It’s Labor Day weekend and I sit in the passenger seat of my friend Dawn’s Cadillac Escalade, following a line of European coupes and late-model sport utility vehicles as we wind our way up the switchbacking highway cutting through the heart of the San Bernardino National Forest. Our destination is Lake Arrowhead, where Southern California’s ultra-wealthy holiday on the balconies of their mile-high vacation homes and behind the wheels of their six-figure speedboats. For a part-time wage-earner and emerging writer, it’s lifestyle shock to the max.
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I was invited to spend the weekend here as a guest of the family and I reluctantly accepted. The more social of my local friend contingent was in Santa Monica, enjoying Labor Day weekend in the usual Angelino style, with understated attitudes, overdressed women, and astronomically priced drinks. I’d almost chosen to join them. But something urged me to the mountains.
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Perhaps it was the spare ribs and free pints of Lagunitas ale. Who’s to say.
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I didn’t know it at the time, but that weekend marked my 1,000th day of living home-free. And as far as available options went, there couldn’t have been a less appropriate way to celebrate it–or could there?
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Nothing is more striking about Lake Arrowhead than the cost of living. Not just the literal dollar amount, either. The human presence here is staggering, making a handful of trees (and the untouched portion of water) the only things distinguishing the place from the city I thought we had escaped. Without the sweeping views of the mansions and condos on the hills across the lake, one might mistake Lake Arrowhead for a cooler Bel Air. With a tad less smog.
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As we approach the lake from our home on the prestigious but Orwellianly-named John Muir Road, I’m shocked by how little each house is in use. As we pass the homes on our block, Dawn names the owner of each as I note how just about every other home seems empty. And this on the Sunday morning of a three-day weekend.
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“I guess they decided to stay home for the weekend,” she said.
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Dawn’s Arrowhead visits have dropped in the last few years–she averages one visit every few months–a trend that some wonder may be hitting many vacationers to the lake. Even during her lake-home honeymoon days, Dawn might only visit once a month. With estimates showing over two-thirds of Arrowhead homeowners are only part-time residents (read: weekend visitors), and some noting a decline in visitation to the lake, the question arises: How often are these homes actually in use?
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At risk of offending Dawn and her family, I refrained from investigating this trend too deeply in my visit. But what I did do was observe. What struck me most was the abundance of waste and its cost to the landscape.
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To explain, let me paint a picture of Big Bear Lake, Arrowhead’s higher altitude cousin and apparent antithesis. Big Bear Lake is highly accessible, with various points reachable by foot or car for anyone willing and able to get there. The area is a tourist destination for sure–complete with a wide selection of fudge and (why???–>) saltwater taffy–but with sections of the lake reserved for wilderness and public use. One can drive the perimeter without being surrounded by buildings, with clear views of the water and the structure-free slopes which surround it. No, it’s not a backcountry experience worthy of preservationist celebration. But for a resort-town lake, it’s a shining example of the modern day compromise between development and access.
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Visit Lake Arrowhead, however, and you’ll discover much the opposite. First of all, lake access requires an expensive “pass”, without which it’s almost impossible to reach a place to enjoy the shore. Even if you can get there, the lakeshore has its downsides. Foremost, the current drought has left water levels appallingly low, meaning not all beaches still exist. Past efforts to dredge the lake to preserve thoroughfares for boats have been, in shallower areas, abandoned, exposing unnatural trenches that were once filled with water lapping onto a beach shore, but now are only mud. Dock landings no longer reach the water with their original paths, so owners fight over space to push their docks out without crashing into that of their neighbors. The result is a hodge-podge of already unsightly boat parking areas littering the ever-changing coastline.
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On each of these docks is a watercraft of some sort–mostly runabouts and bowriders, with a sprinkle of inflatables. These boats are packed tightly next to one another, ready to push out and get in line to make the next water ski run on the loop. If the center of the lake is a racetrack, the shoreline is a no-vacancy parking garage, each square foot of natural shoreline built upon in favor of rote utility. You can hear it, too. Instead of the pleasing lap of a lazy lake’s swell against the sand, the sounds of water against boat and dock dominate the shore.
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In a lake so apparently attractive, it inspired one local supplier to brand itself “Arrowhead” to evoke its allure, I wondered if it was even safe to swim in.
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So what’s the price of modifying such a beautiful landscape for exclusive personal use?
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Back at Dawn’s family’s house (one of them–they own a few), I find a moment to forget about these urban luxuries which have so burdened the landscape and find myself enjoying a deep inhale of the cool breeze. It’s hard not to love the mountains, if nothing more than for the calming grandeur of their presence. Nature brings us closer to the human experience. That we have advanced as a collective civilization to use nature to improve that experience is a benefit. But can that “advancement” go too far?
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I think back to a quote from a book on the life of the man the street of this home was named after–John Muir–a quote which sinks to the essence of my feeling about this place:
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“Man must be made conscious of his origin as a child of Nature. Brought into right relationship with the wilderness he would see that he was not a separate entity endowed with a divine right to subdue his fellow creatures and destroy the common heritage, but rather an integral part of a harmonious whole. He would see that his appropriation of earth’s resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance and beget ultimate loss and poverty for all.”
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The cost of housing goes well beyond a dollar amount. For the part-time community of Lake Arrowhead, where rural overcrowding has left a once-charming retreat to more closely resemble the very city its inhabitants yearn to escape, that cost is ever-lasting. Meanwhile, the urge to reserve a private slab of land and water for occasional and exclusive use keeps it a reality.
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But what if we could surrender our more extreme luxuries in favor of simpler, more essential ends?
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Could this land not serve as a resting place for some tired soul, eager to lay his head under the shade of that lodgepole pine you felled to pave the strip of land you use as a parking space once every 28 days?
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Perhaps it’s idealistic to think that everyone is capable of enjoying a lifestyle so communal or austere. We are all unique in our needs and desires. But this tendency to cram in development to every available space–particularly universally attractive natural space, and especially for rarely used private getaways–seems a bit extreme. Or worse, immoral.
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Yes, Lake Arrowhead might have been the least appropriate place for me to celebrate my 1,000th day of living home-free. Or maybe not. Maybe the questions raised by my visit here only serve to reinforce the philosophy of voluntary simplicity and living home-free.
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While I think about that, I guess I’ll just have another pint of Lagunitas to moll it over.
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On the house.
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– T.O.H.
