Stebbins Cold Canyon: Training

Last night I attended an introductory training session to lead trips at Stebbins Cold Canyon, a UC Reserve just west of Winters. I am interested in how Jeff Falyn is organizing how he encourages people of this region to connect with place, with this place in particular, and nothing is considered too off-the-wall. (See here and here for accounts of our trips to this reserve.)

We were asked to consider what the focus of our walks might be. A sixth grader is interested in maps and has discovered trails and tunnels nobody else knew, wants to share them; a retired Iranian professor of engineering wanted to lead walks focusing on poetry and nature in the great Persian tradition. I immediately put down birds and sketching, but this is a place that invites multiple prisms, and I got to thinking it might be fun to have some calligraphic doodling with reed pens I’m going to try and make from one of our noxious riparian invasives, Arundo donax, giant reed, which grows in a mild-mannered way in the Mediterranean basin but which is good for nothing here.

Except making pens and, I’ve decided, a bunch of fences to protect my new garden against the wind (Jennifer, thanks for showing me how to do this).

There’s a stand of Arundo just down below our bridge. I might see if I can’t get a stack this weekend…