America’s Other Best Idea

By NINA KIDD Contributing Writer Two years ago, a TV documentary by Ken Burns, ‘America’s Best Idea,’ swept viewers away with breathtaking images of Yellowstone and Yosemite. Burns is right: our national parks are a good idea’a great idea’but how about another candidate for best: our own state and county wilderness parks?   On L.A.’s Westside, we live next door to a collection of state and local parks (only since 1978 gone national) that rival in biological diversity any wild places in the country. The Santa Monica National Recreation Area is a marvel in itself. You can find the park’s story online at nps.gov/samo/parkmgmt/index.htm.   Besides being beautiful and accessible, with nearly 400 miles of trails, in recent years our Santa Monica Mountains have been a study site, used for vegetation mapping that aids wildfire fighters, students’ plant restoration projects and projects called wildlife corridors, a conservation solution that allows native animals the room to roam that is essential to their long-term survival’even living side by side with a big city. The Santa Monica Mountains is a treasure of biodiversity, including plants that are found nowhere else. Our local wilderness is thriving, and you’re invited.   With the wet Southern California winter, starting with the lacy white ceanothus in February, the Santa Monica Mountains are blooming, and changing colors as fast as a sunny soap bubble. Come out and see if you don’t cast your vote for the wilderness next door, a ‘best idea’ that, if we care to visit, can do magic for us almost any day of the year.   Warning: Flowers in the Santa Monicas are smaller than they appear. If you want to discover some of those pictured here, a kid companion can help. (Nina Kidd grew up along the edges of the Santa Monica Mountains. She has published articles and illustrated several books for young people about wild places and the creatures that live there. Formerly a teacher at Brentwood School in West Los Angeles, she is currently at work on a book about mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains.)