“. . . the mouthwatering taste of SPAM^® Classic seasoned with black pepper. It’s a delicious dream come true.”

In a previous entry I dubbed the Santa Barbara County original, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, “a nutritionist’s nightmare, a glutton’s godsend.” Well, folks, I venture to say we have a new-found contender in the arena of arterial abuse deserving of its own exclusive post. Glorious, of so ever glorious, SPAM!

Prior to a recent backpacking trip into the Sespe Wilderness, I cannot recall if I ever tasted of the canned meat product that has become the subject of so many pop culture wisecracks. Now that I have, I will never forget that first experience.

When I eased my sore muscles down to sit in camp beneath the palm trees after a hard day’s 16 mile hike, and I caught a whiff of black pepper seasoned SPAM being pan-fried, it was indeed a dream come true. To quote, once more, Homer Simpson, “Really, the only word for it is . . .(some guttural, saliva bubbling phonetical utterance.)” I carried nothing in my pack that could even remotely contend with it.

The sizzle and pop of 15 juicy grams of highly salted fat per serving emanating from the darkness was enough in itself to induce an unusual eagerness to sample the pink gelatinous fare Craig was frying. Though I feigned only slight interest, being that I was not the one that lugged in the heavy tinned foodstuff.

In a realm wherein boiling water serves as the key to nearly every meal, and how good could anything possibly be that requires hot water to rehydrate it, to smell fried black pepper seasoned SPAM was akin to taunting a starving hyena with fresh meat. My salivary glands constricted and the drool did flow.

Sespe Wilderness, Los Padres National Forest. Does that v-slot canyon not beckon all backcountry bush crawlers?

I mentioned this SPAM-errific experience to a Hawaiian born friend. In Hawaii, SPAM became somewhat of a cultural cornerstone after WWII. SPAM musubi can be found in convenience stores like other fast food items such as those hotdogs that roll endlessly around on heated metal cylinders.

My friend, the frontman for a popular reggae band heard on the radio, let it be known that he and his bandmates added a rider to their contract that included the requirement that SPAM be a staple food item when they tour. They hooked their bus driver on it like a drug and he came to expect, if not demand, a hot SPAM panini whenever he worked. My friend advised me that to do it right, one must fry it until it nearly blackens, so it gets a spotty dark brown crust, which is precisely how Craig served it.

I can’t say that I’m hooked to the point that I’ll be eating SPAM when in the comforts of home or demand a contract ensuring I receive regular servings, but I have no doubt I’ll be packing it along the next time I hit the trail for an overnighter. Who needs refrigerated filet mignon for $25 a pound when you can pack shelf-stable SPAM for $3.99? And never mind the price, it’s the taste alone that makes it the stuff of dreams. Of course, it helps to be famished and far from the convenience of a fully stocked kitchen.

The only remaining question now is whether I dare proceed to the next obvious step, which is dipping fried SPAM in Ranch Dressing. Yet, perhaps the better query is whether or not I have the will power for sake of my health to ignore the thought and refuse the temptation.

Looking up Hot Springs Canyon at San Rafael Peak in the Sespe Wilderness.

A blue-belly lizard on a fallen log atop Pine Mountain in the Sespe Wilderness.

Blue-belly lizards always interested me as a boy. Sort of like a cat attracted to movement, they naturally captured my attention when they scurried around on boulders in creeks or my backyard fence.

Then my dad taught me how to fashion a lasso from the pliable flower stalk of green wild oats. I could use the grassy length of plant to get close enough to catch the otherwise uncatchable speedy reptiles by slipping the noose over their head, which pulled tight when they darted away.

Another fascinating lesson came when I learned to put a blue-belly to “sleep” by slowly turning it on its back and gently stroking its belly. It’s small experiences like that, I suppose, which helped instill in me an interest in the natural world as I grew up, and made me to understand that moments of wonder and amusement could be found in the smallest of things.

A blue-belly hiding out in a tiny cave along the hike to Arrowhead Spring in the Los Padres National Forest.

In a previous post, Ticks, Lizards and Lyme Disease, I mentioned a fascinating biological connection between blue-belly lizards and a decrease of the debilitating Lyme disease found in California. Another notable characteristic of blue-belly lizards is their ability to change color.

Contrary to misinformation found on the Internet, however, these lizards do not change color for defense purposes as a means of subterfuge, but do so to help thermoregulate. Blue-bellies have a third eye of sorts called a parietal eye, which is seen as a dot on the large scale found behind their two eyes. It communicates with their brain based on a measurement of ambient sunlight to determine, depending on their need to warm or cool themselves, how dark or light their skin tone should be, which increases or decreases, respectively, the amount of heat they absorb from the sun.

Sometimes the small and seemingly ordinary things have interesting stories to tell for those willing to take the time to listen.

Reference:

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

Fossilized oak leaf found along the Sespe Trail. Note the veins and serrated edges.

A Late, Hot Start

I didn’t start walking from Piedra Blanca Trailhead until a few ticks before ten in the morning, at least four hours later than I had hoped to begin my hike. Everybody else had long since hit the trail. I was the lone straggler.

With about 16 miles to hike, struggling with the weight of an overloaded pack beneath the unpleasant Sespe sun, which at times makes a person feel like an ant being scorched under a magnifying glass by some malicious giant in the sky, I was concerned about making Sespe Hot Springs before sundown. I had no doubt that I’d make it in a day, but thought I may have to finish by headlamp.

Normally such a prospect would be no cause for concern, in fact it would add a welcome tinge of adventure to the day. Stillman and I had hiked this trail starting at four o’clock in the morning, walking for hours in darkness, and that made for a great experience, a blazing white slivered moon and glittering amber-hued Venus low and large in the sky. (Sespe Creek: Piedra Blanca to Devil’s Gate)

But never having hiked up to the hot springs from Sespe River, I was not relishing the thought of finding my way for the first time up an unknown canyon in the dark even if the trail was well traveled.

Sespe River or is it a creek? There seems to be some confusion, but if the Santa Ynez can rightly be labeled a river than so too should the Sespe for it is, when flowing, long, powerful, deep and dangerous.

Long segments of the Sespe River Trail wind alongside the watercourse nearly entirely devoid of shade. Longer stretches, that is, than one might prefer with no shadows sufficiently large enough to provide respite from the blistering solar radiance. Winter here can feel like summer. While it may be chilly in what shade may be found, hiking the exposed trail on a cloudless day can be unpleasantly hot. In summertime it can be downright brutal.

