David Covey

Black sage. "If you rub your hands on the leaves you can smell it. The Indians made a tea out of it and they also used it for deodorant.”

At night Florida Canyon is a forbidding, lonely place. In spite of the nearness of lighted tennis courts at Morley Field, and the cars cruising by regularly on Florida Drive, it's easy to imagine you are out in the middle of nowhere. The night air is filled with the sound of crickets and the pungent scent of sage, and there is the nagging feeling that you might possibly, just possibly, run into something you aren’t quite prepared for, perhaps an angry skunk, or a fox, or a slightly-larger-than-average bat. And of course you might; these animals are found out here.

Star thistle

David Covey

“Many people have remarked on the feeling of remoteness that you can get in the canyon.” says Helen Chamlee, who, as a founder and member of the Florida Canyoneers, has had ample occasion to study the area. “Even though the canyon’s surrounded by urban development and the roar of traffic, you can get a surprising feeling of being out in the woods.” Chamlee, trim, white-haired, with gleaming brown eyes, also serves as associate for educational activities at the Museum of Natural History. She is an earnest and helpful person who doesn't at all seem to mind digging into her files to answer obscure questions posed by visitors. When one bit of information couldn't be found recently, she looked stunned. “I don’t know the answer,” she finally admitted to her guest. “But I know you can find out.”

“Florida Canyon is a pitiful little remnant, really."

David Covey

Chamlee originally formed the Florida Canyoneers (the name was later shortened to simply Canyoneers) as a spin-off from the museum’s docent group. Their goal was to organize and lead walks through the canyon in order to encourage the public to take an interest in San Diego's natural history. “The genesis of the canyon program was to expand the museum’s educational effort into the outdoors, with the emphasis on ecology and the natural interrelationships of the area,” she explains. “Outdoors the moths fly and the birds sing and the bees sting — they’re not just pictures or exhibits in cases.

Bush monkey flower. "There are plants in bloom at almost every time of the year."

David Covey

“Florida Canyon is a pitiful little remnant, really, of what was once a widespread environment. But its value lies in its accessibility. It’s practically in the center of the urban area, where people live who never get out into natural country. Where else are they going to see a wildflower?”

Florida Canyon is the last natural area left in metropolitan San Diego.

David Covey

The canyon is, in fact, the last natural area left in metropolitan San Diego. There are other canyons, but Florida Canyon is the only one that functions as a complete ecosystem, a place where the native plants and wildlife interact with each other in a way that needs no outside assistance or control. That it has been left more or less untouched is not by design but by sheer accident. Officially included in San Diego’s park lands by the state legislature in 1878, the canyon was unused until 1902, when a portion of it became a city garbage dump. In 1919 the U.S. Navy requested permission from the city to build a twenty-six-acre hospital facility on the canyon’s southwestern bank. Permission was necessary because the city charter requires a two-thirds majority of voters to approve the use of park lands for nonpark purposes. A special election was held on August 3, 1919 to decide the issue. With the public preoccupied by World War I, the outcome was never in doubt, and a resolution permitting the Navy to build the hospital was passed 9289 to 137. The site has since been expanded to more than one hundred acres.

In the 1930s Florida Street was extended through the canyon from Morley Field Drive to Pershing Drive, and the canyon, almost as an afterthought, acquired its name. More recently, the construction of recreational facilities in the Morley Field area encroached on the canyon’s northeastern corner. But for the most part the canyon, remained untouched until 1970, when officials of the San Diego Zoo proposed building a parking lot in it. At that point Helen Chamlee, acting as a private citizen, led a group which recommended that a portion of the canyon be designated a “natural area,’’ meaning that its plants and wildlife could not be removed and that the area would be protected from further development. “I had to approach the Balboa Park Committee as an individual, not as a member of the museum staff, because of political constraints,’’ she recounted. “As a publicly supported institution, the museum isn’t supposed to get involved in political debates.” Her recommendation finally passed the Balboa Park Committee as well as the park and recreation board, and was adopted by the city council in 1971.

Even after the area was protected by law, however, there was much to be done. Just getting signs posted indicating the canyon was a natural area was a project that took several years. “It takes a long time to get things through channels,” Chamlee said with a laugh. “The matter of getting the signs up took so long it became almost a joke.” In the meantime the first Canyoneers were trained as guides and began leading nature walks in 1973. The program currently reaches an estimated 8000 people a year, of which approximately half are school children.

There are several things that make the canyon educationally valuable. For one, it is an example of San Diego's environment as it existed when the Spanish first settled the area. It also presents a remarkable study in the adaptability of nature to the local climate. In the dry, hot air, most of the plant life has evolved to conserve moisture in one way or another. The leaves of the lemonade berry, for instance, a tall, spreading shrub, point skyward in order to avoid absorbing too much sunlight; the manzanita stores water in thick, curling leaves. Many of the smaller plants lie dormant in the summer, rather than the winter, sprouting back virtually from the dead in the rainy season. They provide food for various species of wildlife in the canyon — the brush rabbit prefers young leaves and twigs, while the dusky-footed woodrat eats the acorns and even the bark of the scrub oak. The black and orange harlequin bug sucks the juices of the bladder-pod and lays its eggs among the twigs, living out its entire life cycle on the same plant. Sparrows, finches, and jays feed on the numerous seeds and berries. If a fire were to burn away every visible tree and shrub, many would resprout from their roots; the seeds of the coast white lilac actually won’t germinate until they are exposed to the heat of a fire.

