Sisquoc Falls, located in a restricted condor sanctuary in the San Rafael Wilderness, is officially off-limits to the general public.

The following narrative was originally published in the Santa Maria Times in 1884. It chronicles the bushwhacking exploratory adventure of a group of men who fought their way up Santa Barbara County’s remote, wild and trailless Sisquoc River to its headwaters and surrounding mountains.

Locals with experience hiking Santa Barbara County mountains, and who well know the brutally impenetrable and lacerative nature of chaparral, may find it humorous that the explorers warn readers, “we advise anyone undertaking the trip to take along a sheet-iron suit of clothes.”

Hiram Preserved Wheat, mentioned by last name in the story as a guide, was “the patriarch of the Sisquoc homestead community,” write Blakley and Barnette in their book, “Historical Overview of Los Padres National Forest” (1985). He was known to the pioneers of the Sisquoc River area as “Old Man Wheat” and originally came from Potawanie County, Kansas. Today, a grassy and steep, pyramidal mountain overlooking the Sisquoc River is named in his honor, “Wheat Peak.”

The other guide mentioned, Forrester, was another member of the Sisquoc homestead community, Edward Everett Forrester. He was one of three people chosen to form a board of trustees for the community’s newly constructed schoolhouse in 1893. (Manzana Creek Schoolhouse 1893)

Wheat Peak, as seen from Manzana Schoolhouse, looms over the Sisquoc River which flows along its base.

The Sisquoc Falls: A Little Known Region in California Explored

Having heard so many conflicting reports about the wonderful scenery at the headwaters of the Sisquoc Creek, we, in company with Messrs. Wheat and Forrester, concluded to make a thorough exploration of that section, which has until lately been almost a terra incognita to even the oldest settlers, owing to the dense chaparral which covered the mountains on all sides, and made it almost inaccessible until an extensive fire swept over the several hundred square miles about there. We supplied ourselves with a necessary outfit, mainly blankets, Winchester rifle and salt, mounted the hurricane deck of our favorite caballo and the first day reached Mr. Wheat’s ranch, 35 miles from Santa Maria.

The next day while passing through the narrows, where the canyon is only seventy-five feet wide, the walls above towering hundreds of feet, we met with a slight accident in the same place where two other horsemen had come to grief only a few days previous. On one side a trout pool ten or twelve feet deep, on the other a shelf of slippery soapstone, to cross at an angle of 45 degrees. My horse’s feet slipped, and first the rifle went clattering down the slope, horse and rider rolling after in inextricable confusion. The rifle went off, striking the horse, fortunately missing a vital part. A mile further on we reached Mr. Robert’s camp and were soon supplied with a remount.

After passing the narrows we had to cut a trail for miles until reaching the burned country above the main forks of the river. Ascending the south-east fork about twelve miles from the river we came to Ventura Fall—as we named it—from the great number of them about there. The gorge at the foot of the fall was wild and picturesque in the extreme. Huge boulders and fallen trees, with occasionally a cascade varying in height from ten to one hundred feet to climb around. Grizzly bear tracks were quite plenty, but no grizzlies came in sight on the top, nor were we hunting any.

We climbed above and measured the main fall and found it to be 480 feet in height—a sheer descent with about 30 miner’s inches of water flowing over it. The stream falls about 2,o00 feet in two miles and a half, making a great number of beautiful cascades. The pool below the fall is 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and upwards of thirty feet in depth, clear and cold as ice, and so sheltered by the overhanging bluffs that the sun rarely shines in it.

Fishermen displaying their catch, or plunder depending on your perspective, along the Sisquoc River (1916). The waterway is now an officially designated Wild and Scenic River. Fishing is no longer legally allowed in an effort to protect native southern steelhead, which are an endangered species and cling to existence today at about one to two percent of their former population size.

Near the top of the bluff, and at an elevation of 4,000 feet above sea, is an old beach line about fifty feet thick of rocks and marine shells deeply cemented together. This is the fifth well defined beach line to be found at the various altitudes between this place and the summit at the San Rafael range, all of them showing a different age and different formation of rocks. We found marine shells, etc., in the sandstone at the extreme summit of the range, at an altitude of over 5,000 feet.

Climbing the mountain above the fall we found to be terrific work; the dense chaparral partly burned and partly grown up again, was impossible to get through without chopping for miles. Near the summit of the range, between the Sisquoc and the Santa Ynez, we found a belt of fine timber on the northern slope of the mountain, about three fourths of a mile long and half a mile wide. We made a thorough examination of the whole grove and found it to consist mostly of the yellow pine to be found at certain altitudes on all mountains in California. Quite a number of the finest kind of sugar pine, with a few scattering firs and cedars, the latter being mistaken for redwood by an experienced woodsman, with a few oaks intermingling. We made a partial count of the grove and estimated the number of trees fir for milling to be from 9,000 to 10,000, the majority of them being from three to five feet in diameter.

After a careful search, we could find none of the unmistakable traces which a white man leaves behind him and concluded that the place has been hitherto very rarely visited by them. In one place were three cedar stumps which had been cut at least from 50 to 75 years, judging from their state of decay. It was done with a dull ax by Indians, probably to make bows from.

A clear, cold and deep pool along a tributary of the Sisquoc River.

The slope is so steep that we could find no place level enough to spread our blankets without shoveling, except at the extreme summit of the mountain. There we had a magnificent view of the whole surrounding country. To the south and west lay the Santa Barbara Islands. Far out across the Mohave Desert, upwards of 200 miles distant, the Providence Mountains were plainly seen. To the northwest the wide sweep of the San Joaquin Valley, on the further side the Sierra Nevadas, the snow-capped summit of Mt. Whitney and other lesser peaks, while in the northwest lay the coast range, a succession of sharp ridges and steep canyons, covered with dense chaparral for hundreds of miles, with here and there a beautiful valley nestling below.

The day was exceptionally clear, and the prospect well repaid us for all the trouble of getting there. The following day we tried to ascend the main south fork of the creek, which is even a rougher and wilder gorge than the other, if possible. After climbing a mile and half we came in sight of another fall from 250 to 300 feet high, considerable water flowing over it. We had to give it up as a bad job that day, and we advise anyone undertaking the trip to take along a sheet-iron suit of clothes.

Those falls are about 65 miles from Santa Maria, and the timber belt spoken of about 70 miles. On coming back to camp we found one of the party, Mr. Roberts, in chasing a wounded deer had broken a bone in his foot, compelling us to start out as soon as possible. In another branch of the creek we found a small grove of genuine sugar maples, some of them two feet in diameter, the only natural grove of the kind we ever heard of in California.

Sunset in fall, Los Padres National Forest.

Rich sensory perception is the essence of human existence and it occurs in nature more strikingly than perhaps anywhere else. In the remote, less visited tracts of unsettled land exists a feeling of aliveness hard to find in any city. Where there are no distractions from the trappings of civilization or humanity’s artificial landscapes and environments, and where such buffers do not insulate a person from the natural world.

Consider the point in the context of a single basic meal. Squatting beside a wood-fired open flame circled in stones grilling a small meal out in the wilderness makes for a vividly rich sensory experience. The sizzle and snap of burning wood, random leap of unpredictable flames and flickering firelight. The dancing shadows and swirling plumes of spicy wood smoke biting at the nostrils or stinging watery eyes. There is an herbal fragrance from the cooling forest at dusk and a sweet, minerally and moist scent of a nearby stream and its soothing sound of trickling water. The sun’s radiance transferred across 93 million miles to the plant that absorbed its solar energy, used it to fuel the creation of wood, which I gathered by hand and now burns brightly, hot against my face, radiating the sun’s energy back at me through the cool night air. And the star-sprent blackened void of infinite space overhead.