I continually passed deep, cold emerald pools because I hadn’t sufficient time to stop for a swim. It was tough to disregard the growing urge to leap in the water. But if I was to meet up with the others, among whom were Craig R. Carey.net, EM Walker.net, VC Canyoneering.com, I had to keep marching.

Pools of the Sespe sit like oases amid a parched land of searing heat.

At one turn in the river I stood on the trail peering down at the shimmering water as sweat trickled down my steamy hot face, my feet seemingly aflame from the earth’s radiant heat and the friction from constant walking. The lure of the chilly liquid, and urge for cold refreshment, was finally too irresistible to deny any longer.

I plodded down a path across a grassy flat, and through the dappled light cast by old cottonwood trees along the river bank, searching for an entry point into a pool, somewhere I could leap in and instantly be enveloped in the running river of rain. I found only shallow riffling flats, nothing colored in that inviting hue of clear green characteristic of calm, deep pools.

I turned and looked back at the trail climbing away from the river up the west facing, rocky, fully exposed slope baking in the late afternoon sun, cursing myself for foolishly wasting precious time and energy. I walked by prime, deep pools all day, then was lured down to the waterline along a section of the river I knew was not good for swimming.

Frustrated, huffing through the sand and brush, I made my way back to the hard packed trail, hotter and thirstier than I was thirty minutes earlier, accomplishing the exact opposite of my intention. For some reason I kept expecting to walk up on a rattlesnake, something to add further insult to my foul mood, but thankfully a serpent never showed.

Onward forth I stomped.

Clean up crew. One guy’s fatality is another dude’s feast.

Looking up Hot Springs Canyon at San Rafael Peak. That west flank looks mighty appetizing, though naturally it hides a number of obstacles, perhaps impassable, from brush to loose rocky slopes and unseen steep creases in the mountainside. But one never knows how something tastes just sitting around looking at the menu, you must order and have a sample.

David Stillman scrambling up familiar territory, through the gullet of Fossil Falls and over the slick, water polished basalt.

Standing in the arid Owens Valley of California, beside an ancient dry riverbed that can barely be discerned amid cragged lava flows and sandy flats, I strain my imaginative powers trying to picture a lush pluvial environment, wherein tree-lined streams lead down from the distant, icy Sierran peaks poking into the sky and feed a powerful, fast-flowing river.

The sign before me describes the richness of a riparian landscape that is the opposite of what exists around me. Men, women and children, I read, carry on life’s daily activities enjoying the natural wealth of a bountiful land of verdure and abundant animal life. I look away from the sign and see heat waves, barren mountain slopes, fields of dark volcanic rock and much bare dirt and sediment with only a meager speckling of native plants that can barely be called scrub brush. The environment here has radically changed since the times thousands of years ago when humans lived along the shores of this now non existent river.

Looking up the riverbed toward upper Fossil Falls.

Looking over the precipice of lower Fossil Falls.

Lower Fossil Falls

Looking up the ancient Owens River toward the falls.

I’m at Fossil Falls, a pair of ancient waterfalls that have not flowed for at least 10,000 years. When lava oozed across the drainage channel the glacial Owens River carved its way through the volcanic rock creating a series of large falls. The basalt is slick and glassy, having been polished by the heavy sediment load carried by the turbulent prehistoric river. Rocks and boulders caught in vortices bored pits and deep round holes into the volcanic rock leaving behind a lithic sort of Swiss cheese formation, some holes large enough to crawl into.

Today there remains an extraordinary landscape of naturally sculpted, stark beauty. The traces of prehistoric humanity can still be seen in the form of millstone mortars, petroglyphs and even the rock rings that once served as foundations for dwellings. Obsidian flakes cast off from the crafting of tools are scattered all over the ground.

The following text is taken from the Bureau of Land Management:

AREA DESCRIPTION: Fed by the rains and snows of the last Ice Age, the Owens River once flowed from Owens Lake down through this narrow valley between the Coso and Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges. Several times during the last 100,000 years, the discharge from the Owens River has been great enough to form a vast interconnected system of lakes in what are now the arid basins of the Mojave Desert.

The rugged and primitive features of Fossil Falls are the product of volcanic activity. As recent as 20,000 years ago, volcanic eruptions poured lava into the Owens River channel. The erosional forces of the Owens River acted upon this volcanic rock, forming the polished and sculpted features that now can be seen at Fossil Falls.

EARLY CULTURE: Some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago the first human beings camped along the ancient rivers and lakes of the Mojave Desert. These prehistoric people harvested lakeshore resources and hunted large animals.

By 6000 BC, extreme aridity caused the last of these ancient rivers and lakes (including the Owens River) to disappear. The grasslands, marshes, and large mammals that had once flanked these lakes vanished. Prehistoric human populations may have partially abandoned low-lying desert areas in search of food and water in upland mountains areas.

WAY OF LIFE: Around 4000 BC, climatic conditions again shifted from the extreme aridity of the preceding period to the relatively moderate conditions that exist today. A cultural pattern was established that emphasized the use of a wide variety of desert plant foods that included both small and large mammals, reptiles, insects and waterfowl as well.

With only slight adjustments such as the additions of pottery and the bow and arrow, this way of life was still being practiced by the Little Lake Shoshone Indians at the time of the first European explorations of the Mojave Desert. Many of the archaeological sites at Fossil Falls are dated between 4000 BC and European contact in the 19th century.

Petroglyph panel on rock face at center frame.

Reference:

Geology Underfoot In Death Valley and Owens Valley, Robert Phillip Sharp, Allen F. Glazner (1997)

Immediately upon reaching the river we turned down the road which followed its shores through a wide farming valley toward the ocean. We saw a few hopeful anglers along the riverbank but went on to the beach, obsessed with the desire of steelhead coming in from the sea. A railroad trestle spanned a wide tidal lagoon from which the current slipped in a wide shallow channel down across the sand and into the breakers.

The tide was high, and we could occasionally see a great fish tossed up on the crest of the giant combers to be thrown up on the sand, where it struggled nobly through the receding waters to reach the thin apron of fresh water that indicated so surely that nature’s guidance had been true. The unfathomable mystery of it all was overpowering. I was enthralled, steelhead angler for life.

A few hopeful anglers and others with deadly grabhooks were trying for the struggling fish in the shallow water as they forged up toward the lagoon, and I turned away in disgust. So noble a fish deserves at least a chance to regain strength in the lagoon above and to be angled for by sportsman methods when it again can be a worthy antagonist and have a fair chance to pit its great strength and speed against light tackle. Happily, in later years fishing was prohibited in this shallow outlet of the river.

