One of seven in the Channel Island archipelago 22 miles west of Los Angeles, Catalina is indeed a “flower flowing on the soft breast of the Pacific” as once described by turn of the century botanist-poet Blanche Trask in an essay entitled the Heart of Santa Catalina published in 1897. The ocean was shimmering and seductive, soft and gentle most of my seven days on the island. Having been raised on the waved bashed New England coast, I was grateful for the lazy lapping waves and smoothness of the Pacific. I was not deceived, however, by how vulnerable the two harbor towns of this small island are and could very easily imagine the wreckage a tsunami would leave behind. Earlier in the year in fact, Catalina Island was struck by the aftershocks transmitted by the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami thousands of miles away.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Victorian poet took up residence on the subtropical island after the tourists had abandoned the then tent city of Avalon for the winter months; it had not been easy for me to return to the mainland after a week traversing the 37 mile Trans-Catalina Trail. What does surprise--and impress--me is that she had done what few people, let alone women, at the time had done. She had lifted her heavy skirts, scaled the mountain rim surrounding the protected harbor and entered the “Interior” of the island.

Although not quite a Heart of Darkness replica, the Interior is what the locals call the area beyond the hills pushing Avalon against the sea and up to the low lying double exposed isthmus town of Two Harbors. Aside from one paved road, if you can properly call the patchwork asphalt up to the Airport in the Sky pavement, the Interior as well as the West End, the tip north of Two Harbors, remains undeveloped and untamed. According to Trask, beyond the harbor towns the island’s “real self lives on unmoved upon the heights—the heights so full of mystery and beauty, seldom seen by any.” Inspired, I followed her lead and got out of Avalon, spending most of my visit in the Interior and the West End, upon those very heights she acclaimed.

Here’s the thing, though, about those heights so full of mystery. They jut straight out of the sea and very little has improved the path of ascension since the scantily clad pre-colonial Tongva lived there. Most trails are cut as switchbacks up a mountain, which makes cresting peaks easier for bipeds. Trails are not so on Catalina. When not on buffalo trails or roads, trans-island hikers are scaling fire breaks, most of which cut straight up and drop straight down thousands of feet at unbelievable grades. Little surprise then that’s what I was shouting into the wilderness as I struggled with the incline. Although hiking permits can be obtained for free, trekking takes its toll on the most seasoned.

Almost nine years ago the Reader’s very own trail master and alpinist, the late Jerry Schad, referred to the fire breaks used in lieu of trails on the West End as a “sheer descent down the wind-buffeted ridgeline” from “slopes falling precipitously to the emerald-tinted ocean below.” I ascended the likes of what he had precariously descended.

Treacherous, indeed, are the cliffs of Catalina as Trask had said all those years ago and I’m still not certain which is worse –going up or coming down a trail as steep as Fence Line. Many end up on the seat of their pants sliding down the loose shale trail. I didn‘t have the luxury of stopping along the way up as you’d imagine I would have; I’d begin to slide backwards when I did, so was driven to pump up the two miles from Parsons Landing nonstop until I crested the ridge onto the Silver Peak Trail.

Schad described the windward West End aptly as “gorgeously scenic.” It truly, without doubt, is one of the most The-Hills-Are-Alive-With-The-Sound-Of-Music inspiring places I’ve visited, panoramic vistas of unadulterated natural beauty. The Silver Peak Trail that follows the spine of the mountain, as he indicated, affords 360 degree ocean views for almost ten miles. The getting to it is the fun part, or perhaps more precisely, the mystery to which Trask referred. The grueling grades are, indeed, painstaking.

I can tell you that while Fence Line was the craziest trail I’ve attempted in a long while, it was well worth the effort when I made it to the top to see the Pacific in front of me and the San Pedro Channel behind me. My old standard “Yeehaw!” didn’t come close to expressing the jubilation and glee I felt when I reached the top just as the clouds, thankfully, had lifted engulfing me in sunshine and blue skies stretching to the far horizon. “Hallelujah!” didn’t either although it certainly was a spiritually enlightening ascension as I begged every God I had ever heard of to help me reach the top before my legs gave out from under me. Once there, I circled slowly in jaw gaping dumbness, absorbing the majesty before me. I don’t think I stopped smiling until I made it back to the historic Banning House Lodge on the isthmus hours later.

