Like a scene from Jurassic World, you step out from your camping van onto a clearing of bone white dust edged in by rustling branches of sycamore whispering of your entry between interlocked fingers of bark. This is just 1 of 63 camping sites in the 8000 acre reserve, picnic tables and washroom facilities the only signs of modernity within this outpost of nature. Bottles of water strapped securely to your back, you set off into the significantly dimmed woodlands on an unnamed trail, passing beneath the boughs of bent and twisted oak. You are but a spec inching through the steep gorges cut out through the ground like splintering cracks, over the elevated peaks of slumped giants carpeted in chaparral. Along the way, you would skip past streams and rivulets, runaway strands from the Malibu creek which is strung across the Santa Monica Mountains like a silver ribbon. Towering redwoods from the 1910s, the ancient guardians of the forest, gaze upon you from their pedestals as you pass by, tiny ants in proportion to the girth of their trunks.

At the chiseled volcanic rock face, you hook yourself onto a harness and secure the complicated locks and stirrups before hoisting yourself onto the wall. Fingers gripping onto the scarce ledges and narrow cracks in the crumbling mineral, you’re now on the run from giant apes as your friend close by scales the wall unharnessed and dragging herself up by sheer courage. Muscles burning from the exertion, you hoist yourself up and continue the climb to Saddle Peak where you can finally take a heaving deep breath past the run. With trembling fingers, you capture the setting sun against the Santa Monica Coastline that douses the fauna across the reserve and the rippling blue miles away in a glittering yellow veil. In fact, it might seem rather disconcerting returning to the suburbs, breaking the mirage of unbroken nature preserved within Malibu Creek Park.