Rain, I don’t mind…a band of determined outdoor enthusiasts refused to allow a little “weather” to interfere with plans for the tour.
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Happy as a clam…the rain-loving snail is a mollusk rather than an insect; its cousins include the octopus and—of all things—the clam.
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Viewing a fading oasis…according to Eric Bowlby, 90 percent of our wetlands have vanished due to development (like the road under their feet).
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Wetland indicators…Willow trees and Mule Fat stand like watchtowers over out quickly dwindling riparian habitats throughout San Diego.
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Binoculars up…people had an opportunity to watch a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks surf the air currents (and elude the photographer).
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On the road again…on a prior tour, hikers used the creek as a path; few remembered when Chollas had last functioned as a waterway.
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Naturalist Walter Konopka…(at right) spent much of his time identifying native plants and pinpointing their significance to the Chollas Creek area.
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Native Wild Cucumber…this tiny fruit will grow into a large spiny inedible pod; Native Americans ground the seeds as poultices for wounds.
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The Linda Vista layer…John Raifschneider tells how a seam of rock and clay enabled the formation of canyons by trapping the sediment below.
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Erosion created the canyons…as the Linda Vista layer held fast, softer sedimentations washed away leaving deep “etchings” in the earth.
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Million-year-old hardpan…a closer look at the Linda Vista layer reveals a compression of clay and rock reddened by the soil’s high iron content.
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The Red-Tailed Hawk is…largest of the hawks and most common in the genera Accipitridae (image pirated from a 1949 Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia).
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As the tour winds down…hikers stand on top of a rise looking down at a creek flowing for the first time in many years due to recent heavy rains.
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