Here’s me in April 1991 posing in front of a San Rafael Wilderness sign. We had just climbed out of the Upper Sisquoc River watershed. I was as a young buck laying eyes on, what was for me, never before seen territory.

We put in at Nira Campground and had been out on the trail for several days, spending our first night at Manzana Narrows Camp. I vividly recall laying eyes on the sandstone formations at the top of White Ledge Canyon for the first time in my life, the next morning, after climbing out of the Manzana watershed. We popped through a narrow gap in the rocky hills near a creek and right into a huge sprawling albino Lizard’s Mouth. At least that’s how I saw it. Already having a fascination with rock formations and caves stoked by years of scrambling around the Santa Ynez Mountains closer to town, the landscape looked like a lithic playground of epic proportions.

We proceeded down White Ledge Canyon passing through a lush Happy Hunting Ground Camp and on down the trail to spend our second night at White Ledge Camp. The next day the weather began to change and the cloud cover thickened through out the day. It started raining as we approached the last several miles before the Sisquoc River and South Fork confluence, and so we holed up in the South Fork cabin the rest of the afternoon and night. The cabin at that time was little more than a rat nest made of four walls and a roof. But it was dry and we appreciated the wood burning stove and the dry fuel other hikers had kindly stocked. The river outside was dirt filled from runoff and rippin’.

South Fork cabin in 1991.

Lazing the afternoon away reading a paperback at the cabin in June 2011. It is shown here after being restored by the Los Padres Volunteer Wilderness Rangers, which started, I believe, in 2008. Hat tip to all those involved!

The storm bathed the landscape in a gentle intermittent rain, but cleared during the night and the next morning we picked our way along a less swollen Upper Sisquoc. I spotted a large morel mushroom that third day.

We made it to Upper Bear Camp after more deep river crossings than we cared for. It was a mite chilly and there was some snow still scattered about. On a huge pine log near camp, there was what to this day is still the largest clump of ladybugs I’ve ever seen.  The backside of Big Pine Mountain also had a cap of crusty old snow, which we crunched over on our way down the fire road after staying the night at Upper Bear.

The first photo in this post was taken on Big Pine-Buckhorn Road east of Alamar Camp after having climbed out of the Sisquoc headwaters. We followed the road to Bluff Camp that day and set up for the night. It was an easy walk compared to what came next.

The following day we plodded along until well after dark, grinding through mile after curving mile of seemingly endless fire road. It was one of those hikes where you round a bend only to see the road running along the ridge far off in the distance, and you sigh in exasperation, as it winds around numerous hills to disappear and then reappear even further off in the distance. We had hoped to reach Upper Oso Campground. We didn’t make it.

We covered somewhere around 15 miles before my little brother finally could go no further. He put in a hell of a day for how young he was. We ended up rolling out our sleeping bags right on the thin strip of dirt that was the trail, somewhere on the south face of Little Pine Mountain, above Nineteen Oaks Camp.

We must have chewed some jerky and trail mix or something for dinner, but I don’t recall. We surely didn’t cook anything. We were plumb tuckered. The second half of the trip wasn’t the most inspired course to take, that’s for sure, but altogether, the route got us just about as deep into the backcountry as is possible around these parts. It was certainly a remarkable experience for kids of our age.

The last morning we walked the remaining short distance down Oso Canyon and through a vacant Upper Oso Campground. The gate was still closed at First Crossing. We waded across a shallow spot in the Santa Ynez River and hitched a ride to Paradise Store, where we called for our ride back to civilization.

Along lower Manzana Creek in the Santa Barbara backcountry, a rib of sandstone known to some as Castle Rock (Jack’s Map) juts into the air along the west end of the wind swept ridge officially dubbed Hurricane Deck. This is not to be confused with another formation also known by a few as Castle Rock.

Every time I have hiked through the area the north slope of the outcrop has caught my attention with its numerous caves seen from the trail. Yet, despite the lure of the rocks and my unending interest I had never explored the area. Recently I struck out midweek on an exploratory venture to change that.

A rafter of turkeys seen along the flats of Alamo Pintado Creek.

Hideous beauty.

The Castle Rock sandstone formation in the San Rafael Wilderness, as seen in May 2011. All other photos were taken at the time of this most recent hike.

A cold wind howled over Figueroa Mountain and whooshed through the pine trees, as I cinched down the straps of my pack and headed down the Sulphur Springs trail from Cedros Saddle. An unsettling layer of dark clouds covered the sky and blotted out the sun. It was forecast to rain that night.

