One afternoon in September 1998, a large rattlesnake stretched itself out to sun on the dirt service road in Rose Canyon Open Space Park. This was the first time Debby Knight, now president of Friends of Rose Canyon, had ever entered the canyon. She couldn’t at the time have told you what exactly a “canyon” is. She had moved to San Diego five days earlier from the East Coast, where there are valleys, gorges and ravines. This new concept of a “canyon” resonated with a kind of mystery.

Nor, in the East, had she ever encountered a rattlesnake in the wild. Yet here, in the middle of a city that appeared shorn of nature in its dry September drab, here, just a few blocks from where she hoped to buy a house, was this miracle of nature. This city that had seemed in those first five days ruled by freeways had opened its heart.

Over the next three and a half years, Debby ran regularly in Rose Canyon, but learned little more about its secrets.  She recognized a few birds that were familiar from the East Coast.  She saw the occasional coyote. But not knowing the local plants and animals, she saw little of what is really there.  And she knew no one else besides her husband who cared about the canyon as she did: for the sense of freedom and discovery that it gave her in the midst of concrete.

Then, in 2002, came the news that the city planned to build a major road – the Regents Road bridge project - through the most peaceful and scenic part of this park, where the hills rolled in layers and the hawks and kites hunted, where road noise was most distant, and the sense of spaciousness and timelessness still held sway. She lay awake at night with a sense of desperation: this would destroy the essence of what made this city a place she wanted to live.

Then someone knocked on her door looking for supporters to oppose the road project. He introduced her to others who cared about the canyon, and within a few weeks Friends of Rose Canyon was born. A month later, they held their first bird walk, and sixty people showed up.  People who joined the core taught her the canyon’s secrets.  Some could identify 50 species of birds in two hours in the canyon, some could track bobcat, coyotes and foxes, and some knew the native plants with wonderful names like mulefat, toyon and California buckwheat. For Debby, the canyon – and the community – both came to life.

When she moved to San Diego, Debby had intended to travel and explore and write about the world’s wild places. With her children grown, she felt no desire to engage in any further community activism.  But the need to save Rose Canyon gradually drew her in.  The effort introduced her not just to nature in San Diego, but also to people citywide who cared about and fought to protect that nature.

Over the next four years, the work to stop the road project and save the canyon involved committees, meetings, reports, learning about agencies and environmental laws, and work with technical experts and attorneys – and lots of fundraising.  But through it all, Debby’s favorite activity remained bringing kids into the canyon on nature walks. From her own childhood spent playing in the woods of New England, she knew the deep bond with nature that once formed in childhood lasts a lifetime.  For children living amidst so much concrete, time and again something happened on these walks that was riveting: they would encounter a live snake, or come at night into the canyon to use a black light to catch and identify insects; they would see a rabbit on the path ahead, find a coyote track, or watch a hawk circle overhead. To Debby, saving a place where kids and adults alike could have these experiences came to mean saving something about the soul of the city.

On August 1, 2006 the City Council voted to proceed with the Regents Road bridge project.  For Debby, the decision was deeply disappointing. But the years of bringing people into the canyon, of connecting with supporters around the city, of learning about the canyon plants and wildlife as well as the law, had laid the groundwork for the next stage of the campaign to save Rose Canyon:  along with three other environmental groups, Friends of Rose Canyon filed suit to overturn the decision. By now, hundreds of people and dozens of organizations citywide were willing to speak up: Rose Canyon now had many friends.

Debby sometimes wonders at the way life hooks you into unexpected commitments. Being a community activist at this stage in her life was definitely not her dream. But she recognizes that underneath her commitment to preserving Rose Canyon is that old childhood passion for exploration and discovery that nature offers, and that Rose Canyon, surrounded by city, still offers.  A card beside her computer bears an anonymous quote: “A city without nature is a grim place.” To her, saving Rose Canyon is to save San Diego from that fate.