I had not visited Bonita in almost a year.
When I lived in the South Bay from 1984-97, Sweetwater Summit, and the trails surrounding it, was my local nature retreat. I would park at the end of Conduit Drive and hike up a flowering slope to the summit of Red Hill (so named because of the red dirt and rocks). Red Hill looked out over the Sweetwater Reservoir and to San Miguel in the east. Looking west from Red Hill I could see the Pacific Ocean and the Coronado Islands.
I would watch the flocks of birds gliding over the lake's edge. I saw turkey vultures, the majestic blue heron, hummingbirds with scarlet breasts, and white egrets. The lake would reflect San Miguel back to me. And everywhere grew sagebrush, manzanilla, and wild mustard.
I knew that State Route 125 would be constructed right through my private natural reserve but I didn't know quite when. From the last visit to this one, it happens.
We've had so much rain this year that I wondered if the trailhead, located in the Sweetwater floodplain, would be passable. It was, barely. I set out through the muck, carefully stepping on the weeds to avoid being sucked into the mud. The hillside, which in years past was covered by wild mustard and long green grasses that swayed gently in the wind, had been graded into a series of terraces in preparation for the freeway. The green and the yellow were gone, replaced by dun-colored and soggy dirt.
Halfway up, my trail was cut off by a haul road and I had to detour around the hill on a series of switchbacks. Each switchback corner was muddy and in the last one, my shoe sank into the mud up to my calf. I carefully extricated the shoe and stared at it. Now what? Finally I put it back on and schlupped on up the hill.
At the campground I entered the bathroom and washed my shoe and sock. I continued upward to Red Hill.
From the summit looking south and east, nothing has changed; the destruction is behind me. However, once the freeway is open, the noise will drown out the music of wind whistling through the sage, the buzzing of the bees, and the chirping of the cicadas.
I was upset, you can imagine. Why does everything I love have to be destroyed? Then I remembered the tsunami. In the photos of the destruction it is remarkable to see the houses and man-made structures leveled while palm trees continue to sway in the wind. The trees were created to withstand tsunamis; the houses were not.
The weed will win in the end my friend. If I take the long view, then I cannot grow too upset about Sweetwater Summit's despoliation. The freeway will not last forever. But it will last longer than me, certainly.
Mutaburuka, a poet and spokesperson of the Rastafarian movement, would say that the Earth can take care of itself. We should focus on our fellow beings. But I am not too fond of my fellow humans and I love the wild places of the earth.
Perhaps I can focus on the future, and new, unspoiled places to explore. Then I remember plastics. In "The Graduate," Dustin Hoffman was advised to invest in plastics; they were our future. But plastics, non-degradable, are filling up our wild places. Plastics are destroying our future! Yet, how can we do without plastics? They are ubiquitous.
The solution, perhaps, lies in letting go of earthly things. I simply pass through this life and into another. In that next life, Sweetwater Summit will be untouched and plastics will have never been invented.
