By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—I’m fortunate to live in the Mission Trails Regional Park neighborhood of San Diego. It is in the eastern part of the city, nearly surrounded by the suburbs of Santee, El Cajon and La Mesa.
From my window I can see the U.S. and California flags fluttering near the Visitors Center of the regional park. I can see Fortuna Mountain, which draws its name from our city’s Spanish heritage and Kwaaypay peak, which similarly honors our city’s Kumeyaay background. If I look to the right of my back yard I can see Cowles Mountain, named for a land developer in our region’s more modern, American period. Cowles Mountain, highest in San Diego, is often covered with hikers, who can be seen ant-like on its switchback trails.
Many people in my neighborhood, especially we older ones, prefer to hike in the relatively flat expanses across Mission Gorge Road. We can walk down from our hillside development and cross the four-lane Mission Gorge Road to take a hiking trail. Here the City of San Diego has constructed an ewaa—a thatched replica of a Kumeyaay hut—as an interpretive exhibit. People who find it like to stoop through its low entrance, turn around a bit awkwardly while still stooped, and have their companions snap their photograph at the entrance. Afterwards, they might read the plaques nearby, or they might simply continue along the dirt path that meanders to the park’s paved road, named for Father Junipero Serra, whose celebration of mass in 1769 began San Diego’s recorded history.
At the intersection of the path and the Serra Trail, if you turn left you can take a short walk back to the Visitors Center, which is housed in a building with spread wings that remind me of the hawks so often seen soaring overhead. The approach to the Visitors Center is sound-scaped. The motion of your body triggers recordings of various birds, reptiles, and mammals – the raspy bark of a mule deer, the rattle of the indigenous snakes, the call of the California gnatcatcher. Inside the center, there are more sounds, particularly up an incline leading from the main floor to a second-floor gallery. A coyote, an owl, and mountain lion ignite visitors’ imaginations.
However, if you turn right at the intersection of the dirt path and the paved Serrra trail, you soon will come to a descending path that will take you down to the San Diego River and to the “grinding rocks” where generations of Kumeyaay pounded acorns into a meal, that later was leached of its tannins to take away the bitterness. The acorn meal was then shaped into cakes and, along with fish and small game, provided a major component of the Kumeyaay diet. You can see round holes in the granite rock, shaped by pounding pestles over the centuries. And if you squint your eyes, you can imagine people at work here – some preparing food, some weaving baskets from the nearby reeds, some washing their children. It’s a picturesque spot.
Climb back up to the main trail and one can continue past rock formations that are as varied as people’s imaginations. I have my favorites to which I’ve assigned such names as “Bedouin Camp,” “Before the Big Bang!” and “Moses Descending Sinai.” As most of these names invoke non-Kumeyaay themes, they are unlikely to be adopted by the park administration, which is faithful to its mission of interpreting local history.
The paved trail was once part of the highway that travelers took from eastern regions into San Diego, or vice versa. But years ago, it was decided to bypass it with a new section of the four-lane Mission Gorge Road, which is carved between Kwaypay Peak and Cowles Mountain. One lane of the old two-lane road was reserved for bicyclists and pedestrians; the other lane for automobiles. Traffic bumps assure that the cars do not travel too fast through this wilderness.
The reward for hiking the Serra Trail is that in less than two miles you reach the National Landmark Site of Old Mission Dam, which was built early in the 19th century by Kumeyaay laborers supervised by Franciscan padres from Mission San Diego. The dam was built of adobe and on its upriver side was a flume that carried fresh water by gravity flow to the mission about five miles away. It was the first dam built on the West Coast of the United States.
At some 6,000 acres, Mission Trails Regional Park is one of the largest urban parks in the nation. I can look from my backyard and it fills the horizon. And yet, I can only see a small part of it.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com