Standing midstream in the Santa Ynez River, a watercourse that flows only intermittently yet was exceptional habitat for huge runs of oceangoing rainbow trout.

Far back up the river and by now late in the afternoon, I stopped and assembled my tackle. There was no possibility of using the fly in the turbid water, so I reluctantly impaled a bait of bottled salmon roe on a No. 6 hook with two buckshot for weight to carry it down toward the bottom. A fairly stiffish fly rod of nine feet seemed to promise a good fight were a steelhead hooked and, at least, was the only possible concession to my preference in tackle and methods.

Just where to try for these great fish in those long opaque pools and churning riffles? This was surely a guessing game for the uninitiated. I could not know how far upstream the fish might have progressed, whether they traveled steadily or stopped to rest at favorable spots.

But the trout fisherman does not forget early training or the hard-earned knowledge of general stream craft. So I stopped at a long narrow run of deep water that was fed through a churning white-water chute. Those black swirls and the backwash looked decidedly fishy with indications of a deep pocket just out of the main current.

A placid length of the Santa Ynez River.

I placed my bait in a likely spot and after a few more casts felt a light nibble, as if a baby six-incher were taking it. A too slow strike brought up my bare hook. This was uninteresting, for even fair-sized rainbows of my experience had been always voraciously violent on the strike. So I tried again, and again came that gentle tug and my answering twitch of the rod tip. Instantly my rod arched sharply, and I was fast to a veritable submarine of a fish, my first steelhead!

At once this warrior shot far down the current, boring and charging with tremendous power. A great deal of line had melted from my large reel, which fortunately I had provided with ample extra backing line else this, my first great steelhead, would already have been gone.

But the pressure of the whipping rod at last slowed the fish, and it came out of the water in a tremendous flurry of spray to fall back with a mighty splash. My heart must of been racing, and I know my hands now trembled acutely as I manipulated rod and reel. Here, you see, in this little river of the farmlands fought the largest trout I had ever hooked.

Morning serenity on the river.

My fish now charged back upstream, worked deep, surged under a mass of streamside drift—and was gone! Not much chance for another here, it seemed, but I lighted my pipe for solace and with renewed optimism tried again. And in that same magic, whirling series of eddies within a few minutes I was fast to another great steelhead.

This one ran straight down the river, as the other had done, placing a tremendous strain on my sharply arched fly rod, and so excited was I by now that I did not know whether to try and snub that wild battler or just let him go and try and keep up. Never in a fairly wide experience with fresh-water rainbows had I experienced such wonderful speed and power in a hooked fish.

I wondered, while stumbling down along the littered shore, if my ten-pound leader was strong enough, if that little No. 6 hook could have bitten deep enough to hold this monster fish.

Mirror images on a deep pool along the Santa Ynez River.

I gradually gained some line at last by simply outrunning my steelhead, then it turned back upstream, necessitating speedy cranking of the fly reel, which retrieves line slowly at best. And now back at the head of the pool we fought the battle to a finish.

My fish was slowly coming in. Gently I submerged my large lake net in the water and slowly—oh, so slowly and carefully—drew my prize over it.

Back at the car in the gloom of the winter evening I weighed my beautiful fish, a silver-sided female with steel blue back which registered just 9 1/2 pounds. And my long suffering wife, who, I suspected, had had little faith in my winter fishing before, was properly congratulatory.

Related Posts:

Native Steelhead of Yore on the Santa Ynez River

Salmon Choking the Santa Ynez (1896)

Santa Barbara County Trout

The entrance into the Burro Schmidt Tunnel.

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?”

-Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851)

Along US-395 a small unremarkable wooden sign informs drivers that yonder in the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave Desert can be found the “Burro Schmidt Tunnel.” And so we ventured.

Down a long winding, bumpy, whoop-riddled dirt road Stillman manned the helm of the “Perseverance,” as we followed uncertainly the poorly signed route, passing OHVs and Kalashnikovs, until we arrived at a rectangular shored, blackened opening leading into a nondescript hillside. There before us was a tunnel hand dug over the course of more than three decades through some 2500 feet of steely granite by William Henry “Burro” Schmidt.

The following, as written by David Stillman and shared here by permission, is the Ahabian story of an inexorable, madly obsessed man hellbent on completing the herculean task he set for himself, if for no other reason than to merely achieve his goal.

Looking down the Burro Schmidt Tunnel.

Burro Schmidt, the “Human Mole”

The desert breeds it’s own oddities, and the people who left them. Enter William Henry “Burro” Schmidt.

Schmidt was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The year was 1871, and as he grew into a frail and small statured man, six of his brothers and sisters succumbed to tuberculosis. Fearing the same fate, Schmidt left for the hot, dry environs of California, arriving in 1894 at the age of twenty three.

He prospected in the mountains of Kern County, eventually filing claims in the desolate El Paso Mountains northeast of Mojave, CA. Here he set about his life’s work, and here Schmidt’s story gets incredibly weird.

Schmidt started mining, boring horizontally into a dirt capped mountain deep in the middle of egypt (a 4,400′ elevation mound in the El Pasos). In short order he encountered the solid bedrock under the mountain, bullet proof grey Kern granite. He must have encountered a couple veins of gold early on, or at least produced ore that assayed well because he kept at it, tunneling deeper into the mountain.

“Burro” Schmidt beside his humble abode a short distance from his tunnel.

But Schmidt had a problem, he didn’t have a way to get his ore to the nearest smelters. At that time there were no roads by which he could transport the ore to Mojave or Garlock (20 miles away) where his ore could be processed, and the only route out of the mountains traveled through a treacherous canyon.

At this point Schmidt had few options. He had ore with gold in it, but no way to turn that into money. In this light one might understand how these circumstances could have led Schmidt to do what came next. The year was 1906.

At some point, presumably after frustrations with transporting his ore, Schmidt declared that he would continue tunneling straight through the mountain until he reached the other side. In this way he would devise his own bypass to the problem. So that’s what he did.

Schmidt must have been a site to behold. He lived alone but for the company of two burros. He recycled the tins from his provisions to resole his shoes. His clothes were patched with burlap sacks. His cabin was a one room shanty with two windows, a door, and a secondhand hand wood burner which served to heat both the room and his food.

The shack, which still exists, was insulated on the inside with old newspapers, magazines, cardboard from foodstuffs, and holiday cards, all of which were tacked to the walls and ceiling to keep the heat in and the wind out. Most of these publications still remain in situ, many of which date back to the Great Depression.