Transfer the cooking of a meal into the confines of a home’s enclosed kitchen, where bulbs cast never changing artificial light, always from the same angle, and make it day at any hour. I cook by stovetop over a uniform little ring of piped-in, gas-fueled, smokeless blue flame. Wood flooring, stainless appliances, granite and travertine. It’s slick, convenient and as evolutionarily efficient in storing, preparing and consuming food as any one of nature’s iconic animals is at survival. But an entire world of sensually rich experience is lost.

After enjoying a meal beside the campfire I walk down to the creek for water to clean up with and perhaps to replenish supply for a cup of coffee or to drink during the night. A loud cacophony of cricket chirps and frog croaks fires forth from the surrounding darkness. The moist heaviness of the fragrant mountain air  intensifies as I approach the flowing stream, the earthy scent of saturated organic matter, mud, and wood and rotting plants. The water is chilly to the touch and makes my fingers ache.

Despite knowing I have nothing to fear, the pioneers and settlers long ago having killed off the wolves and grizzly bears, and not being in the place or time to worry about deadly Comanche raiders or such, I still look apprehensively over my shoulders now and again, alone peering into the blackness of the forest as if some unknown creature or entity is lurking just out of sight. The dark and remote woods, desolate, wild, miles from civilization and well out of cell phone range, makes me feel small and vulnerable as I crouch beside the creek, defensive in some manner. And it sharpens my senses.

I place a bare hand on a gritty and cold cobblestone and lean down to sip the running clear mountain elixir infused with nutrients absorbed from the surrounding land and its flora. It tastes good, sweet and syrupy-like and alive with complexity altogether missing from the sterilized, processed water of the urban realm. I walk back to camp watching the orangy warm glow of firelight flicker in the forest canopy. The mountain air is getting colder and the silvery glint of dew sparkles on the plants and beads up on and weighs down the spider webs.

Campfire roasted rainbow trout.

Translate the same activity into modern domestic terms and, again, an entire world of sensually rich experience is lost, life’s activities becoming clinical and lackluster. In the kitchen at home, beneath artificial lighting, I load dirty dishes into the dishwasher and press a button. The tap water smells faintly of chlorine. I place a glass to the fridge for a drink and a stream of cold water shoots out, and while filtered so it doesn’t taste bad, it still tastes bland.

There is less feeling. A dearth of stimuli relative life in the open wilderness. Like lunch in the sterile atmosphere of a hospital cafeteria beneath fluorescent lights compared to an open air picnic on a warm sunny day beneath a vast blue sky. And that is but one small facet of daily life. Imagine the span of an entire lifetime and what might be given up the farther from nature life is lived.

The more time I spend hiking the more important food becomes both in taste and nutritive content. Sooner rather than later it seems every sort of energy bar, snack, meal and caloric form is tried. Some are hard to choke down with any enthusiasm or enjoyment, even though wholesome and well made. Yet even somethings that are enjoyed eventually no longer satisfy and are a chore to chew up and swallow.

Sometimes, to avoid eating what food I’ve brought because it’s thoroughly unappealing, I’ll go most of a day eating very little to the point of precipitating fatigue, headache, stomach pains and a sever decline in physical ability. I’ll get back to my vehicle, slide into the seat feeling like I’ve been tortured, and head straight for the calorie bomb of a freshly made hot meal somewhere which hits the stomach like a bowling ball. If only I could get a good greasy cheeseburger, burrito or plate of enchiladas out on the trail!

And so with the idea of finding something new and which I actually look forward to eating and that I unintentionally scarf down quickly like a starving dog—a sure sign of tasty fulfilling food—I started frying up miniature pancakes to take out hiking.

I use as a base high quality organic whole wheat pancake mix to which I add organic buckwheat. I supplement the flour mixture with flax seed meal and whole chia seeds to add additional fiber and protein. Chia seeds, for example, pack five grams of fiber and three grams of protein in a single tablespoon and provide sustained energy. While these days chia seeds are renowned by athletes and distance runners as a source of long lasting power, the tiny seeds were long ago eaten by Aztec warriors for similar reasons. The word “chia” is derived from the Mayan language and means “strength.”

In mixing the batter I don’t skimp. I use whole milk for a creamier taste and more calories. I add cinnamon and vanilla extract for additional depth of flavor. I fry the cakes in a generous amount of coconut oil, which also adds flavor as well as calories and that results in a pancake with crispy, wavy edges that are irresistible. Fresh out of the pan I smother the hotcakes in honey to sweeten them, add further calories and provide a source of quick energy.

The result is a deliciously sweet and tasty, healthy treat that provides quick as well as sustained energy.

Related Post:

Jack Elliott’s Custom Deluxe Campfire Cuisine (Soup and Stew)

Castle Rock, San Rafael Wilderness

Concerns in the wilderness revolve around basic necessities not luxuries. Removal from the busy, overstocked urban realm and immersion in the sparse serenity of pristine nature reduces life to an elemental state. Such experience trims the fat removing excess and in that leanness is found clarity and perspective.

Minimality transforms outlook and attitude. Things are the same but subtly different, as if a ray of light cast from a new angle has illuminated life in a way that reveals its previously unseen characteristics.  The common and ordinary take on greater value or perhaps it’s that their true worth is better revealed.

It is a less sophisticated slower-paced life in the wilderness, where boiling creek water to brew a spoon full of coffee or cook a handful of pasta can be a remarkably pleasurable experience, nearly an end in itself.

At home, caught up in the busy business of urban domestic life, cooking, while one of my favorite activities, can feel like a burdensome chore I just want to complete in order to quickly move on to the next task. Sometimes I wish there was a pill to satisfy hunger like aspirin relieves a headache.

At home I carelessly shovel heaping amounts of fanciful food from an overflowing cornucopia and guzzle a seemingly limitless variety or drinks from a bottomless well, a glutton assuming the never ending supply of endless choices will always be there when and where I demand it.

When in the woods, on the other hand, with only a small quantity of basic provisions, I relish each little bit as though it’s a pinch of a rare treasured commodity selected from a limited cache and held carefully in cupped hands.

Few victuals have ever been more enjoyed and appreciated as much as those simple meals I’ve eaten from a plain metal dish, on a dusty and battered old picnic table or atop my lap, around a flickering campfire out in the backcountry. In the wilderness I come to better appreciate so much of what I routinely take for granted while in the city. And I realize how little is needed to be happy.

Wandering off-trail in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

A long lost condor radio transmitter on Whiteacre Peak.

Condors seem to have an eye on Whiteacre Peak in Sespe Wilderness. The first time Stillman (davidstillman.blogspot.com) and I hiked the peak, after having just left the summit, condors came soaring out of the vast blue sky east of the mountain, dark dots in the far distance. Not long after one bird flew over us making a few passes before landing atop the very summit we had been standing on a short time before.

On our latest hike to the top of Whiteacre Peak, the summit of which is polka dotted with white bird poop, a condor once more flew over our heads making several passes, flying into the wind, easing slowly by looking us over before soaring off and disappearing into the distance.

Such relatively close encounters I suppose are rare. The California condor is a critically endangered species whose total population in 1987 numbered in the twenties. Between 1987 and 1992, after all known birds were captured for a captive breeding program, no condors at all flew wild in California. At the time of this writing about 219 free flying California condors are alive with about 53 of them having been released and fledged in southern California. (CDFW)

Number 92 giving us the beady bird eye from the sky.

