CHAPTER VIII 



DIABLO CANYON 



Familiar and Strange Things of Interest Observed During a Day 

 Spent Within Its Walls 



While sojourning at the Mt. Diablo Oountry 

 Club a beautiful spring day suggested to me 

 that a walk up on the sides of old Diablo 

 would not only afford pleasurable recreation, 

 but where all plant life was stimulated by 

 seasonal conditions to activities that gave 

 freshness and beauty to the surroundings, and 

 the bird and animal life of the mountain was 

 to be found at its best, I should probably meet 

 with something in Nature's great family and 

 in the fulfillment and operation of her laws 

 that would be new and instructive to me. 



I will confess it was more the thought of 

 the wild flowers, for the variableness and 

 beauty of which Mt. Diablo is celebrated, that 

 was uppermost in my mind when I started 

 out on the trip. I chose the old road, which 

 has been closed to travel for several years, 

 as affording an easy grade up the wooded 

 canyon, to the ieft of the Toll House, as well 

 as being less frequented by the public, and 

 where the thoughtless automobilists had not 

 ravished the flowering shrubs by the road- 

 sides, robbing them of their beauty in flowers 

 and symmetry, or depopulated the bird life 

 with the repeating shotgun. 



Others with more imaginative minds and 

 poetical thoughts than I possess have walked 

 up this same canyon long before it became 

 my privilege to enjoy its grandure and en- 

 chantments, and have given freedom to their 

 enthusiasm and inspiration in vivid and 

 prettily worded descriptions of its bowered 

 nooks, tree-canopied trails, flower carpeted 

 ridges, majestic rocky walls, crystal springs, 

 soul-inspiring views and other features firing 

 the spirit for mountain tramping and com- 

 munion with Nature. This has been done 

 so well and so frequently I will leave the sub- 

 ject of the canyon with the general statement 

 that it is worth the while of anyone, who 

 loves the hills of the Coast Ranges and has 

 the strength, to walk through its entire 

 length a distance of, about two miles from the 

 Toll House. Nearly every foot of the way has 

 something of interest for the artist, for the 

 student of botany, lover of birds, the collec- 

 tors of entomological specimens, and fossil de- 

 posits for geologists. There is plenty of 

 brush to crawl through, rocks to scale or clam- 

 ber over, deep gulches and steep ridges, to 

 make a day of as tough mountain work as 

 one has ambition for. But all that can be 

 avoided by keeping on the old abandoned 

 wagon roadbed and following its turns and 

 grade to the head of the canyon, where it 

 intercepts the new toll road going up to the 

 summit. The old road is shaded much of the 



distance by the friendly branches of numer- 

 ous oaks, laurels and maples, growing in the 

 canyon and by the roadside. 



I had made two or three trips up the can- 

 yon before and I must say I was somewhat 

 disappointed in the variety and number of 

 wild flowers met with, although I was pre- 

 pared for it by the knowledge that dry win- 

 ters mean absence in the following spring 

 of many species of flowering plants. Yet I 

 was hoping the mountain would do better 

 than the neighboring range to the west, in 

 keeping with its reputation, but as I have 

 intimtaed, the variety was limited and the 

 number far less than was expected. The 

 amount of rainfall and the changes of tem«- 

 perature in the winter and early spring 

 months determines the character of Nature's 

 floral display in the spring and summer fol- 

 lowing. This fact was plainly manifested 

 during a period of several seasons on the 

 Pleasanton ridge, where I made a study of 

 the wild flowers of that section. Some species 

 of plants, like the sunflower, cyclamen, brod- 

 iaea, California poppy, tulip, pansy and about 

 all that blossom in the early spring, could be 

 depended upon to make their appearance 

 every year in the same localities with little 

 or no variation in numbers, while many 

 others were wholly absent, or scarce or in 

 profusion according to the season's rainfall 

 and temperature. Among the plants noted 

 as being so influenced by seasonal condi- 

 tions were godetia, wind poppy, clarkia, 

 escobita and larkspur. Some years patches on 

 the hillside of some of these flowers were 

 so thick and extensive they formed con- 

 spicuous spots in the landscape, visible miles 

 away. Yet on the following season, because 

 of too much t or too little rain or too much, 

 or too little warmth, scarcely a representative 

 of the floral profusion of the previous year 

 was to be found. Every flower seed has its 

 time for germination, some in the early win- 

 ter and others along toward summer, and if 

 the moisture and warmth of the ground is not 

 sufficient to awaken into life the mysterious 

 little germ it holds when that period ap- 

 proaches, then the seed must lay dormant 

 until a season of favorable conditions comes 

 along and gives it the assistance required to 

 fulfill the purpose of Nature. Other sea- 

 sonal conditions complicate matters, such as 

 extended periods of drouth after the sprouting 

 of the seed and before the young plant has 

 been able to send its little roots down into 

 the soil, and the plant is killed. There may 

 be other causes contributing to the intermit- 