Schmidt had no formal training in either prospecting or mine construction. He didn’t use any of the standard mining tools of the day, which would have included compressed air drills and jacks. Instead, he used only a pick, a shovel, a 4 pound hammer and a hand drill. On granite. Which is just ridiculous.

Later, after the mine and tunnel were underway, he began to use dynamite, again without a lick of experience or training. He came to the conclusion that short fuses save money, and would run out of the mine like the devil rode his heels every time he touched one off. On multiple occasions he showed up at neighboring mine camps injured, indicating he’d either cut the fuse too short or hadn’t run fast enough; probably both.

Schmidt was so frugal (a synonym for “broke”) that when the cost of kerosine for his single lantern rose, he would continue his work using only one two-cent candle per day. He survived numerous cave-ins during the excavation of his tunnel. Fortunately the shaft ran through solid granite because all indications are that he was too cheap to have purchased the timbers to properly shore up a less stable tunnel. He transported his ore out of the tunnel on his back before getting a wheelbarrow. Eventually he built a rail track and obtained a single ore cart.

In the 1920s a road was constructed through the nearby Last Chance Canyon which allowed an easy, downhill route into the desert. At last Burro Schmidt could safely transport the fruits of his labors. Here’s where reality becomes weirder than fiction. Schmidt, in his fifties by this time, and having tested his luck well beyond reasonable limits, should have settled down and started mining like it ought to be done. Nope. What makes Schmidt so perplexing as a human, and legendary in his time, is that he just continued doing what he’d decided he was going to do, digging his tunnel. His is an example where reasoned, rational intent does not conform to logic. Crazy as a soup sandwich.

Schmidt at work, the frail flesh of humanity versus the bullet proof granite of eternal creation. Note that he is not even wearing gloves.

By the time Schmidt saw daylight at the opposite end of his tunnel he was 67 years old. The year was 1938, and he had worked on his tunnel for 32 years. The tunnel was nearly 2,500 feet in length and he had removed roughly 5,800 tons of granite. As for the tunnel, he never did use it to move ore to Mojave or anywhere else, and upon it’s completion he sold the tunnel to another miner, Mike Lee, and moved elsewhere in the El Pasos.

William Henry “Burro” Schmidt died in 1954 at the age of 83 and is buried nearby in the desert town of Johannesburg. He was quoted as saying, “I never made a damn thing out of it.” In a monetary sense that statement may be true, but the irony is that his tunnel, bored through solid granite, will probably outlast many of the other monuments men have created for themselves. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not named Schmidt “the Human Mole,” and stated of Schmidt’s tunnel that it was “the greatest one-man mining achievement in history.”

 * * * * *

Schmidt’s shanty.

Re-purposed siding made from tin containers, as similarly found on the historic homes of Bodie (Seen on this blog: Bodie, California Ghost Town).

Burro Schmidt’s one-room shanty remains standing a short distance from his tunnel. It is a rare time capsule of American history largely preserved as it was some 80 years ago thanks to desert conditions and the caring stewardship of the late Evelyn “Tonie” Seger, who with her husband purchased the site in 1963. Following Mrs. Seger’s death in 2003, however, the cabin has been neglected and ravaged by vandalism.

Inside Schmidt’s place is an impressive, veritable museum of Depression Era Americana in the form of newspapers, magazines, holiday cards and food cartons and labels dating from the 1920s and 1930s, which he had carefully nailed to the walls and ceiling as makeshift insulation.

Interestingly, some of the art found on these various labels tacked to the walls is the work of the West Coast printing titan of the era, the Schmidt Lithography Company of San Francisco, no apparent relation to Burro Schmidt.

“The art and business of printing in the San Francisco Bay Area are significant in the history of printing in the United States and have been an integral part of the cultural development of California.”

—A Life In Printing: An Oral History, Ruth Teiser and Lawton Kennedy (2012)

“Schmidt Lithography Co. was once the largest printing company on the West Coast.”

—The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco

Note the National Recovery Administration (NRA) logo on this issue of Redbook magazine, which would mean the magazine dates from sometime between 1933, when the National Industrial Recovery Act was passed, and 1935, when it was, along with its ancillary policies and bureaucracies like the NRA, unanimously ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The NRA logo also notable on each of these issues of The Saturday Evening Post

Newspaper from 1936

July 18, 1931

Nothing like a Lucky straight to ease throat strain! Read the text: “Claudette Colbert tells how the throat-strain of emotional acting led her to Luckies.”

The interior of Burro Schmidt cabin thoroughly bespeckled with years of magazine and food labels. I’d venture to bet it actually looked fairly artful in its prime for what it was.

A view of the ridgeline running down from Owens Peak, which was named by Major General John C. Fremont after Richard Owens, a captain who served in his California Battalion during the Mexican-American War.

During the war Fremont captured the city of Santa Barbara in 1846 after a treacherous night-time crossing over the Santa Ynez Mountains in a rainstorm. Today there is a public campground adjacent the Santa Ynez River named in Fremont’s honor and hikers can follow Fremont Ridge Trail which follows the battalion commander’s historic route over the mountains. (Sierra Club; Walker A. Tompkins, Santa Barbara, Past and Present. [1975])

We put in a cursory effort to try and locate Native American rock art in Indian Wells Canyon, but came up empty, which isn’t a hard achievement to attain when looking for small stains of paint hidden along a monstrous mountainside.

We were rewarded, however, with awesome views of the Sierran landscape. Leaving the stark flatness of Mojave Desert, we climbed by four wheels up the long canyon ’til we reached high slopes covered in knobby granite and conifers and accented with the color of spring wildflowers.

Perhaps a few images may inspire readers to get out and explore places they’ve never seen, because you just never know what you may find even if you don’t find what you were looking for.

This rock art panel painted on granite sits in a shallow canyon along the foothills of a mountain range on the edge of California’s Mojave Desert. More art adorns the underside of a natural shelter formed by the boulders, but has been nearly entirely erased by the elements. A large millstone with numerous mortars lays at the foot of the painted rock and an adjacent boulder is also painted.

The pictographs are found on the shaded face of the boulder.

I always marvel at deep mortars bored into granite, an exceedingly hard stone. It reflects many long hours of use. Note the patina surrounding the work surface of the stone compared to the rougher edges of the boulder, which also reflects long use of the site. How long might it take to polish granite like that from mere contact with the hands, feet and rumps of humans using the  mortars?

Bare bunned at Teardrop.