From the Dough Flat Trailhead, gateway to Sespe Wilderness within the southern Los Padres National Forest, Whiteacre Peak looks more like a rocky ridgeline than a peak. From some angles along Sespe Trail the summit actually looks to be lower in elevation than the surrounding sandstone outcrop.

Yet, despite it’s appearance from below it’s a notable summit, a rocky knob rising above the surrounding terrain and offering three hundred and sixty degree views of the Sespe Wilderness and far beyond including some of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.

There were no signatures in the register since we were last there a year ago. And before that time the last signature was logged in 2007. It is appropriately labeled a “Seldom Visited Site” (SVS). While there are some sections of footpath and animal trail on the way to the peak, there is no official trail. It’s a relatively short, but tough hike requiring some scrambling and bushwhacking.

Stillman and Mark enjoying textbook SoCal winter afternoon weather on Whiteacre Potrero below the peak.

The tilted slab of bedrock forming Whiteacre Peak slopes eastward and is hollowed out by wind and rain in various places to form a number of caves, alcoves and massive overhangs. There are several small grassy flats amongst the uplifted sandstone slabs and boulder piles, which are veined with wiry chaparral and punctuated with the occasional conifer. Several small basins or tanks in the slabs serve as reservoirs on the otherwise dry mountaintop by catching and holding rain.

The peak holds some well-preserved traces of the sandstone’s marine origins including ripple marks from water or wind on sand and rill marks suggesting the erosive work of retreating water during low tide. There are fossilized mollusks scattered about, which are common all over the southern Los Padres National Forest, but there are a few fossilized bones, too, from something relatively large.

It is a landscape I look over and feel compelled to explore, and since our first visit last year I’ve wanted to return, and to stay a night. Despite its relative close proximity to the trailhead, Whiteacre Peak feels very remote and desolate. Add the bear and mountain lion prints we’ve seen along with the condors and the peak is a rather notable bit of wildness in southern California.

A chunk of what looks to be ancient tidal flat with rill marks and ripples showing the interplay between water and sediment now preserved in sandstone.

Stillman heading down the rope section.

Mark climbing up the rope section.

After the rope climb comes the crawl.

One of many dry caves on Whiteacre Peak.

The east facing, backside slope of Whiteacre Peak.

Looking east from Whiteacre summit.

Whiteacre Peak as seen from along its southeast flank.

Related Post:

Whiteacre Peak, Fossilized Bones, Cougar Prints and Condors

Back in August (Life and Death in a Creek) I had mentioned happening across a dead mountain lion while out poking around the Los Padres. Some time afterward Stillman and I returned to the site and he salvaged and cleaned the skull.

Open the jaw bone and put those pointy teeth to the back of your bare neck and it takes little imagination to picture how effective they are at gripping struggling prey and tearing through flesh.

The lion as found in the mouth of a sandstone alcove.

A few days ago a mountain lion killed two large animals at a house on the bottom of La Cumbre Rd, about a block and a half from State Street. I’m not sure what type of animals, but the house where the attack occurred has a farmyard-type set up in back with corrals.

Along Cedar Creek Trail

While ranging off trail recently I came across a bootleg camp along a small spring-fed tributary of Cedar Creek in Sespe Wilderness. It was situated right in the creek. Branches and fallen trees had been lashed together with synthetic cordage and fashioned into a crude roof frame. A rolled up sheet of heavy, clear plastic was stuffed into the branches of the framework for storage and was apparently used to make a waterproof ceiling. There was a pile of charcoal and some scattered trash including the obligatory crumpled beer can or two, the trailings of the slouch class of American recreationists, who in this case thought it wiser to ensure their plastic makeshift ceiling was carefully rolled and stored for later use rather than leave the area free of garbage and their charcoal.

Five to ten yards away there was a perfect grassy bench above the creek, at the foot of a slope and beneath the drooping branches of a cedar tree, which was a far more intelligent and hospitable place to locate a small camp. It would have been a warmer, dryer and roomier place upon which to work, relax and sleep.

Yet some clowns had set up shop as close to the water as possible, nearly in the muck of the brook, in the dampest and coldest place around, hemmed in by the tiny trickle of cloudy late season water and several trees, with little room to work around the fire or relax let alone roll out a bedroll. The whole thing looked clumsy and silly.

Bear scratch

The real, official, Cedar Creek Camp

The camp in question.

Hurricane Deck, the prominent ridge defining the skyline.

There is no trace of water on Hurricane Deck, no trees and no campgrounds. It’s a 20 mile long ridgeline with south facing cliffs and steep grassy slopes on one side and a dense cover of chaparral on the other. It can be hot even in winter and deadly, broiling hot in summer.

Something sort of like a trail runs across the top of the ridge, but it’s neglected and unmaintained, brushy and ill-defined. In some sections it’s downright dangerous as a makeshift trail skirts the cliffs with only inches of space to walk, a precipice on one side and a wall of wiry chaparral poking at you from the other.

The clifftop is shaley and loose, with piles of small domino-like flat, rectangular pieces of interlaced stone covered in thin layers of dirt. Step near the cliff edge and the shale dominoes slide apart and the earth seems to disintegrate underfoot. One misstep could easily send a hiker over the edge and they wouldn’t stop tumbling for several hundred feet.

Lost Valley Trail

Twin Oaks Camp along Lost Valley Trail.

Crossing the top of middle Hurricane Deck recently, I was able to link a combination of old trail cut through the brush, current animal paths and thin use trail left by the occasional intrepid backcountry hiker. I only had to crawl under or through the brush in three areas, but only for a few feet at a time, which wasn’t bad. I had expected worse.

Never having crossed this middle section of the ridge I wasn’t sure how passable the route would be, and was all the while concerned I was going to run into impenetrable chaparral half way into my day, some 12 to 14 miles from the trailhead, and find myself stuck with only fleeting hours of short winter daylight. Sunset comes fast this time of year. I didn’t want to be fighting my way through a bramble of brush at half a mile an hour or less as the sun began setting.

At a certain point on such a hike there is no going back, and you commit to the planned task and just hope you make it through before it gets dark. I’m not the type to ask people for current conditions. Life’s a gamble. And that’s the beauty of it.

Looking over the Sisquoc River watershed as seen from the junction of Lost Valley Trail and Hurricane Deck Trail.

The junction of Lost Valley Trail and Hurricane Deck.

Looking back, eastward, over where I’d come from along the top of Hurricane Deck.

There are no rock formations of interest, no rolling grassy potreros or any other sort of notable features on top of middle Hurricane Deck. Perhaps the most remarkable feature are the views of Manzana Creek watershed on one side and the Sisquoc River drainage on the other.

I’ve heard of Europeans visiting the Santa Barbara area who’ve allotted time in their itinerary to hike Hurricane Deck. I wonder if those tourists made this particular geographical feature of the San Rafael Wilderness a destination based solely on the romantic, adventurous name it was bestowed with, because I can’t imagine what else might have led them to want to spend what little time they had on vacation hiking it. It had to be the lure of the name.

I’ve heard of other people of local origin that set out to hike the trail for the first time by trying to do it at night under a full moon. I don’t know how it works elsewhere, but around the southern Los Padres National Forest it’s not wise to assume a trail is easily passable just because it’s listed on a map. In fact, what’s labeled on a map as a trail may not even exist in any other manner but in old cut branches long buried in a thicket of overgrown chaparral.

