Golden Hill’s 32nd Street Canyon

Golden Hill’s 32nd Street Canyon is one of the best-kept canyons in our mid-city neighborhood.

It’s also one of the best examples of the value such urban oases offer.

Take a walk through its 12 acres of peaceful space in Golden Hill, bordered from Cedar to C streets, between 31st and 33rd. You’ll smell the sage, ponder the leafy pepper trees and trod a trail which has been softened with loads of sawdust.

It wasn’t always so inviting.

“When we started, it had many signs of blight: diminishing native ecosystems, many invasive weeds, drug encampments, a fire and even signs of prostitution,” says the 32nd Street Canyon Task Force on the Web site of the Friends of 32nd Street Canyon (www.32ndstreetcanyon.org).

Tershia d’Elgin, a member of the Friends of 32nd Street Canyon, sometimes she calls herself the “busybody of 32nd Street Canyon.” We caught her in the canyon leading a group of fourth-graders from Albert Einstein Academy on an exploration.

“Five people started the group in 2000 to keep the (San Diego Unified) school district from developing the canyon,” she told us. “That threat galvanized friends and neighbors.” Development threats are a common refrain among many of the “friends” groups of local canyons, which were originally sponsored by the San Diego Sierra Club and are now held together by San Diego Canyonlands(http://sdcanyonlands.org/).

D’Elgin, an award-winning writer and editor, also serves on the City of San Diego’s Forest Advisory Board. “I’m from Colorado, where there are forests,” she said. “This kind of vegetation didn’t mean anything to me.” But now she’ll pick a sage leaf and ask a child to smell its lovely fragrance. Or she’ll point to the red berries of what appears to be a holly bush and point out its real name is toyon. “They named Hollywood after this berry bush, but it really should be Toyonland,” she noted.