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Blue Elderberry Wildcraft
Clusters of wild blue elderberries. “Delectable dishes made from elderberry are a leftover from old time housekeeping, when table luxuries were not so varied and abundant as they are now.” New-York...
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Remarkable Auto Tour In Southern California (1907)
“. . .we located a ford and secured two men and a team of horses to tow us through the current, which was very swift.” The following passage, excerpted from the journal of a businessman named J. B....
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100° Hike
Santa Ynez Valley viticulture as seen on drive to trailhead. It’s an ordinary summer day. It’s not one of those media hyped heat wave events, but it’s supposed to be hot out. Such forecasts don’t...
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Indian Rock Art Pictograph
Little Ms. E and I ventured out for a short hike Wednesday morning to a pictograph site. This is the fifth Indian rock art site I’ve taken her to and it required the longest and most strenuous hike for...
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Marijuana in the Woods: Endangering Hikers and Killing Wildlife
Marijuana growing in the Los Padres National Forest. (Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department) Marijuana Increasingly Grown In National Forests According to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department,...
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Gaviota Pass Overlook, Gaviota State Park
The Gaviota Coast and Santa Ynez Mountains. “The Gaviota Coast is the largest stretch of undeveloped coastline remaining in Southern California, and is representative of the only coastal Mediterranean...
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Semen Stains, Fake Tequila and Cava de Oro in Mexico
Sonoran Desert “The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, or experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes...
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Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus Titanum)
Post peak bloom, starting to wilt. It’s a fleeting display lasting only hours. I went out to the University of California, Santa Barbara to see the corpse flower in bloom, a titan arum named “Chanel.”...
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California Condor
1890—California condor population estimated at 600. 1982—Only 22 California condors alive in the world. 1985—A single breeding pair survive for the entire species. 1987—The last wild condor is captured...
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Chumash Rock Art
Shown below are a few pictographs at a Chumash rock art site located in Ventura County. The pictographs decorate the underside of a slight overhang found at the base of a hillside outcrop. The rock...
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Pit Viper on Arroyo Burro Trail
Chumash bedrock mortars in Barger Canyon below Arroyo Burro Trail. Arroyo Burro Trail purportedly follows an historic Chumash Indian route over the Santa Ynez Mountains linking the Santa Barbara...
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Life and Death in a Creek
Murky and mossy, slow-flowing summertime creek. With the southern Los Padres National Forest currently undergoing its characteristic seasonal broil, and being too brutally hot and dry for hiking many...
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Stealing Condor Eggs (1899)
An illustration originally published in the San Francisco Call newspaper in 1911. “CALIFORNIA CONDOR A RARE BIRD WHOSE EGGS ARE VALUED AT $18,000 A DOZEN It is not generally known that among the fads...
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Piss Pot Flat Campground
P-Bar Flat Campground along the upper Santa Ynez River began as a private hunting camp around 1916. It was originally known as “Piss Pot Flat,” a name taken from a chamber pot that hung on a post and...
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Searching for Soul Outside the Cage
San Emigdio Mountains “The environment we’re used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human...
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Deluge and Drought in Santa Barbara County
Cachuma Lake at Bradbury Dam, September 2013. The reservoir is well below the floodgates and currently less than half full. It seldom rains in Santa Barbara. “Probably the most striking feature of...
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Arrowhead Spring Chumash Rock Art
Arrowhead Spring Pictograph panel above the spring. A reproduction of the Arrowhead Spring pictograph painted by Campbell Grant in the 1970s, which hangs in the Goleta Public Library. In his book,...
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Grass Mountain & Zaca Peak Via Birabent Canyon
The environs of Figueroa Mountain feature a diverse range of landscape. Open rolling grassland, gravely slopes sparsely studded with moss and lichen covered oaks, other nooks holding denser stands of...
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