What if Hurricane Deck was renamed using the ever expansive Big Book of Tiresome Cliches? What if it was instead named all too accurately the sunbaked, wind-swept, dry as a bone, God forsaken ridge? It certainly would not attract as much attention or foot traffic as it does, which is little as it is.

A section of Hurricane Deck. The trail, or a trail, runs up the edge of the steep ridgeline to the conical apex and then down the saddle on the left.

Potrero Canyon Trail showing Hurricane Deck looming in the upper left-hand corner of the frame.

Related Post:

Potrero Canyon, Hurricane Deck, Manzana Creek 20 Mile Day Hike

La Jolla Trail 

Trail through the oak trees.

Dropping into Birabent Canyon on La Jolla Trail.

A U.S. Forest Service stove at Ballard Camp, which was presumably named after the nearby town of Ballard or its namesake, W. N. Ballard, who built and managed a stagecoach station there from 1862-70. (Slippery Rock Stagecoach Road [19th Century])

Ballard was the hometown of Edgar B. Davison, previously mentioned on this blog in the post, Edgar B. Davison’s Cabin (circa 1900). Davison was one of the first forest rangers in Santa Barbara County and served on Figueroa Mountain from 1898 through 1912.

Ballard Camp beside the creek in Birabent Canyon.

Afternoon reflections on a deep pool, which would be a lot deeper, as the mineral stain on the rock shows, were it not for the current droughty conditions.

Hericium mushrooms are one of the subtle signs of annual change in the Los Padres National Forest. When they sprout from their woody hosts it signifies the return of the rainy season.

For 51 weeks the hericium hunter patiently awaits the first rain showers of the season, which trigger the short-lived growth of the “Lion’s Mane” mushroom. If the first rain comes early, however, so too will the mushrooms, but sometimes the wait is longer than a year.

There is but a fleeting window of opportunity, about a week or so depending on weather, to harvest hericiums in their prime before they begin to turn woody and then rot. Then, typically, they do not grow again until the next season. It is a rare treat.

A hericium growing in the Santa Ynez Mountains. They have a pleasant, fruity mushroom fragrance and can taste like lobster or shrimp when picked fresh and sautéed in butter and olive oil.

Meat.

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Hericium Mushrooms of Santa Barbara County
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David Stillman standing at the base of the second fall in a series of waterfalls which flow when it rains.

So we go and so it is, around this bend and that, up over and down under and around we go again. This branch breaks, that one doesn’t, a slice and a scratch, trip, stumble, slide and on up the dry creek and over the hills we go.

By early afternoon, having been barging and breaking our way through a wildfire charred landscape for hours, I’m streaked in black slash marks and covered in a fine powder of black dust with several red gleaming stinging cuts across both arms .

It’s hot hiking in the sun, for winter. And dry, pretty dry, for winter. But there are a number of pockets of water around replenished if only slightly by the last minuscule rain to fall seemingly so long ago. There’s plenty to keep you alive in a pinch, but not much more than that. And it’s around these few seasonal seeps and channels that drain occasional runoff that we search for tell-tale traces of times long past.

The dry waterfall just below the one shown in the previous photo. Seasonal runoff has carved a deep winding slot through the sandstone bedrock with multiple waterfalls.

The rugged terrane bristles with chaparral and does not lend itself to easy travel or encourage and invite exploration. It quickly reveals weaknesses. To hike even but a few miles off-trail into its midst requires not just physical, but mental fortitude and the discipline to tolerate a fair amount of various discomforts.

The sun’s blistering glare and heat, even in winter, insidiously saps energy while drawing a constant stream of water from the body, initiating a relentless battle to maintain sufficient hydration, which necessitates constant drinking, usually of less than appetizing warm water drawn from one’s backpack.

Clouds of dirt and charcoal dust explode into the air when breaking through the brush and tramping over the silty dry soil. The superfine particulate coats eyeballs in a gritty film and irritates the nose triggering sneezing fits and sniffling.

And there is the general physical strain of lumbering over a wild landscape of loose soil, shifting rocks and big boulders, across and up and down steep slopes, and through bushes that poke, stab and lacerate soft human flesh like needles and blades. These are the dues that must be paid, nature’s abstract gatekeepers that allow only the most determined and fit adventurers access to the treasures of the backcountry.

Looking down a miniature gorge. Seasonal runoff flows over the lip of the ledge at the bottom of the photo and falls about ten feet, and then on down the slot over several additional waterfalls.

Another miniature gorge or tiny slot canyon of a sort. The water flows over the yellowish stone at the bottom of the frame and falls about eight to ten feet before washing down the slot and over additional waterfalls.

Discovering or locating Indian rock art in such a landscape requires indefatigable persistence to press on to the next inconspicuous small cave, alcove or sheltered nook where there may lie hidden a faded, highly eroded pictograph measuring only several inches in size. Finding a pictograph in the chaparral is comparable to locating that needle in haystack everyone talks about.

Looking in every little pocket in the sandstone which may conceal rock art throughout even a small area of rugged terrane is laborious, time consuming hard work. Even if you know the general area where a painted cave is located, you may beat yourself to a bloody, tired mess and not find it or not even cover the entirety of the area in question due to insufficient daylight or depleted energy and waning interest.

Looking over the edge at Stillman scrambling down a dry creek.

Vintage beer can.

We finally found a single pictograph in an outcrop holding several bedrock mortars. Etiquette dictates that I not provide so much as a single clue to its location and any photos shared be limited in their scope so as not to reveal distinguishing features of the surrounding landscape, which may disclose where the archaeological site might be located.

There exists a contingent of rock art enthusiasts out there who believe it’s their personal duty to enforce such unwritten rules and to protect the exclusivity of such sites for none but the select, chosen few. And if these rules are infringed upon or violated they will not hesitate to inform you of your transgression. No doubt some even grit their teeth over the mere mention of the existence of such archaeological sites in a post entitled such as this one.

Meanwhile, the fragile ever-eroding pictographs and petroglyphs continue fading into oblivion from exposure to the elements. If not intentionally destroyed by vandals or unintentionally by increasing numbers of respectful visitors unknowingly panting moisture laden breath into the caves and kicking up dust, nature will erase these delicate traces of a mystical time long past once and for all. It’s now or later, but it is indeed inevitable.

A bear scratch inside a cave. Presumably the bear found the inclusion in the sandstone strangely out of place and pawed at it out of curiosity.

This here’s a deep, completely dry cave. Nice one. There is plenty of space to sleep inside with a lot of extra room, was my first thought. It’s maybe like ten feet long, two to four feet high and three to four feet wide. It has another slightly larger entrance at one end. It very well may have been used as a dry cache by the Chumash. Who stacked those rocks?

The outcrop holding the mortars and pictograph.

Sometimes all that remains is a tiny spot of paint such as this centimeter wide dot. The Los Padres National Forest spans some 1,752,400 acres.

The painted cave is shown here at center frame.

These Chumash pictographs are located in a remarkable cave with a lofty view overlooking the surrounding countryside. It has a level floor and is relatively deep and spacious inside. It’s a superb shelter.

The ceiling inside and a bit of the wall are covered in some of the most spectacular polychrome rock art in the Chumash territory. Both the complexity of the abstract designs and the variety of colors, including orange blue and green, make it a notable standout.

The paint is thickly applied, almost in a paste consistency, as if spackled onto the sandstone. It’s apparent that natural erosion has erased much of the paint over the years and that the interior of the cave was at one time decorated with a far larger panel of art reminiscent of a mural.

What appears to be a leg and a foot.

