Issue 311 A Publication of the Docent Council, Martin Griffin Preserve of Audubon Canyon Ranch © June 2019
Graduation. New docents. Public season. Summer. The Preserve beckoning you to linger and discover more of its wonders. This sent us into the archives to bring you this excerpt from 2003. It just feels timely. Generations of a Living Landscape By Gwen Heistand The landscapes of this place are inextricably woven with human history and rich invisible signs of passing time. Redwood youth, themselves bearing scars from the last big fire in the 1940s, sprout from once-logged old growth ancestors. Coastal scrub marches over hillsides that were once grazed and planted with potatoes. Douglas firs encroach on the marching coastal scrub and, in the Dead Horse Grove, five of them mark the buried corpses of J.P., Champ, and Lady, horses on belonging to Walter McLaren, the general maintenance manager of Canyon Ranch from 1950-1975. A Miwok charmstone found in Garden Club Canyon’s stream in 2000 spans centuries and cultures as it gets passed in a circle from docent to child to docent. Trees above the Spring Trail completely engird an old boundary fence until it appears as if barbed wire grows from oak bark. And throughout Bolinas Lagoon Preserve, names of individuals who are linked to this land have been transformed into the place itself. Bourne is a ridge, a fire trail where a logging skid trail once was, where harvester ants separate chaff and false tarantulas clean their burrows after the first rains. Parsons is a pond filled with copepods, backswimmers, water boatmen, dragonfly naiads, and no small amount of mystery. Henderson sings the descending trill of an orange-crowned warbler and hosts the yellow flowers of Oregon grape while overlooking our nesting white-winged ambassadors. Zumie winds through coffeberry and sagebrush, huckleberry and bay, live oak and purple explosions of Douglas iris. Picher has a stream that spills over rocks, under which caddisfly larvae vibrate in their cases, past elk clover and liverworts and Pacific giant salamanders, and eventually flows into the old ranch yard to greet busloads of school children and weekend visitors. Miller reminds us that the waterbirds do indeed return every fall from points north to gather in the lagoon for the winter. Harwell educates us about ecotones and edges transitioning from mixed woodland to redwood forest, redwood forest to coastal scrub, coastal scrub to grassland. Fog drip collects in Schwarz, providing moisture for the tall trees through-out the dry Mediterranean summers. Griffin loops through landscapes moist and sere, gives up vistas of ocean and lagoon, passes places where the aria of a winter wren morphs into a duet with a waterfall and lingers in the drops on five-fingered ferns. Pierson is a marsh with cattails, red-winged black bird nests, choruses of tree frogs, and two ponds containing newts and wonder. —Continues on page x
A Look at What’s Inside
Spare a Thought They’re the Head for the A Celebration of New Arrivals It Happened: the for the Salmon Hallelujah Class of Treetops Wild Greens Program to Expand Martin Griffin Opera Locally, salmon 2019 Our book The fun begins This new addition Check out Joyce’s are making a Learn a little more reviewer sends with a story and to the Education Corner for the full local comeback. about our newest you back to the some book tips on Program is story! Read the good docents and the treetops with page 7 and ends growing. news. new class rep. Canopy Meg. with a wild recipe. Page 13 Page 11 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Pages 7-10