by Ian Harding
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For Bubs.
Always.
Large and isolated in the gleaming whiteness of the page, the hawk stares back at you, bold, statuesque, brightly coloured. But when you have shut the book, you will never see that bird again. Compared with the close and static image, the reality will seem dull and disappointing. The living bird will never be so large, so shiny-bright. It will be deep in landscape, and always sinking farther back, always at the point of being lost. Pictures are waxworks beside the passionate mobility of the living bird.
—J. A. Baker, The Peregrine
Introduction
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
The day had been sweltering. I’d spent the last few hours trying to avoid the heat, but as I stood in the river, the icy cold water rushing around my ankles, I began to shiver.
I looked up and down the river. I couldn’t find the bird.
A blur tracked across my peripheral vision. I turned to see where it went.
Large boulders interrupted the river in places, and looking out over the water, I couldn’t see where the bird had landed. It had been only a shadow of a motion—a flash of gray.
Where the hell had it gone?
Maybe it had landed just out of sight, I figured, so I began to slog through the river, periodically glancing upstream to see if it had landed on any of the boulders sticking out of the water. Bird-less, every last one of them.
Maybe the bird had flown farther upstream than I had realized, and here I was, standing in a river, my teeth chattering, just a bit overeager to find it.
I looked out at the river again and tried to take it all in. White riffles coursed around the large boulders. The water was fast-moving and clear where it had room to flow. A trout rose to the surface of a pool below one of the rocks.
There it was again. The flash of gray.
As I turned to look, the movement congealed into the form of a small bird, its tail bobbing rhythmically as it perched out on a boulder in the middle of the water. It turned back and forth, looking upstream and down, as if trying to make up its mind where to go.
The bird hop-flew to the next rock downstream, toward me, and continued to bob its tail. It blinked—I saw it blink—its white eyelids popping against its slate-gray body.
An American dipper. This was a good bird.
* * *
I had gotten a late start that morning. It was a Saturday in August, and I was driving out of Los Angeles—the city I call home. I was going up to the mountains to go hiking and birding by myself, then I had plans to meet up with friends to camp for the night.
I turned the AC up to full blast as I drove: it was a stupefyingly hot day in the Southland.
I’ve been in LA for just under a decade now, and I love it here. An ocean to the west, mountains to the north. The city stretches east and south, and the mass of humanity here seems more or less continuous all the way down to San Diego. There’s a lot to do close by—you can surf in the morning in Santa Monica and then drive two hours to spend the afternoon skiing at Big Bear.
Los Angeles County is huge—substantially larger than the city itself. It stretches far north over the Angeles National Forest and the San Gabriel Mountains, encompassing Antelope Valley—which blooms orange with California poppies in the spring—the eastern corner of the Los Padres National Forest, and the western corner of the Mojave Desert. Despite the urban sprawl across large parts of the county, which is home to more than ten million people, even larger swathes are covered in oak woodland, pine and fir forest, and desert—and there’s seventy miles of coastline.
Because of the diversity of habitat, you can see more species of birds in Los Angeles County than almost anywhere else in the United States.
A little more than an hour on the road, I exited the 210 at Azusa. I was on my way to the Angeles National Forest, which includes the mountain range to the northeast of the city. A few turns put me on the 39, heading north into the park.
As the highway switchbacked up off the valley floor, I started to think about my plan for the weekend. Today I was looking forward to getting outdoors, roughing it for a night. In the morning I would wake up early to drive back to Los Angeles. A stylist was coming over to my house in the midafternoon to make me look presentable, because tomorrow night I was attending the Teen Choice Awards.
For the past seven years I’ve played a high school English teacher named Ezra Fitz on a TV show called Pretty Little Liars. It was a gig I was fortunate enough to land right out of college. Right now, I’m finishing up filming on the last season of PLL—its seventh.
As I drove, I thought back to an idea I’d had for a while—three seasons back, my character on the show wrote a book, and I’ve been thinking about writing one myself ever since. What you’re reading now is the result of that crazy idea.
This book isn’t a chronological memoir. I’m too young to write something like that anyway. Instead, it’s a collection of stories and thoughts I’ve had about my life in Hollywood and my life outdoors—and a few things I’ve only recently been able to put words to.
I want to look back on my experiences so far and talk about a few of them: about my childhood, about my life as an actor, and about some of the things I find meaningful. And, yes, birds. A lot about birds. Because they mean a lot to me, and they keep cropping up in my life.
* * *
As I continued up into the park, I had to concentrate fully on the winding road. All around loomed mountains covered in chaparral, a tangle of thorns and brush, brown and faded gray-green, vegetation the color of desert camouflage.
A cyclist was pushing himself up and up and up the steep road, and I followed behind him for a ways, watching his legs turn pedals turn gears turn wheels, waiting for a sight line long enough to safely pass.