Related Posts:

Wild Cucumber, Trout and Pictographs
Cave Bound: 23 Mile Day Hike to Chumash Rock Art Site
Fallen Rock Chumash Pictograph Rock Art
Cave’s Eye View on the Carrizo Plain
Painted Rock Camp, Montgomery Potrero
Chumash Pictographs of Santa Barbara County
The Carrizo Experience: Ten Hours on the Plain III
Arrowhead Spring Chumash Rock Art

Wind carved tunnel through soft sandstone.

We spent yesterday morning wambling our way through the brush, up a shady wet canyon and back down the canyon, up an adjacent exposed sunny ridge over and down again the same canyon. Over to the next canyon, the sight of which, dry, narrow, tight and clogged with brush, quickly withered our enthusiasm. So we called it quits by half-day and headed back out not without a few scratches and a bit of frustration.

Tiny oyster mushrooms waiting for rain that won’t come in time.

I did manage to spot a few still fresh oyster mushrooms, which during this spectacularly dry winter, in the midst of an increasingly severe drought, might be unexpected. I saw a number of tiny oysters that had sprouted after the last rain only to be thwarted and turned woody, their growth cycle stopped dead, by no subsequent rain showers. These fresh ones below had sprouted from the underside of a log about a foot above the trickling creek and so managed to suck up enough moisture to grow to decent size.

Wild oyster mushrooms are a tasty treat when lightly battered and fried in butter and olive oil or a bit of bacon grease.

Related Posts:
Hericium Mushrooms of Santa Barbara County
Oyster Mushrooms
Giant Puffballs
Gem Studded Puffballs
Chanterelle Mushrooms

Montecito Peak, Santa Ynez Mountains

Numerous parked cars line the road at the trailhead when I arrive one September morning. Several people in different small groups linger about getting ready for a walk or returning therefrom. A few voices resonate in the canyon. I don’t like it. It’s not even a busy day, but I don’t like it.

I haven’t spent much time on Santa Barbara’s frontcountry trails in many years. Too many people, and the sight and sound of the city, which can be hard to escape on the frontside of the Santa Ynez Mountains though there are indeed quieter nooks to be found, tend to ruin the ambiance and mindset I’m typically after when I go out for a hike.

I’ve flown down the trails at white-knuckled dangerous speed on my mountain bike far more than I’ve ever hiked them and likely ever will hike them. My arrival at Cold Springs Trailhead this warm and sunny fall day reaffirms my existing aversion to the frontcountry trails.

East Fork Cold Springs Trail through the oaks and sandstone.

The East Fork Cold Springs Trail eucalyptus. Maybe this tree was a volunteer, I don’t know, but it sure would have been nice if an oak tree was planted instead!

I step from the pavement to the dirt eagerly looking forward to getting up the mountain. Having seldom walked the trail, having spent more time hopping cobblestones up the creek if’n I do visit Cold Springs Canyon on foot, I’m shocked at the numerous highly worn and wide use trails crisscrossing the mountainside. It seems every corner on a trail is routinely cut leading to new unstable paths and subsequent erosion. My antipathy grows, my irascible nature being stoked. It’s all too trampled and crowded for my likes.

A few minutes up the superhighway of a footpath and I come to a little bag sitting beside the trail. It’s somewhat common. I see it at the beach, too, and I’ve actually done it before myself, picked up after the dog and set the bag aside to grab on the return walk. Because who wants to tote a warm sack of it around?

Yet I have carried it before, too, which is no small item to note when you have a 170 pound Great Dane. Sometimes I’ve tied the bag to the end of a piece of driftwood to gain some distance and avoid the stream of stench wafting from it. Thirty or forty minutes or however long of kicking around a long beach at low tide walking the dog with my bindle of excrement. I can’t imagine it’s any more enjoyable carrying it up a mountain trail on a warm day.

A view of the Santa Ynez Mountains from the trail showing slopes carpeted in chaparral and the canyon bottom shaded by much lusher riparian canopy.

Holly-leaved cherries are edible and have a thin layer of yellowish pulp that can be sweet and juicy. (Related Post: Holly-leaved cherries, called ‘akhtayukhash in Barbareno Chumash).

I understand why people bag it and set it aside. Though it may be temporary, to every person who then passes by it’s no different than any other piece of litter that spoils a scene. Reminds me of a time I came across dirty diapers at Red Rock on the Santa Ynez River. Not much different, both bags of crap lying around, just from different animals.

And so the majority of people are expected to tolerate the unsightly dropping of trash on trail so that one person can avoid the inconvenience of being a responsible and considerate pet owner. In economics this is referred to as a “negative externality,” or a cost affecting a person who did not choose to incur it.

For whatever reason on this day the bag of poop irked me more than usual and made me strike a deal with myself to not again be “that guy.” I have no moral authority here or interest in preaching, but think about it folks.

The final length of trail to the top of Montecito Peak.

View of Santa Barbara and Pacific Ocean from Montecito Peak, the crest of Santa Cruz Island just visible above the marine layer in the channel.

It’s been 80 degrees the last few days; winter in Santa Barbara.

The negative low tides of winter offer a great chance to get the kids out on the beach exploring tide pools and instill in them a curiosity and appreciation for the natural world that might last a lifetime, as was the case for me. The marine environment, after all, is yet another wilderness. When they grow old enough I’ll have the three of them out in the water free diving the submarine forests of giant kelp, which I think are far more spectacular than those forests on land.

As a boy I spent many, many hours and long days at the beach, which typically occurred at Summerland, a tiny town just south of Santa Barbara, because my mom was somewhat of a hippie and back in those days it was a nude beach. Sometimes we went to More Mesa beach. We would arrive in the a.m. hours like nomads hauling our supplies and leave in the late afternoon. Later, as an older boy without supervision, I would get dropped off at “The Pit” or Arroyo Burro beach as well as Campus Point.

My cousin and I would ramble up and down the Summerland seashore playing about when we weren’t out in the water boogieboarding. There was a natural freshwater seep below the railroad tracks down there which filled a small mucky but clear and deep puddle, which was always a favorite attraction. A few goldfish lived in it for a time which somebody had tossed in the tiny pool.

Hungry, hungry hippo found while beachcombing.

Exploring the base of the prominent landmark cliff around Loon Point in Summerland, we discovered a large deposit of old abalone shells scattered about. I have for years wanted to check back to see if I could relocate it, but haven’t gotten around to it. I’m not sure who dumped them or why. They looked aged at the time, but I don’t think ancient, though who knows, I was young.

I’ve wondered recently if the shells were an Indian midden. Whatever period they came from it was a time, obviously, when abalone in California were still plentiful and harvested as a delicacy of the sea. Those times have long since passed, for the most part. The only experience I have with red abalones are seeing the numerous shells decorating the wall of an older friend’s house in Carpinteria, the mustachioed waterman, Mr. S.C.

So I’m left to scrounge California mussels, which, though being abundant and easily taken, have never been as coveted as abalones but are still pretty darn tasty.

A mussel encrusted boulder, the Santa Ynez Mountains and Los Padres National Forest in the distant background.

The archaeological record as pieced together from middens found on San Miguel, the westernmost of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, suggests mussels have been a valuable item in the human diet for at least 10,000 years. (Journal of Archaeological Science PDF)

The same midden evidence shows an apparently significant decrease in the size of mussels harvested as the shellfish are thought to have faced increased pressure from a burgeoning Native American population. Mussels were a highly valued food source. These days, by contrast, mussels commonly reach their full-sized potential because almost nobody eats them.