Teardrop was named for its shape. It’s a small swimming hole, a large bathtub, bored out of sandstone bedrock visually and audibly accented by a waterfall dropping into its emerald water. Like many swimming holes, its depth fluctuates through the years depending on how heavily it rains and if winter storms are strong enough to flush the pool of rocks or too weak and so it fills with sediment. Located on a steep slope of exposed bedrock, which provides plenty of room to lay around basking in the afternoon sun, it’s unshaded by forest canopy throughout the hottest part of the day. (Teardrop is located on private property that is off-limits to the general public without permission from Mr. A.)

The waterfall into Tear Drop.

I lived for a time as a kid not much more than a stone’s throw up the canyon from Teardrop on the old Whitaker property in a Six Pac camper shell with my mom. As one might imagine, it was a humble, nothing fancy time of scant funds and some hardship. I woke more than once in the night to the sound of my mom weeping in the darkness, probably concerned about how to make ends meet and how little she was able to provide for her young son. Yet, as a kid who had few expectations or assumptions about how things should be I didn’t seem to lack much.

There was only one other kid around of my age, an often barefooted boy named Eric who lived with his hippie mom, “Rainbow,” and little sister, Aurora, in a trailer on the other side of a small sloping potrero. He once came to our house wearing nothing but a large bath towel because he apparently had no other clothes.

I didn’t much get along with him, however, and so I spent many hours alone exploring the Los Padres National Forest right outside our aluminum shelled camper door. There was little space inside our “home” for anything other than eating a meal or sleeping so I lived outdoors for the most part during daylight hours.

The point is not to recount some sob story or to say I had it particularly rough, many others had it way worse, but that in such lean times I learned to appreciate the subtle beauty and value of my surroundings, the natural wealth which too often seems to be overlooked by most people.

In combining my imagination with nature the possibilities for fun seemed limitless. I spent a lot of time outside in the mountains discovering in the forest ways to keep me occupied. It was a formative time that helped foster an interest in and appreciation for the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Looking down the spillway from Teardrop pool.

Looking up the spillway toward Teardrop.

Looking up from the next pool down, the top of Teardrop waterfall barely visible.

Related Post:

Finding Frontier in the Forest Conquered

A California stream orchid growing beneath a large boulder beside a seep in an otherwise dry creek feeding into a seasonal tributary of the Santa Ynez River.

I think that all but the keenest, most experienced observers would never suspect there is flowing water up this dry wash when looking at it from the flats below. The arroyo, however, turns into a small, bouldery creek bed that cuts a deep gash into the mountainside, but it’s hidden from plain sight until one gets right up to it. And through a short section of the miniature canyon, even in this year of record drought, water flows.

The creek bed is shaded through midday in the dappled light of a sparse cover of oak and sycamore trees, a mountainside casting a shadow over it through early morning and a massive outcrop shading the area by late afternoon.

Here in this unlikely moist nook, filled with a melange of scents comprised of the sweetness of trickling clear water, the earthy fragrance of wet sediment, and spiked with effluvial hints of decomposing organic matter, a place surrounded by parched south and west facing chaparral-covered hills that are blistering hot in summer months, California stream orchids thrive in abundance.

A rather large orchid yet to bloom.

I recall the first time I saw this type of orchid in the wild, which is notable, for no other first experience with a native wildflower sticks out so prominently in my mind. I was about 10 or 11 years old exploring the forest with a friend and we found a small clump growing along Mono Creek, just below the campground and debris dam.

Mono Jungle

I was surprised to find orchids growing in this semi-arid region of south-central California, though this portion of Mono Creek tends to be exceptionally lush relative its upper reaches and other creeks in general. Nonetheless, the orchids seemed out of place even in the “Mono Jungle.”

I didn’t actually know for sure that they were orchids, but I knew enough to recognize that they certainly resembled orchids, and so that’s what we called them. Always curious, I touched one of the blooms and it moved, under its own power, which made the plant all the more fascinating.

California stream orchids are thigmonastic, meaning that they respond when touched. They move the lower portion of their blooms, presumably as a means to better spread pollen to pollinators that come in contact with their flowers. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as “chatterbox orchids,” for their nastic motions call to mind the jaw movement of a talking person.

Looking down the dry creek below the seep where the orchids grow.

A stand of charred oak trees on an elevated flat overlooking the Santa Ynez River. The White wildfire was touched off by careless recreationists barbequing at White Rock Day Use Area in May 2013.

A thick and lumpy Pacific marine layer was flowing up the Santa Ynez River valley and a cool wind buffeted the crests of ridges. The late afternoon low cloud cover added a degree of dark character and attitude to the spring day giving the land a muffled, closed in feel.

I wandered aimlessly around the odoriferous burnt forest. It’s a canyon I’ve hiked through many times, but now I could see the lay of the land like never before, stripped naked and devoid of vegetative cover. Every fold and crease was visible.

I wondered what I might find. I was sure I’d see vintage beer cans long ago tossed aside by littering lushes and buried beneath the now nonexistent leaf mulch. The steel and aluminum variety that required a churchkey to open by punching holes into the can.

Apart from whatever other trinkets I might see, I thought I might perhaps, by the sheer luck of slim chance, stumble across some treasure, something historical from the Spanish colonial or American postcolonial period or perhaps even prehistoric artifacts, like a Chumash arrowhead, a spear point or a bowl. It wouldn’t be the first time, though it’s not a habit of mine to plunder or intentionally partake in such searches. All I found was a rusty horseshoe that now adorns the mid-point of the exterior wall above our garage door.

I climbed a shaley ridgeline to reach an elevated flat forested by a stand of coast live oaks overlooking the Santa Ynez River. I wandered a curvilinear course through the blackened trees inspecting the regrowth, which consisted in part of numerous wildflowers that are particularly adept at taking advantage of the slower reseeding of other wild weeds, which eventually smother or depress the delicate more attractive floral species.

I came to one particular oak that had had its core entirely burned out and stood twisted up into the air from the barren earth like some wicked piece of sculpted black art, as if it had been frozen still in the midst of a death throe as it was burned alive at the stake in some terrible form of sacrifice. It caught my attention enough that I walked over for a closer look.

Weirdo that I am, because, really, how many other people do this sort of thing. I felt compelled to smell its skeleton. I leaned slowly forward into its woody cavity and, with my nostrils inches away, took a sniff.

It was then, with my head inside the charcoal-colored wooden cavity traced with bits of ashy grey, that I noticed it was snapping, and crackling and popping, something like Rice Krispies cereal in a bowl of milk. It sounded like the smoldering coals of a campfire after the flames have died out. I had to touch it just to make sure it wasn’t still burning, though I knew that was silly. That’s how odd, and how similar to smoldering coals, it sounded.

