A year ago, we were all glued to our phones, namely the Watch Duty app, as we watched fires rip through beloved neighborhoods and landscapes. We braced ourselves for the death toll, the number of homes lost and what was harmed in our beloved mountains.
The Eaton and Palisades fires were the beginning of a crushing year for L.A.
I don’t believe in closure or want to push the idea of resilience, concepts too often forced in these kind of post-disaster narratives. But I do believe in pausing to discern what we have learned over the past year.
I recently spoke with trail crew volunteers, including two who lost their houses in the fires, to get their takes.
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They each shared what’s helped them move through this past year, including what we can learn from the regrowth and recovery of our local forests. I left these conversations feeling inspired by both the natural and human spirit. I hope you will be too.
Lesson 1: Humans are adaptable like the trees and plants
After the devastating 2018 Woolsey fire, which burned much of the Santa Monica Mountains, photographer Jane Simpson made regular pilgrimages to Malibu Creek State Park to document the renewal process. She saw the hillsides start to green, and lupine and other flowers (and mustard) start to bloom.
It helped give her a baseline for what to expect when she started returning to the mountains scorched by the Palisades fire.
Simpson is a member of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force trail crew, known often by their nickname, the Trailies.
In November, Simpson worked alongside other Trailies on the Bienveneda and Leacock trails in Topanga State Park. The area was badly burned, but still Simpson noticed green sprouts peeking out of the ashy soil and from the branches of trees that the average passerby might assume were dead.
“I just want to think that the trees, the flowers, the [landscape] are not just responding blindly and dumbly — we know they’ve learned to adapt, and humans are learning to adapt as well,” said Simpson, who joined the Trailies in 2017.
Simpson has been forced to adapt. Her home in the Palisades Highlands was among thousands that burned in the Palisades fire, and she alongside her neighbors are grappling with whether to rebuild. Simpson grew up in Mandeville Canyon, and as a kid, she’d head out the door with a sack lunch and friends for a day of unsupervised adventures. It’s hard to imagine not living there.
Trail crew worker Jane Simpson observes a Humboldt’s lily in Santa Ynez Canyon last summer.
(Gaby Valensi)
Before the fire, Simpson could walk out her front door and quickly take one of about five nearby trailheads. She and a neighbor would often “just head out the door and go anywhere,” she said, like the many times they headed along Palisades Drive to Temescal Ridge Trail to Radio Peak, a local name for Temescal Peak.
Those trips helped them learn the local plants and how they changed with the seasons, like how the ceanothus would blossom with blue blooms in early spring. And in Santa Ynez Canyon, Simpson loved spotting the Humboldt’s lilies, knowing the perennials would come back every year.
Even after the devastation of the Palisades fire, she’s seen those lilies return to the same spot they’ve always been.
“A fire-scarred landscape may look dead, but spotting a familiar flower is like seeing old friends,” she said. “It’s reassurance — that some kind of normal is possible. Of course, when it is your own property, there is no normal there, but there is reassurance that for the earth, the wildlife, plants, things will go on, even if I don’t return.”
Lesson 2: We have our own ecological role to play
Trailie crew member Ron Dean is drawn to trail work for creativity. Every 10 minutes, there’s seemingly a new problem the trail crew faces, like, “Where should we put the trail? Should we put the rocks over here? Does this need a drain? How can we move this thing out of the way? It’s wonderful,” he said.
When I asked Dean, who joined the crew 12 years ago, to describe his relationship with the Santa Monica Mountains, he was quick to answer.
“When I’m out in the mountains, I feel like I’m hanging out with my best friend,” Dean said.
A Trailies volunteer works on the Leacock Trail in 2019.
(Jane Simpson)
Dean moved from Wisconsin to L.A. in 1970 for a job and stayed for the climate and landscape. Every Sunday for the past several years, Dean and his son Josh would hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, leaving Dean’s home in the Palisades and often hitting a loop trail to Goat Peak, also referred to by some locals as High Point. After the hike, they’d have brunch and watch football.
That home, which was built in 1951, burned in the Palisades fire. Similar to how he approaches trail work, Dean is looking at how to create a better home for today’s climate, adding solar panels, backup batteries, water recycling and a heat pump system.
Dean is comfortable tackling problems that seemingly have no end. He’s known among his fellow Trailies as the “mustard man” because whenever he sees invasive black mustard — the yellow flowers that cover L.A.’s hillsides in the spring before drying into quick-burning brown twigs — he yanks it out. “Will I win? Of course not,” Dean said.
