The Dedalus Log

You’re out of the woods
You’re out of the dark
You’re out of the night.
Step into the sun
Step into the light.
Keep straight ahead
For the most glorious place
On the Face of the Earth
Or the sky.
Hold onto your breath
Hold onto your heart
Hold onto you hope.
March up to the gate and bid it
Open, open, open.
(Optimistic Voices, from the Wizard of Oz – music by Stohart & Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg: 1939)

It was like entering the National Gallery in Washington D.C., and walking into the Chester Dale Exhibit on Impressionism. Only instead of merely looking at the Impressionist masterpieces of Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, or Van Gogh that decorated the walls, you were allowed to ENTER a single landscape painting by Claude Monet. The field would engulf you and then burst into flames of orange and red petals. Tongues of burnt-orange, oil colors would lick at your heels as you gingerly stepped around them. Luminous flares of yellow, white, and violet would streak across the hills as if powered by solar winds, and then explode into sparks of glowing embers. That was my image of the poppy fields of the California Poppy Reserve – it was like walking into an impressionist field of colors.

On Saturday, April 10^th, Kathy and I visited the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, in Lancaster, California. I’d heard of the perennial poppy bloom for years, and I saw the annual photos in the L.A. Times advertising the Reserve, and publicizing the California Poppy Festival in Lancaster. At various times in my life I’d seen random, wild poppy bursts on the sides of roads and highways as we traveled up and down the state during the spring, and marveled at the beautiful, golden flower. But I’d never experienced a full-scale bloom – a floral phenomenon that supposedly covered entire hillsides. When I mentioned the idea to Kathy last week, she became very excited and thought it was a marvelous way to end her Easter vacation. After quickly looking up the information on the internet, she produced a copy of a news release informing the public that the Poppy Reserve Visitors Center was currently open for the wildflower season. However, because of the unpredictable nature of seasonal rainfall and climate, a definite timetable for the bloom was impossible. We agreed that this weekend worked best for us, and hoped we would see an impressive bloom.

The Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve is easily accessible from anywhere in Southern California. You just take the Antelope Valley Freeway, Highway 14 to Lancaster, and exit at Avenue I. From there, you travel west on Avenue I, which becomes Lancaster Road, for 15 miles to the reserve, which is clearly marked on the right. The first part of the ride is through the usual high desert environment of flat, sandy ground with sparse yucca trees and sagebrush. The most curious feature was the County jail complex at 60^th Street West. Passing the barbed wire fencing and guard towers of the Mira Loma Detention Facility, we finally saw the faraway hills of the Antelope Buttes. As the distant horizon became clearer, we could see what appeared to be pomegranate stains of orange and red on the hillsides.
“Could those be the poppies?” I asked aloud. “I thought they were golden colored, not orange”.
By the time the road angled north on 120^th Street W the landscape had changed into taller grasses, leafier brush, and wildflowers, and the hills were getting closer. Soon we saw our first roadside burst of poppies and wildflowers.
“There they are!” Kathy announced, staying alert to the cars that were slowing down and stopping to unload passengers who wanted to inspect and photograph these early samples of the season.
“Let’s keep going,” I urged. “I want to see what those hills look like. That must be the Reserve”.
We passed another large roadside patch with more parked cars and passengers climbing the burnt orange slopes, before coming to a sign announcing the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. We turned right and entered.

The California poppy was named the State flower in 1903. Prior to that time great fields of poppies were found throughout the State. Today, while poppies grow in many areas, the only really large fields are in the western Antelope Valley. La Sabanilla de San Pascual (the altar cloth of St. Pascal) is the name Spanish sailors gave to the glorious fields of poppies that blanketed the California shores in the 1700’s. They described these fields as rivers of gold that flowed some 25 miles toward the ocean. Other names for the California poppy have been Copa de Oro (Cup of Gold), Amapola and Dormidera (meaning the sleepy one, because the flowers closed up at night and when it was cloudy or when the cold wind blew). The botanical name Eschscholtzia Californica was given to the plant by Adelbert Von Chamisso, the poet-naturalist of the Russian scientific expedition that visited California in 1816. The name honored his lifelong friend and ship surgeon, Dr. Johann Eschscholtz*.

The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve was established to protect and perpetuate outstanding displays of native wildflowers, particularly the California poppy. It is an 1800 acre State Reserve of the most consistent poppy-bearing land, nestled in the Antelope Valley Buttes, 15 miles west of Lancaster. Other wildflowers share this desert grassland with the poppy to produce a mosaic of color and fragrance each spring. The reserve contains seven miles of trails, winding gently through the wildflower fields*. These clearly marked paths were the most important feature of the Reserve, because they insured the preservation of the fields. The roadside poppy bursts that we saw on the way up, would not long survive the constant trampling of tourists and visitors who wanted to get as close as possible to the beautiful wildflowers. Soon these wide bursts would become smaller and smaller patches of flowers, eventually becoming as small as a sweetheart’s modest bouquet.

After briefly visiting the Jane S. Pinheiro Interpretive Center, a low slung, Mojave Desert-style instructional building and gift shop, Kathy and I started up the Tehachapi Vista Point trail. It was a bright and sunny day, with gusty winds coming off the desert below, and some high, wispy clouds that promised rain for the morrow. While I was soon off wandering with my camera, trying to find a perspective that would frame the entire, breath-taking effect of a flaming hillside, Kathy stayed behind. When I looked back, I saw her studying the incredible variety of discrete colors and individual wildflowers that refused to be consumed by the dominating poppies. When I returned, she pointed out the hearty maroon bracts and white tips of the Owl’s Clover, the dainty blue-velvet petals and pink-white interior of the Davy Gilia, and the mysteriously named Red Maid, and Red Stem Filagree, whose rose-red and magenta-pink petals that looked more violet that red. The only other hue to seriously challenge the burnt-orange colors of the poppy were the various shades of yellow that also abounded throughout the hillsides: Goldfields, Bigelow Coreopsis, Slender Keel Fruit, Wild Parsley, Cream Cups, Hairy Lotus, and the Acton Daisy. The entire hillside was a painter’s palette of mixed and separate colors, tints, and hues. The closer we came to individual flowers, the clearer we could see their distinct and independent colors, but from afar the whole picture looked different. I was reminded of Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on the Island of la Grande Jatte, a revolutionary impressionist painting that employed the technique of pointillism. This was the practice of painting individual, contrasting dots (or points) of pure color onto a canvas in such a pattern as to form a complete image of a picture that was best seen from afar. There was really no other way to describe what we saw on the sloping sides of these buttes in the Antelope Valley.

Kathy and I left after two hours of exploring, taking photographs, and just breathing in the exquisite beauty of nature in the wild. It was miraculous that such a thing could exist so close to our modern city, and it was embarrassing to think of how valiantly we try reproducing that beauty in paintings, photography, and art. I heartily recommend that you visit this wondrous floral phenomenon before it is gone. The California Poppy Festival in Lancaster is scheduled for April 24 and 25, but because of the seasonal nature of the bloom, there could be little left to see by then. If you are interested in seeing the complete photo album of our visit to the California Poppy Reserve, check my Flickr account: 2010-04-10 California Poppy Reserve

*Information about the California poppy and the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve was taken from the official brochure, created and published by The Poppy Reserve/Mojave Desert Interpretive Association.