After finding my way down the unkempt trail and reaching the confluence of Sulphur Creek and Dry Creek, I rounded a bend and surprised three doe grazing beside the creek. They promptly scattered into the forest crashing through bushes and over crispy dry leaves.

Well there goes any chance of seeing more wildlife around here, I thought. I glanced up the mountain slope as I walked by and spotted one of the deer staring at me through the underbrush beneath the oak trees. I clicked my tongue against my front teeth like one might do when riding a horse and then yelled out, “I see you up there.” What happened next was a mite surprising considering all the ruckus.

Walking on around the bend in the trail, noted on the left within the red circle, I came up behind a bobcat. It strode lazily along maybe thirty to forty yards in front of me. I stopped at first sight and watched it saunter on down the road oblivious to my presence.

For a moment its behavior made me think it was a domestic cat. I couldn’t believe that it didn’t hear the crash of the three deer through the forest or the thud of my footsteps or if it did why it didn’t bolt. After a second more I quickly tore my pack off and set it down while watching the cat intently. It was still walking and clueless. Turning my sight to my pack I ripped my camera out as quietly as possible. When I looked up the animal was gone.

I ran on my tip toes down the road, as close to the foot of the mountain it skirted as possible using it as a blind. There it was. Still in the road walking away from me. I knelt, camera to eye and poised ready to fire off shots as fast as my reaction made possible. The bobcat just kept walking. What is with this stupid thing? I thought. I held fire for fear that the rapid shutter clicking would scare the cat into the forest in a blur.

The bobcat wandered off the road and up on top of a small boulder buried in the ground, where it proceeded to sniff around, its head out of sight and its rear end pointed skyward. Crouched in plain sight I waited, concluding that these animals were far less crafty and perceptive than I had grown to believe.

It finally raised its head and began to turn my direction. Upon spotting me it froze dead still. I let rip with the camera and we glared at each through the lens for a few seconds, the shutter flapping away. After a riffle of shots I pulled the lens from eye to make sure I had my settings right and was actually getting worthwhile photos.

The second I turned my head down to view the camera I heard a crash through the underbrush and the animal was gone for good. I turned and headed down canyon shaking a fist in the air knowing that whatever else was in store for the afternoon, my day was already made.

Shooting star wildflowers (Dodecatheon clevelandii)

Dabney Cabin beside Manzana Creek was originally built in 1913 or 1914 depending on the source consulted. It was constructed as a recreational lodge for Charles William Dabney and today stands as Santa Barbara Historical Marker No. 8.

The southwest face of Castle Rock.

The northern face of Castle Rock showing the green of winter ferns and moss.

A moss and lichen covered boulder seen at the foot of Castle Rock’s northern side.

The cave that was my main destination for the day. It appears here deceptively easy to get into.

A closer view.

Having reached Castle Rock, I picked my way up the rocky chute that drains its north face in wet weather. Scrambling up the declivity, and out of the dry creek, I headed for one of the larger caves that is visible from across Manzana Creek on the trail below. The cave shown above. It was readily apparent that the peak was steeper and more treacherous than I had anticipated, and that climbing it was not going to be easy.

For the most part only a thin layer of soil covers the steep sandstone. As I pushed my toes into the grass to climb, the dirt peeled free from the stone in a mat held together by roots and I promptly went sliding downhill. Okay, time for the next option. I gained traction in a crack kept clear and bare by rushing water in rainstorms and slithered up it and through the branches of a downed pine tree.

Once I reached the cave I found it impossible to gain entry despite being mere feet from its entrance. Perhaps somebody with more courage or fewer brains might make it inside. But I was alone, and without a satellite phone this time around, and so could not risk a debilitating fall. Grudgingly, I admitted defeat and turned my attention elsewhere.

The cave I could not get into as seen from above. Maybe one day I’ll return with a rope and make it inside.

The outward appearance of a different cave, which is easily accessible.

Making my way further up the slope another cave came into view, its mouth hidden behind a shroud of bare poison oak branches. When the poison oak is fully leafed out in summer the cave must be unnoticeable from a distance. As I parted the branches and stepped inside I was surprised to see its size. I couldn’t help but admire what a choice campsite it would make and pondered what I would do to turn it into a cozy dwelling.

Looking inside the cave.

Standing in the mouth of the cave looking over lower Manzana Creek.

The view from the cave looking over Manzana Creek and toward the Sisquoc River confluence.

A view showing the steepness of Castle Rock’s northern slope and some of its smaller caves.

