A Visit to Cuyamaca...

This past weekend, Debbie and I visited some places we're very familiar with: the west slope of Cuyamaca Mountain (along Boulder Creek Road), Engineer Road (along North Peak), and the Stonewall Mine area in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Much of these areas was burned over in the awful Cedar Fire of 2003, over four years ago. It's been tough for us to go back there since then, as the fires destroyed some of our favorite scenery in the area…

The toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) at right was one of many we saw along Engineer Road. The toyon is a locally common chaparral plant; we have 100 or so specimens on the 25 or so acres surrounding our home. But here they were growing in a burnt-over forest, one of the first native plants (along with ceanothus) to come back after the fire. This would seem to make them a “fire pioneer” plant. The literature I could find on the web seems a bit contradictory on this point; some said that the seedlings were often seen after a fire, but others said that the plants wouldn't become established (and I'm not sure exactly what they mean by that) until there was a closed canopy overhead. But who cares, really – they were a spot of most unexpected beauty in the monochome tones of the burned areas…

The toyon is one of the two common chaparral plants in our area that stays reliably green, even through the droughts (the other is a sumac, commonly called “lemonade berry”). However, it is often quite hidden from view. In the area around our home, it's often found under live oaks, large manzanitas, or even very large ceanothus. This habit makes it an under-appreciated chaparral plant – I suspect many property owners around here don't even know they exist! Just a short walk from our house there is a particularly fine stand of toyon, under a live oak that's about 30 feet tall. But this stand is put to shame by the specimens we saw along Engineer Road.

We saw something else there that greatly cheered me: some pine seedlings, up to a couple feet tall. This is the very first time since the Cedar Fire that I have spotted conifer seedlings in the burned area, something that I found disheartening – so I was delighted to see these little guys! We saw some later in the park, as well. If I were to guess at density, I'd say it was between 20 and 40 seedlings per acre. That sounds very low to me, but perhaps there will be more in following years…

Once we got to the Stonewall Mine area, we had another pleasant surprise: deer. Again, this was the first time we'd spotted deer up here since the Cedar Fire. Their return means that the big predators (especially the mountain lion) will return as well, or perhaps they're already back. The scene at right, taken from a point close to the mine, is a classic autumn scene in the coastal California mountains. The thick grasses always turn a golden brown then, and the winds waft a distinctive smell, much like hay. We spotted the deer in a meadow just south of the one pictured, perhaps a half mile away…

I've always loved the visual textures of these dried grasses, whether as isolated plants or en masse. I find them especially beautiful when backlit, though it's very challenging to capture that high-contrast image in a photo.

Grasses such as these are, of course, amongst the very first pioneer plants after a fire. I don't know if the plants that come up first are from existing seed that survived the fire, or if new seed somehow makes it in. We saw luxurious grass (along with perennial wildflowers) in many burnt-over areas the first spring after the fire, just four or five months afterwards. The wildflowers don't stay in large numbers, unfortunately, but the grass does – in the many natural meadows, amongst rock outcroppings, and along road cuts. These luxurious grasses seem to need something that's available only at higher altitudes (more rainfall, I suspect), as we cannot grow them near our home. If we irrigated, we'd get bazillions of weeds, so I don't even try that…