San Diego’s Mission Valley where I live was formed over millions of years by erosion. Geologists can read the record of the Valley’s development by studying the layers of rocks rearranged by water rushing down from mountains. I like to imagine how the place might have looked when saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths, and mammoths roamed the area. We don’t know much about the first people to reach the valley around 20,000 years ago.

A relatively short time ago in geologic time, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542. Settlement by Europeans didn’t begin until Sebastian Vizcaino arrived in 1602 with his flagship “San Diego.” He and the Catholic Fathers who came with him named the place San Diego de Alcala. Since prehistoric times the geography of the valley hasn’t changed much except for one small dam built at the east end of the valley around 1800 and a network of levies and dikes built to control the tidal flow from the Pacific and the river flowing down from the mountains. While the basic lay of the land hasn’t changed much in the past two hundred years, the look of it is dramatically different from the scene even fifty years ago. Many San Diego Old Timers remember when the valley was a sleepy stretch of dairy farms all the way back to El Cajon. Now the valley is crowded with shopping centers, freeways, and condominium complexes... with emphasis on complex.

I found my picture for today as I wandered around a hillside rising up from the valley floor. I wondered what the oracles of Delphi would have thought about some holes in the hillside, especially one that has a large crystal fixed between two layers of dirt. I’ve wandered all over the valley and the hillsides, and I don’t remember having seen crystals before this morning. The one I saw today is large... maybe a foot-and-a-half long, and I could only guess at the the size of the part buried in the dirt. It’s a mystery... and I like a mystery. I’ll go back to check on it every now-and-then. In the meantime I’m going to ask somebody who would know or perhaps I’ll go to the library to find out what causes crystals to form. If a crystal like the one I saw today had been found in a hole anywhere on Mount Parnassus that towers above Delphi, the ancient Greeks would have found an explanation for it in their mythology. They were understandably very cautious, even reverent, around holes in the ground. The Underworld, ruled over by the god Hades, was a place to be avoided as long as possible; and even a small dark pit in the earth might be a dangerous opening into the place where dwelled the spirits of those who had passed into the gloom of death.