As I walked on, so silent was the place beneath the muffling blanket of maritime fog, I could hear the myriad crackling of an entire blackened forest of oaks cracking in the moist breeze. I stopped and stood looking into the back-lit, black tree skeletons reaching into the grey sky like the gnarled and crooked arthritic fingers of an old man.

The noise did not seem to be the result of scorched, fire-stiffened branches being forcibly bent by the current of air flowing up the valley, as much as it was the moisture in the breath of air blowing against the charcoal in some way playing upon the desiccated carbonaceous wood.

Whatever the phenomenon at work, the faintly lit gloomy and grey late afternoon sky, and the crackling black and bare trees and largely achromatic environment I stood alone within in no way connoted springtime. It felt otherworldly. Like the setting in a mystical realm of some fantastic tale that was about to unfold before me. So far removed did it feel from the bright and cheery, and otherwise ordinary ambiance that that particular patch of land holds on a sunny blue skied day prior to the burn.

Devil’s Playground topside, Santa Ynez Mountains.

There are two worlds in Devil’s Playground. The topside and the underside.

The upper dimension is one of expansive sky, farsighted coastal views and the blinding sunlight and heat of a southward sloping mountainside facing the mirror-like Pacific Ocean.

The lower realm consists of the cool shadowy confines between and within the weathered stone. The massive caves and voids hollowed out of the sandstone by wind and rain and the cracks formed by the rise of the Santa Ynez Mountains and fracturing of massive bedrock plates.

The Slot is one remarkable geological feature of that subsurface realm, a some forty foot crack in the sandstone which a person can barely squeeze through in some sections.

Descending into the shady and shadowy underside of Devil’s Playground.

Mossy sandstone and dudelya succulents deep within the cracks.

The red arrow points into The Slot.

Looking down the pipe from the top end. Where’s Waldo?

The oak tree popping out above the rock, and Pacific Ocean in the distance.

The oak from below.

Looking back toward the oak from further down the increasingly narrow Slot.

The view overhead.

Shuffling through a tight spot in The Slot.

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Devil’s Playground, Santa Ynez Mountains

I was lounging around camp in midafternoon boiling the billy. Had me a relaxation station set up in the shade of a tree, an air mattress propped up against a boulder as a makeshift recliner, and a long view down the creek.

I had pulled my can of boiling water off the campfire and set it beside my lounge chair, and when I glanced up before sitting down, I caught sight of a black bear just before it passed behind a wall of bushes along the creek bank.

I was startled for a second. It was odd to unexpectedly see an animal of that size, a big black beast, so close to me. I’m not accustomed to seeing anything larger than deer when out in the forest around here. It’s not like Sequoia National Park or other places where bears are a daily sight.

I was all alone in that canyon, I thought, the biggest animal around, hadn’t seen anybody in two days. Then seemingly out of nowhere another large mammal suddenly pops into sight. And it was only a short stone’s throw from where I stood and coming directly toward my camp.

I bounded over to my backpack and ripped my camera from its pouch, but when I looked up the bear had already fled back across the creek. It was pushing through the brush and climbing over boulders moving up the slope out of the streambed. It paused briefly several times to glance back down at me as I watched it intently.

It’s only the second bear I’ve ever seen in the Los Padres National Forest. I saw one a couple of decades ago, but just a split second glimpse of its hind end as it charged into the chaparral, after having been surprised by me as I blasted down a dirt road on a motorcycle.

Nearly every time I go out for a hike I see bear sign. Bears seem to be everywhere all the time, judging by the number of footprints I see, but they’re sly and not commonly seen. On this day, however, a bear walked right up to my camp oblivious to my presence.

The upper Santa Ynez River valley.

Upper Santa Ynez River

Looking up lower Mono Creek near the Santa Ynez River confluence.

“During the month of November the trail in Little Caliente and Mono canyons was greatly improved.”

Los Angeles Herald (1899)

The Mono-Alamar Trail is a treasure hunt to hike for the uninitiated. Near constant searching, scanning the brush and ground, straining to see subtle clues and telltale signs that lead to the goods. It may well represent in microcosm much of the world of hiking in southern Los Padres National Forest.

I had little time to spare with nine miles to hike in late afternoon up the unkempt, poorly marked trail. The treasured outcome was actually arriving at camp before sunset.

A short distance from its beginning the trail fades into the poison oak understory of a coast live oak forest and there I stood once again, like last time, wondering where the path went and which way to go.

In a general sense I knew exactly where to go. I’ve been there before. I didn’t need the trail. I could’ve reached the campsite without it and I wanted to forget the damn thing. Not waste time searching for it.

The meadow at Mono Campground. I lost a toy cowboy rifle somewhere down there several decades ago, which for some reason still sticks out in my mind.

The intense mental effort required to search for and follow the trail for miles on end makes it seem like an irrational obsession at times. I feel like an unsuspecting character in an outdoor theater of the absurd compelled to stay on the trail whether it makes the hike easier or not.

I waste time and energy searching for the trail, wandering around in circles over here and over there, into the brush and back out, up the creek and back down.

Where is the damn thing? How can it just disappear? It’s clear as day here and then a few steps later, poof, it’s gone.

An adobe at Ogilvy Ranch along Mono Creek.

Another view of the adobe looking up Mono Creek canyon.

Late afternoon reflections on a clear water section of the creek.

I stand gazing over the land straining to recognize some trace of the trail’s presence cutting through the grass or bushes or across a patch of soil, but I’m also thinking that I could easily hike on without it. I could make a lot better time hiking without a trail than standing around looking for one.

Sometimes I’m standing around looking or walking back and forth searching for the trail in the midst of a thirty or forty foot-wide gravelly wash beside the main creek channel. It’s open country in a wide, flat-bottomed canyon, but rather than hiking easily up the creek without need of the trail, I’m erratically wandering around staring at the ground searching for it.

It’s like a sick obsessive-compulsive disorder. That I must stay on the trail at every turn, even when it requires more time to do so and doesn’t make hiking any easier. As if the entire point of the trip is walking the trail as an end itself.

Looking upstream into Mono Narrows. The location of the campsite can barely be seen frame left as a tiny touch of brown, the top of the dead oak tree, at the foot of the shadowy cliff.

Mono Creek Narrows after a little rain.

Muddy Waters

Sight of the dry creek triggered visions of digging for mucky water in the gravel of the narrows, squatting in some low spot between boulders ladling up the dirty leftovers of a once clear flowing stream.

I hadn’t actually expected to see lower Mono Creek flowing or even muddy. I knew it’d be dry. Recent rain, a measly and sporadic few showers, had barely moistened the droughty hills. I had packed enough fluids to sustain me for two days at a minimum level and hoped to find water near camp.