A member of the Trailies works on Leacock Trail in 2019.
(Jane Simpson)
This is the kind of acceptance Dean has learned from our local mountains — that we can all do our part for as long as we’re here.
Lesson 3: Restoration is a form of reciprocity
In 2012, Rubio Canyon Trail Crew member Sean Green made it his personal mission to restore the Lone Tree Trail in Rubio Canyon. The path, built more than 100 years ago, was constructed so that workers from a municipal water company could reach the utility’s water intakes far into the canyon, Green said.
The trail had been abandoned for decades, but was rediscovered after the 1993 Kinneloa fire ripped through the area. “I decided I loved that trail and I restored it,” Green said.
The Rubio Canyon Trail Crew removes a landslide from the Gooseberry Motorway in 1997.
(Sean Green)
The trail crew’s work is part of a long history of give and take between humans and the canyon.
The lush landscape of chaparral, coast sage scrubs and creek beds was once a stop on the Mount Lowe Railway. The “railway climbed the steep Lake Avenue and crossed the poppy fields into the Rubio Canyon,” according to a local history website. “This part of the trip was called the Mountain Division. At this juncture stood the Rubio Pavilion, a small 12-room hotel. From there the passengers transferred to a cable car funicular which climbed the Great Incline to the top of the Echo Mountain promontory.”
The Rubio Cañon Land and Water Assn. has pulled water from the canyon since the 1880s, delivering it to nearby residents in Altadena. But in the late ’90s, in a still-debated controversy, the water company completed a construction project that sent thousands of yards of debris into the canyon, burying at least three waterfalls.
“Whether by nature’s hand or man’s, with time or with money, Rubio Canyon’s waterfalls will return,” Pasadena Star-News journalist Becky Oskin wrote at the time.
It appears that time has finally come.
Green said heavy rains pushed debris away from the once-covered Maidenhair Falls, a 30-foot cascade named after the Maidenhair ferns that once surrounded it.
The Rubio Canyon Trail Crew, which has worked in the area for more than 25 years, is busy bringing the rest of the canyon’s trails back too.
Claus Boettger, Phil Fujii and Jason Trevor backfill a new retaining wall along the Gooseberry Motorway in 2005. The original road was built in 1923 by Southern California Edison to install electric towers along the foothill ridges. It is now a single-track trail.
(Sean Green)
The Eaton fire ripped through the Rubio Canyon Preserve, seriously damaging the canyon’s chaparral, coast sage scrub and riparian habitats.
Green said his crew has almost finished restoring the Loma Alta Trail and has put in several hours on the Gooseberry Motorway, which takes hikers up and over a ridgeline, eventually into Angeles National Forest. The motorway was originally built by Southern California Edison to install electrical towers, Green said.
The crew has started seeing wildflowers, trees and wildlife all return to the canyon.
“The land is recovering,” Green said. “The Eaton fire caused a lot of damage, burning many houses down and burning the vegetation, but nature is very resilient and it will come back. … The canyon itself is going to take awhile to look like a vegetated canyon bottom because of all the debris that came down, but the rest of Rubio Canyon is going to regrow. It’s going to look pretty, and we’re going to get the trails in shape.”
Lesson 4: Hard work pays off
Lowelifes founder Rob Pettersen repairs a trail in Angeles National Forest.
(Erik Hillard, Lowelifes RCC)
The hiking trails of Angeles National Forest, as a whole, are in far better shape than they were 10 years ago. In spite of repeated wildfires — the Bobcat fire in 2020, the Bridge fire in 2024, the Eaton fire last year — and heavy rains, the trails remain.
I was so focused on the damage of the past year from the Eaton fire and heavy rainfall, I hadn’t zoomed out to consider the bigger picture until I spoke to Rob Pettersen, a founding board member of the Lowelifes Respectable Citizens’ Club.
The Lowelifes are among a dedicated coalition of trail crews that dedicate hundreds of hours every year to reestablishing damaged trails by lugging out fallen and dead trees, moving soil and rock, and more.
“We are moving forward, but Mother Nature has other ideas sometimes,” Pettersen said. “There’s no silver bullet for fixing these trails. They just need constant attention. It’s just the nature of our geology.”
Pettersen has volunteered on trail work crews off and on for the past 20 years, most consistently after Lowelifes was founded in 2019. Pettersen enjoys living in Los Feliz, but like most of us, is drawn to the solace and peace that the mountains provide.