After a rest I left the cave and climbed to the top of the outcrop along its lower most saddle and then scampered on back down the slope to the canyon floor. Walking back up Sulphur Creek toward the trailhead, I crossed paths with another smaller bobcat. I had mistakenly walked off the faint path and been pushing through the bushes when I spotted the cat a short distance away.

Yet again, I could not believe it had remained so close. It had seen me, but was walking slowly away seemingly unconcerned. It didn’t dart off, but just wandered away into the woods as I fumbled with my camera in vain trying to get a shot off. Finishing up the last section of the trail before reaching my ride, I thought back on an decent day for seeing wildlife. You just never know what you might find out there.

The circuit I hiked noted on Bing imagery.

I woke early and hit the super slab driving up over the Santa Ynez Mountains, across the Santa Ynez Valley and over Figueroa Mountain to the lower Manzana Creek trailhead in the San Rafael Wilderness. In preparation for getting my arse kicked out on the trail by this suicyco mutha***** I’m soon to do some hiking with, I spent eight hours, plus an hour lunch break, hiking over 21 miles of trail and no less than 4500 feet in combined elevation gain and loss.

Despite the length, the loop is a relatively easy walk as most of the trail is fairly flat apart from the climb up Potrero Canyon to Hurricane Deck and back down to Manzana Creek at its confluence with the Sisquoc River.

As the morning waned the sky cleared to pure blue but with cool winter temperatures. I hiked all day in a short sleeved t-shirt under a long sleeved shirt. Not much wildlife this time around. I only saw a few deer, couple of hawks, a small snake and three turkeys.

A section of west Hurricane Deck in morning light, the red dots noting the trail route. The more prominent grassy face of Bald Mountain is seen rising just beyond the Deck with the Sisquoc River canyon in the background.

A panoramic iPhone camera shot from atop the west end of Hurricane Deck and looking over the Sisquoc River canyon at center frame. Castle Rock can be seen on the left along the ridgeline. The trail follows the crest of the ridge by Castle Rock and then descends to the Sisquoc River and Manzana Creek confluence.

Looking up stream on the Sisquoc River from Hurricane Deck. It’s rugged, unforgiving dry country that is still making a recovery from wildfire.

A view of Castle Rock showing the burnt, barren hills of the San Rafael Mountains.

Castle Rock

A riverside meadow or what the Spaniards called “potrero.”

The slit in the rocks above Manzana Creek.

This rusty remnant of a tractor or tiller of some sort sits in a meadow along Manzana Creek. A stacked rock wall is nearby and judging by the lichen covered stones it appears old. Knowing next to nothing about old farm equipment, I would hazard a guess that, judging by the wheel design, this piece of machinery is from the Depression-era.

Here below is a series of clips captured along the hike and slapped together. It was shot with an iPhone and so the imagery is poor, pixelated and pretty rough, but, nonetheless, it offers a bit more of a peep into what the day was like through my eyes.

Alcove Falls, San Rafael Wilderness, Santa Barbara County.

I recently unearthed this drawing of Davy Brown’s cabin in an edition of The Herald newspaper that was published on September 25, 1898. Santa Barbara backcountry enthusiasts know Davy Brown as the name of a drive-up campground on the backside of Figueroa Mountain; the modern day camp being located near where the old Brown cabin once stood. It is also the name of the small creek running through the campground, which is located in California’s Los Padres National Forest on the edge of the San Rafael Wilderness. People knowledgeable in the details of Santa Barbara history know Brown as an historical figure that sailed on a British privateer raiding American ships during the War of 1812, and who was once described by the renowned John Muir as a great grizzly bear hunter.

Related Posts:

John Muir Writes of Davy Brown

The Storied Life of Davy Brown

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”

―John Lubbock

Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) is widely credited as the father of Earth Day. As the story goes, after visiting Santa Barbara and viewing firsthand the catastrophic consequences of the oil spill of 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, he was inspired to found a special day of environmental education and awareness. This would later become known as “Earth Day.”

Today, Earth Day 2013, we have all sorts of people around the nation and the world celebrating by holding huge gatherings that in their planning, carrying out and attendance require the consumption of massive amounts of resources and result in the emission of immeasurable amounts of pollution.

And in so doing the activities of Earth Day promote the type of disconnect from the natural world and heedless consumption that is the very sort of thing the concept of the environmental day of education was designed to lessen. If one really wants to celebrate and learn of Earth, then why not go for a long hike into the wilderness alone? Leave the metropolitan bubble of artificial reality behind. Part company with its hurried masses and material culture. Escape the urban cage and enter the natural realm.