And then, farther along, the road twisted back on itself, and I got a view back down the valley—where I had been fifteen minutes earlier—and I saw the haze of the heat rising off the endless city, and the thin layer of smog hugging the land below the clear air of the mountains.
I wasn’t close to my destination yet, but somehow it felt like I had arrived.
* * *
I pulled off the road at a ranger station to see if I could get a recommendation for a hike. The ranger at the station was more goat than man. He had a scraggly white patch of fur under his chin and was wearing a pair of indoor-outdoor glasses—the kind that are always tinted purplish gray, even indoors.
“Hi there,” I said, approaching the counter. “I’m looking for a short day hike. Something a few miles long.”
“You got enough water?” the ranger asked, not looking up from the newspaper he was reading. “Need a couple of liters today. The sun’s brutal.”
I know park rangers have to deal with people with death wishes on a near-daily basis, but I know the rules: Take nothing but selfies, leave nothing but footprints. And always carry plenty of water.
“Yup, I’ve got a couple of bottles,” I said. The ra
nger glanced up from his paper, looked me over, and rolled his eyes.
He pulled out a map of the park, pointing out where we were. Farther up the road, past the spot where my friends and I were planning to camp that night, he pointed to a parking lot on the map.
“This is Coyote Flat. Park here—if the lot is full, park along the road. There’s a five-miler here that’ll take you to the Bridge to Nowhere.”
Perfect. While the name “Bridge to Nowhere” wasn’t particularly auspicious, a five-mile hike was just what the doctor ordered.*
I glanced at my phone before getting back into the car. I knew I was about to lose the little bit of reception I still had, but I wasn’t concerned. John and Walter, the two friends I was meeting up with later that night, knew where we were supposed to meet. I was actually looking forward to being unreachable for a few hours.
Twenty minutes later, I parked in a large lot—it was mostly empty—and started off down a dirt path at the far end. The sun was at its apex, and the temperature must have been in the high nineties.
It was a dry, mind-scrambling heat, like the physical embodiment of white noise—and there was no breeze or even rustle of wind. I slathered sunblock all over my face, and would’ve dunked my head into a vat of it if they sold containers large enough.
I started up the trail, which follows the east fork of the San Gabriel River.
Walking along, the crunch of gravel underfoot seemed especially loud. You pay closer attention to your surroundings when you hike alone, and even the sound of a twig snapping can make you jump—at least until you get used to being back in the food chain.
The trail dropped steadily from the parking lot for half a mile to a campground set among a small stand of pine trees. There were a few tents scattered about. Some were just tarps draped over cords, others seemed built for more permanent residence, and had strings of laundry hanging out to dry.
Passing through that brief bit of shade under the trees was a welcome reprieve. But then the trail left the trees and the road behind to parallel the course of the river, crossing over it from time to time.
A few hundred yards past the campsite, I realized I hadn’t heard any birds. No canyon wrens, no scrub jays—nothing. Too hot for them to be singing, apparently. I was starting to feel a little light-headed myself, and I wondered if it was such a good idea to be outside for so long. I had two liters of water on me, which I figured was more than enough. I took a swig from one of my wide-mouthed Nalgenes.
I could feel my face beginning to burn. I opened up my pack and pulled out a balaclava, which I originally bought for skiing because it covers my entire face—except a thin slit for my eyes. It’s also great for sun protection while out hiking, as long as you don’t mind looking like a yuppie jihadist. The occasional odd looks are worth the protection from skin cancer.
I took the Nalgene I was drinking from and poured it over my head to cool off, and then reached for the other I’d brought along. To my utter horror, it was empty. I’d forgotten to fill it up. At the next water crossing, I jumped into the river in my clothes to cool off, which was nice, for a moment. Above the crossing, a trio of unkempt redneck “entrepreneurs” in their early thirties was shoveling soil into a sluice box—it looked to be a small-time gold-panning operation.
The water around me was filthy—full of the runoff from their work. I hadn’t been planning on it, but now I definitely wasn’t going to drink from the stream.
“Finding anything?” I called over to them, trying to be friendly.
They stared at me for a moment. One coughed. They went back to their work.
Sometimes it’s hard to make good conversation in the woods. People mostly come here to be left alone.
I realized then that I still had the balaclava on, and must’ve been a weird sight, sitting there in the river, lightly panting. The men continued to ignore me, and I took my cue to keep walking, a little soggier now, my shoes squishing with each step and the bottoms slowly caking with sandy soil.
I slogged onward, my eyes focused on the ground. I tried not to think about how thirsty I was. The river floodplain widened out, and yucca plants festooned the flats like Koosh balls. I found myself slowly following a path up the eastern side of the valley.
Where the hell was this bridge? Around every turn in the trail, more trail … and I was completely out of water.
