, wandering dazed and sunstruck through industrial wastelands, or shuffling furtively past suburban cottages that conscientiously turn their backs on it, till it suddenly expands into a glittering estuary for a few brief yards before drowning itself in the sussurant reaches of the harbor. It murmurs to us from beneath the arching concrete bridges, it waves white handkerchiefs of sunglint to distract our eyes, and once in a while, when the storms come, it explodes into a futile rage, confined as it is within a staitjacket of stained cement. People gather at the bridges then and watch with an odd sort of dispassionate awe as it strikes out at nothing, boxing and wrestling with memories of itself, harmless in its isolation….
It is we who cast it out of our lives, we who have nurtured its rages and its shame. We did not have to make a drainage ditch out of a river. The floods we used as an excuse were floods we made.
All rivers flood, even seasonal desert rivers such as ours, and we could not have a fully wild river in our midst, any more than we could let lions wander through our streets, lazy and complacent felines though they are; they do feel hungry sometimes, after all. But the great floods of the Los Angeles River were born of the city itself, and not of the rains that had been falling here for millennia before the first few plats and roadways appeared on some developer's office wall, decades ago.
Los Angeles was the first large city predicated on car use for transit, and as the city grew, so did the proportion of its surface covered with asphalt. Now, up to 70% of our land is dedicated to the automobile, for freeways, streets, and alleys; for gas stations and parking lots and garages; for onramps and offramps and driveways and who knows what. And of course, a goodly portion of the rest is covered in houses, apartments, and stores…and in a city famous for its lack of parks, that leaves precious little open earth to absorb the rains. A few front yards and parkway strips can't do too much, so we have the irony of a city that receives less rain in a year than many others do in a month, being so rightfully fearful of floods that we have walled in our entire river, from source to mouth, and sequestered it, almost entirely, from our lives.
That may be changing now.
We are beginning to understand a little more about permeability, both the vertical permeability of the soil and the horizontal permeability of our social constructs. We are realizing that we can reshape the riverbanks so that the land around the river absorbs water, and that we must leave free soil exposed to the sky throughout the city so that plants may grow on it and guide the rains into the earth to replenish our groundwater, rather than simply wash out to the sea. And we are realizing that the river need not be a barrier, as it now is.
We are learning that it can instead be a commons for the neighborhoods around it, bringing people together, encouraging us to cross the boundaries that separate us from our fellows, from other neighborhoods filled with people just as lonely and loving, just as fearful and brave, as we are. We are beginning to free the river, not just with the sporadic guerrilla actions of years past--furtive artworks like the famous river cats painted on the storm drain hinges, or the hidden parks built by lonely and passionate eccentrics here and there along the banks--but with the blessing and the money of the State of California. Over eighty million dollars to re-green the river, to build parks and bike paths along its banks, to tear up some of the concrete…to let the river show its face once more. Many persons, many groups, have helped us come to this. But it is only a beginning.
We must go farther. The greening of the river can't simply stop a hundred yards from its banks, and it need not be limited to parks. There is already one farm in the river, by the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin--why not more? Why not urban farms all along the river, interspersed with parks and wildlife sanctuaries? Why not more multi-use flood basins, that would serve as farms or parks ten months out of each year, not only along the river but dispersed throughout the city, such as we already have in Pan Pacific Park just south of Hollywood?
No river exists only in its channel; it's part of an intricate matrix of streams, ponds, aquifers, of rain and of roots, and of music and motion as well, a fabric that has patterned our city and that we have needlessly stained and smeared with asphalt till it's unrecognizable. No one ordinarily thinks that building a subway or riding a bus or a bicycle can save the river, but that's in part what it will take: for then we can tear up some of the asphalt that makes of Los Angeles a gray, flat smear reflected in an equally gray sky, a chaos of lonely drivers locked in their cars. We have begun this work, though it will take a long long time to finish. But we will do it, or Los Angeles itself will become a homeless town, a place where people live in boxes and move on when they're told.
It is time to bring the river home again. It is time to introduce ourselves to our forgotten landscape and to the physical forces that flow equally in the river, underground, and through our veins. It is time to look beyond the walls that we have built and see the faces of our river, of our city, of our neighbors, and of ourselves. It is time to find our home.
Richard Risemberg
Photos by the author and G. S. Morey.