As I squat barefoot in a t-shirt and shorts in mid-winter among large boulders three to four feet high, plucking mussels from the seashore at low tide, I think of the Chumash village that was once located a few yards behind me. No doubt humanity has been harvesting the bivalve mollusks from this beach for a long time and I take pleasure in practicing an ancient, simple and slow activity amid the timelessness of the sea during a hurried era of otherwise supreme sophistication.

The rhythmic crash and roar of breaking surf serves as soundtrack along with the occasional cry from nearby gulls. The thick organic scent of exposed beach at low tide fills the air, as a glassy-eyed seal pokes its sleek head above the waterline peering at me in wonderment.

I have found numerous sandstone bowls, both remnant pieces and fully intact, at this location through the years, though never actually purposely looking for them. One cold winter dawn while donning my wetsuit to paddle out to surf here, on a high tide with exceptionally large swell pounding the shoreline, I noticed a significant amount of soil and rock had been stripped from the back-shore.

The tumbling of cobblestones was not just audible with each powerful sweep of foaming whitewater across the shoreline. I could also feel the rumble, the physical expression of energy carried through thousands of miles of open ocean from a far distant storm, which had transferred its power from the atmosphere to the sea, and that now exploded against the edge of the continent.

Understanding the possibility, I had cast my gaze around the immediate area in front of me and instantly spotted two different bowl halves lying wet and tumbled among the rocks, the edge of one still crusted with natural seep oil once used to attach a basket. After surfing for three hours or so I returned to shore and spotted yet another artifact as I unsuited, a fully intact bowl lying upright on the cobblestones.

Gathering mussels is fast and easy, but cleaning them is laborious. As I pull them from the rocks I toss them in a tide pool hoping to encourage them to crack their shells and disgorge any sand they hold inside. Gulls have begun perching atop nearby rocks jockeying for position and hoping for an easy meal.

Once I’ve collected enough for a meal I scrape each shell vigorously against a rock to remove the small barnacles, sea anemones and limpets (also edible) that cling to their shells, after which I toss them back into the tide pool.

Finishing the task in the fading glow of twilight I walk back up the canyon with my sack of fresh seafood, walking under the gnarled and leafless sycamore trees and the canopy of coast live oak, the silence of a waterless dry creek bed a notable testament to the current severe drought conditions in California. From the beach to the kitchen within an hour, it’s fresh dinner for the night.

(Author’s note: Mussels are quarantined each season due to the potential for poisoning from the consumption of marine biotoxins. Check with the California Department of Public Health for further information: Shellfish Information Line (800) 553-4133.)

Fresh mussels and linguine in a white wine broth. It’s good stuff, Maynard, I’m tellin’ ya.

Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) (c) Timothy Knepp – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The following newspaper brief was published in the San Francisco Call on March 11, 1896 and testifies to the way things once were not all that long ago in the wilds of Santa Barbara County. Whereas historic steelhead runs on the Santa Ynez River are estimated to have numbered up to 30,000 fish, today the number is thought to be somewhere around 100. And, of course, fishing for them is strictly forbidden.

While the story is from the late nineteenth century, large steelhead runs like it describes, aside from the exaggerated number, routinely happened at least as late as the 1940s. Many of the fish identified as salmon in the news clip would likely have been upwards of two feet long, based on historic photos and the stories told by those who were there. And then the monster-sized fish vanished from the forest.

“Anecdotal accounts suggest that run sizes declined precipitously during the late 1940s and 1950s, due possibly to both drought and to anthropogenic changes to the river system such as dam construction,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports in a technical memorandum from 2005.

Ponder the thought of seeing a 30-inch steelhead in a tiny tributary of the Santa Ynez River, deep in the Los Padres National Forest. Not just once, a rare freak happening long thought to no longer be possible, but seeing them routinely through the years. It’s something that sounds preposterous, a laughable fantasy, as based on common experience in the forest these days.

A person just does not expect to see very many or very large fish in the creeks and rivers around here anymore. Tell younger generations or even some middle-aged men who’ve never heard these sorts of true fish stories from the past and you’ll blow their minds.

The news clip from 1896, aside from noting the steelhead run, relates the common practice back then of spearing the fish as they passed through the shallows. One might imagine the historic population of Chumash Indians taking the large sea-run trout in a similar fashion through the centuries to supplement their diets with fresh and dried or smoked fish.

A report from a Santa Barbara newspaper reprinted in the Los Angeles Herald on March 15, 1909, which tells of yet another method in which steelhead were once taken by means other than a rod and reel.

On occasion I daydream of the small riverside town of Lompoc, near the mouth of the Santa Ynez River, as a renowned fishing destination. A place where anglers and fishermen flock during steelhead season, the motels and inns fill up, and the breakfast joints and cafes hum with fish stories bantered back and forth among old men in flannel and denim, suspenders pulled tight over shoulders, sipping black coffee. The walls of the eateries decorated with old fishing rods and reels, handcrafted lures and flies, taxidermy, and scores of photos documenting the memorable fishing experiences of its out-of-town patrons and locals alike, men, women and children, and the town’s main street dotted with small tackle shops and pickup trucks and SUVs, their rear windows and bumpers polka dotted with various outdoorsy-type stickers.

The town is nothing like that today, and I don’t necessarily wish it was, but I entertain the thought amusingly, because it very well might have been.

Related Post:

Native Steelhead of Yore on the Santa Ynez River

A lesser set wave on Friday, January 24, 2014.

As an observer it’s interesting to me, the big(ger) wave event along this stretch of coastline. I surf and I surf, and I surf, through the months or even years, and everything else around me in the surrounding knot of civilization carries on as usual, indifferent and apart from my experience at the beach. Nobody but surfers and saltwater junkies, the usual suspects, cares or shows any interest in the ocean.

Then comes a large swell event and suddenly the beach is abuzz in activity. Spectators crowd the shoreline just to watch the raw power of the Pacific slam against the edge of the continent. They stand ashore gazing upon the breakers mesmerized as when watching a campfire. Harbor Patrol boats and Coastguard Cutters cruise the roiling nearshore waters, helicopters fly up and down the beaches, and emergency first responders tool around in their various rigs, some towing wave runners.

As the swell grows the crowd in the lineup thins. On the day an exceptionally large swell peaks, typically a much small group of guys are out than I’d expect. The next day, as the swell fades, though still big, the crowd grows proportionate to how much the waves shrink until the surf reaches a more normal size, maybe overhead or whatever, and the lineup is once more thick with scores of bobbing heads. At that point the crowds of spectators and the rest have long disappeared, the coastline again quiet for the most part.

Some days later the waves turn puny and only a few people remain. Completing the cycle, the Pacific eventually flattens out like a lake taking on its namesake calm character. Then, there’s nobody around. They’ve all gone just as fast as they came, a mania of fleeting interest.

Yet I remain.

A mural of Point Conception lighthouse painted on the exterior of a building in Lompoc, California, Santa Barbara County. An accompanying reader board describes the surrounding coastline as “the mariner’s stretch of nightmare coast known as ‘the graveyard of ships.’”

“Point Conception we passed in the night, a cheery light gleaming over the waters from its tar light-house, standing on its outermost peak. Point Conception! That word was enough to recall all our experiences and dreads of gales, swept decks, topmast carried away, and the hardships of a coast service in the winter.”

-Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. dropped out of Harvard University, boarded the brig Pilgrim in Boston harbor and set sail on a two year voyage working as a common seaman. His maritime job brought him to the Pacific coast of California, where he worked in the hide and tallow trade loading the ship with cattle skins. The voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to Santa Barbara took 150 days.

