Journey to the West (Topanga Canyon)

After three months in New York, I began to feel that big city life would drive me crazy and when the chance came for company with a young French guy we decided to take a drive-away car cross-country. We had limited time, but we made a stop at the Hopi reservation to pay our respects to the American-Americans. A second stop was at the Grand Canyon; truly a breath-taking encounter with American nature. The final destination of the car was another especially American phenomenon: Las Vegas. Here we split up and I took the bus to LA, or, more precisely, to Topanga Canyon where Sherab’s twin brother, Bruce, and his Danish wife had invited me to visit. They lived in a bus and had given me a fairly good description of how to find them.

Arrived in LA it was already early evening. I asked for Topanga and was shown to a bus. The bus let me off at a crossing. It was Topanga Avenue and it stretched infinitely to the right and to the left. There was nobody around. All I could do was take a guess, which way was right, and then start walking.
It was getting dark and there didn’t seem to be anybody living in the neighborhood. Finally a car came by and stopped for a red light near me. I approached the car to ask for help, but as soon as the driver noticed me he started up and ran the red light to get away. That was the last living being I saw that night. I found a deserted place behind an office building and rolled out my sleeping bag.

Next morning I found a gas station and the attendant told me that I had taken the wrong direction and anyway, Topanga Canyon was quite far. I had to take a bus. When I arrived I followed the directions, but where Bruce’s bus should have been there was no bus. I called Sherab in New York and after several phone calls it was revealed that Bruce had gone with the wife and the bus to visit his parents in Escondido and wouldn’t be back until a week later. I didn’t have money for a hotel, in part because Sherab hadn’t paid me what he owed me, so I told him he had to help me out. After more phone calls Sherab had me hooked up with a Buddhist center in LA and I reached them before nightfall. They took good care of me till Bruce returned.

I was still captivated by America, even more so after crossing the continent and seeing the West coast. I had expected everything to be new and efficient because all the new things in Europe that I disliked, like freeways and supermarkets, all came from America. Instead it was often more funky and old fashioned here than Europe. Topanga was some kind of hippie community; it even had a fair while I was there, attended by Timothy Leary. Ten years earlier meeting the acid guru would have fascinated me; now he seemed a bit passé.