A Happy Tale About Mountain Trails : Recreation: Group is making strides toward building a comprehensive network of interconnecting trails in Santa Monica Mountains.

Linda Palmer doesn’t have to go to Disneyland to find enchantment--it’s there for her on the trails of the Santa Monica Mountains.

“A trail is a magical space within a space,” said Palmer, an engaging Calabasas grandmother with a passion for the outdoors.

Palmer even has allegorical dreams about trails. “I once dreamed that I walked into a room that was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside,” she says. “It was just a wonderful feeling. That’s what trails can mean within a community.”

Palmer’s fascination with trails has turned her into one of the area’s leading trails activists. As president of the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council for the past 10 years, she shares other dreams with the 100 members of the nonprofit organization.

By building new trails and patching old bulldozer tracks, fire roads and maybe even an ancient Chumash Indian trail or two into the Backbone Trail, the Trails Council envisions a comprehensive 200-plus-mile network of interconnecting trails with primitive trail camps set up along the way from Griffith Park to Point Mugu.

In the early 1980s, Los Angeles County included the trail system in its Area Plan for the mountains, mapping 23 trails suggested by the Trails Council. Today, however, none of the 23 have been completed, only a few connections have actually been made, and most of the trails and fire roads remain isolated.

Palmer spends about 40 hours a week as an unpaid advocate, dealing with bureaucrats, developers and private landowners to prevent the easements for the proposed trail system from getting paved over or closed to the public.

“We try to make sure these pieces of easement don’t fall through the cracks,” she said.

Before the county established the Area Plan, “Trails were not saved,” she said. “They were lost forever.”

Developers and private land owners, she says, have generally been cooperative. “Typically, people will recognize trails as a good thing after we explain the benefits. ‘No’ is usually their first reaction. ‘Why me? Why not put it over there?’ Even trail users will find a reason to put it on a neighbor’s land.”

For landowners, the benefits of a trail in their back yard include having access to the mountains without the need to drive to a park. “One woman couldn’t understand why the Zuma Ridge Trail had to be on her property where she wanted to put up a barn,” Palmer said. “But when we explained that one day the trail will go from Malibu to Ventura, she said, ‘I can ride my horses all that way?!’ Then she hugged me.”

The Trails Council was established in 1972 when the construction of Kanan-Dume Road virtually destroyed an historic trail, alarming preservationists. Palmer joined the group in the mid-’70s after she had moved to Calabasas with two horses, five children and husband Boyd Holister, an actor who has done a one-man show as Clark Gable.

“We were only here a year when I noticed that a couple of trails I had been using got closed,” she says. “I started looking around to see if anybody was doing anything to save the trails.”

In 1978, the Trails Council met with County Supervisor Baxter Ward and persuaded him “to recognize the importance of trails and permit us to assist the county in mapping some of the trails with the idea that the county would adopt and preserve them,” Palmer said.

With the spine of the proposed trail system--the 65-mile-long Backbone Trail--nearly completed, the preservationists now have an artery into which they can connect their 170 miles of auxiliary trails. And with government continuing to acquire more land in the Santa Monicas and developers cooperating, “it’s feasible,” says country trails coordinator James McCarthy, that the network could become a reality in the future.

If it happens, Palmer will deserve a large share of the credit. “She is everywhere,” McCarthy said.

Ron Webster, who builds trails for the Trails Council with a grant from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, believes that the council has been effective because it treads lightly.

“There are so many angry passions in the mountains, but the Trails Council has offended fewer people and stepped on fewer toes than the other groups, maybe because of Linda’s personality,” he said. “She’s a diplomat, kind and patient. Everybody gets a fair shake with her.”

Aside from preserving and building trails, the council also maintains and enhances them. A few years ago, the group gave money to Eagle Scouts to erect a wooden bench on the banks of a stream along Calabasas-Cold Creek Trail. Recently, Palmer visited the bench, sat peacefully in the shade of two giant oaks, admired the stream-side orchids and watched a four-foot king snake wriggle through the brush.

“Amenities such as this bench are important for people to feel friendly with the environment,” she said. “L.A. doesn’t have enough places like this.”

There has been one downside to Palmer’s passion. “I got involved because I love to ride,” she said. “It’s ironic, but now that I’m so busy with the Trails Council, I ride only once a week.”

Want to work on a trail? The Trails Council is looking for volunteers. Call the National Park Service at (818) 597-9192 to contact the council.