The rest of the wildlife in the canyon is part of the same bewilderingly complex chain: insects, attracted by the foliage, are eaten by lizards, skunks, and certain birds; hawks occasionally supplement their diet of rodents with lizards. Squirrels, birds, and rabbits are eaten by foxes, and the abundance of foxes — the largest of the canyon’s remaining predators — is in turn controlled by the amount of available food. When there isn’t enough to go around, they simply fight it out or move on to new territory.

“Once there were coyotes, and once before that there were deer, and once there might even have been grizzly bears in the canyon,” Chamlee noted. “But an area that is surrounded by urban development gradually loses its wildlife. Certain species are killed by domestic animals, plants are trampled, and the food chain begins to break down. In a natural ecosystem, any change triggers a series of changes because everything is so interdependent.

“Florida Canyon can support more wildlife than most canyons in the city because it connects to other canyons at its southern end, and because it's bigger than most. Each animal — even the vegetation — needs a certain area in order to survive.”

Two p.m. Sunday. About a dozen people have gathered on the sloping lawn just west of the Morley Field tennis courts. Three of them wear rectangular green badges labeled “Canyoneers”; the rest are visitors. After dutifully signing in on a clipboard, the latter are divided into three groups — one guide to a group — and set off down the path on the Florida Canyon nature walk.

Jameda Stewart, a thirty-year-old, round-faced woman wearing glasses and a white sun visor, is one of the guides. She has been a Canyoneer for less than a year, she says. “Why did I join? I went on the nature walk myself, and I just liked the idea of knowing the names of the plants and some of the uses the Indians put them to. This black sage, for instance. It's darker than white sage, and it's different from California sage brush. It's a member of the mint family — if you rub your hands on the leaves you can smell it. The Indians made a tea out of it and they also used it for deodorant.”

Stopping every few yards or so along the trail, Stewart points out what the less savvy observer might miss: a lizard's shedded skin dangling from a twig like a T-shirt hung out to dry; a woodrat’s nest deep in the brush — an intriguing pile of leaves and branches that turns out to be abandoned; the web of a funnel spider, a silky little tunnel that disappears into a crevice in the ground.

“The spider waits at the end of the funnel,” Stewart explains. “When something falls onto the web, the spider can feel the vibrations and- comes up. That’s how it gets its food.”

“Maybe we should try it — throw something onto the web.” suggests a girl in a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts.

“We better not.” says Stewart, adjusting her glasses. “These funnel spiders can get pretty big.”

From the top of a knoll she points out the reddish and tan layered geologic formations that are exposed along portions of the canyon's hillsides. The reddish layer, known as the Linda Vista formation, was deposited about two million years ago. The tan San Diego formation lies underneath it and was deposited about four million years ago, when the entire San Diego area was submerged beneath an inland sea. The San Diego formation is so hard that plants cannot root in it, making erosion of the soils above it a particularly critical problem. Further along the path Stewart stops at a place where long channels have been cut into the earth by running water. “The water that did this came from the lawn sprinklers up by the tennis courts," she explains, shaking her head. “That water collects and runs off and we actually get a little man-made waterfall down here during some parts of the year.”

In the distance, the site where the Navy has proposed to build a new. expanded hospital can be seen. Opponents contend that this facility, which would occupy the lower third of the canyon, will divide and therefore destroy the canyon's ecosystem. The city council has been requested to put the issue on the November ballot, something the Navy is not eager to see happen. This is a case where they want to do their maneuvering away from the public eye, possibly because they realize they are on delicate ground. Most observers think that the -city's voters would not approve the new site by the two-thirds majority required, but some have expressed the concern that whatever the Navy wants, ultimately the Navy gets. The plebiscite issue comes before the council on Monday, July 31.

"Personally, I don’t know enough about the hospital situation to make much of a comment.” says Jameda Stewart in response to a question. "But I don't like the idea of possibly losing the canyon.”

She continues along the trail, drawing attention to an "oak apple," a rose-colored growth the size of a cherry hanging from the branch of a scrub oak. It forms when a certain species of wasp — so tiny you need a magnifying glass to tell it's a wasp at all — lays its eggs on the oak. The tree, in what might be called an extraordinary spirit of cooperation, then secretes a substance which surrounds the eggs, protecting them and providing food for the newly hatched young.

The trail leads down from the open hillside into a thicket, where a tangle of scrub oak and manzanita branches forms a kind of roof overhead. On all sides the brush is so thick you can hardly see back into it, the different species intertwined like a single botanical oddity. Stewart identifies lemonade berry, laurel sumac, and chemise, among others, the latter a shrub with dark, ragged bark and fern-like leaves. "Chemise is one plant that actually encourages fire to spread. Another name for it is greasewood — it contains a high amount of resin in its leaves and branches. The Indians used it for firewood and torches, but it really doesn't make a very good torch because it doesn’t burn long at all.” Without taking a step she points to the fruit of the lemonade berry. “The Indians ate these berries — they’ve got a tangy, citrus taste. You can make a tea out of them. I’ve made it myself. The Indians ate the berries of the manzanita, too, but keep in mind they ate a lot of things that we couldn't eat today. Our digestive capabilities are different.”