After the 2020 Bobcat fire, which burned through Big Santa Anita Canyon and several other beloved places, the Lowelifes focused several months on restoring the Idlehour Trail, a six-mile jaunt through lush woodland.
“This time last year, Idlehour was in some of the best shape it’s ever been — and then it got melted” in the Eaton fire, Pettersen said. “It’s a very popular [and] special place for Lowelifes folks individually, and the fact we had just completed a lot of work there is kind of brutal.”
This ebb and flow of fire and flood, exacerbated by human-caused climate change, he said, is why the Lowelifes focus on restoring trails to a quality that can withstand harsh conditions.
“Even though we’ve had multiple years now where we’ve done a bunch of trail restoration work and then got hit by several inches of rain in 12 hours,” Pettersen said, “the vast majority of the trail mileage holds up because we do good work so the trail isn’t gone. But the trouble spots — the heavy drainages, the cliffy areas — those are always impacted by debris flow. So it’s a bummer, but it also feels good to be making a difference and doing good work for the community.”
Rob Pettersen cuts through a downed log during a Lowelifes work day on trails in Angeles National Forest.
(Matt Baffert, Lowelifes RCC)
Several Lowelife crew members lost their homes or livelihood in the Eaton fire, including Lowelifes president Matt Baffert. Additionally, the fire also burned up the crew’s tools, which were stored at Baffert’s home.
A year later, though, Baffert and others are rebuilding and moving back, Pettersen said.
That’s in large part because the community rallied behind the Lowelifes. The group received several grants and donations, and the Lowelifes as a nonprofit came out of the fire more financially secure than before. Pettersen said so many volunteers showed up to help that the Lowelifes had to turn people away because they couldn’t safely fit everyone who showed up on the trails to work.
“It’s amazing seeing how many people care about our Lowelifes individually and about our trails and our Angeles National Forest,” Pettersen said. “People care about trails, people care about public lands; that’s been positive and we want to keep building on that.”
This month, the Lowelifes plan — rain and snow permitting — to head back to the Idlehour trail.
The work continues.
3 things to do
Hikers with Hearts for Sight and the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter trek along a path together.
(Joan Schipper, Hearts For Sight)
1. Volunteer as a hiker guide in L.A. Hearts For Sight and the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter will host their monthly White Cane Hike at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 18 in Griffith Park. Volunteers are needed to guide blind and visually-impaired hikers on a gentle hike from Franklin’s Cafe & Market to a heliport in the park. The hike is free, and lunch is provided. To register, call Hearts for Sight at (818) 457-1482.
2. Make new friends hiking in Elysian Park LA for the Culture Hiking Club will host a beginner-friendly, free community hike at noon Saturday in Elysian Park. The group will meet at the Grace E. Simons Lodge parking lot before heading onto the Elysian Park West Loop, which offers stunning views of the city. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Commune with nature and a notebook near Calabasas California State Parks and Santa Monica Mountains Nature Journal Club will host a nature journaling meetup from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Malibu Creek State Park. Participants who are new to nature journaling are invited to take a free introductory course while experienced nature journalers can head into the park. The group will reconvene at noon to share their experiences. Guests are invited to bring a potluck dish to share. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
(Mary Forgione / Los Angeles Times)
One of the first places I go to research a trail is The Times archives because we’ve been writing about the trails and campgrounds of Angeles National Forest for more than 100 years. In all that time, we haven’t slowed down enough to write a comprehensive guide of the forest — until now. I spent the past few months researching and writing what is a part love letter/part guide to help you explore every corner of the 700,000-acre national forest playground that sits right in our backyard. I hope you save this guide and use it for many of your future adventures! I know I will.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
After the recent rain and snowfall, there are new and serious hazards on our local trails that you must consider before heading out. We have already lost at least three hikers locally this winter. As I’ve written previously, you often need crampons and an ice axe, equipment you need to be experienced using, before heading into a snow hike with elevation gain. I have seen several images on social media of hikers celebrating at the snow-covered Mt. Baldy summit, the highest point in the San Gabriel Mountains, but anyone headed up Baldy needs to understand how dangerous the hike is in winter conditions. As Kyle Fordham, a 36-year-old experienced hiker, told my colleagues, the Devil’s Backbone trail is typically considered the easier option, but it becomes “a death slide” in the winter. “It basically becomes a giant ice cliff,” Fordham said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can very easily die on it.” If you do run into a fellow hiker in need, please help however you can. It can sometimes be the kindness of a stranger that saves a life. Stay safe out there, friends!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
IF you fancy visiting one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the World’ – there’s a place right here in the UK that has made it onto a new list.