I have found that there are few better ways to reconnect with the natural world than time alone spent immersed in it, with but the bare basic necessities to sustain you. It is a healthy activity for mind and body that requires few material items and leaves a relatively miniscule environmental footprint. It affords time for reflection and the pondering of nature and one’s place within it to an extent that is impossible to achieve within the man-made bounds of a city. It simplifies life and in that simplification reveals its essence in a way that reaffirms one’s bond to the mother of all mothers. Take a 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 really apply to the backcountry, though, and I expect it to be hotter than called for.

County-wide to date Santa Barbara has received less than half its normal rainfall amount for this season. And a little more than half the normal amount of rain fell the previous season. Bradbury Dam at Lake Cachuma last spilled in 2011.

The San Rafael Wilderness is hot and dry. It’s withered, shriveled, and crunchy. And hordes of tiny flies are out in search of heads to ceaselessly buzz around and eyes, ears, noses and mouths to crawl into. These less than pleasant conditions deter most people, a fact confirmed by my arrival at a parking lot devoid of vehicles.

Manzana Creek

Sun scorched trail

I plod along the trail with my head down and a steamy red face, step by heavy step up the gravely mountainside, glistening and dripping with sweat, my heart throbbing audibly in my head. The world bobs and weaves with the motion of my head as I stomp along, randomly glancing out here and there from under my hat brim. The only sounds are my heavy footsteps, the forceful rush of breath in and out of my nose and the rhythmic dull thump of my heart.

It’s like I’m fighting against myself as I hike, because as I struggle along, sucking and puffing wind, legs laboriously scissoring back and forth, the world around me, the plants and rocks and everything else, it’s all still and silent. It’s not doing anything. It’s not for me or against me. It’s inanimate. Indifferent.

It’s always like that, of course, but on this exceptionally hot day the feeling seems particularly acute as I grind my way up the sweltering slope. I’m working myself toward dehydration, fatigue and heat stroke and all I’m doing is slowly walking up a dirt path.

Mariposa lilies

I slog up the mountainside through the crispy dry chaparral, caught between the life shriveling, merciless glare of the sun overhead and the rocky mountainside underfoot radiating its solar energy back at me.

I come upon a scant patch of shade under an overhang of brush. The shadow falls over a small trailside slope of bare soil. I collapse onto the dirt, scrunching myself up against the shadowy foot of the chaparral and trying to escape the sun’s deadly wrath.

Like a victim cowering from an aggressor, I curl up in the shadow. I’m able to get most of my body out of the sun except my lower legs, which I try to shade by placing my hat on a raised knee like an umbrella. After ten minutes or so I glance at the thermometer on my backpack in the shade: 100 degrees.

I march over the crest of a chaparral covered hill and down into a lightly wooded grassy glen, eagerly looking forward to another rest in the shade. The odd patch of sloping grass on the brushy mountainside is sparsely dotted with oak trees casting big shadows.

I plop down under a large tree to cool down, hydrate, refuel and allow my fluttering heart to slow down. I’ve only covered a couple of miles, but the short hike thus far has inflicted a disproportionately large degree of strain on my body. I feel beat.

The forest seems empty and lifeless in the heat and absence of water. The fleeting splash of vibrant green, lent briefly to the drab hills seasonally by the flush of grasses and other small annual plants, has long since withered and faded to neutral earth tones. It will be months before it rains again.

Peering over the parched landscape shimmering in the afternoon heat it does not appear as if life here is thriving. It’s hard to imagine that the plants and animals are doing much more than merely enduring. Of course, this view is based on my own experience. I can’t avoid projecting my own strain and struggle onto other lifeforms.

Compared to months earlier, or years as the case may be, when the creeks and arroyos were flowing and filling the canyons with the sound of rushing water, now there is a heavy silence, a notable sound of absence. The land feels less dynamic and less alive without the roar and trickle of running water.

Leaving the grassy hollow behind, I wade through the sparse brush, over the sandy soil and rocks and through wildfire scorched skeletons of chaparral and a few little trees. I’m traversing an uneven expanse cut by several deep, but narrow arroyos.

One of these small drainage chutes, while dry like all the rest, drops over a wall of bedrock and into a lush, muddy pocket surrounded on either side by walls of sandstone. It’s a rare seep. The water oozes out of cracks in the bedrock at the base of what would be a small cascade during wet weather, but now it’s a mire unsuitable for drinking or anything else unless in desperate need.

Nonetheless, I take note. I always find springs and seeps in this semi-arid, usually dry landscape interesting and worthy of attention. Time spent in this forest is too often dominated by the need of water so it always catches my eye when I come across it.

