By Anthony Zolezzi
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After all the hiking I did on my excursion to Iceland, I arrived home in L.A. determined not to lose the newfound “momentum” I had gained while there. So, still operating on Iceland time, which is about seven hours ahead of ours, I awoke at 4 a.m., sent out some e-mails, and then decided to head out on an urban hike, my objective being to hoof it from the Fairfax district to Santa Monica and the 405 Freeway, which I estimated to be a distance of about eight or nine miles.

Heading out, I kept mostly to side streets, and soon found myself quite fascinated by the way that Mother Nature manages to find so many openings amid all the asphalt and concrete. It was, to be sure, quite a contrast to the grandeur of Iceland, but beautiful in its own way nonetheless. Rather than the pristine springs and streams that serve as ‘watering holes’ while traversing the Icelandic countryside, my oasis on this hike was the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, of which there were a couple along my route. And instead of the visionaries whom I had gotten to know while hiking the land of the Vikings, I found myself engaged in conversation with some of the people who regularly bed down in the wooded area around one of the off-ramps (where I found myself after temporarily becoming lost on the Avenue of the Stars, not realizing that I was actually disturbing the sleep of some of these “locals”).

While perhaps not quite as breathtaking as the treks I had recently been on, all in all it was a beautiful little adventure in rediscovering my own “habitat.” In fact, viewed from the perspective of a hike, even things as seemingly banal and unattractive as the graffiti, the signs and the alleys took on a new and intriguing character, as did the homeless, from whom there are many insights we could gain about the society in which we live if only we would take the time to sit down and chat with them.

When one has hiked in as many fascinating locales as I have by now, from the rainforests of Central America to the Colorado Rockies, and most recently, the remote hills and valleys of northern Iceland, the idea of hiking in such a humdrum setting might seem less than appealing. But, as my little excursion through the twists and turns of L.A. revealed, there’s a lot to be discovered (or rediscovered), even in the most seemingly familiar o f landscapes, when you’re doing a “walk through” rather than a “drive by.” Which is why I plan on heading out on foot again tomorrow, this time to the Hollywood Hills.