As a land trust, Ojai Valley Land Conservancy is always looking to save land, and we’re thrilled to announce that we are in the process of saving 234 acres of new conservation land! Land conservation is arguably more important than ever, and to many remains the single most lasting and effective conservation strategy.

Wherever you grew up, whether in the Ojai Valley or elsewhere, how many of the surrounding street names besides your own did you know? If you’re like most people, probably not many. The streets are just fixtures of your community, so a detail as minor as the name is unimportant compared to the fact that your friend lives one street over and your school is at the end of another street five minutes away. Riverview Trailhead seems to be a similar fixture in this community.

When I am studying to live up to the title of botanist, I will flip through the names of thousands of plants. What a thing to know, what an expectation for myself to understand! I fumble for genus names, species names, and subspecies. What are their defining characteristics? What detail must I see? Is it the millimeter difference of a bract, or the width and shape of a leaf? Glume, petal, sheath? Answered with study, ruler, and belief. These questions are sought in the heavy Jepson Manual, where the observations of phytophile build upon one another. More importantly, they are found when I kneel before these small cotyledons, exchange the gift of breath, and something less methodical presents itself to blanket the grief of misunderstanding.