WalkGood LA Hike

The Hollywood Climate Summit community laced up their shoes and hit the trail with our partner WalkGood LA for a hike-and-learn experience that showed us a side of Los Angeles hiding in plain sight.

WalkGood LA is one of Los Angeles' most beloved community wellness organizations, founded in 2020 by siblings Etienne and Ivy-Victoria Maurice and their cousin Marley Ralph as a free, inclusive space for healing through movement. Rooted in Jamaican heritage and a deep commitment to Black and Brown communities, WalkGood LA creates experiences where people can show up fully, breathe, and reconnect with themselves and each other.

This hike at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area was exactly that. As our group moved through the trail together, conversations flowed naturally about mental health, burnout, what community care actually looks and feels like in practice. There was something about being outside, bodies in motion, that made people open up in ways that a conference room never quite allows.

From the top, the views stretched out in every direction and so did the veiws of the urban oil rigs. Dozens of them, dotting the hillsides of Los Angeles, hiding in plain sight. For many of us, it was the first time we had truly seen them, a visceral, gut-level understanding that LA sits atop the largest urban oil field in the United States, a fact that far too few residents ever reckon with.

It was a reminder of why we do this work, and why doing it together, in nature, in community, matters.