NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

For those of you who are curious, we thought we would tell you how we write our columns. Basically, we write about our lives as environmentalists and conservationists. Vic teaches ecology, birding, and man and the environment classes at local community colleges. I work as a restoration biologist and environmental educator with the Orange County Conservation Corps. We often come across column topics in the course of our work or in our reading. Writing the columns is a multistep process that also involves giving the columns an environmental point and a local angle.

The process

Step 1. Have an adventure. This can involve late-night wildlife monitoring forays into the wilds of Huntington Beach, which occasionally attracts the attention of the police. Or it can involve me accidentally dropping my cellphone into Huntington Harbour while collecting slimy marine invertebrates off the docks for Vic’s biology class. Or, as in today’s column, it can involve a four-wheel-drive trip up Santiago Peak in search of Orange County’s elusive mountain quail.

Step 2. I produce a first draft of the column. Actually, what I produce is an amusing, carefully crafted, flawless treatise on said adventure. But that’s before Vic gets involved.

Step 3. Vic gets out his red pen and strikes out the parts where I’ve called particular people morons and idiots. Of the two of us, he’s definitely the politician. I believe in calling a spade a frigging shovel, but he keeps us from getting sued for libel.

Vic also points out such writerly things as my habit of burying my lead. For example, in this column, I buried my lead of four-wheeling up Santiago Peak late in the paragraph of Step 1. It isn’t that I don’t know that I’ve buried my lead. It’s that I don’t care. Vic also inserts facts into my tirades and random ravings. Facts are nice, I suppose, but they can be boring. Vic says that of the two of us, he’s also the scientist, but that’s an argument we’ll have another day.

Step 4. I turn Vic’s boring additions into something more engaging.

Step 5. We submit our columns to our editors for proper punctuation. Thank God for our editors! I think I was sick the day in school when the teacher covered commas. Also, our editors know things that we don’t know, like what words to capitalize and where hyphens and dashes go.

So that’s how we make the sausage that we call our columns. Now I’ve really buried my lead.

Adventure

Here’s how we almost got up Orange County’s highest mountain last week. We’ve tried to tackle Santiago Peak before in our two-wheel-drive Highlander. We bought a two-wheel drive vehicle back in 2002 because it was more fuel-efficient than a four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicle. (That’s one environmental point.) As conservationists, we believe in saving fuel, but as a working biologist, I needed an SUV to haul around straw bales, California native plants and Corps members. The Highlander was a fairly good choice as it gets 18-23 miles per gallon. It has taken us on many wild and woolly trips, including going up the west side of Santiago Peak through Silverado Canyon. But it couldn’t make it up the eastern approach to Santiago Peak on Main Divide Road off Ortega Highway. When we tried many years ago, the road beat us.

That was how we came to rent a Toyota 4-Runner with four-wheel-drive to go up the eastern approach. Actually, Mark Singer rented it and the three of us went off in search of mountain quail. (Carpooling is good for the environment. That’s our second environmental point.)

We bounced our way up rocky and rutted Main Divide Road last Tuesday, stopping to listen for mountain quail. The road had been graded fairly recently, so it wasn’t too bad, but the steep parts were still enough to keep two-wheel-drive vehicles from making it up. We heard mountain quail calling several times off in the distance. Finally, we saw two of them running along the road in front of us. One mission was accomplished.

But when we got to the fork of Main Divide Road and Indian Truck Trail, the gate to the top of Santiago Peak was closed. We knew the gate on the Silverado side was closed for breeding season of the endangered Southwestern Arroyo Toad. (That’s yet another environmental point.) These toads like to lay their eggs in water-filled road ruts, so the Silverado Canyon road is closed every spring. But Vic had called the U.S. Forest Service the day before and was assured Main Divide Road was open to the top. It wasn’t. So once again we were skunked in our efforts to reach the summit from that side.

Nevertheless, our adventure yielded fabulous scenery. Mark kept commenting that it was hard to believe we were in Orange County. Indeed, it’s a world apart up there. We saw no signs of civilization, heard no traffic, and saw no other cars or trucks the entire time we were up there. Wildflowers and shrubs were a riot of color, and the only thing we heard was the sound of birds.

The road up Silverado Canyon will be open at the end of toad breeding season. We’re not saying it’s an easy drive, but it certainly is worthwhile to take a look at the wild side of Orange County. You won’t believe that such a wonderful wilderness exists mere miles away from Huntington Beach. (And that’s the local angle.) Call the U.S. Forest Service at (951) 736-1811 to check road openings and conditions, but don’t believe everything they tell you.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].