Rainwater was puddled in depressions atop boulders along the trail as I hiked up canyon. Even though the creek was drier than the previous year when I was there last, enough rain had fallen to actually raise the creek through the narrows, but it turned it into a silt-laden stream of chocolate milk. While it didn’t invite a swim nor look appealing to drink, some muddy water was better than no water at all and it actually didn’t taste bad despite its hideous appearance.

Warm and muddy in Mono Narrows.

The Old Oaks Dies

I stopped short and stood gazing down the twilit creek in astonishment, mumbling to myself, cursing and questioning what had happened. The gnarly old oak had died.

The oak defines the campsite, hanging awkwardly over a bench of silt deposited from prior floods. It looks as if its acorn one day long ago washed ashore during an epic flood and rooted in near the high waterline.

The tree gives the camp a sense of place, that it isn’t just another few yards of unremarkable scrubby forestland like so many others. The tree imbues a particular ambiance to the nook that makes it feel like a destination, somewhere worth arriving at, somewhere worth spending time.

Mono Narrows Camp under the dead oak. Each day the water cleared up a little bit and the water fell cutting lines in the sand along its bank.

The oak tree sprouts out of the soil with tentacle-like meandering limbs reaching over the flat. In wild day dreams sitting around camp, the old tree my only companion apart from a bear, I imagine that the deep black hole in its trunk is the sucking maw of some fantastical monster with flexing, reaching lips like that of a horse. Some bizarre beast rooted into the creek bank, its tentacle limbs reaching into the stream snatching prey and stuffing its gaping mouth hole like a crab scavenging a reef, its pincers shoving forage into its grinding mouthparts.

Mono Narrows Camp
A camp fire with a view.

Looking downstream.

Overhead view of camp looking upstream.

The death of the great oak is a tremendous loss. When the tree falls it will take with it much of the campsite’s character and leave a void which cannot be refilled.

It’s unlikely that the campsite will remain an inviting place to stay. It may still serve a basic utilitarian purpose for the odd backpacker passing through who merely needs a patch of dirt upon which to sleep a few hours, but the camp has lost its defining feature and is on its way out. It died along with its ugly old oak.

Another view of the camp.

A large cottonwood tree snapped like a toothpick by a massive rock slide.

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Mono Narrows Camp, 18 Mile Day Hike Gone Bad

Blue skies and golden grass along lower Manzana Creek Trail at the Pratt homestead site.

“The Pratts homesteaded just below Cold Spring on Manzana Creek. They had a stepson by the name of Eddy Fields. At the site of the Pratt house you can still see a large “E” and “F” carved into the trunk of a live oak tree.”

-Historical Overview of the Los Padres National Forest, E.R. “Jim” Blakley and Karen Barnette (1985)

The oak is fairly thin and ordinary, unremarkable, another tree in the forest like so many others. Not like the oaken hulks aside the grassy flat several miles away on the west end of Sunset Valley in lower Munch Canyon, which in their height and massive girth draw attention and would make good targets for a bored mind and idle hands.

The oak must of been a relatively minor tree a hundred years ago when he carved his initials into it. I wonder why Eddy chose it. Maybe it just happened to stand between his family’s cabin and the nearby uncommon pocket of the creek that holds a perennial pool, where I imagine he might of played.

The Pratts stayed only a short time on Manzana Creek and apparently never proved up on their homestead claim. They sold their stove to Edgar B. Davison, a forest ranger who used it to outfit his Fir Canyon station on Figueroa Mountain: Edgar B. Davison’s Fir Canyon Cabin (circa 1900).

The E

The F

Eddy’s oak on the left.

There is a pocket of clear cool water in the creek by the oak. This in the month of July during a record drought while most of Manzana Creek is dry. At the moment of this writing a stack of rocks sits on the bank above the pool to note the uncommon availability of good water for passing hikers in an otherwise dry landscape. It wasn’t a bad choice for a site to stake a claim as a homesteader.

Manzana Creek upstream from the pool shown above at the Pratt homestead site.

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Manzana Creek Schoolhouse (1893)

Calochortus fimbriatus, the late-flowered Mariposa lily, is in bloom at the moment in the Santa Ynez Mountains. A patch of the flowers thrives in the droughty dryness and summertime heat on a south facing rocky hillside at this particular location.

This variety of Calochortus or lily is listed by the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) as being rare throughout its range. Observational information about rare, threatened or endangered native plants and animals can be submitted to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife via their Native Species Field Survey Form. The data is added to the California Natural Diversity Database, which according to CNPS is “the largest, most comprehensive database of its type in the world. It presently contains more than 65,000 site-specific records on California’s rarest plants, animals and natural communities.”

The Chumash pictograph panel at Arrowhead Springs. The arrowhead-shaped mineral stain surrounding the rock art points down to a spring issuing from under the boulder.

Santa Barbara county-wide precipitation for the 2013-14 water year stands at 41 percent of normal or 8.03 inches. The driest year on record was 2006-07, which measured in at 6.41 inches. (Third driest was 1924 with 6.43 inches.) (County of Santa Barbara)

Last season’s county-wide rainfall totaled 46 percent of normal and the year before that it was 66 percent of normal. Not only has far less than normal precipitation fallen in the last three seasons, it has gotten drier each consecutive year.

Earlier this month it was reported that 80 percent of California was in “extreme drought.” Santa Barbara County is now experiencing even worse conditions and has reached the next official level, “exceptional drought.” In addition, it was also reported that from January through June, the vast majority of the county was unusually warm with “record high temperatures.”

One of several bedrock mortars at the spring site.

On a recent July visit to Arrowhead Springs Chumash rock art site, I found the spring no longer held standing water above soil level, but the ground was still damp. I was able to dig out a couple inches of gravel and water quickly filled the small hole.

Would a body be in need of a drink, the spring would provide in this exceptionally dry summer season. Though unlabeled on an official USGS map, and certainly not a perennial gusher, Arrowhead Springs appears to be a fairly reliable seep. The well-hidden shady spring with views of the Pacific Ocean and Santa Cruz Island was obviously of great value to some Chumash Indians for this reason.

The degree of severity of the current drought in California has not been seen in over 120 years, according to NOAA. It’s a good year to witness the nature of these exceptional times in the Los Padres National Forest, and to measure them against past experiences during  rainier years, and to see how the drought affects the land, its plants and animals.

A view of the seep at the base of the boulder, moist but no pooled water.