It might not be one of the classics like the Great Wall of China or Petra, but rather one with modern twist.
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The Bradford Pennine Gateway is a Nature Reserve in YorkshireCredit: AlamyThere are 8 sites across the Nature Reserve including Harden ReservoirCredit: Alamy
Condé Nast Traveller declared the Bradford Pennine Gateway in England to be a ‘wonder of the world’ that should be on your must-visit list for this year.
The publication said: “One of the reigning monarch’s ongoing Kings Series of nature reserves, the Bradford Pennines Gateway is part of a nationwide initiative to protect and celebrate the UK’s natural heritage, enhance biodiversity, and give local communities better access to nature.
“Rather like King Charles himself, there’s something stoic and un-showy about this 1,272-hectare region, resided in, and beloved by, the Brontë sisters and encompassing Ilkley Moor, Penistone Hill Country Park, Harden Moor and Bingley North Bog.”
It continued: “These are landscapes of unhurried drama: undulating moors, wind-polished gritstone tors and views that collapse into long, moody distances broken only by the slow, stately flap of a marsh harrier.”
Bradford Pennine Gateway was only declared a Nature Reserve in May 2025.
It forms part of the King’s Series of National Nature Reserves (NNRs) and is the first in West Yorkshire.
These were launched in 2025 to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III and ‘create a lasting public legacy for people and nature by accelerating the pace of nature recovery in England‘.
The Bradford Pennine Gateway spans 1,274 hectares – twice the size of Ilkley Moor.
Most read in Best of British
The reserve links together eight nature sites within the Bradford and South Pennines area.
The sites include Ilkley Moor, Baildon Moor, Shipley Glen, Trench Meadows, St Ives Estate, Harden Moor and Bingley Bog North.
The Calf and Cow rocks are a famous site along Ilkley Moor
Another is Penistone Country Park which was the home of authors Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte.
The natural surroundings which consist of heathlands and wetlands were said to inspire novels like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
Ilkley Moor is a place to go for panoramic views across the countryside, and is home to rock formations like theCow and Calf Rocks.
The two rocks got their names because the bigger one looks like a cow and a smaller boulder nearby resembles a calf.
There’s also the ancient site of the12 Apostles Stone Circle.
Other major sites in the reserve include the Harden Reservoir and the Goit Stock Waterfall.
By 2027, there’s set to be 27 major NNRs across England including the Lincolnshire Coronation Coast National Nature Reserve.
Others are the Mendip National Nature Reserve in Somerset and North Kent Woods and Downs National Nature Reserve.
This quaint English village that inspired one of UK’s top TV soaps…
The village was used for filming the British ITV soap, Emmerdale…
Despite no actors or camera crew setting foot in it for almost 30 years, it regularly attracts crowds of telly addicts because the stone cottages, shops and local farms were used to film exterior scenes in Emmerdale until the nineties.
Esholt, on the outskirts of Shipley in West Yorkshire, was the backdrop for what was then called Emmerdale Farm between the 1970s to the 1990s.
Producers first chose to film Emmerdale in the village because of the classic North Yorkshire village look, and it being a half hour drive from the Leeds studios.
The local pub found on Main Street was originally called The Commercial, but it was later renamed The Woolpack, after the owner got sick of changing the signs back and forth.
The pub is still called The Woolpack to this day, despite production leaving the village in 1996.
Home Farm was based on the real Home Farm on the Esholt Estate, which dates back to 1691. The row of six cottages on Bunkers Hill was used for filming Demdyke Row. Emmerdale stopped using the plot in 1993 when there was a fictional plane crash that demolished the houses.
Alicia Piller was giddily flitting around her Inglewood live-work studio holding up resin-coated balls of detritus, showing off tiny fossil fragments, and pulling out plastic trays filled with random thingamajigs that had been organized by color.
The assortment is all part of her eclectic jewelry-making arsenal. She clusters recycled textiles, found items, donated castoffs and gemstones to create handmade wearable art that she describes as “science bohemian.”
In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles.
