‘I’m what’s called an ecoist, a person who believes in working for the survival of all species, not just the human species.’
Retired financier Norman Roberts, 68, once occupied a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and founded his own brokerage. In San Diego, he has been a local Republican Party mover and shaker since 1963--working on campaigns, going to the Republican National Convention three times as a delegate and serving as the San Diego County chairman for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. But the license plate on the Jaguar XJS parked outside Roberts’ La Jolla home tells of his true avocation: “NATRLST.” Times staff writer Leslie Wolf interviewed Roberts and Kenneth Lam photographed him.
I was born in San Diego and graduated from Hoover High School. My grandparents on both sides of the family came to San Diego at the turn of the century.
I think I was 7 when I took my first trip down to Baja California. It was pretty primitive then. I have been going down there ever since.
I enjoyed Baja so much that I decided to write a natural history of the peninsula. I wrote about the reptiles first, and then I did the mammals, and then the birds. But those manuscripts are not published because nobody wants to buy them. Then, I decided I’d go with the plants. I have a degree in veterinary medicine, so I had learned something about plant physiology and poisonous plants in college.
My book, “A Field Guide to the Common and Interesting Plants of Baja California” was first published in 1975. It turned out to sell pretty well, I sold 10,000. I’m doing the final work now on an updated version, which should be out in June or July. It will have a different cover and will be almost twice as large, with 336 pages and 315 color photos.
I spend a lot of my time with the plants when I’m down in Baja, but I run into a lot of people as well. I’ve met the mountain people, who are very reclusive but very friendly. Most of them are descended from the families of soldiers who came with the missionaries in the 1700s.
They use the agave a lot, which we call the century plant. The agave has a stalk, which it puts up once every 25 to 30 years. They cut down the stalks and roast them for a couple of days until it’s tender enough to eat. They also dig out the center of the agave and eat the leaves off.
They eat the barrel cactus, too, by breaking off the spines and scooping out the insides with a machete. The inside is very fibrous but has a lot of water in it. Sometimes it’s pretty sweet. The exciting one to eat is the pitaya cactus. The fruit is about golf-ball size, and it’s red and it’s delicious. You can make great daiquiris with it.
California is getting very crowded, so Baja is a perfect place to get away to. Besides the beaches, there are wonderful places to camp in the deserts and mountains. It’s a wonderful outlet for Californians and others who want to take a primitive vacation and enjoy nature as it is rather than nature as it has been tampered with by humans. There’s just so much that people don’t realize is there . . . but sooner or later they will.
When I wrote the first book on plants, I estimated there were 10,000 people who went to Baja consistently. Now there are about 50,000, and that estimate may be conservative. Ultimately, Baja California will be ruined by people.
What’s happening right now in Cabo San Lucas is they don’t have any water, and as a result they’re having salt water infiltration in the fresh water. They’re continuing to build new condos on the cape, and the runoff from the mountains is nowhere near enough to help them. Their only hope for getting water is saline conversion, and that’s very expensive. Until that happens, they’re heading for disaster.
I’m what’s called an ecoist, a person who believes in working for the survival of all species, not just the human species. I believe other species in the world should live, because, when they die, we die.
