Across the Recovering Chaparral

Posted on March 30, 2009 in Biomes Hiking Photos Santiago Fire Video

The mustard leaves spread like lettuce on a tree, shivering in a wind that blew up presumably from the sea. It dwarfed my dog. He didn’t trust it. Sometimes he hovered at the commencement of a stand of it, letting me go through first just in case a bobcat or skunk waited to mug him.

Lupines bent and danced, morning glories trembled. Only the coast paintbrush maintained it’s stiffness, choosing to splash red against the carpet of newly freed annuals. Here and there a knot that had been the trunk of a chamise or a buckwheat sprouted from the humps at the sides of the abandoned road. I was tempted to pull them just to see what rope tethered them to the earth. Christmas berry exploded from rootstock that had not been killed by the conflagration of two years ago. Scrub oak refused to abandon the trunks, though many wizened branches remained. A gully of Mexican elderberry, untouched by the fire, exalted in pale yellow. The greatest miracles were the many pale fronds of Our Lord’s candle that sprouted in the rocky areas. They had the gawky look of weak-stemmed asparagus. The only wildlife we saw were a pair of hawks hunting the mice who came to harvest the new-grown grasses.

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