Piller juxtaposes opals, garnets and pearls with less conventional materials such as tile fragments, snakeskin, bits of lava from a trip to Iceland, and bullet casings, all bound together with strips of leather or vinyl. Lately, she’s been working with 3-D printed waste that her friends, a pair of costume-based performance artists, started delivering to her in giant garbage bags.
“I am always thinking about some aspect of recycling,” she said, “seeing the value in these things that we deem ‘trash.’”
One wall of her studio is lined with metal racks stacked with bins and boxes labeled “clay,” “metal” and “scraps.” The room is cluttered, yet curated.
“There’s a little bit of hoarding mentality,” Piller laughed, “but I use it!”
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1.Necklaces featuring seashells, gemstones and recycled printed plastic.2.Alicia Piller displays her handmade ring.(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
From her “controlled chaos” come intricate, ornate, one-of-a-kind necklaces, earrings, brooches and rings. While Etsy is her main retail hub, she previously sold her wearables at L.A.’s Craft Contemporary museum and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. She’s also provided flair for the likes of Phylicia Rashad, Jill Scott and Ciara.
Her creations give nods to nature, at times skew extraterrestrial, and have Afro-futuristic undertones. One pendant evokes the sea with its swirl of mother-of-pearl, spiral seashells and rivulets of pale gray leather arranged above a piece of bleached coral. A crystal-festooned collar necklace calls to mind a pair of Blue Morpho butterfly wings. And a jasper-studded pin resembles a Ghanaian mask at first glance.
The undulating layers and microcosms that make up her jewelry’s signature “biomorphic” look extend into her fine art practice, as well.
Piller received an MFA from Cal Arts and now teaches sculpture as an adjunct professor at UCLA and UC Irvine. Her maximalist mixed-media artwork has shown at Track 16 (the L.A. gallery that represents her), as well as institutions across Southern California, including the Brick and the Orange County Museum of Art. Both the Hammer Museum and the California African American Museum have her pieces in their permanent collections. Next summer, she’ll unveil a new monument as part of West Hollywood’s Art on the Outside public art program.
In her studio, multiple towering sculptures are ensconced in cardboard and bubble wrap, while others — works in progress — sit on plinths, lean against walls, or hang from the ceiling. There’s a stark contrast between these 9-foot-tall pieces and her smallest makes, a pair of one-inch post earrings. But toggling from the massive to the minute comes naturally to her.
Alicia Piller stands for a portrait in her studio.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s about the microscopic and the macro,” she explained. “I like being able to see the tiniest detail, then letting it expand out into the cosmos. I’m thinking about those two scales constantly and about where we fit between those scales.”
While she addresses such weighty topics as police brutality and climate disasters in her large-scale works, making wearables provides comfort.
“The jewelry is much more free-form and fun versus the more serious stuff that feels heavy to me,” she said. “It’s not always full of activism and all these ideas about humanity and the world. It’s more of a joyous, less stressful task.”
She added, “I also just love to adorn myself in the things that I make.”
This has been true since childhood.
During the studio tour, the artist pulled out a piece of brass wire bent to spell out her name, a keepsake from when she was 12. She’s kept all manner of adolescent mementos, such as beads she fashioned out of tightly-rolled magazine pages or colorful pieces of clay. Her future as an artisan was a foregone conclusion.
Photos of Piller’s maternal ancestors line the edges of this textural necklace, which features a pair of beetles at its center.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Growing up in Chicago, Piller and her mother performed as clowns at birthdays and company picnics. From ages 7 to 14, it was her job to create balloon figures for partygoers — sculpting skills that would come in handy. She gained an appreciation for nature and anthropology from mother-daughter fishing excursions and regular visits to the Field Museum, which focuses on natural history. Her affinity for biology comes from her father, who attended medical school when she was young.
“I had all these books around me that had the insides of bodies,” she recalled, “so there was a fascination with the inside.”
Piller went on to study anthropology and painting at Rutgers University, making jewelry in her spare time. During breaks, she’d work at a Chicago bead store, where she learned about global jewelry-making practices. After graduating in 2004, she moved to Manhattan, spending weekends hawking accessories and hand-painted clothing from a sidewalk table. She later relocated to Santa Fe, N.M., where she worked at a store selling fossils, minerals and semi-precious stones.
“That’s when I really understood that in all these materials there’s a spiritual side, an energy,” she said. “There’s a beauty in the fusion of all of these materials together.”