Reaching back under the boulder, digging out a couple of inches of sediment with a stick, the seep filled a small depression with water within seconds.

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Arrowhead Springs Chumash Rock Art

The large emerald pool below Fish Falls might be the best summertime swimming hole on the frontside of the Santa Ynez Mountains in Santa Barbara County. It’s deep enough to dive into from the top of the waterfall, if you’re good, and wide enough for several people to comfortably swim around.

Even in the current severe drought in the middle of summer the perennial pool remains clear cool and clean, and home to a number of decent sized rainbow trout or steelhead.

Prior to man-made obstructions in the lower watershed which bar access to the upper reaches of the creek, I believe this waterfall stood as the natural end point for native trout swimming in from the Pacific Ocean into the mountains to spawn. It must of been like a sandstone barrel ‘o fish back then.

Morning dew on an avocado leaf in my small backyard orchard.

“. . .the avocado became definitely established [in California] through the introduction of three trees from Mexico in 1871 by Judge R. B. Ord of Santa Barbara. Two of the three trees of his importation bore fruit for many years in Santa Barbara and served to create interest in further plantings.”

—Robert W. Hodgson, “The California Avocado Industry” (1930)

According to the California Avocado Commission, Judge R. B. Ord is credited with not just establishing avocados in Santa Barbara for the first time, but his trees represent the first successful introduction of the bumpy skinned fruit, sometimes called an “alligator pear,” to the United States in general.

It can be said that the roots of the California avocado industry, which today produces about 90 percent of the nation’s half-billion dollar domestic crop, were sunk in Santa Barbara and that the blossoming of the nation’s love of the fruit began with three trees planted in the sunny seaside town known as the American Riviera.

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Squaring off with the sun in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains in 96 degree heat.

I like to see it for myself. When looking at a map of the forest I want to know what each particular attraction noted thereon looks like in person.

I also like to get out and see the lesser visited locations, those places without trails, the cartographically unlabeled, the ignored, places with little if any notable features, and other backcountry nooks only the few of the few may rarely venture to lay eyes upon, because, to the general population, there isn’t anything notable there, and even among avid hikers, there’s not enough there to warrant the strenuous and uncomfortable hike required to reach such remote off-trail places.

When Stillman mentioned an interest in lower Lion Canyon I needed neither further explanation nor incentive. (DavidStillman.blogspot.com) I like to clock my time crawling around in backcountry bushes. I need little excuse.

North slope of Sierra Madre Mountains below Montgomery Potrero.

It’s mid-summer. A severe drought, worst dry spell in over 120 years, intensifies the often brutal and inhospitable, already desert-like Cuyama foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. Last year 2.32 inches of rain fell here, this year a measly 1.71 inches.

An occasional, fleeting puff of breeze floats by, taunting us with refreshment before vanishing, but mostly we trudge through a suffocating stillness. Distance distorted by heat shimmer. The south facing slopes mostly devoid of vegetation. Little shade other than the crosshatched strands of shadow cast from the nearly bare branches of chaparral. Powdery, desiccated soil erupts in puffs of fine particulate like tiny gunshots exploding from under our heels with each step. Sweaty skin a magnet for dust, my face is coated in the grit, my nostrils collecting it, my moist eyeballs rolling in it, grinding and irritated.

I press on ignoring it all, lost in thought, traversing the trailless terrain, up over ridges, down into dry ravines and back up. Stillman always a faster hiker, I follow his footsteps meandering through the scrub over the bajadas, disappearing across the exposures of caliche and reappearing in the alluvium, his footprints the only trace of other humans, I seemingly hike alone.

My motivation and interest to set out on foot and see my backyard at large is driven by passion, but sometimes it may seem fueled more by pathology. My body often suffers for my mind’s compulsion to force it to wander and roam the local weed patches, sometimes in grueling conditions.

Looking over the Sierra Madre foothills toward Cuyama Valley with the Caliente Range in the distance. The mouth of Lion Canyon runs out of the lower right hand corner of the frame toward Lower Lion Spring. Note the golden faced south facing slopes bare of vegetation.

As the day progressed, the sun rising higher in the sky, the sparsely vegetated earth absorbing and radiating ever greater amounts of heat, and as we covered further distance and burned more energy roaming off-trail, the temperature became a greater factor in the day’s equation.

It is not easy to cool a body in conditions like these once it’s overheated. These conditions can be deadly.

Speck in the scrub, Stillman ranging off-trail on the way to Lion Canyon. The rock outcrop seen in the distance frame left is the same one shown in the photo below.

Overlooking lower Lion Canyon creek, back from whence we came atop the creamy white-faced slope in the distance, which Stillman is shown crossing the top of in the previous photo.

We entered into a grassy bowl rimmed by sandstone on our way back to the truck. While Stillman poked his way through the brush to investigate a cluster of oak trees growing from the base of an outcrop, I proceeded up the slope across the grassy bowl. I suddenly felt as if I had wandered into the focus point of a parabola. It was intensely hot. It had to be well over 100 degrees.

I looked about searching for a flat patch of ground in full shade, but saw little. I needed to get into the shadows and lie down to let my heart beat slow and my body temperature fall or at least stop rising. I wasn’t in trouble, but I needed to escape the punishing rays of the sun and get off my feet.

A small alcove in the bedrock  across the bowl cast a sliver of shadow over a rocky and uncomfortably sloped floor. It wouldn’t do. Too much energy required to reach it, too much body heat generated, and too little shade on a piece of stony ground hard to relax on for its angle and roughness.

I turned and settled for a sloping patch of ground under a scrub oak. It offered little respite, but was my best option. I was unsure where Stillman went until I heard a few branches breaking down in the oak-shaded wash that drains the bowl during those infrequent and scant winter rain showers.

We found a trail along the creek just above Lower Lion Spring which served its purpose for a brief spell before we parted ways with it.”Wanna go check the spring?” Stillman asked. “I do, but I don’t,” I answered in the withering heat. “Yeah, me too.”

We reached the top of the grassy bowl and, a few yards beyond, seeing a shadow cast by a vertical rock face, we plopped down for a short rest. We were not sure how far we were from the truck or how easy or how hard it was going to be to get to it.

The brush for the last bit of distance had been thin enough to easily wind our way through, but I feared that as we crested the ridge in front of us in order to drop back into the canyon where we parked, that we would find a wall of dense chaparral covering the westward facing slope.

But the slope was nearly bare enabling us to quickly tromp down the loose hillside and into the dry creek, where after we reached the truck easily within a few minutes to complete a meandering loop surveying a section of lower Lion Canyon.