Such a seep as this reminds me of something in a western novel. A lone remote water hole hidden from sight in a rough land. It makes me think of the different animals it may attract during day and night, the peoples of the past, Indians, pioneers and early explorers, that may have relied on it.

I find a cave and crawl inside seeking refuge. Laying on my back on the cool sandstone I gaze out over the landscape surveying the desolate, inhospitable backcountry realm. My view of this day is entirely shaped by the sweltering temperature and dryness of the land. It’s a different perspective than when I’ve come here on other milder days.

It’s brutal out there. It can be miserable, painful and deadly. This isn’t a pleasant leisurely stroll. This is a punishing battle. It’s a land where I don’t seem to belong but for fleeting visits. Wilderness, as oh-fficially defined, is a land “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Temporary visitation isn’t a choice, though. It’s an undefiable reality.

When facing nature with only what’s in a backpack, one may hold out for some time, even thrive for a period, but eventually she whittles you down and wears you out, and sends you fleeing from her indefatigable elements like a refugee seeking safe harbor and nourishment.

The 100 degree heat has left me tired, sticky lipped and with a thirst that my bottle of warm water cannot quench. Lying in the cave lost in meandering thought, I feel the heavy creep of weariness settling over me and my eye lids growing heavy.

I succumb. My eyelids fall shut.

And I doze.

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.

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

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.

Related Post:

Manzana Creek Schoolhouse (1893)

DavidStillman.com standing beside Rattlesnake Falls deep in the Santa Barbara backcountry on a recent backpacking trip, the creek a tributary of the Wild and Scenic Sisquoc River.

Coldwater Camp lies in a meadow under a large oak tree along Lower Manzana Creek Trail, and is rimmed by hills. A detailed profile of the camp can be seen at Hike Los Padres – Coldwater Camp.

The camp was presumably named due to the usual availability of water in the creek nearby during most conditions, when the rest of the area is dry. This remarkable feature of the land must have been appreciated by the pioneering Pratt family who staked a claim in the area.

In the vicinity of Coldwater Camp, with a clue or two, one might find the initials of the Pratt’s stepson, Eddie Fields, who carved them into a tree near the site of the family’s homestead some 100 years ago.

Another site is hidden here center frame under the trees, somewhat on the opposite end of the meadow. The same sign is seen here as in the first photo above.

“Most of these places, however, were not marked as special on my map. But they became special by personal acquaintance. … I remembered what Ishmael had said in Moby-Dick about the island of Kokovoko: ‘It is not down in any map; true places never are.’”

Robert Macfarlane “Wild Places”

The Essence of Place

Our natural inheritance here in this neck of the woods may not include the largest or most spectacular of water parks. But nor have we such wants. We certainly have no need. We barely have water these days, but we get by just fine.

We appreciate each place for its own character. We do not measure our place by the standards of other places. “I—the royal we, you know. The editorial.”

We are humble in our desire. Allow us a small sandstone tub just large enough to dive into, to feel the wash of cool fresh water over our face on a warm day, to sink to the bottom with held breath and pinched eyes, to bob around. And we are happy.

For even the grandest of waterfalls and deepest, largest of pools may find it hard to compete with the affection for a small place in your home county.

Pinners. Scrawny drought-stricken coast live oak acorns in the fall of 2018. 

After seven years of scant rainfall and extreme drought—Santa Barbara arguably being hit hardest out of any county in California—finding pools that aren’t stagnant or moss-covered and still appealing enough to jump into has become increasingly hard to accomplish, if one finds water at all remaining in the watershed. Many places have dried up altogether. Many places have remained dry for years now.

And so one must put in more effort venturing farther and deeper afield where what little rain has fallen in recent years still manages to trickle out of the ground in sufficient volume to fill a few puddles worthy of attention.

My dad and uncle first stumbled upon this swimming hole over 50 years ago when out exploring the wilds of Santa Barbara County, a favorite family hobby.

They knew not what they might find that day so long ago, but went anyway with not so much as a hint from anybody that a cool emerald pool awaited them out there in the forest after a hot sweaty trek.

August 2018

On a hot summer day we sat poolside smoking Cuban cigars and listening to the blues, the two elders telling tales of meeting tobacco farmers in Cuba and enjoying the fruits of their labor.

They told of learning from the farmers how they dried and cured their leaves over the course of a couple of years; of visiting the drying sheds; of sitting in their humble homes; of chickens standing on kitchen tables beside makeshift wood-burning stoves; of a farmer withdrawing from under his straw mattress supple, golden-brown cured personal stash pressed between sheets of newspaper and hand-rolling cigars of exceptional quality for their indulgence.

