There was little to break up the scenery for the first few miles other than an occasional shack or abandoned car. Then a scattering of small businesses appeared among dry, yellow clearings: a lumberyard, a general store and post office, a lean-to advertising magic crystals at discount.

At the top of the road was a fork that separated Old Topanga Road from the newer highway that led into the Valley. Both routes were empty.

The original Topanga settlers had been Californio homesteaders and New England gold panners, asking for little but beauty and riches and privacy. Their descendants still owned land in the canyon, and individualism remained the Topanga way.

During the sixties and seventies- the time of the Sanctum party- the hippies had invaded in giddy droves, living in caves, scrounging for food, and eliciting outrage the natives hadn't known they had in them. Gary Hinman had a house in Topanga back then, as did lots of other musicians, and he was recording rock 'n' roll tracks in his home studio when the Manson family murdered him.

No more hippies now. Most had wandered off, some had died from overdoses of freedom, a few had become transformed to Topanga burghers. But the canyon hadn't turned into Levittown. Artists and writers and others who didn't keep regular hours continued to homestake here, and I knew several professors and psychotherapists willing to brave the hour-plus drive to the city in order to return here at night. One of them, a man who studied the biochemistry of rage, once told me he'd come across a mountain lion in his back yard one night, savaging a raccoon and licking its chops.

"Scared the shit out of me, Alex, but it also took me to a higher spiritual level."

I turned left onto the old road. The next couple of miles were darker and greener and cooler, shaded by sycamores, maples, willows, and alders that arched over the blacktop.

Pretty, lacy trees.

Houses appeared every hundred to two hundred feet, most of them modest and one-storied and set into vine-crusted glades. Those on the left side of the road sat behind a dry wash, accessible by footbridge or through old railroad boxcars turned into tunnels.

Mine was the only car on the road, and though I could smell horse manure, there were no steeds in sight. I pulled over and read the directions the woman had given me.

Look for a private road around three miles from the bridge, and a wooden sign to the east.

I drove a slow mile. There were several dirt paths cutting into the hillside on the east, all unmarked, and I made a couple of false starts before spotting a wooden sign nearly obscured by a heavy bank of scarlet honeysuckle.

S NC M

The road, if you could call it that, was an acutely slanting dirt path lined with elderberry and ferns and sugar bush. I traveled a thousand feet of kidney-jarring, hairpin solitude. The trees, here, were thick-trunked and hypertrophied, the brush beyond them impenetrable. The growth was so thick that branches scraped the roof of the car, and in some places the vegetation sprouted in the center of the road and brushed the Seville's underbody.

Soon I heard the high-note trickle of a stream. Groundwater. That explained the lushness during the drought. Looking for trees here would be like searching for pedestrians in Times Square.

A couple of turns, then I saw a two-piece gate up ahead. Heavy-duty chicken wire framed by planks of weathered redwood.

Latched, but not locked.

I got out, freed the bolt, and swung both gates open. They were heavy and rusty and left brown grit on my hands.

Another five hundred feet. Another gate, a twin of the first. Beyond it was a big, low-slung, lodge-type building flanked by enormous bristlecone pines and backed by a forest of more pines and firs and coast redwood. The roof was green asphalt shingle, the walls, logs.

I parked in the dirt, between a black Jeep Cherokee and an old white Mercedes convertible. A row of iron hitching posts fronted the lodge. Behind it, wide wooden steps led to a wraparound porch shaded by the eaves of the building and set up with a few bent-willow chairs. The cushions on the chairs were blue floral and mildewed. The windows of the lodge were gray with dust.

Flat, thick silence; then a squirrel scampered across the porch, stopped, and shimmied up a rain gutter.

I climbed the stairs and knocked on the front door. Nothing happened for a while; then it was pulled open and a woman looked out at me.

Thirty-five or so, five-seven, with straight, shoulder-length black hair parted in the middle and painted with copper highlights. Her face was a tan oval, the skin smooth as fresh notepaper, the jawline crisp. She wore second-skin black leggings under a bright green, oversized, sleeveless T-shirt. Her arms were bronze and smooth, her feet bare, her eyes orange-brown.

She had the kind of face that would photograph beautifully: perfectly aligned, slightly oversized features. Both ears were double-pierced.

"Dr. Delaware?" she said in a bored voice. "I'm Nova."

She waved me into a gigantic main room furnished with sagging tweed couches and thrift-shop tables and chairs. To the right was a clumsy, narrow staircase. The grubby plank flooring was covered haphazardly with colorless rugs. The ceiling was beamed with more planks and raw logs, and each beige stucco wall bore two large windows. Plenty of furniture and still enough room to dance. Along the rear wall, beyond the stairs, what had once been a reception desk had been turned into a wet bar crammed with bottles. On either side of the bar were doors.

The walls were covered with scores of mounted animal heads: deer, moose, fox, bear, a snarling puma, lacquered trout with their vital statistics engraved on plaques. All the specimens looked moth-eaten and tired, almost goofy. One was particularly grotesque- a gray, lumpy, porcine thing with Quasimodo features and yellow mandibular fangs that hooked over a sneering upper lip.

"Wally Warthog," said Nova, stopping next to a serape-covered couch.

"Good-looking fellow."

"Charming."

"Does Mr. Lowell hunt?"

She gave a staccato laugh. "Not with a gun. These came with the place and he kept them. He planned to add some of his own- critics and reviewers."

"Never bagged any, huh?"

Her face got hard. "Wait here, I'll tell him you've arrived. If you need to, fix yourself something to drink."

She walked off toward the left-hand door. I went over to the bar. Empty bottles lined the floor. Premium brands, mostly. On the counter were eight or nine cheap glasses that hadn't seen water recently. An old refrigerator was filled with mixers. I washed a glass and poured myself some tonic water, then returned to the center of the huge room. As I sat on a needlepoint rocker, dust shot up. In front of me was a coffee table with nothing on it. I waited and drank for ten minutes; then the door opened.