Piller moved to Inglewood in 2019. Asked if L.A. has impacted her work the way previous cities had, she said, “[My] storytelling, narrative side has come to the forefront. There’s definitely been a shift, in terms of thinking about how an object can tell a story.”
For example, enamored of Pasadena-born author Octavia Butler, she began referencing the sci-fi legend’s writing and using her likeness, both in sculptural form (as with her 2024 piece “Mission Control. Earthseed.”) and in her jewelry. She also started incorporating images of other inspiring women, including her maternal forebears and the Cuban American sculptor Ana Mendieta.
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1.Earrings featuring science fiction author Octavia Butler, one of Piller’s many inspirations.2.A necklace made from a crinoid fossil stem.3.Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta sits at the center of these necklaces.(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
L.A. has shaped her aesthetic in more literal ways, too.
“A big part of what I do is walking and doing urban hikes,” she said, noting that she’s trekked through nearly 20 countries. She’s walked from her studio to Watts Towers or westward to Torrance, collecting things she finds on the ground along the way and eventually transforming them. For instance, a pair of jewel-toned beetles she picked up made an ideal centerpiece for a regal bib necklace.
“There’s that side of me that really gets excited about looking at those objects, then creating my own sort of cosmology, my own artifacts, if you will,” she said. “I’m using ‘high’ gemstones to ‘low’ plastic and elevating all of them, fusing them into one work that then creates this energy, this power.”
The city has cosy cabins, scenic walks and the chance to explore connected islands.
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Inverness is a gorgeous city(Image: Getty)
If you’re on the hunt for a snug winter weekend escape, the UK offers an abundance of options. With so many stunning locations to choose from, it can be quite the task to decide.
From vibrant cities to ancient woodlands and charming villages, the UK is brimming with beautiful spots. However, one location has been singled out as the ideal winter retreat.
The team at Go Outdoors have recently unveiled their top choices for a winter escapade, and the favourite is a delightful blend of urban and rural attractions that cater to all tastes.
Using data on snowfall, woodland walks, cosy pubs with log fires, and cabins, they’ve ranked the top UK adventure destinations – and the Scottish city of Inverness has emerged as the champion.
Boasting over 200 winter cabins and a wealth of breathtaking walking trails, it’s not hard to see why Inverness clinched the top spot.
One of the most favoured walks is the Inverness Castle and River Circular, which guides you on a stunning 4.5km journey through some of Scotland’s most majestic landscapes, reports the Express.
During your hour-and-a-half stroll, you’ll also pass by the iconic Inverness Castle, nestled in the city centre.
Inverness even provides the opportunity for island hopping – without ever having to leave the city.
The Ness Islands are a chain of islands in the river, all interconnected by beautiful Victorian-era footbridges.
You can start on one side of the riverbank and end up on the other, meandering through the islands and spotting sculptures along the way. It’s the perfect way to spend a wintry day exploring.
Though Inverness is a small city that’s easy to navigate, it also serves as an excellent base for exploring the wider Highlands.
Just beyond the city limits, you’ll find the renowned Loch Ness, home to its elusive, legendary creature – perhaps you’ll be the lucky one to spot her.
Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.
“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.
“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.
It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on that L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”
She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.
5 a.m.: Morning solitude
I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Oyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.
Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.
Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.
9 a.m.: Gimme that bread
I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.
10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city
We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.
11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows
One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.
We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.
I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.
2 p.m.: Browse the aisles
I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.
If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.
5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory
We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.
6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams
I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.
One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is top-tier activity for me.
9 p.m.: Rally for improv
Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.
Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside in Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.
11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down
I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.
I was in awe of the cavern’s striations and white globs of minerals dripping from its ceiling. The experience stuck with me, enough that in this week’s Wild, we’re exploring more about the geology of our local mountains.
And we’re in luck! This week, the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park debuted “Unearthed: Raw Beauty,” an exhibit of rare earth minerals, including several from Southern California.
Visitors will see blue cap tourmaline, crystals named after their blue tops, and other tourmaline crystals mined in San Diego. They’re estimated to be 100 million years old!
Tourmaline grows in Southern California inside rocks called pegmatites, which are “basically granite that had time to grow large crystals. These rocks form when hot magma cools and hardens into solid rock inside Earth’s crust,” according to the museum. (We’ll talk more about pegmatites in a minute.)
While at the opening night event for the exhibit, I spoke to two experts to better understand all that rocks and rolls around us: Aaron Celestian, the curator of mineral sciences at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Kriss Leftwich, collections manager of mineral sciences at the Natural History Museum.
