Remnants of Natural California: Canyons of the Foothills (part 2)

If one starts in the middle of the city of Fontana, California, and drives straight up Sierra avenue (more or less main street) and continue to the exit at I-15, you get probably the most accurate remaining viewpoint of what basin topography and plants would be like.  Downtown, of course, is built up and paved over, and any grasses you might see are manicured lawn specialties.  As you head closer to the mountains, the development eases off a little, and one is surrounded by open fields with the occasional shrub sticking out.  Slowly, about every mile or so, the land gains about fifty to seventy feet in elevation, and by the time you near I-15, you get shrubs starting to make the area look a lot more bountiful.  Ahead, you see the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains meeting head on, with a moderately high pass in the middle called Cajon Pass, which leads up and out into the Mojave desert beyond.

Staying on Sierra avenue, which is now called Lytle Creek road, the land becomes a bit rocky, gains about 400 feet to a mile until it hits the town of Lytle Creek.  The road passes over Lytle Creek itself, which this far up is still a stream even in dry months, as it has yet to sink into the dry basin lands.  Here, the ground is denied full sun by the closing canyon walls, and groundwater is closer to the surface as it flows downhill.  In some places, the water pools and cascades in pretty decent displays even in the dead of summer.  On the day I took this, many people were swimming in the creek further downstream.

That soft, pine looking shrub in the front center is the dreaded Tamarisk, a tree which wreaks havoc throughout the western United States.  They reproduce easily, crowd out existing vegetation, suck up the local water table, and even dredge up salt from deep in the ground which they then drop in the decaying leaves on nearby soil to prevent other plants from growing.  Fortunately, this one seemed to be a bit of a loner, and was surrounded by normal, patriotic trees like Fremont Cottonwoods and various willows.

As noted, this lets streams be streams, but it also allows for taller species of trees to grow.  Only a mile and a half into the canyon, the slopes have Bigcone Douglas-fir growing on them.

These are trees of opportunity, to say the least.  They grow mainly on the east and north facing slopes to avoid the desiccation of the full afternoon sun.  Their little niches are rocky, moist, and spots of safety among the otherwise fire prone canyons.  In such conditions, they reach down as far as possible into the basin lands, stopping at around 1,000 feet in their lowest occurrence.  In some areas, they are true survivors, several centuries old and beacons of vitality in a scorched landscape.

In others, the sheer intensity of wildfires overcome them, usually high-intensity blazes that are deliberately set by arsonists or careless smokers (this has been proven and confessed by such people).  Still, they are tough things, and I have yet to see an entire hillside devoid of them. There are always at least a few survivors that were shielded by their neighbors.

The outer trees actually slow the fires, which burn outwards then back to the more flammable vegetation.  Of course, the flammable stuff also has mechanisms that help cope with the extreme fire conditions here.  In the immediate foreground are Chamise, which dominate much of the lower foothill landscape.  These and other shrubs, mainly manzanitas, ceanothus, and yuccas, burn to the ground quickly in the intense fires of the region, aided by the oils in their leaves and branches.  Some of these can even spring right back up again from the roots, which were safely away from the quickly passing fire underground.  Many of the plants have seeds which can remain dormant until activated.  In some cases, several months later, the area can look undistrubed.

Many of the shrubs are deciduous evergreens and could provide for a lovely garden year round in their native climate, but are often passed over for the many plants from around the world that grow can grow in the area.  More often than not, residents living along the foothill ranges see only their distant appearance, which in the summer through early winter look dull and brown.  Closer up though, even in late August when the basins and deserts across the range look brown and choked, these hills can be a very refreshing green.

The large stalk in the middle belongs to a Yucca whipplei, which Franciscan missionaries also named "Our Lord's Candle".  (The plant is hidden in the bushes, but you can make out a non-flowering one on the left of the picture-the spiky pale blue-green plant).  I have seen stems as tall as twenty five feet shoot up from the small plants, which die after they flower in this way, sacrificed for providing nutrients to such a feat of growth that bears hundreds of seeds.  Nature, as some of the more romantic naturalists have noted, is often more of a temple to honor God than most cathedrals.  I would add that it can work just as well as a theology book, given proper understanding.

So why do I find canyons and ravines like Lytel Creek to be so amazing?  Well, maybe because if you cross the Mojave desert for hours and wonder if you will ever see a tree again, you finally descend into this lush world and it stands in amazing contrast to the sandy expanses above and the dry, urban sprawl below.  Here, see for yourself:

Out in the desert, not too far away:

Here in the canyon:

Down towards Fontana, San Bernardino, etc.:

Noticeable contrast, to say the least.  The foothills and their canyons are surrounded by dry lands, and are themselves witness to maybe 20 inches of rain a year, roughly half of what the Eastern United States and Canada receive annually.  They are subject to intense natural (and unnatural) phenomena, and yet are full of life that has not only managed to survive, but thrive.  From a distance, even relatively close up, the slopes do not look like much.

For those who take a moment and venture a closer look, however, there is some lovely life growing here.

Mind you, in some places, the beauty can be arresting even to those always in a hurry.  

OK, so I cheated on that last one, that was taken about seven miles away, off of California 18.  Granted, the landscape and ecosystem are fairly the same.

Lytel Creek canyon is easy to get to, right off of I-15 on the Sierra avenue exit, which is the last exit before heading up into Cajon pass.  There is a wonderful joint ranger station for both the San Bernardino and Angeles National Forests, which aside from having weird hours and a closed bathroom, does have a lovely botanical garden that highlights the native flora.  The canyon is a wonderful remnant of natural California, and the wonderful oasis that once offered rest to the peoples who lived here for ages and welcomed those who arrived in these lands after a long trek across the continent looking for the golden land near the Pacific.