Al Martinez: Two people can save a mountain ... with help

Once upon a time two proper ladies of a certain age were sitting on the grass in the upper Fernwood section of Topanga Canyon looking at a mountain in the distance when one of them informed the other that it was up for sale and housing developers were interested.

This was a shocking revelation to the other who loved the mountain known as Rocky Ledge with its oak trees and chaparral and wanted to keep it just the way it was, open and undeveloped for everyone to enjoy. She looked at her friend and said, "Why don't we buy it?"

Thus began, more or less, a quest that set into motion an effort to raise almost $1 million in public and private funds to buy not the whole mountain but the 20 acres of it up for sale, and deed it to the future. And you know what? They did it.

It took Jeanne Arthur and Margaret Oakley just a year to accomplish the remarkable feat, and now they are looking around for more land to preserve, having proved that citizen power, when in the hands of two proper ladies, can achieve wonders.

"I'm astonished this could happen," Arthur said to me in the home she shares with husband Robert that looks across at 2,000-foot high Rocky Ledge. She remains somewhat stunned by the success of a team they put together to do the job. "It proves," she said, "that anyone can do it."

The 20 acres is adjacent to 80 acres already preserved as open space, and brings to 120 the total amount of land on the mountainside that is free from

the threat of development, thanks to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and the land owners, Richard and Kimberly Connolly, who agreed to hold up subdividing their acreage while the women raised money.

Arthur, 64, a slim, sprightly nature-lover with long, graying hair, led the effort by sending out hundreds of e-mails, by filling the mailboxes in her neighborhood with pamphlets that sought donations and by writing about their effort in the local newspaper, The Topanga Messenger. The total effort brought in about $3,000 in private money with the remaining $965,000 coming from funds available through the Board of Supervisors and the MRCA. The deal was done.

The team that the two women put together, called the Rocky Ledge Land Preservation group, includes their husbands and also involves a real estate man and a scientist. The team seeks, not power over property, but permanence. It wants the open land that rims the Valley to remain undisturbed for all the generations that follow.

Arthur observed as our conversation ended: "Just looking at the mountain makes me feel good."

And the two proper ladies and the mountain that they loved lived happily ever after.

Al Martinez writes a column that appears in the Los Angeles Daily News on Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at almtz13@aol.com.

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