These stories were those of travelers that went out to find for themselves lively experiences, not tourists having been led to trendy traps detailed in books and articles with explicit directions. That’s personal acquaintance. In that grows a deeper appreciation. It’s to love rather than merely like. And one begins to know something of the essence of true place.

Once upon a time many decades ago in a similar vein, these two adventurous travelers had set out and found for themselves this liquid gem we now enjoyed on a sunny summer afternoon, somewhere yonder deep within the wilds of Santa Barbara County.

It’s the old swimming hole. Where relaxation is found, fun had and memories made.

“It was a rough land that bred a tough man.”

—Louis L’Amour, Utah Blaine (1984)

The observer may glean some insight into the nature of the land by looking at its native inhabitants. When you’re wearing a helmet of horns and shrouded in barbed chain mail, then you know the San Rafael Wilderness is some rough country.

When I was a kid on a Monte Vista elementary school field trip to Cachuma Lake, one of the kids in my class caught a horny toad. It was a raving huge hit.

And so pestered did the lizard become as the center of rambunctious childhood attention that it demonstrated one of the oddest sights in this here county.

The crazy thing spurted blood from its eyeballs!

It was probably the first time most of the kids even became aware that such a wild looking lizard lived in their greater backyards, to say nothing of actually holding one, and then, of all things, watching the lizard shoot blood from its eyes.

It was a wild scene, I tell you what.

All these many years later, despite catching many of them through the decades, and even poking a few here and there, I still have not yet seen another horny toad bleed from its eyes.

Slopes of chaparral in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

On down the slopes and all the way to the canyons was a thicket of varied shrubs that changed in character as altitude fell but was everywhere dense enough to stop an army.

On its lower levels, it was all green, white, and yellow with buckwheat, burroweed, lotus and sage, deerweed, bindweed, yerba santa. There were wild morning glories, Canterbury bells, tree tobacco, miner’s lettuce.

The thicket’s resistance to trespass, while everywhere formidable, stiffened considerably as it evolved upward.

There were intertwining mixtures of manzanita, California lilac, scrub oak, chamise. There was buckthorn. There was mountain mahogany. Generally evergreen, the dark slopes were splashed here and there with dodder, its mustard color deepening to rust. Blossoms of the Spanish bayonet stood up like yellow flames. There were lemonade berries (relatives of poison ivy and poison oak). In canyons, there were alders, big-leaf maple bushes, pug sycamores, and California bay.

Whatever and wherever they were, these plants were prickly, thick, and dry, and a good deal tougher than tundra.

Those evergreen oaks fingering up the creases in the mountains were known to the Spaniards as chaparros. Riders who worked in the related landscape wore leather overalls open at the back, and called them chaparajos.

By extension, this all but impenetrable brush was known as chaparral.”

John McPhee, “The Control of Nature” (1989)

Everywhere and always around here, chaparral. The woody and wiry brushwood that grows in thickets so tangled and prickly it renders foot travel impossible without being ripped to shreds.

I hate it so much I’ve grown to love it. “Worthy ******* adversary,” to quote Walter Sobchak. Chaparral demands respect.

The hideous overgrown weeds are penetrable only through violent force in most places. “Carrying packs and cutting our way down a brush-choked arroyo with machetes,” Campbell Grant wrote, “we made a mile in two hours.”

Through the years chaparral has defined and many times dictated the day’s (mis)adventures by obscuring trails, barring access and making travel afoot exceedingly difficult and uncomfortable.

I can’t deny feeling a certain degree of pleasure whenever a wildfire scorches vast swaths of chaparral. Take that, vile weed!  And how nice it is to walk freely through open terrain when it’s been reduced to ash and bare sticks. That never lasts long, though.

It’s a rather perverse and maddening feeling to have been “lost” one night within sight of people and the city only because an impenetrable wall of chaparral stood between me and Gibraltar Road. I could see cars driving on the mountain road not too far off from where I was stuck in the dark without a trail, but short of a brutal bushwhack–which might have taken hours to cover only a short distance and require an extreme amount of effort and result in being scratched raw and bloody–I could not make it to the road.

In the land of chaparral, the trail is a thin savior through the thicket. A twelve-inch wide life raft promising safe passage home and a return to the comfort and convenience of civilization and the bottomless well that gushes at all hours everything anybody wants.

To lose the trail is to fall from the raft and be cast adrift in rolling seas of chaparral that stretch to the horizon. A puny human marooned in an ocean of dangerous wilderness. A castaway caught amidst heaving peaks and steep mountain slopes that rise and fall like monstrous green swells.

