NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

This past week was jam-packed with things for Vic and me to be thankful for.

One of the outcomes of the Triangle Complex fire is more work for the Orange County Conservation Corps. Our members sandbag and clear the concrete-lined channels along county roadways. Often the only thing between a mudslide and the roads is the wall of sandbags our crews place there.

Because Orange County was declared a national disaster area, we now can obtain federal funding. I’ll be busy training new corps members this winter. We are still cleaning up after last year’s Santiago fire, but if the county makes the Chino Hills area a priority, we’ll jump on it.

We are also working under a Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project grant to Audubon Starr Ranch, and now have a full-time crew stationed there. I took my orientation crew there last week to assist the full-time crew in removing invasive non-native plants along Bell Creek. After lunch, both crews participated in Starr Ranch’s wonderful mammal tracking program. First the corps members learned to tell the difference between tracks of mountain lion, bobcat, coyote, raccoon, skunk and opossum. Then we hiked one of the trails and looked for tracks and scat. We found recent tracks of skunk, gray fox, coyote and mountain lion, plus scat of gray fox.

I told my crew of new corps members that if they could finish their conservation awareness worksheets Thursday they could go on the all-corps field trip to the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace on Friday.

While Vic was teaching his natural history class Friday morning, I met the corps members at the library.

We were lucky that the library had reopened in time for our field trip. It had been closed during the Triangle Complex fires. One of the staffers had used a garden hose to keep Nixon’s birthplace wet when embers were blowing everywhere. Neither the house nor the library were harmed, and that’s yet another thing to be thankful for.

During previous visits, I’ve enjoyed touring the modest house Nixon’s father built in 1912, and seeing the life-sized statues of Nixon-era world leaders. On this visit, I learned that two of the rooms at the library are replicas of the East Room and Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House. My corps members seemed most impressed with the presidential limousine, a black, bulletproof Lincoln that cost $500,000.

If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it, no matter what your politics are. Visit www.nixonlibrary.org for directions.

I had to duck out of the tour early because the corps was receiving a Friend of the Conservancy award from the Bolsa Chica Conservancy. I dashed down the 55 Freeway to Pacific Coast Highway, and drove past the ongoing restoration at the Huntington Wetlands. More restored wetlands is yet another thing for which we’re grateful.

At the Waterfront Hilton, I caught up with Vic, who also arrived late. We greeted Max Carter, executive director of the corps, Simeon Jasso, who had been the supervisor of the crew stationed at Bolsa Chica, and five corps members who had been selected to represent the corps. The event was well attended, with many sitting council members and former mayors. Steve Tully of Quiksilver received the 2008 Conservator of the Year award for raising money for the recent refurbishing of the conservancy’s center at Warner Avenue and PCH.

A Friend of the Conservancy award also was presented to Rainbow Disposal for their commitment to cleanup and restoration efforts at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. They have donated one big blue bin after another for at least two decades of non-native plant removal and debris cleanup. Boeing Co. received the other Friend of the Conservancy award for providing grants for restoration and education, plus volunteers by the hundreds for cleanup and restoration. Quiksilver, Rainbow and Boeing are fabulous corporate friends of our environmental community. And that’s more for which we are grateful.

This series of good things was counterbalanced, however, by some recent tragic losses. Vic’s father, George Leipzig, passed away Oct. 25 from complications following open-heart surgery. He was 83. We have been struggling to come to grips with this sad turn of events. This past week, Vic’s last uncle on his mother’s side, Lawson Brian, passed away 90. And sadly, one of my former corps members, Pedro Mercado, 20, was killed in a gang shooting early last week. He had worked on the Santiago fire cleanup. Pedro’s death makes the fourth corps member whom I’ve lost to violence in the four years that I’ve worked there.

I’m just thankful that we’re able to save as many as we do.

As yet another Thanksgiving rolls around, we are grateful for many things. But a certain sadness lingers for those who are missing from our midst. Blessings on you all.