I watch surf documentaries. The surfers shown in these films embody the perfect standard of people pursuing adventures filled with both physical and personal discovery. The physical discovery comes from the surfers traveling the world in search of new waves. The personal discovery comes from a wider range of action, such as fulfilling a legacy passed down from previous generations, like in Jess Bianchi’s Given, to bringing a community together through a shared belief of environmentalism, like in Jason Baffa’s Bella Vita. In search for discovery myself, these modern day explorers inspired me to go out into nature and do some of my own adventuring. I first started at the beach. That step wasn 't difficult since the beach is I live less than …show more content…
All I needed was a head-turn from the boogie boarders at Point Mugu to right across the PCH. There stands the Santa Monica Mountains National Park. Perfectly enough, I like hiking and knew bare to nothing about these mountains. And if I learned anything from Mike Hansyn and Robert August in Bruce Brown’s surf classic The Endless Summer, it is that trips with friends are more fun. Safer too, but more importantly fun. When I asked people to join me, however, half of them were just as informed as I was in the sense that they knew about the trails but never hiked up them. The other half didn 't know that the trails existed. Here, my community has access to such a monumental place and the majority of people were not taking advantage of this opportunity. I made it my mission to get more people involved with my trips. I soon began grabbing a couple friends at a time and heading out to footpaths from Rocky Oaks Park off of Kanan Dume Road to the Backbone Trail where the ends of Wendy Drive and Potrero Road meet every weekend. And we get to see nothing but trees from every direction. Or maybe we can’t see where the pathway is, but we get the best view of the stars that I have ever seen. And views of heights above a sea of silver-gray clouds, and each other running our hands in every waterfall we come in contact with, and the blue sky bordered by the beach’s frothy waves. And I stand in awe when I look