Simply Natural Hub

Episode #706

August 13, 2022

My friends call where I live desert.
It is in the foothills inland of Temecula, CA.

The altitude is 4,000’ MSL and the temperature averages 15° lower than the rest of Riverside county. 

I like to call my terrain mountain chaparral. The hillside is covered with Manzanita, Red Shank and Ironwood with hundreds of varieties of blooming underbrush. The hills are always green except for when it snows and when the foliage blooms, then it is white.
A breeze (sometimes a wind) blows over my ridgetop property most of the time. When the wind is onshore, the weather is cool. A Santana wind from the East warms things up.

I live on the alluvial plain of a granite volcano. Water is collected by the mountain from clouds scraping over it. The water then flows through the aquifer under my land where my well sips from its life.

It is no surprise that my wife and I decided to take a road trip to a similar terrain.

Simply Natural Boulevard Hub is located off Highway 8 half way between San Diego and Arizona in the mountain chaparral near the Mexican border. The elevation is 4,000’ MSL. The foliage is Live Oak, Red Shank and Manzanita. There is an abundance of Cholla, Buckwheat and wild flowers. The hills are green, striped with white blooming Red Shank groves.

One evening the sky was half filled with the dark and white cumulous rain clouds of a monsoonal flow. The thunder was continuous for over an hour, punctuated with streaks of lightning. Waves of sprinkling rain washed over us.

Simply Natural Savory Hub is an experiment in returning the desert to lush agricultural land. It is based on Allan Savory’s Holistic approach to resource land management.

At Boulevard they raise sheep, cattle, horses, ostriches and pigs with the intent of setting them out to free range grazing.

The ostriches were uncommonly friendly and seemed to enjoy my company.

On the property is a KOA campground where we stayed. It is a quiet, full service camp ground in a Live Oak forest.

In the campground is a pool, community garden, pig nursery, chicken coop, eight hole frisbee golf course and a friendly informative staff.

There is a labyrinth made of bricks from Tecate, Mexico. Its design is 13th century Christian using sacred geometric principles. My experience, as I walked the length of the labyrinth, was a little dizzy at first. This caused me to slow my walk which led to some boredom. As I became bored I looked around myself and began to take in the natural landscape. This distraction had a calming effect. My pulse slowed and my mind was at rest.

The American Indians in the Mojave desert embraced this labyrinth design because of its symbolic similarity to their sacred Joshua Tree mythology.

The sunset splashed up from the eastern horizon in magnificent water color on the clouds of the big sky. Nature trails and star gazing completed the experience.

Simply Natural Hub was beautiful, calming and familiar.
We will return.

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