Trask had said that on those “lonely peaks” cloaked in clouds, what she referred to as white fog-spirits, there was perfect quiet. She was right. Not that there is no sound there; there is, plenty. But, there is a profound peacefulness settled upon them still 114 years after she described them as such, which I think is a testament to local preservation efforts. Trask’s “volcanic upland” where boulders stand “like sentinels—rocks shattered by earthquakes and old-time terrors” is still there to be seen by those daring enough to venture into the Interior. Her rainbow cliffs, thousand foot high palisades of “exquisite coloring” and the “bare and desolate mountains of over-burnt rock…comforted…by the brilliant lichens of green and orange and red and lavender” still remain as intact as when she herself skirted this wild rock in the middle of the ocean. Descendents of her bald eagles still fish from the cliffsides and the seeds of her wildflowers still propagate the meadows and deep gutted canyons. I hiked amidst colorful autumn blossoms infused by breeze wafted scents of White Sage and Wild Fennel just as she had a century before. Yet, I did it without the pounds of skirts and with well treaded shoes rather than heeled leather bottom boots. I did it with emergency cellular service.

It should be noted that on one point I adamantly disagree with Trask's impressions of the island. I did NOT find Catalina at its best in the rain, although she was very accurate when she stated that after it does rain, the trails become like streambeds. They do that and to this day the Interior west of the airport where the paved road ends virtually shuts down when the rains come. With no infrastructure, ledges and roads collapse and wash away without warning. Flash floods tear through otherwise dry ravines, dragging whole trees down. Thanks to the Ranger, though, I had been forewarned.

Being from the East Coast, I had done my fair share of wet weather hiking and camping. Although not looking forward to the looming storm or spending a night in a wind beaten drenched tent in a damp sleeping bag, I wasn’t deterred by the forecast. I'm no pussyfooted lightweight and am regrettably, stubborn. But, the Island holds claim to something New England doesn’t. The high clay content in the soil, (from which the now collectable Catalina Pottery and Tile was crafted between 1927 and 1937), soaked by a few inches of rain renders hikers stranded until the sun and wind dry out the trails.

I chose instead to hole up in the comfort of Banning House’s Lodge Room by a roaring fire with a bottle of wine reading a book while waiting out the storm. Next morning, I saw three hikers who looked as if they hadn’t slept all night caked in mud up to their knees lugging their dripping gear into town and was glad I hadn’t spent the night in a wind buffeted tent in a mudslide beside a thrashing sea. They told me they had been awakened in the night when the tide rose beyond their campsite and into their tent, flooding them out. More than slightly shaken, they had been making their way back to the isthmus since then, mostly bushwhacking off trail due to the impassible mud pits the trails had become.

I had been regretting not having been able to camp in an isolated camp ground off season by the ocean but watching them trying to shake the experience as well as the mud off before entering the café assured me that I had made the right decision. It was my birthday after all and I was deserving of a warm, dry bed I had thought. Leave monsoon camping and the boot sucking mud hiking for the younger more durable crowd, I had thought. For once, I am glad I had. Thought, that is when so often I fly off spontaneously, ignoring the warning of good wishers or those more experienced than myself, when I have all too often been known to bypass logic and common sense, even. This time, though, thanks to Ranger Rem, I was warm and toasty, sleeping soundly beneath a down duvet instead of shivering and straining against the elements as I would have been otherwise. I have finally learned to listen better. I am, of late, very good to myself.

Ten of the poems Trask wrote while living fulltime, year ‘round on Catalina Island have been published, one with the very lovely title of “Longing in the Land of Sunshine.” I felt lots of longing myself while on the island, and much of it for sunshine, ironically. Sentimental alignment with a deceased poetess aside, I must admit to being more captivated by her essay’s closing comments than her romantic poems as those words seem all too significant with the End Of The World predicted to strike by year’s end. She had written, “As it is said this island rose in a single upheaval, so may it sink again; but what of it all? We put too much stress on the day and hour in which we live. We forget that without the dust of the stars there would be no Milky Way.”

I’m with Blanche. It is the natural order of things that through devastation comes beauty, which in turn decays to lay more creative fodder from which the future may arise quivering with potential. With death comes life resurrected, again and again, ‘round and ‘round. We are all but cosmic compost inhaling the miracle of existence with each breath we heave. Makes sense, then, to aim for the high peaks regardless of the absence of meandering well groomed trails if for nothing more than the aesthetic pleasures received at having claimed those “toppling crags” shrouded in spirited mist. Because, from the heights of Santa Catalina, just a 65 mile drive north of San Diego to Dana Point and a 1.5 hour $72 ferry ride due west, nothing seems more beautiful, perfect and necessary than being right there, rain or shine.