The Great Crossing*: a Walk Party Across the Hillside
Meet at the end of King court (GPS: 1203 King Drive, El Cerrito) at 5pm.
Join for the potluck at the end of Snowdon (GPS: 6921 Snowdon Avenue, El Cerrito). NB: We will improvise a carpool for people who need to come by car. Please let us know in advance, park near Snowden, and meet us there at 4:45 pm to be driven up to King Court.
A symbolic passing of the baton from our yearly work parties to our summer stewardship season. We’ll walk east to west across the Hillside, exploring the different sites Friends of the Hillside has been restoring and caring for over the past year.
Along the way, discover resilient stories of native plants and changing landscapes. Learn to read the land, ask questions, and build hypotheses together about ecology, fire, water, succession, and restoration.
From the Golden Triangle to the Green Triangle, from Monkeyflower and Rose Valleys to Elderberry Paradise, we’ll pass through some of the Hillside’s most inspiring restoration areas. We’ll also enjoy the local superbloom in the remarkable native grassland of Jim’s Meadow before ending at the base of Motorcycle Hill, where we will establish our summer camp and stewardship focus for the season.
We will finish with a potluck at around 6.30pm with a view to celebrate the transition into summer and the community that helps care for this land.
You are welcome to join us for either or both parts, whether you have volunteered with us before or are simply curious about what we are doing.
All ages are welcome.
For a bit of extra fun, we will draw parallels with the famous French cartoon Asterix and Obelix. Like the indomitable village resisting the Roman Empire, native plants in places like the Hillside Natural Area persist as small but remarkably resilient strongholds within landscapes dominated by invasive species.
Invasive plants spread like Roman legions: fast, widespread, and overwhelming after disturbance. Yet remnant natives through deep roots, drought adaptation, and long ecological relationships with pollinators, fungi, and fire.
Restoration work becomes a kind of ecological resistance: protecting these “irreducible villages” of biodiversity and helping them slowly expand again. Tiny patches of native habitat may look fragile, but they carry the memory and resilience of an entire ecosystem.
Our volunteers are like the irreducible Gauls from Asterix: fueled by a magic potion (homemade kombucha), and ending the day with a big celebratory banquet.
The Great Crossing is also the title of an “Asterix and the Great Crossing” adventure in which Asterix and Obelix accidentally cross the Atlantic and end up in North America, where they encounter Indigenous peoples and, eventually, some very confused Vikings.
