I tried to go Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve on Monday to burn off some of the holiday calories but the gates were shut tight. I’d forgotten that they close the place down after heavy rains to protect the trails. In the minute I was there two other cars pulled up with the same idea. I guess there wore more calories than usual going around this holiday season…

I ended up closer to home, at Marion Bear Memorial Park in San Clemente Canyon. San Diego has made an attempt to preserve and develop interconnected open spaces so that wildlife can move around. Some of the set-aside places can have the feeling more of a corridor than a destination, and this park, positioned along four lanes of busy highway traffic, suffers from corridor syndrome. I can get a little arrogant over what kind of open space experience you can have in a park bordered for its entire length by freeway traffic, but once you get practiced at shutting out the constant automotive noise it was definitely much much better than nothing.

Being an urban park you encounter some bizarre botanical warning signs. Trees have hanging limbs? Better watch out!

Hazardous limbs? Like on this sycamore?

The iceplant marching down the hillside beyond looks lots more dangerous to me.

Signs that parts of the park were underwater from the recent rains were everywhere. This cone was still partially submerged.

The perennial stream had retreated into its main channel…

…but grasses and other plants far from the stream bed were bent over from east to west from the force of the water that was covering them a few days ago.

In addition to the natural narrative of plants responding to the force of running water, you could see examples of many of the other narratives that late December exposes:

Late-season, falling, coloring leaves…

Bare branches, plants dying back for the winter…

Plants gone to seed, starting the new generation…

Plants responding to the rains with new growth…

New generations starting up…

And for me, one of the most interesting narratives is that here in this urban environment, you can still encounter so many of December’s natural processes and the rhythms of the seasons.