Coming out of the thicket we pass an immense laurel sumac in full bloom, covered with bees. In the heat of the afternoon sun the canyon's principal sound seems to be the humming of bees — bees crawling on the laurel sumac blossoms, bees buzzing to and fro over patches of flat-top buckwheat, bees hovering just off the yellow flowers of the tar weed. “The ecology of the canyon is such that there are plants in bloom at almost every time of the year," comments Stewart.

She stops in front of a cactus that has thick, spiny arms twisting in all directions. "This is snake choya. It’s becoming kind of rare — there’s another one over on the other side of the canyon. It’s a member of the cactus family. We have two other types of cactus down here: barrel cactus and prickly pear cactus.”

A dark-haired woman in the group speaks up shyly. "You can boil the pads of the prickly pear cactus and put them in salads.” she says.

“That's right,” nods Stewart. “And you can take the pears — they’re purplish-looking things that appear on the plant in the spring — and make prickly pear preserves.”

“Oh, prickly pear preserves,” says the dark-haired woman, who obviously knows something about this cactus. "Mmmmm!”

A few stops more and the trail leads a short distance back to the parking lot. Stewart answers the last of the questions ("Are there rattlesnakes?” No verified sightings for several years. "Tarantulas?” Very likely, though in the summer they come out only at night) to the accompaniment of tennis balls being smacked back and forth, and the tour, which lasted about an hour, is over.

In the evening the birds come out in Florida Canyon. The air grows cooler, and the rhythmic squawk of a wrentit begins deep in the brush behind me. Two mockingbirds soar out over the canyon and dive sharply around a large scrub oak on the far side. From all directions comes the twittering of unseen birds; when I look to my left there is an Anna’s hummingbird perched on a twig just a few feet away, its scarlet head turned silently toward me.

In the city’s general plan for the future preservation of the canyon, the hillside across the road from where I am sitting is to be made a garden for California native plants; a pedestrian bridge to be built over Park Boulevard would provide access to it. The natural area on the other side of the canyon would be preserved as is. Florida Drive would be closed from Morley Field Drive to Pershing Drive, and Florida Creek, whose path was altered to allow the road to be put in, would be restored to its natural course. It’s a good plan, but there is no current schedule for this work to take place; and the money required will be difficult to obtain in light of June’s tax reform initiative.

A jet appears in the sky to the east, its roar growing until it drowns out all other sounds. It thunders over the southern end of the canyon — big enough to read clearly the logo on the tail — and disappears over Balboa Park. The silence slowly returns, only to be broken again by the squealing of tires and the drone of car engines along Florida Drive. The city cannot let you forget that this place is in its middle, but as soon as the noises die away, even for a moment, you are out in the wilds once more.

The sun is sinking fast, the shadows creeping up the hillside a short distance away. A cottontail ambles out of a thicket and crouches on a narrow path, nibbling at the undergrowth. The vegetation of the southwestern United States is sometimes said to be lacking in color, but the delicate hues of Florida Canyon belie that contention — the jade-green leaves of the manzanita; the flowering yellow tar weed; the silvery-green white sage; the cream-colored blossoms of the laurel sumac, brick-red where they have gone to seed.

Signs of man's encroachment are all around. There is barren ground between many of the bushes, and trails seem to lead everywhere. Five years ago foxes lived on the hillside near where I am sitting, in a den lined with grass and leaves. Those that remain now live in an adjoining canyon south of Pershing Drive and come only at night to hunt in Florida Canyon. Hidden by the brush and the darkness, they wander up the canyon's narrow southern end to search for the rabbits and squirrels that form the staple of their diet. Coyotes, which-are still occasionally sighted in the canyon, and other animals use the same “corridor'’ — it is the only route that connects Florida Canyon to adjacent canyons and the more distant open country. If the Naval hospital is built, this corridor would effectively be sealed off. The foxes would likely be forced to move, and the remaining wildlife, trapped in a smaller area, would begin to disappear. The sectioning of San Diego would be complete.

The sun is glowing fiery orange above the canyon’s western bank. Having sat in the same spot for nearly twenty minutes. I now notice the web of a funnel spider near my foot. On a whim I take a tiny bit of leaf, toss it onto the web. and wait. A few minutes later a spider the size of a fifty-cent piece, with thick, hairy legs, appears in the mouth of the funnel. It stays there, not moving, and soon it seems as if it is staring at me. The feeling is disconcerting, and after a while I stand up and walk quickly down the path. From a stand of white sage a brilliant yellow goldfinch cheeps accusingly after me. in reprimand. Suddenly I understand: I have not treated the spider with proper respect; I have counterfeited the natural order. I have disturbed the canyon in a way I am not qualified to do.