[ Lost in the Landscape ]

into the wild

On my last lit­tle out­ing to my city’s largest open-space park, before the recent rains, while I wasn’t busy look­ing at sycamores, I was head­ing up the trail to For­tuna Peak, one of the high­est point in the city lim­its. At 1291 feet in ele­va­tion and with good trails all the way, it’s no seri­ous moun­tain climb, but the view from the top gives you views from the ocean to the west to the first ranges of real moun­tains to the east.

Many of the local wild parks have signs warn­ing you about the dan­ger­ous fauna in the area–mostly rat­tlesnakes. Here the sign cau­tions hik­ers about the moun­tain lions that live here on the park’s more than 5000 acres and in the adja­cent open space.

I’m used to being the top preda­tor almost wher­ever I go. Even con­fronting a sign like this, I still man­age to don that cloak of invin­ci­bil­ity stitched through years of never con­fronting any­thing that might chal­lenge that sense. I’m also a pretty statistics-driven per­son. I might think about how you’re many times more likely to meet your end by light­en­ing strike on a golf course than hik­ing through land like this. Many more peo­ple die from smok­ing than they do through moun­tain lion attack.

For me, know­ing that there are moun­tain lions in the vicin­ity adds to the adven­ture. Some­how this park feels more authen­tic, more alive, more com­plete because of it.

It brings to mind the only solo back­pack­ing trip I’ve taken through Utah’s Cedar Mesa back­coun­try. Five min­utes after enter­ing the wilder­ness area I encoun­tered the only human I was to see for the rest of the trip as he was leav­ing. Ten min­utes into the trip I was cross­ing a stream bed still moist from an after­noon thun­der­storm. As I stepped into the sand I noticed one immense, per­fect paw print next to my boot. A moun­tain lion had passed this way in the last few hours. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feel­ing a quick stab of fear at that moment. Wel­come to the wild.

Maybe that’s a bit too much macho pos­tur­ing on my part. If I were attacked by one of these cats, the first thing the author­i­ties would do is to go after it. Peo­ple would demand it. My reck­less­ness would lead to the destruc­tion of one of these elu­sive crea­tures. But I’m not a moun­tain lion’s favorite food, and these signs always seem like a park author­ity try­ing to limit their lia­bil­ity. Really, what are the odds of suf­fer­ing any harm?

The wilds today didn’t offer any­thing so dra­matic as moun­tain lions. A few other hik­ers were out, some of them totally fit and prac­ti­cally run­ning, oth­ers look­ing like they were there because of a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion. Almost noth­ing was in bloom, but white-flowering cur­rant (Ribes indeco­rum) pro­vided bright accent marks along the trail to the top.

Once on top the view expands all around you. Look north and you see open chap­ar­ral and the run­ways of Mira­mar Air Sta­tion sev­eral miles away. Mil­i­tary instal­la­tions may take up a cer­tain amount of a city’s land, but they often man­age to pre­serve open space in ways that sub­ur­ban sprawl doesn’t.

Turn a lit­tle east and there you begin to see the ranks of foothills lead­ing up to the Cuya­maca and Laguna ranges that divide the county, coastal region on one side, desert on the other. Yerba santa and black sage pro­vide the foreground.

After I returned home from the hike I finally opened up the lat­est issue of Orion Mag­a­zine. One of the pieces, “Spec­tral Light” by Amy Irvine, describes a city fam­ily that has moved into a area in the South­west as they come to grips with liv­ing in an area that is wilder than they ever imag­ined. Def­i­nitely got me think­ing. It’s worth pick­ing up the January/February 2010 issue to read it, or you can lis­ten to the author read her piece or down­load the pod­cast [ here ].

January 25 2010 | Categories: landscape • places • rambles | Tags: Mission Trails Regional Park • mountain lions • Orion Magazine • wilderness | 5 Comments »

gbbd: the garden and beyond

It’s spring, all right. The gar­den con­tin­ues to bloom away man­i­cally, but the out­door places around town have been no slouch, either, when it comes to flowers.

This Gar­den Blogger’s Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gar­dens, fea­tures a gallery of some blooms from the gar­den mixed in with blooms from Mis­sion Trails Regional Park in San Diego.

In the top photo from Mis­sion Trails you can see that the yellow-flowered deer­weed, Lotus sco­par­ius, has col­o­nized many of the sunny areas that burned four and a half years ago. As the land­scape recov­ers, other plants will come in and stake their claims. The sec­ond image from near the top of For­tuna Peak shows that other areas are also recov­er­ing from the fires, though slower than far­ther downslope.

You can hover over each image below for its name, or click it to see a larger photo. While you can prob­a­bly tell what’s a wild plant and what’s in the gar­den, there’s an answer key at the end if you’re into quizzing your­self. (A few of thee are tricky in that they’re local native plants that have been incor­po­rated into the gar­den.)

Answers:
Wild, gar­den, gar­den;
gar­den, wild, wild;
wild, gar­den wild;
gar­den, gar­den, gar­den;
gar­den, wild, gar­den;
wild, gar­den, wild;
wild, wild, wild.

April 15 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape | Tags: Add new tag • fire • fire ecology • flowers • gbbd • in bloom • Mission Trails Regional Park | 5 Comments »

the view from the top

It’s spring, and the wild­flow­ers wait for no one. I’ve been for­sak­ing gar­den­ing and home projects and blog­ging (gasp!) a bit to check out some of the local open spaces. Here’s a panorama of part of the view from the top of For­tuna Mount­ian, at 1,243 feet the sec­ond high­est “peak” in the San Diego city lim­its. (Click the image to enlarge.)

This peak burned on Octo­ber 26, 2003 dur­ing the county’s big Cedar Fire. Revis­it­ing the area is a great les­son to see how things recover from a major fire, either by resprout­ing from the roots or reestab­lish­ing them­selves by seed. There are still plenty of dead branches pok­ing up towards the sky, but there’s also a huge amount of green. And these big, gor­geous rocks didn’t hold on to their scorch marks for long. (Don’t you just love rocks in a land­scape, either in the wilds or in a garden?)

Many of the plants and flow­ers aren’t ones you’ll find even in native plant gar­dens, but sev­eral have passed the “garden-worthy” test. In the sec­ond frame from the left above, you’ll see a bloom spike of the sting­ing lupine, Lupi­nus hir­sutis­simus, sort of an awful name for a beau­ti­ful plant.

While I haven’t seen plants of this annual species offered for sale, sev­eral online sources do list seeds, includ­ing S&S Seeds, and Seed­hunt.

Also on the sum­mit were two other plants that are used fairly fre­quently in native gar­dens: lau­rel sumac (Mal­osma lau­rina) and mis­sion man­zanita (Xylo­coc­cus bicolor), both of them even­tu­ally form­ing large, inter­est­ing shrubs.

I’ll be shar­ing more bits and pieces of the trips as I get them more organized.

April 03 2009 | Categories: landscape • photography | Tags: Fortuna Mountain • Mission Trails Regional Park • San Diego | 2 Comments »