Whimsy in the wilderness

Lately, I’ve been spending time in the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness, a particularly rugged and quiet corner of the Cleveland National Forest where Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties meet. It’s one of those rare places so wild that mountain bikes are banned, which always makes hikers exceedingly happy.

In a spot this remote, there are bound to be both human mischief and human heroics. Someone pulled out many of the heavy trail markers some years ago, confounding newbie hikers. A legendary backpacker who camps alone, even though his eyesight is worsening these days, did the kindness of replacing them with neatly lettered wood sticks. Sometimes people switch the sticks around to send hikers on the wrong track. Others fix them.

Hike around here awhile and eventually you’ll hear about the twin mysteries of the Alpine village and Bunnyville, two tiny ceramic fantasy gardens about 15 miles from one another.

It would be odd enough if these toy towns had been erected to attract the attention of hikers. Even odder is that each is tucked into its setting in such a way that it’s invisible to those passing within a few feet. Playfulness? Whimsy? Geocaching? No one but the person or people who placed them there knows the reason for their existence.

Discovered a few years ago by a Sierra Club leader who was on a mission to find the missing trail markers, the Alpine village is arrayed on the slope of a small grotto in the Fisherman’s Camp area. White-topped ceramic houses, each perhaps 8 inches high and set on its own little knoll, depict a snowy scene. Miniature ceramic passengers ride in a hand-sized carriage amid the fading miner’s lettuce, an ankle-high plant that towers above the figurines like a shade tree.

Bunnyville -- so dubbed by the two environmentalists who were scouting for steelhead trout when they stumbled across it -- flaunts its Easter colors under the dense chaparral of Devil’s Canyon. Its unknown creator cleared a little space in the greenery, setting the gingerbread houses in picturesque spots alongside lichen-spotted rocks. The resident 2-inch-high porcelain rabbits perpetually go about their unguessable business among the houses.

Stranger still, these two mini-villages were kept up immaculately for years, apparently by their founder or founders. (The men who discovered them think of these as separate efforts, but I discern a common urban design.) They sparkled, always clean, the plants around them tidily clipped. In the last year or so, though, neglect has been the main visitor. A couple of the Alpine houses have chipped, and the paint is weathered. The bunny houses still shine, but the plants around them are scraggly, and spiders have covered parts of the “town” with webs.

We Southern Californians have a contradictory relationship with nature. We build our houses ever deeper into the diminishing open spaces, then drive off for a walk in the woods because we have to get away from civilization. We try to bring nature to our gardens with artificial waterfalls and artfully placed boulders. And once in a very great while, one of us brings a charming little artifact of civilization into the wilderness.

For all the purism that hikers can exhibit about any change to the wilderness, no one has ever tried to remove or harm the innocent handiwork of the villages. In recent months, hikers at Fisherman’s Camp have been dusting off the snowcapped roofs of the Alpine village, and on my most recent visit to Bunnyville, I felt compelled to brush aside the cobwebs, a small gesture of thanks to the person who doesn’t seem to visit anymore.

-- Karin Klein

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See photographs of the Alpine village and Bunnyville at latimes.com/news/opinion/.