Rancho Nuevo Canyon, Dick Smith Wilderness (Early May, 2012)

“It is possible to be indifferent to flowers—possible but not very likely. Psychiatrists regard a patient’s indifference to flowers as a symptom of depression. It seems that by the time the singular beauty of a flower in bloom can no longer pierce the veil of black or obsessive thoughts in a person’s mind, that mind’s connection to the sensual world has grown dangerously frayed.”

—Michael Pollan, Botany of Desire

This here poppy, Papaver heterophyllum, is one of the lesser seen wildflowers in the hills around Santa Barbara County so far as I’ve seen in my few years and limited experience.

I saw a wind poppy at the mouth of Rancho Nuevo Canyon eight years ago.

Dusty David Stillman and I had just finished up a hike through the canyon—Deal Cyn, Rancho Nuevo Cyn 17 Mile Day Hike—and as we came off the trail I glanced over and spied wind poppies in bloom.

Seven years would pass before I saw another wind poppy.

I don’t think Mr. Stillman had any interest, which is not in any way to suggest he isn’t of sound mind. He’s solid like bedrock. Plants just do not interest him like they do me.

I’ve long been fascinated by the plant world and have been a grower of various plants since I was a small boy. When I was about ten years old I rode my bike down from the top of Hope Avenue to La Sumida Nursery on upper State Street, now no longer there, and bought a load of cactus which I somehow managed to transport back home. The clerk overlooked one of those plants and neglected to charge me and I remember feeling like I had won the lottery.

Later as a young adult I worked for Hilton Sumida at that same nursery together with the wife of Dick Smith’s son, for whom the Dick Smith Wilderness was named.

She held in her head an encyclopedic knowledge of plants and people would stop into the nursery all the time to pick her brain, and she always obliged the interrogators.

Once on the side of a mountain below Owen’s Peak in Indian Wells Canyon, Stillman peered over me in curiosity as if watching wildlife.

I had been collecting a can of granite gravel within which to plant the small piece of beaver tail cactus, Opuntia basilaris, I had just respectfully collected for my home collection.

“You’re a real weirdo, you know that?” he had said.

I couldn’t rightly deny the charge. Several years later the cactus offered up a single bloom, seen here.

Back to the Rancho Nuevo Canyon wind poppies. The flowers were freshly popped and new, but the lighting was weak shortly before sunset, the temperature cool and falling, and the blooms were already half closed hunkering down for night.

The poppies grew in a patch of grass between clumps of scorched chaparral. This was five years after the Zaca Fire burned the area in 2007.

The land in Rancho Nuevo Canyon was still in the early-successional stage of regrowth following the wildfire and the poppies appeared to thrive in this particular habitat.

Lost Valley, San Rafael Wilderness (Late May, 2019)

In May of 2019 a good friend and I ambled down Lost Valley Trail after two nights hiking and lounging around in the San Rafael Wilderness in the Santa Barbara backcountry.

The land still looked somewhat scorched from the Zaca Fire, although that fire was 12 years past. Or did another fire sweep the area after the Zaca? Fire has burned so much around this neck of the woods in recent years it can be hard to keep track.

Small pockets remained between the chaparral, yet to close over, where delicate annual herbaceous plants sprouted with gusto.

Here in one of these pockets, much like in Rancho Nuevo Canyon years earlier, right along the trail just before reaching the old rusty sign at Lost Valley Overlook, I glanced over and saw a number of wind poppies in bloom.

This was late May and the flowers were days old and on their way out, but still vibrant.

Wind poppies resemble fire poppies, previously noted on this blog: Fire Poppy (Papaver californicum). Without a careful look one may confuse the two.

Readers of that post may recall the fascinating relationship between fire and Papaver californicum and I imagine the same phenomenon may be at work with wind poppies:

The burning brush and trees of a wildfire produce chemicals found in smoke that regulate plant growth known as karrikins, which are deposited on the surface of the soil. When watered in by seasonal rains karrikins stimulate rampant germination and vigorous seedling growth.

“I love the feeling when it falls apart.”

–Red Hot Chili Peppers, Desecration Smile

“By virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in me by the act of June 4, 1897, 30 Stat. 1, 11, 36 (U.S.C., title 16, sec. 473), it is ordered that the name of the Santa Barbara National Forest, in the State of California, be, and it is hereby, changed to Los Padres National Forest.”

—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Executive Order 7501
The White House
December 3, 1936

____________________________

“It will be seen that the Santa Barbara National Forest was the result of a consolidation of different national forest units.