In 1840, he published a narrative of his experiences under the title, Two Years Before the Mast, and in this story he relates an early view of California including Santa Barbara, which he called at that time “the central port of the coast,” and which the Pilgrim called upon numerous times.

In Two Years Before the Mast, Dana describes his experience during a treacherous nighttime passing of Point Conception. In his full narrative, select excerpts of which follow below, he details the frantic work of his fellow sailors to guide their ship through the tempest in one piece, while wild swells sweep the deck, the sails and rigging are ripped to shreds and the gale force wind threatens to snap the mast in two. Dana describes working on the open deck and being “several times buried in the seas, until the mate ordered us in, from fear of our being washed off.”

“We had a fine breeze to take us through the Canal [Santa Barbara Channel], as they call this bay of forty miles long by ten wide. The breeze died away at night, and we were becalmed all day on Sunday, about half-way between Santa Barbara and Point Conception.

Sunday night we had a light, fair wind, which set us up again; and having a fine sea-breeze on the first part of Monday we had the prospect of passing, without any trouble, Point Conception, —the Cape Horn of California, where, the sailors say, it begins to blow the first of January, and blows until the last of December.

Toward the latter part of the afternoon, however, the regular northwest wind, as usual, set in, which brought in our studding-sails, and gave us the chance of beating round the Point, which we were now just abreast of, and which stretched off into the Pacific, high, rocky, and barren, forming the central point of the coast for hundreds of miles north and south. A cap-full of wind will be a bag-full here, . . .”

“We had been below but a short time, before we had the usual premonitions of a coming gale, —seas washing over the whole forward part of the vessel, and her bows beating against them with a force and sound like the driving of piles.”

“I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear, and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from the northwest.”

“It was a fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The force of the wind was greater than I had ever felt it before; . . .”

“The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. In going up the rigging, it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds; and, on the yard, there was no such thing as turning a face to windward.”

“The gale was now at its height, `blowing like scissors and thumb-screws’; the captain was on deck; the ship, which was light, rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction.”

“For three days and three nights the gale continued with unabated fury, and with singular regularity. There were no lulls, and very little variation in its fierceness. … All this time the sea was rolling in immense surges, white with foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side, for we were now leagues and leagues from shore.”

“During these seventy-two hours we had nothing to do but to turn in and out, four hours on deck, and four below, eat, sleep, and keep watch. …and we had many days’ sailing to get back to the longitude we were in when the storm took us.”

“Day after day Captain Faucon went up to the hill [overlooking Monterey Bay] to look out for us, and at last gave us up, thinking we must have gone down in the gale which we experienced off Point Conception, . . .”

Illustrations of Point Conception lighthouse penned in 1859 by Major Hartman Bache, inspector of the 12th Lighthouse District. (c) NOAA

Dana’s dramatic description of the sea and weather surrounding Point Conception is lent greater weight having come from a mariner well experienced in sailing open ocean through some of the world’s most deadly waters, including a frightful trip around Cape Horn during an Antarctic winter, and having to work the icy decks and rigging of a pitching and rolling ship under howling winds in the midst of “driving sleet, and darkness, and wet, and cold.”

Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick (1851), widely considered one of the greatest American novels of all time, advises readers in White Jacket (1850):

“But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana’s unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle.”

Knowing well the nastiness of Cape Horn, Dana still saw fit to compare Point Conception to it, which surely is some proof of the Central Coast headland’s formidable nature. The treacherous seas off Point Conception result in part from the confluence of cold and warm water oceanic currents. Typically it is a region of unsettled, foggy and blustery weather and rough and turbulent chilly water that has long played havoc on passing vessels.

A short distance up the coast from Point Conception, at Honda (Pedernales) Point, one of the largest peacetime disasters in United States naval history occurred, when on September 8, 1923, a navigational error in foggy or misty weather led seven destroyers aground on the jagged seashore and 23 sailors died.

As the United States Coast Pilot publication of 2012 notes:

Point Conception has been called the Cape Horn of the Pacific because of the heavy NW gales encountered off it during the passage through Santa Barbara Channel. A marked change of climatic and meteorological conditions is experienced off the point, the transition often being remarkably sudden and well defined.

Another view of the lighthouse from 1859 when it was located atop the crest of the headlands rather than at its base, as shown below.

Point Conception lighthouse. (c) John Wiley

Map showing Point Conception.

Related Post:

Santa Barbara Seen Through a Sailor’s Eyes (1835)

Luisa Ygnacio, Barbareno Chumash (1913)

“The people venerated the swordfish because they sometimes chased whales ashore and thus the people had a lot of meat.”

—Luisa Ygnacio (c. 1835-1922)

“All, whatever there is in the ocean is just like everything that is here on this earth. . .We are the people of this land … The people of the ocean are the swordfish.”

—Mary J. Yee (1897-1965), Luisa Ygnacio’s granddaughter and the last speaker of Barbareno Chumash

John P. Harrington accompanied by two Barbareno Chumash consultants at the site of their former adobe home, Indian Orchard, in Goleta. Mary J. Yee holding her son John Yee, Lucrecia Garcia, and Harrington holding Angela Yee. (1931)

Swordfish featured prominently in Chumash culture and were accorded the high status of being the marine equivalent to what humans were terrestrially. (Though it should, perhaps, be noted that in general there in fact was no single homogenous Chumash culture, but there existed a wide diversity of beliefs among the historic people commonly known under that name in contemporary times.)

One of the most important Chumash ceremonies involved the Swordfish Dance performed in regalia comprised of a headdress made of a swordfish skull and bill and a cape decorated with pieces of sparkling abalone shell. Sometimes the costume was made of feathers representing the swordfish.

Fernando Librado, a Chumash consultant to ethnographer John P. Harrington, described the performance of the Swordfish Dancer:

“During the dance the performer whirled; his headdress feathers looked like a wheel as he spun around, first in one direction and then another, giving thanks. The feathers on his belt whirled also and looked like a stripe.”

Fernando Librado Kitsepawit (1839-1915)

An excerpt from the notes of David Banks Rogers, the first curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, describing in 1944 his find of a Chumash skeleton 18 years earlier that was dressed in the ceremonial regalia of a swordfish dancer:

(The site) is on the crest of an exposed headland over-looking the ocean about three miles west of the Goleta Slough … it bore abundant evidence of having been the site, at different periods, of the three successive cultures which have peopled our coast … and the most remarkable find at this site was made on May 28 (1926) … I encountered a skeleton in the embryonic position, resting on the left side … and everything which comprised this find … was encased in … mud. In spite of this fact it was very evident this was no ordinary burial, for a wide cape composed of symmetrically arranged bits of shell (Haliotis) which had each been carefully shaped and pierced for attachment extended from the side and back of the skull, over the shoulder, suggestive of the scale armor of ancient warriors …

Nor was this all of special interest which attached to this burial. A further removal of the mud … showed that the skull was enclosed in another skull, that of a swordfish, the beak of which extended upward from the forehead and as it lay, pointed due west, in the same general direction in which the heads of all the skeletons in this section had pointed …

Several days later, being somewhat dried, a large part of the adhering soil was carefully removed from the head portion, disclosing that it was of even greater interest than its first appearance indicated.

… the outstanding features of this burial were the appurtenances that first wakened in me the deep interest in it, the armor-like cape composed of bits of shell and as of now, cleared of soil, displaying their sparkling iridescent surfaces turned out, and this creation in turn seemingly having been attached to the base of the skull of a swordfish, this skull having been divided longitudinally in the rear and opened so that it clasped each side of the back of the wearer’s head, the beak, some sixteen inches long, having projected obliquely upward and forward from above the forehead as the wearer stood upright. This beak when found was broken from the skull, and was also broken in one other place, not far from the tip…. but all the parts lay in sequence.

