Fieldtrips
Indian Rock
Spring 2003

Hidden Meadows
Fall 2003

The Glens
Fall 2003

Legend Rock
Fall 2003

Camp Pendleton
Spring 2002

Gathering Juncus
Spring 2002

Field Tripping
Spring 2002
PDF version: fast connection

Waterfall
Fall 2003

Camp Pendleton
Text by Deborah Small
Images by Andy Contreras, David Fleischman and Jessica Walker

The 125,000 acre Camp Pendleton Marine Base is home to 18 endangered species of plants, animals, and birds, as well as many threatened or rare species. Located in traditional Luiseño and Juaneño territory, Camp Pendleton is also home to hundreds of village and milling sites, rock art sites, and other culturally significant and sacred Luiseño sites.

In Spring 2002, we arranged a field trip to the base. To help us prepare for our field trip, Pendleton archeologist Julie Hurley had emailed us an extensive 32-page Excel spreadsheet—an inventory of all the native and introduced plants growing on the base.

After signing all the requisite waivers, Julie and her colleague, archeologist Stan Berryman, drove us in 4-wheel drive vehicles into a region few nonmilitary people are allowed to visit. The marines were busy simulating air, sea and ground assault scenarios as we photographed tule, stinging nettle, lupine, and soaproot in the Pendleton back country. An occasional Cobra helicopter flew directly overhead, and we could hear machine gun fire a few hills away.

We cluster around a large stand of the difficult to find kahawut_soaproot plant. Luiseño field guides Diania and Mark show us how to carefully harvest the bulb. They explain how the long coarse husk fibers can be used to make small brushes that were used to sweep up scattered meal after pounding acorns in bedrock mortars. The bulb was also boiled for glue to make baskets watertight, or to glue together the brush handles on the brushes.

Diania and Mark explain how no part of this very useful plant was wasted. The young spring shoots were used for food and the bulb roasted in an earthen oven. The bulb was throw in a stream to give off a toxin that stuns fish, which would then float to the surface, making them easy to catch. Crushed bulbs can be stirred in water to make a lather for shampoo as well.

Another Cobra flies directly over us. We imagine they are curious about what we are doing so intently down here on the ground.

After our Pendleton field trip, a few students are gifted with dreams of native plants. One student dreamed of a giant soaproot plant, and of tiny deer attaching themselves to his ears. He knew the message from the dream was to listen. Listen to what the deer had to tell him. To what the soaproot had to tell him.

Studying native plants on an active military base is dependent on the global political climate. In Spring 2003, we scheduled a field trip to Pendleton, but our visit was contingent on the state of the war with Iraq at the time. We were aware that if the base went to a ”higher threat condition,“ Julie would have to cancel our field trip. As it turned out, the trip was cancelled, but because of the stormy weather in San Diego rather than the escalating war in Iraq.

Field trips to Pendleton add depth, complexity, mystery, and most of all, an overwhelming sense of the lived contradictions in our understanding of the region where we live.