My main question for them was: How can hikers better understand what they’re seeing and hiking over and around?
Let’s dive into what I learned, which I’ve compiled for you into a brief beginner’s guide. It rocks!
A lone hiker takes in sweeping views of the Santa Monica Mountains at Eagle Rock along the Backbone Trail in Topanga State Park.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
What minerals can be observed in the Santa Monica Mountains?
The sediment and minerals of the Santa Monica Mountains were formed over millions of years, including through a process of ocean transgression and regression, Celestian said.
As Earth went through its natural periods of warming and cooling, ice sheets would melt and grow, causing sea levels to rise and fall. When sea levels rose, water moved further inland, covering ancient beaches and sandstone in layers of marine sediment, including shells and skeletons of sea animals. When the sea levels would fall, the water would recess, causing more beach material and sediments close to the shore to layer over the marine layers, he said.
Parts of the Santa Monicas were previously a beach-type environment that eventually developed into sandstone that we see while out hiking, Celestian said.
As this geologic report on the Santa Monica Mountains points out, “Sediments that were deposited in marine settings millions of year (sic) ago now sit high in ridges and peaks of the park as a result of tectonic forces and the uplift.”
The sunset seen from the Ray Miller Backbone Trail in Point Mugu State Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The Santa Monica Mountains were formed over millions of years through a process called “compression,” where tectonic plates force land upward, and tectonic folding, where the rock bends instead of breaking.
Celestian said the Santa Monica Mountains originally ran along the coastline, but “they started to rotate horizontally … [because] there’s a fault that actually rotated the Santa Monicas perpendicular.”
“They call them the Transverse Ranges because they got twisted,” he added.
Because of the diversity of our mountains and how they were formed, geologists (or lucky hikers) might find surprising micro-environments with unexpected minerals.
One way these can be formed is through the cooling process of a magma chamber. “It’s releasing lots of water, and that water is like a convection cell, and it circulates through it, and it concentrates metals in various areas. So you can get these little pockets of random crystals that you’ve never seen before because of how the water cooled,” deep underground, Celestian said.
While out hiking recently in the Santa Monica Mountains, he found lots of invertebrate fossils at the top of a mountain. And then he found a “huge pocket of quartz underneath a tree” with nothing else around it, likely due to a geological process that developed a micro-environment.
A close look at a tourmaline on feldspar on display at the “Unearthed: Raw Beauty” exhibit at the Natural History Museum.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
What types of minerals might we notice while hiking in the San Gabriels?
As you hike in the San Gabriels, you may notice striations in rock walls, like large white rock with little black veins. That was likely a quartz-rich rock with mica, a flaky, “very glittery” mineral that will resemble the texture of eye shadow, Leftwich said.
“When it’s black, it’s biotite, and when it’s purple, it’s lepidolite,” Leftwich said, adding there are several other types of mica.
If lucky, hikers might observe pegmatite, which is essentially a rock with large crystals forming within it, she said.
Leftwich said the pegmatite on display at the museum could have been in a cooling magma chamber or a similar environment. The large hunk of rock — visitors are encouraged to touch it — features large plates called albite or cleavelandite, which are types of feldspar, a group of minerals “distinguished by the presence of alumina and silica in their chemistry,” according to Minerals Education Coalition.
Celestian said the reason that hikers might observe a lot of quartz, feldspar and mica in the San Gabriel Mountains is because the range is “mostly like old basement volcano rocks.”
“It was like magma chambers that cooled down deep in the earth, and over time, that got pushed up to the surface, and that’s what we have in the San Gabriels and surrounding mountains,” he said.
A tourmaline on quartz on display at the “Unearthed: Raw Beauty” exhibit. The piece is from the tourmaline King Mine in San Diego County and is estimated to be 100 million years old.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Are there any tools I can carry as a hiker to help me identify rocks?
Celestian has tested apps that claim to be able to identify rocks and has found they’re correct only about 10% to 15% of the time.
“A lizard is going to have the same morphology every single time. A bird is going to have the same morphology every single time. A mineral is not,” Celestian said.
Hence why it’s so hard to develop an app. Calcite, he said, can grow in hundreds of different forms, making it near impossible for an app to recognize it just by using a phone’s camera.
Still, the best tool for beginners is your phone’s camera because you can take photos of the rock in question for later research.
