The organic curves of chaparral-cloaked Condor National Forest. I’m growing like a seed Rain’s been falling on me — KT Tunstall, Feel It All “I’m wondering if we won’t see August thunderstorms.” I wrote that in June, a freak premonition. The feeling came after two days of uncommon rain showers, which had followed the unrelenting foggy gloom and weep of a spring that never quite sprung and an exceptionally wet winter.  Though the calendar read summer, something seemed to suggest the showers were not yet over as we headed into what was typically the driest time of year. I hadn’t thought o ..read more

img_7477 A howling coyote and one at the den barking. They didn’t seem to sense the presence of a human right off, but were suddenly startled to see or smell me and that’s when the one began barking. The howler happened to be facing the full Cold Moon of December 26, 2023, which was  rising over the silhouetted Santa Ynez Mountains just between Arlington Peak and White Mountain. This presented the common folk lore impression of a wild dog howling at the full moon. It appears to be a pregnant female, yet also with a bad limp. Last year I saw coyotes in a different den, but not too far a ..read more

Asperitas clouds over Santa Barbara seen from our home on November 15, 2023. October 2023 Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two laws Tuesday intended to compel California’s public university systems to make progress in their review and return of Native American remains and artifacts. Decades-old state and federal legislation, known as repatriation laws, require government entities to return these items to tribes. Those artifacts could include prayer sticks or wolves’ skins that have been used for ceremonies. —Associated Press  * * * December 2023 .. California is pressing universities to repatri ..read more

What does this look like? It looks like three stones stacked by human hands to me.  Who? Why? When? The rocks did not fall from the wall or ceiling of the cave that I could tell. There is no trace of a break or fracture in the cave or some such occurrence that may have sent the rocks tumbling and falling into place. Yet, even if they had fallen naturally, it’s impossible to believe they landed stacked so elegantly.  The rocks could have been set deeper into the stone hollow and thus farther into the dry shelter. But they are nonetheless well under the lip of the cave mouth and so sh ..read more

A plastic bin to hold plastic bags washed ashore along the Gaviota Coast. “Our research found 6-to-1 plastic to plankton by weight in 1999. We went back last year [2008] and found 46-to-1 plastic to plankton – the weight had gone up, the volume had gone up, the number of pieces had gone up. Every decade, it’s getting close to 10 times worse.” –Charles Moore on the ratio of plastic to plankton he found in the great Pacific garbage patch, as quoted in Earth Island Journal Fifteen years ago I published a brief in a glossy print surfing magazine about plastic pollution in the ocean entitled, A S ..read more

Humboldt lily seed pod. “Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath the rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.” —Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways Some level of maturity is required to enjoy a long trail walk through a forest without venturing so much as a single step anywhere off the path, “immediately adjacent” to it. To walk the line requires discipline and self-restraint.  Who will remain separated? To only ever peek at from afar, l ..read more

Along the road to bugville in autumn.  Springtime wildflower blooms on Figueroa Mountain capture all the attention. But I’ve long marveled, too, at the winter ladybug blooms of the mountain. December 2023 I hold onto a childhood memory of ladybugs blanketing big logs around Upper Bear Camp along the headwaters of Sisquoc River. The bugs are one of only several memories of our long walk through from NIRA to Upper Oso. Last year on Figueroa, ladybugs fluttered through the forest air on sunny afternoons so thickly in places I thought I might inhale them and had to cover my nose and mouth wh ..read more

A thin sign in Sespe Wilderness only but several inches wide with not another sign in sight. Once upon a time not long ago, following wildfire, thoughtful land managers in Ventura County reposted sliver-thin signs along Sespe Wilderness trail, there marking the condor sanctuary boundaryline. This is federally designated critical habitat of the highest order. What other wild creature in America has been the focus of more investment in time and money through as many decades to save a single species? A national icon. A hiker walking beyond the boundary might accidentally drop a piece of shiny and ..read more

In my years at University of California earning a degree in American history with a minor in Native American studies I never heard tell of the Indian Head Test Pattern. I first learned of it reading Tommy Orange’s novel, There There. The image on TV and its utility for the industry has been written about in fine detail, in matter of fact fashion. The use of a tool described. In popular mainstream culture the stylized image is recounted with fondness and steeped in the warmth of nostalgia and Americana. People suggest the cartoon chief was featured in a dignified manner or out of admiration an ..read more

Restoration travesty (January 2023) “Paths are human; they are the traces of our relationships.” —Robert Macfarlane  Channel Islands Restoration, her purported protector, deflowered the virgin. A screaming outrage. A grotesque violation. This was not restoration. This was mutilation. I met a guy once. They took a sharpened piece of metal to the soft flesh of his face. He came out of prison looking like he had tried to French kiss Freddy Krueger without an invitation.  That’s what they did to Spring Potrero in the San Marcos Foothills Preserve.   Out came the long knives t ..read more