Here Comes the Rain Again
Given that California is swimming through another monsoon season, we’re re-posting this soggy piece from January, 2023. Wherever you are, stay dry!
Dear Wags,
Atmospheric River is an awfully mellow name for a disaster. Generally speaking, rivers are lovely to have around, especially in a drought-stricken place. If only they didn’t turn on people. A river may not have the cataclysmic punch of an earthquake or a tsunami, but it is a primal force inexorably remaking the world, and us along with it.
This California Deluge is one for the books, havoc-making in all kinds of ways. It’s also been one of those rare occasions when the distracted citizenry of Los Angeles discovers they are possessed of a river—not just a trickle in a concrete viaduct but an epic, raging and periodically homicidal personality.
The Wag-in-Chief has followed the L.A. River from its headwaters in the Simi Hills, down into Canoga Park, and across the Valley to Burbank, where it hooks through the almost bucolic Glendale Narrows. From there it shoots past downtown’s industrial exurbs in a cement corset (you know this stretch from the drag race scene in Grease). It mingles unnoticed with the 101, 5, 10, and 710 freeways, and navigates the unglamorous march of communities that make up the backside of L.A. Past chain link fences, bungalows with bars on their windows, and pitbull-defended junkyards it flows—east of Compton, west of Bellflower, nowhere special. Fed by the Rio Hondo and Compton Creek, it swells into a not-so-grand canal, and reunites with the 405, which it first air-kissed in faraway Sherman Oaks. In Long Beach, it dips back under the 710 and laps against the Queen Mary. Finally, it empties into the busiest container ship port in the Western Hemisphere and loses itself in San Pedro Bay.
Lately, the Los Angeles River has collected friends. There are the stalwarts who pick condoms and wigs out of the reeds and paddle kayaks through the murky water, and there are the arrivistes, who hired Frank Gehry to come up with a billion dollar plan to transform all 51 miles of it into a massive public amenity. These worthy constituencies are frequently at one another’s throats. Critics say as much of the river should be reverted to its essential, mercurial state as possible, and that the Gehry plan is all bling and bristling hardscape to gird against flooding. In 25 years or so, L.A. may have a destination river, as opposed to a ditch that is infrequently stumbled across.
Maybe. But unlike the Hudson, Seine, or Thames, the Los Angeles River has a way of defying expectations. It vanishes under razor wire and overpasses. It’s a refuge for carp, herons and coyotes and a secret highway for the dispossessed. But when the rains come, it bursts into view—snarling and lethal, all white water and wilderness. Unpredictable nature roils against civilization’s straight jacket. What good are spreadsheets, smartphones and Teslas when the rivers of the atmosphere touch those of the earth?
Our little inventions are no match for them. Mud slides, freeways buckle, and for a moment, humanity gives way. Take it in: In the end, we all bend to the river.
Yours Ever,
