Saturday morning included ditching work, narrowly avoiding traffic while driving up the coast through Camp Pendleton, breaking my diet (regrettably), and taking a journey though San Juan Capistrano to the Tree of Life nursery.
Admittedly, I didn't do a whole lot of research on the place before going, but the prospect of getting outside on a beautiful Saturday morning was much more appealingly than spending the hours indoors at my job. Also, I was partially swayed by the double field trip credit, I must admit.
The nursery's main focus was on preservation. Somewhere during the proceedings, between random photography and video taking, we listened to Abe Sanchez as he gave a presentation on the goal of such preservation and what their efforts were really about. His lecture seemed focused primarily on basket weaving - it's roots, traditions of practice, methods, techniques, and (most importantly) the materials used. As they're all natural materials, the nursery aims to preserve mainly of the plants needs to form baskets, as well as those used to create dyes and such. It seemed like they were very dedicated in keeping a dying art form alive.
Abe also spoke a little about the cultural and ways of life of the indigenous tribes - an interesting bit came out of his recount of today's native American youth losing interest in basket weaving in favor of things such as internet, yet still using ancient dialects on the internet to communicate. This seemed like kind of a strange clash of culture and time periods.
The outing as a whole was very relaxing. The type of weather I describe as such being the type of whether where "I want to go surfing, even though I don't surf." I managed to get out of work, get some good photos, and also some video for a documentary I'm going to (attempt to) make for another class.
More pictures and video later (if I feel like it.)
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