On March 23 Brian, Erika and I set out for Idyllwild via the Ortega Highway, so that I could make up for the field trip I missed. The Idyllwild photos are listed on the Idyllwild Field Trip page. The page you are looking at lists plants that we saw and photographed along the way, and chronicles our adventures of the day.
We really enjoyed the drive up and over the Santa Ana mountains. The kids are from the midwest and have not had much opportunity to see mountains, so they were quite impressed. The photo below shows the view from the coastal side of the mountains. (Very large image)
I did not much care for the Lake Elsinore part of the drive, and I missed the back road through Hemet so that was a bit of a trial that went on and on and on. But finally we past out of the city and started up the San Jacinto Mountains.
Signs posted along the roadside indicated that prescribed burns were taking place. We saw the smoke as we drove closer, and then we were awed to see a helicopter dropping fire onto the chaparral! As we got close to the fires we could feel the heat. You can see in the photo on the left how close the fire was to the roadway. It was something none of us had experienced before - I've been around wildfires before, but never quite so close!
The fires burned all afternoon. We could see the plume of smoke as we looked down from Idyllwild. (Very large image)
As you look at the mountains in the photo below, you can see many dead trees. The mountain's vegetation is stressed by pollution, misguided land management practices and by inappropriate, often destructive "development." Click on the photo to see the 1600 pixel version - you can get a real sense of the problem.
Wildfires are a normal part of Southern California's ecosystems. One of the mistakes we humans have made has been to try to prevent all wildfires. With no periodic burning, the trees begin to grow too close together, and they compete with each other for water and nutrients. As a result, they become weak and susceptible to insect damage and diseases. And since the undergrowth does not get burned off regularly, it becomes abundant, so that when a fire starts it burns much hotter than it should. It is this, in combination with other factors, that resulted in the horrible devastation of the firestorm of Fall, 2003.
I was pleased to see the prescribed burns, and to see all the tree removal, because these activities reduce the risk of devastating fires. Still, these are just short term measures. The problem requires long term solutions, the most important being better land use policies.
When we reached Idyllwild, we stopped at Jo'an's for lunch before continuing on to our target location. Our waitress was quite taken with Erika's mid-western accent! We had such a pleasant time there that we resolved to return for pie before heading back home.
Here are my son Brian and his sweetie Erika...
...and me. You can see that I've been studiously photographing and documenting! The kids had a blast climbing around on the rocks while I was busy trying to figure out which tree is which. The left-most picture (Very large image) is a huge crevasse, big enough for a person to slide into and get stuck.
The mountains were gorgeous in the afternoon light. (Very large images)
After a pleasant afternoon, we stopped back at Jo'an's for home made pie. It was very crowded with fire-fighters as well as "regular folks" like us, but we had a pleasant time anyway - our waitress of earlier in the day remembered us. As we drove down the mountain in the dark we encountered smoke and thick fog from the afternoon's fires. This time, I found the back road and was able to by-pass the worst of Hemet. We arrived back in O.C. tired but happy.
*indicates a naturalized (not native) plant
Last update 04/05/07
Copyright © Jeanne Lepowsky 2004