The sun continued to torment. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, willing them to move more out of spite than muscle memory.
I passed a pair of hikers on their way back down: a mother and her teenage daughter.
“You’re almost there!” the mom said encouragingly.
I guess my balaclava didn’t frighten everyone after all. I nodded a quick thanks and picked up the pace. I was getting somewhere after all.
I’d gone another fifteen steps or so when I heard a voice call out from behind me—“Ian?”
I stopped and turned around. The teenage girl and her mom were standing in the middle of the path looking back at me. The girl’s hands were shaking.
“Ian?” the girl said again. I stared at her, dumbfounded. How on earth could she have recognized me? My face was almost completely covered—all she could see were my eyes.
I couldn’t recognize my own mother by only her eyes.
“Uh … yes?” I managed to stammer.
Her face lit up. “I knew it!” she cried. Before I knew what was happening, she was hugging me. My clothes were damp from sweat and river water.
“Nice to see you, too,” I said.
“This is so exciting!” she chirped. “I’m a huge fan of your show.”
I looked down and saw that the girl was carrying a canteen.
“Can I have some of your water?” I blurted out.
They both seemed taken aback.
“Um … okay,” the girl said, reaching for her canteen and handing it to me. I thanked her and took a few desperate gulps.
“Would it be possible to take a picture with you?” she asked.
“Sure, of course,” I said, handing her back her canteen.
The mom took out her iPhone. I put my arm around the girl’s shoulder and smiled. The mom held the screen up to her face, framing the picture, then hesitated and put it down. “Everything okay?” I asked.
“Would you mind taking off your face mask?”
I had forgotten all about it again.
After we took the photo, I thanked the mother and daughter for the water and hiked on, hoping that I’d soon reach my destination. I was beginning to worry that the Bridge to Nowhere might not actually exist.
But then, not fifteen minutes later, around a corner, there it was.
Turns out it wasn’t some big metaphor, after all. It was real.
The bridge was beautiful—a Depression-era concrete arch that spanned a deep gorge—and far below, a clear mountain stream carried snowmelt down to the valley below.
When the bridge was originally constructed, in 1936, it was intended to connect the north side of Angeles National Forest with the south. Partway through construction, the road leading up to the bridge was washed out by a massive flood. Rebuilding the road was subsequently deemed not worth it, leaving the bridge orphaned in the middle of the wilderness.
There was a hand-pump spigot on the bridge, and I doused my head under it. After thoroughly soaking my hair, I filled my water bottles and collapsed in a sweaty heap under a canvas sunshade that was stretched out over the bridge.
My head was still burning up, that feverish buzzing of dehydration. I closed my eyes for a second and must have dozed off.
When I snapped back to reality, there were three or four other hikers loafing around nearby. Two of them sat, backs against the concrete wall of the bridge, eating cans of Vienna sausage. In a cooler at their feet, I noticed a stack of empty sausage tins.
Off in the distance, a pair of ravens cruised by, their wedge-shaped tails pronounced in stark outline against the summer sun.
I stood up and
stretched my legs. I considered walking back down, but I found myself looking to the far side of the bridge. I didn’t feel like going back down just yet, so I got up and wandered across.
On the other side of the Bridge to Nowhere, there was a trail, a path to the river below. Picking my steps carefully, I made my way down to the water.
As I stood looking up and down the river, taking it all in, the colors and textures, I thought back to the girl and her mother I’d met on the trail. I replayed the interaction in my head, still amazed that she’d been able to recognize me with that balaclava on.
Had I been rude? I hoped not. I’d definitely come across as disoriented. A little weird, probably. At worst, they walked away thinking I was on drugs—and I could live with that.
A blur tracked across my peripheral vision—I turned to see what it was. It was a motion, a flash of gray. I couldn’t find it.
You know what happens next.
I stumbled downstream, planting a foot squarely into the river in my frantic search to find the bird. And there it was again: the American dipper.
* * *
There’s no wrong way to look at birds.
You can go to the coast and set up a scope and pan across the ocean’s edge, looking for shorebirds. You can walk through the woods and listen—identifying them by their songs. You can watch them on feeders in your backyard from your living room, taking in the beauty of their myriad forms.
You can take a reference book out to the woods and compare the pictures to the birds that you see in the wild. You can learn about their field marks—the shape of their tails or the way they bob up and down.
Often though, the birds don’t stay put long enough for you to observe them as much as you’d want. Instead, what you see is a motion. Birds aren’t static objects, and birding makes you good at identifying blurs.
Sometimes I let my eyes not focus on anything in particular—let them almost glaze over, fall out of focus, and take it all in—and then the motion will register, like a water bug skating across a glassy surface. Out in the forest, or even just walking around my neighborhood, I’ll see the motion before I actually see the bird.