stewardship – Page 5 – alive in the sea of information

On the fireline

Sunday afternoon I swam on campus at the Canyonview pool. The cool water was delicious as I did my laps, a good way to exercise on a hot day! Built on a mesa, the pool provides a great view down the canyon to the northeastern section of San Diego County. On a typical Summer’s day the view from this part of UC San Diego extends across the Carmel Valley to the foothills southwest of Escondido. I’ve tried to capture this summertime view in my ink and watercolor drawing.

On a crisp clear day in Winter after a cold rain, one can see a dusting of snow on the hills — sometimes catching a glimpse of a snow capped Palomar Mountain (some 5300 feet above sea level) in the Agua Tibia mountain range. In August, however, snow is a distant promise, and on this day the sky was a very hazy and thick gray-pink color, a result I believe of the fires burning in the San Gabriel mountains north of Los Angeles. Crossing the Tehacapi and the San Gabriel mountains is the final driving test before Northern Californians — tired from slogging through the endless miles of Interstate 5 — are permitted to enter the City of Angels. It is dramatic country. The San Andreas rift zone lies on the San Gabriel ridgeline neatly separating the Mojave Desert from the Los Angeles Basin. The San Gabriels are also the majestic backdrop to the craftsman bungalows of Pasadena. In the autumn of 1888, Mary Austin — future author of The Land of Little Rain — journeyed from Pasadena to the San Joaquin valley. The journey — described in her book One Hundred Miles on Horseback — took her across the San Gabriels via the towns of San Fernando and Newhall and up the San Francisquito Canyon to the ridgeline and finally Tejon Pass. On her way to San Fernando she ambled past orchards and vineyards alternating with stony stretches “marking the wash of some mountain stream and covered with brown tangled chapparal, bristling with the dried stalks of that species of yucca known as the Spanish Bayonet…these stony places are the favorite haunts of the prickly pear.” Once she began to climb the walls of the San Francisquito canyon she encountered the “dark red satin smooth stems, and olive green foliage of the manzanita; sometimes bare and ragged cliffs with strata turned and twisted, and folded back upon itself, bearing on its face the marks of primeval fire and flood.” California has a summer drought followed by a risky fire season and native plants many of which have adapted so well to this climate that they don’t reproduce until after a fire. As Californians we all know that flood, fire and earthquake are part of living in this beautiful place, and many of us prepare as best we can, but their significance as life changing events cannot be overstated.

I go among trees and sit still

Sunday morning and I wake up hot. Again. For the last few days, Southern California has been dominated by a High Pressure system and we won’t see relief until later this week. After moving part of my life to San Diego last year, I came to understand there are only three seasons in the southland: rain, hot and fire. The season of fire has come and several fires are tragically raging now in the Los Angeles Basin. Still horizontal I begin to dream of shade trees and my mind wonders again to cooler climes of the Spring and my visits to Tomales Bay just north of San Francisco. On Inverness Ridge, the west side of Tomales Bay and the gateway to Point Reyes National Seashore, there are coast woodlands of Bishop pine and Douglas Fir. On the eastern side of Tomales Bay are the open oak woodlands and grasslands with dairy and beef ranches — often visited by families of deer. Much of this land on the eastern side has thankfully become conservation easements protected by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT).

On this side we also find the non-native Blue Gum Eucalyptus and the Monterey Cypress planted by early settlers in this community to provide shelter from the winds.

On my visits to Tomales Bay, I’ve tried to quickly capture the trees and grasslands of the eastern side in watercolor and ink with a bamboo pen.

Blue-Gum Eucalyptus. Copyright 2009 Robin L. Chandler

Daydreaming still, the words come from several Wendell Berry poems I’ve read in his book A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979 – 1997. “I go among the trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.” Then as a hot breeze comes through my open window I think “of deep root and wide shadow, of bright, hot August calm, on the small, tree-ringed meadow.” At the end of a long, hot day last Thursday, I cycled to Leucadia and then returned home. It was a beautiful evening, and the air was still warm even as the sun set in the West. As I started up the Torrey Pines hill on the coast highway suddenly the temperature changed drastically. The pines nestled among the canyons of the park create a blessed coolness — the air felt like cool water lapping against my skin as I swam up the hill. I was thankful for the trees whose kindness helped me ride that hill. Rooted in the earth but reaching towards the heavens, trees give us life.

To feel the earth beneath my feet….

Grazing near Tomales Bay. Copyright 2009 Robin L. Chandler

In the Spring of 2009, we returned to Marin County just north of San Francisco to visit what I consider to be one of the most heavenly places on earth — the region near and around Tomales Bay — a land preserved by a mixture of sustainable agriculture and state and national parks. A place of peace where thoughtfulness comes as easily as breathing. It is always a homecoming of sorts for me. It has been the site of many adventures over the years: the kayak trips to Hog Island, the hikes through Bear Valley to Mt. Wittenberg, the cycling past Nicasio and hours spent painting and sketching the area from many vantage points. The watercolors posted here are two of my attempts to capture the beauty of the place. It also brings to mind for me Wallace Stegner, a writer who always opens my mind to the landscape through which I travel. In 2008 the Point Reyes Books sponsored the “Geography of Hope” conference focusing on the environmental writings of Stegner.

In his “Wilderness Letter” dated December 3, 1960, Stegner wrote “we simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”