The oil, movie and aerospace industries brought even more people and more changes to the land. Today's Los Angeles continues a human story which stretches unbroken from nomadic hunters to an ethnically and economically varied metropolitan area. These mountains provide us with important perspectives. Commuters travel the major freeways while hikers pause a mile away, watching a red tail hawk bank in the wind. From the air at night, the lights of city streets surround and bisect the mountain area.
Mountain lions roam the dark canyons.
Whales migrate off the Malibu shoreline. People, land and sea interact here to create a distinctive place. The healthy future of the land and sea depends on people on our capacity for respect, vision, compromise and care. To hike and wade along mountain creeks, to sleep beneath glittering stars under a great oak tree, and to look to a horizon free of roads, billboards and buildings these are powerful experiences. Such escapes free us from our everyday demands, release our imaginations, and assist us in appreciating the open spaces and exhilarating natural landscapes which intermingle here in urban Southern California.