Taking pictures and “just trying to figure out your environment is really exciting,” Celestian said. “It matters a lot because all of the resources that we have available to us today came from the earth, and knowing more about how that came about, how much time it takes to create these things, adds a different perspective of Earth’s resources and how we appreciate them.”
A pegmatite rock on display at “Unearthed: Raw Beauty.” Attendees are allowed to touch and interact with the rock as part of the exhibit.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
To take the most useful images for mineral identification, I’d recommend reading the rock key from the Mineralogical Society of America before heading out. It will help you understand the types of pictures you need to take (especially since on our public lands, you’ll be leaving the rock where you found it).
For example, the first question on the rock key is, “Is the rock made of crystal grains? (Does it have a lot of flat, shiny faces — maybe tiny to small — that reflect light like little mirrors? You may need to use a magnifier.)” To answer that question, you’d want to ensure you captured those characteristics in your photographs.
A piece of gold stands on on display at “Unearthed: Raw Beauty.” The piece is from the Mother Lode District in El Dorado County.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
How can a hiker learn more about our local geology?
One of my biggest takeaways from my conversations with Celestian and Leftwich was our local geology varies widely, and thus, there’s a lot to learn. But that complexity opens up a great opportunity to find community.
You can join one of several local geology groups where hopefully you’ll find not only knowledge but also new friends. And for anyone wanting to dive a little deeper, there are local caving groups like the SoCal Grotto, which teaches its members how to explore safely and responsibly, along with hosting experts at its meetings where members learn about a range of earth science topics.
A final thought
“Look under the rock before you pick it up — because of spiders and snakes,” Celestian said.
3 things to do
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Celebrate New Year’s Day hiking around L.A. California State Parks will host its annual First Day Hikes on Jan. 1 at more than 60 of its parks, including across L.A. At the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park near Simi Valley, hikers can arrive by 11 a.m. for a stroll past its narrow canyons and hulking rocks. Mount San Jacinto State Park will host a snowshoeing hike at 11 a.m. for hikers willing to take the tram up. Or if you’re perhaps feeling like a later start, Malibu Creek State Park will host a guided night hike at 5 p.m., where hikers will trek under an almost full moon. Learn more, including how to register, at parks.ca.gov.
2. Nurture native plants in Agoura National Park Service and Santa Monica Mountains Fund need volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday to restore native plants around Cheeseboro Canyon. Participants will plant hundreds of live plants grown from locally collected seed. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Capture the sunset in Borrego Springs The Anza-Borrego Foundation will host photographer Paulette Donnellon to teach a sunset photography class from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 3 at the park. Donnellon will share tips on how to shoot wildlife and landscapes before leading students into the desert for both golden hour and “blue hour” just after sunset. The class is $100. Register at theabf.org.
The must-read
Joseph Brambila vanished on Mt. Whitney in early November. This image is from a previous climb in the summer of 2025.
(Joseph Brambila)
Like many Southern California hikers, 21-year-old southeast L.A. County resident Joseph Brambila had fallen in love with Mt. Whitney. Only a four-hour drive north of L.A. to its trailhead, Mt. Whitney is the nation’s tallest mountain outside of Alaska. In early November, Brambila was reported missing, his last known location being Mt. Whitney. Times staff writer Jack Dolan spoke to Brambila’s family about the budding alpinist, highlighting what kept Brambila coming back to the mountain. “He always said he loves to disconnect from the real world,” his girlfriend, Darlene Molina, said. “He just wanted to be out there and enjoy life. … It was just him, nature, and God.” On Monday, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office announced it had recovered the body of a young male hiker that fit the description of Brambila. He is the second person believed to have died near a steep, icy section of trail known as the 99 Switchbacks.
In reading Dolan’s story, I felt like I got a brief glimpse into the excitement and love that Brambila carried with him into the mountains. It’s an energy we can all relate to, one that keeps us returning for more.
Happy, safe adventuring,
P.S.
This is the final Wild for 2025. If you’d like to catch up on all we’ve covered, head over to our archives or my author page. The most-read Wild of the year was this piece about Austin Nicassio, founder of Accessible Off-Road, a nonprofit aimed at bringing off-road mobility devices to parks and trails around L.A. If you’re reading this as an email, consider replying and letting me know what you’d like to see more of. Yes, I read your last emails and I do plan to write more in 2026 about hikes in Orange and Ventura County. I love hearing from you and I cannot thank you enough for your support of The Wild. Happy holidays, friends!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
