Dragons in the Valley, Fer Sure

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. But it looks like there will be at least one, and sometime soon. I'll tell you why I think that, but first let me introduce myself.

Daisy Maricarmen Ortega, at your service. Please call me Daisy.

I live in the San Fernando Valley. The very Valley that Moon Unit Zappa made famous with her Valley Girl song. That came out long before my time, but it's woven into every fiber of my being, shopping for clothes and all that, fer sure. The Galleria of which she sang is a hop, skip and jump away from me, in a nice part of the Valley. I live in Van Nuys. Not the uppity parts that rechristened themselves Lake Balboa or Valley Glen, but in Van Nuys itself. In an apartment where I share a bedroom with my sister Rosa.

Our family settled around here after my granddad came from Mexico and got a job as a groundskeeper at a boys school. After the school closed, he painted a daisy on the door of his blue Ford pickup and started his own local gardening business, and his two sons joined him. My mom's a nursing assistant at the VA Hospital, nearly a straight shot north on the bus. She is of this land. In the early 1800s, her ancestor was taken from the village of Mapipinga to the San Fernando Mission, and given the name Maria Dolorosa. My brother Ricardo is studying computers at community college, Rosa got a biology degree there last year and is working with the CCC in Arizona. As a family, we joke that my siblings were named for Mom's parents, and I was named for Abuelito's door. As a family, I think we're doing ok.

Actually, I always thought we were pretty lucky. Not far from us is the Sepulveda Basin, a super park area with a bike path, picnic spots, even a flood basin for storms. It's crazy to see people go there and get stuck in the water during the rare big rains! Its Japanese Garden is really lovely, sometimes my family would walk over on a weekend to enjoy the blooming plants and landscaped tranquility.

There's a thing about me. Daddy calls it curiosity, Mom says it's passion. When I find out about something intriguing, I keep asking questions until I'm satisfied. This, what I call my passionate curiosity, really took off when I was on a middle school field trip. I discovered the endless resources of the L.A. Public Library. There were computers there, opening the door to the internet. As a book lover, I learned to track down esoteric subjects and get books sent to my local branch to pick up. I was rich beyond bounds. This year, the school gave us all laptops! But I'm not to that part of my story yet.

When I was in second grade, I met my first best friend right there in the Japanese Garden. Searching for bugs with a plastic magnifying glass, she had wandered away from her parents. I was fascinated, never having seen a real magnifying glass outside of Dora the Explorer, so I went over to watch her. She looked a little like Dora too, with straight black bangs across her forehead. I said hey, what are you doing? She explained that she had found a brown marmorated stink bug, did I want to see? I peaked through the lens, surprised that it worked, and said "Grody to the max!" because it was a stink bug, but actually it was quite fascinating to see up close. She asked me my name, and we were buds from then on. Literally. I told her my name was Daisy. She covered her mouth with her hand as a titterly little laugh escaped. "We will be flower sisters. I am Sakura," she said. "Sakura means Cherry Blossom!"

I love having Sakura Ikeda as my friend. We went to different schools, but as we got older, we spent time exploring the acres of Sepulveda Basin together, tagging along with older siblings until parents deemed us old enough to go alone. During long summer evenings, we would meet by the Wildlife Reserve and watch for bunnies in the grass. When we were in middle school, she told me about a great high school that was closeby. It was called Daniel Pearl, and it was a magnet school, you had to do a special application for it. I told my parents, and Sakura and I were both able to go to that school. It was named for a poor journalist that was assassinated, God rest his soul. I thought Pearl Magnet sounded so exotic. I decided that if I became an author someday, my pen name would be Pearl Magnetta.

There's one more in our friendship trifecta. She's nonconventional, wanting to stymie her parents' vision of her every chance she gets. She has gorgeously wavy, naturally blond hair that drastically changes color to match her manicure every so often. Beautifully named Abigail Winifred Higginbotham, Abi for short. Yet when she started high school with a completely new group of people, she started going by Fred. Fred Bottom, usually. I think she spent the first week of freshman year looking around to find the most contrary people, in order to especially bother her parents' preconceived notion of the "right sort" of friends, and she settled on the two of us. Fred lives south of the Boulevard in Tarzana, in a sic hacienda house, a Mission-style mansion with a terra cotta tile roof and a four car garage that's full. She wasn't in any of our classes that first semester, but she introduced herself to us one day during lunch period. "Abigail Winifred Higginbotham, at your service," she said. I thought that was such a classy presentation. I immediately adopted it.

We are a linguistically varied trio. My parents wanted Rosa and Ricardo to speak only English to me when I was little. I amassed a phenomenal vocabulary, but that came at the expense of my Spanish. I understand it but my speech no es bueno, although I hope to remedy that. Sakura is fluent in Japanese, having attended classes at the SFV Japanese American Center. Fred had a smattering of Farsi from her childhood nanny, and some French from middle school. I think we're so international.

Our quest, such as it is, began in what I suppose was an unusual way for some, but kind of typical for us. Although we're international, we're a bit on the nerdy side and embrace educational pursuits when we can. With a school field trip for biology class in freshman year, we became acquainted with the Natural History Museum. Their quest is to record species living in all corners of Los Angeles. With our love of the outdoors, our interest was piqued and we joined a cadre of community scientists who performed bioblizes. In a bioblitz, a squad of volunteers descend on a place, like a city park or county beach, and record any living thing observed, from moss and fungi to seastars, coyotes, and hummingbirds. One of Sakura's most exciting finds was a diabolical ironclad beetle! We'd join bioblitzes whenever we could figure out the bus route to some of these remote bioblitz sites.

As museum staff found that we were stalwart yet wheelless volunteers, one suggested arranging a bioblitz in our own backyard, the Sepulveda Basin. On an early Saturday morning that spring, I didn't know that life was going to become infinitely more interesting.

Data gathering for the bioblitz led us near the concrete dam at Sepulveda Basin, the verboten area behind a high chainlink fence. Our trusted trio and another pair were allowed to go through the County-controlled locked gate. They headed south, we walked north, towards the pockets of flora and fauna growing along the edge of, and in the cracks of, the drainage channel.

Scrambling down the side of the slope, and then sliding in my inappropriate footwear, I put my hand down for balance on a large concretion, like an oval basketball. It looked bumpy but felt smooth like marble warmed in the sun. I heard a sound, a vibration, resonating in my head like a loud swarm of cicadas. I tasted sweet salty blood as I bit my tongue, I smelled the dust kicked up by my shoes. I saw my handprint on the rock, boldly glowing in a swirling opalescence of charcoal grey with hot pink, turquoise and green, like an Australian black opal. I fell back on my butt against the slope, slammed by an instantaneous physical jolt and an indescribable emotional charge. I felt elated, and invincible. I felt like sobbing. "Pearl Magnetta" echoed in my head. That was the nanosecond which changed my life.

Written as a Vocal Challenge: write the first chaper of a book with this first line: "There weren't always dragons in the Valley."