A remarkable feature of the swordfish skull was the eye orbit on the right side. The orbit had been greatly enlarged and was inlayed with shaped sections of shell, to form a most striking ellipse-shaped, iridescent ornament of the side of the wearer’s head. The center of this ellipse was a well-worked, plain ellipse of mother-of-pearl set in asphalt. Radiating from this center was a mosaic of other pieces of mother-of-pearl, each shaped much as were those of the cape attached below them…

When I described this amazing attire to Tehachipi George, a Santa Barbara Canalino, third removed, he nodded knowingly and said it was the regular regalia of the ‘Swordfish Dancer’ who did the dance in honor of the swordfish who brought his people whale meat in plenty….

An excerpt from David Banks Rogers’, “Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast” (1929), in which he describes his find of the swordfish dancer:

“I had, at intervals, found the beaks of swordfish near the heads of male skeletons. Finally, I had good fortune to find on in place, protruding above and forward from the face of the skeleton; above and below the skull lay a thick sheet of overlapping triangular ornaments, shaped from the iridescent inner layer of abalone shell. Each of these pieces was pierced with one or more small holes , as though for attachment to some fabric or dressed skin. It was the most convincing picture imaginable.

The body that had lain here had been dressed to symbolize the swordfish, the scaly sides of the head and neck and the formidable sword being very suggestive. I am inclined to believe that this individual had, in life, danced the character of the swordfish, and, in death, had been put away in his ceremonial paraphernalia.

Traditions persist among the surviving remnants of kindred people, that the Canalino held this combative fish in great veneration, because it drove ashore or killed the whales that contributed so largely to the food supply of this people. It is probable that, in our dancer, we have an individual who had done homage to the benefactor of his people.”

At least three different Chumash rock art sites feature swordfish pictographs with numerous other locations containing more abstract motifs which may be representative of the great billed fish.

Taken together, the dance and art reflect the significant role swordfish played in the maritime culture’s rituals, aside from serving as food and raw materials for the crafting of numerous utilitarian goods such as cups made from vertebra.

The swordfish depicted as negative space.

Swordfish Cave is located in the vicinity of Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, a geographical location held sacred by many Chumash people past and present as the historic site of a shrine to the dead and a point through which the deceased pass on to the afterworld. (However, in the interest in being as accurate and true to the Chumash people as possible, it should perhaps be noted that Point Conception is often erroneously labeled decisively as the so-called “Western Gate” in traditional Chumash lore. While there is a factual basis to this idea surrounding Point Conception, and it stems from genuine Chumash belief among some, the term “Western Gate” is a manufactured label that was popularized in the late twentieth century. The matter is often oversimplified and it’s incorrectly suggested if not stated positively that the point was the only such site as believed by all Chumash people, which, based on the notes of John P. Harrington, was clearly not the case.)

The following text is taken verbatim from a reader board posted at Swordfish Cave:

“Human occupation at Swordfish Cave  began 3,500 years ago, shortly after the cave formed and when the bedrock floor was still exposed. From that time until about 2,700 years ago, the ancestral Chumash periodically used the cave as a campsite while hunting and gathering. Small mammals such as cottontail rabbits and ground squirrels were an important source of food. Early cave occupants created a bedrock mortar in the cave floor for grinding plant foods—the mortar is currently visible in the cave floor.

Petroglyphs (carvings in the rocks) were created during these occupations between 3,500 and 2,700 years ago, and it is likely that some pictographs (paintings) were also created during that period. Swordfish Cave contains the earliest known rock art along California’s Central Coast.

The ancestral Chumash society changed around 2,700 years ago. A religious system in which religious specialists (shamans) were distinguished from political leaders was instituted. Swordfish Cave was not used as a campsite for the next 2,500 years, as it was apparently reserved for ceremonial and religious purposes. Petroglyphs were not created during this period, although it is possible that pictographs were.

Mission la Purisima Conception was established in Lompoc in 1787, dramatically changing the Chumash lifeways. Nearly the entire local Chumash population was under control of the mission, but missionaries were unable to feed the Chumash neophytes year-round. Consequently, they periodically turned to hunting and gathering. Swordfish Cave was used as a campsite for the last time between A.D. 1787 and 1804, when some Chumash people reverted to a lifestyle similar to that between 3,500 and 2,700 years ago. This time, however, cave residents were eating larger animals, including cattle.

The prehistoric artwork at Swordfish Cave is diverse. Petroglyphs include horizontal and vertical incised lines in the cave walls; incised lines are even evident in the bedrock floor. Small drilled holes are also evident, typically in clusters. The larger holes around the mouth of the cave were created naturally, but some of these have been enhanced with paint. Pictographs include painted lines as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, including a realistic rendition of a Swordfish. (Text by Clayton G. Lebow.)”

Swordfish Cave

Petroglyphs and/or incised rock.

Reference:

“The Chumash and the Swordfish,” Davenport, Demorest; Johnson, John R.; Timbrook, Jan, Antiquity 67: 257-72 (1993).

“Point Conception and the Chumash Land of the Dead: Revisions from Harrington’s Notes,” Haley, Brian D.; Wilcoxon, Larry R., Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology
Vol. 2 1 , No. 2, pp. 21 3-235 (1 999).

A drop of rainwater suspended in a spider web stuck to the underside of a boulder.

Prior to the recent few downpours last month in late February and early this March, it hadn’t rained in a long time. Just a smattering of precipitation had fallen here or there over the many months, but hardly enough to wet the ground in most places and everything was so dry from the ongoing drought that a day or so later, with a little sun and a light breeze, there was hardly a trace of moisture left.

Before February, as per the County’s official measure, it had been over a year since it had rained more than a single inch during the course of a day. I had started thinking it may become the season I remember ever after as the winter it didn’t rain.

Then it finally did rain: 2.47 inches on February 27th, 2.60 inches on the 28th, 1.16 inches on March 1st and 2.00 inches on the 2nd. The precipitation that fell during those several days amounted to almost half the total rainfall of the previous season.

Last season’s rainfall county-wide measured in at 46 percent of normal. With most of the wettest part of this season past the tally stands at just 43 percent of normal. Those recent four days of rain very well may end up being the vast overwhelming majority of all precipitation for the entire year! (As an aside, apart from the lack of rain, this winter in Santa Barbara has also been the warmest in five years according to University of California, Davis.)

A rain beetle (Pleocoma spp.).

“By tying its mating cycle to that of the rain, this beetle can remain underground for long periods of time in case of drought.”

Joan Easton Lentz, A Naturalist’s Guide to the Santa Barbara Region (2013)

Rain beetle larvae live underground for ten or more years before finally emerging as mature adults to mate. Male beetles fly low over the land, often while it’s raining, in search of females. As fancy looking as their finely, evolutionarily tailored body appears, once they emerge from the ground as an adult they never eat, as their mouthparts are not functional and they have no developed digestive system.

A decade of burrowing around as a grub underground eating roots, much to the frustration of fruit tree growers, only to emerge into the open air just long enough to get some and then die. The life of a bug.

I always wish I could get inside bugs and drive or fly them around like a big truck or an aircraft, like they had an air conditioned cab or a cockpit with plush captain’s chairs. By the looks of a rain beetle, I bet I could have some serious fun cruising around in them like Spaceman Spiff.

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