It was located, however, in six counties and residents of other counties somewhat resented the name Santa Barbara.

Public pressure was brought to bear on local administrators to change to a name less identified with one county.

The four counties of Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Monterey, in which the bulk of the national forest was located, were all closely identified with mission history, and the trail of the Mission fathers led over the rugged slopes of the Santa Barbara National Forest.

Furthermore, nine of the old missions were located adjacent to the national forest area, already replete with an atmosphere of Spanish and Mexican days.

It was quite logical that the name finally chosen, ‘Los Padres’ (The Fathers), would be met with universal approval, so by executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, dated December 3, 1936, the Santa Barbara National Forest became Los Padres National Forest, ‘The Forest of the Fathers’–a fitting memorial to its first white users.”

–William S. Brown, June 1945 (rev.1972) History of Los Padres National Forest, 1898–1945

Afternoon in Condor National Forest

Something is wrong with the name Los Padres as it was applied to our national forest and we need to change it.

I first wondered out loud about this back in June of 2020: Rename Los Padres National Forest? Race and Recognition In the Woods.

I wade once more into the breach.

This is not a matter of applying contemporary mores to old choices made way back when.

This is not about fickle opinion or trying to make the past conform to today’s turbulent and finicky cultural preferences.

The name was as wrong in 1936 when it was first chosen as it is today.

Furthermore, whatever harm came to Native Americans at the hands of Los Padres is not my concern in this post, and that the name may be offensive to some people because of that history is not important here at the moment.

Those arguments for change are insufficient and miss the larger problem with the name. My focus is elsewhere, and much deeper.

The argument for change needs to be focused on the name itself as it was applied to our forest, not the emotions of some people in reaction to that name.

We can find outrage and grief and insult across America. It’s a brutal and violent history in many ways and in many areas, which guarantees roiling emotions.

If we extend the logic of the argument about the name being offensive, it suggests we should rename hundreds or thousands of places in America, because they honor people who in addition to their great accomplishments also did some bad things or said some bad things.

That’s not a good argument for change. It casts far too wide a net and calls into question the naming of such places as Comanche National Grasslands.

“Enemies, meanwhile, were enemies, and the rules for dealing with them had come down through a thousand years.

A Comanche brave who captured a live Ute would torture him to death without question.

It was what everyone had always done, what the Sioux did to the Assiniboine, what the Crow did to the Blackfeet.

A Comanche captured by a Ute would expect to receive exactly the same treatment (thus making him weirdly consistent with the idea of the Golden Rule), which was why Indians always fought to their last breath on battlefields, to the astonishment of Europeans and Americans.

There were no exceptions.

Of course, the same Indians also believed, quite as deeply, in blood vengeance.

The life of the warrior tortured to death would be paid for with another torture-killing if possible, preferably even more hideous than the first.”

—S.C. Gwynne, “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.”

“The name Comanche is derived from a Ute word meaning ‘anyone who wants to fight me all the time,’” the Britannica entry reads.

I rather like that. And I am not suggesting we rename Comanche National Grasslands.

But it memorializes a people that, among many other things, almost wiped the Apache off the map once and for all and inflicted upon them, and anybody else caught, extraordinarily imaginative acts of cruelty, torture and death.

“Comanches were incredibly warlike,” author S.C. Gwynne says in a National Public Radio interview. “They swept everyone off the Southern plains. They nearly exterminated the Apaches.”

That’s a serious word, exterminate.

It was not by happenstance that some of the last frontier taken by the United States Army in the nation’s westward expansion was that of the Comanche, whom were perhaps the greatest mounted archers since the Mongols.

When Americans first came across the Comanche in Texas in the 1830s, they found what they saw nearly impossible to believe and were astounded by the incredible horsemanship and archery skills of the warriors.

A vintage print from a book on American Indians by John George Woods (1877). Look carefully and note the three side-mounted warriors in the upper right corner. Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center

“There is one warlike feat in which all the Comanche warriors are trained from their infancy.

As the man is dashing along with his horse at full speed, he will suddenly drop over the side of his horse, leaving no part of his person visible, except the sole of one foot, which is fastened over the horse’s back, as a purchase by which he can pull himself to an upright position.

In this attitude he can ride for any distance, and, moreover, can use with deadly effect either his bow or fourteen-foot lance.

One of their favorite modes of attack is to gallop towards the enemy at full speed, and then, just before they come within range, they drop upon the opposite side of their horses, dash past the foe, and pour upon him a shower of arrows directed under their horses’ necks, and sometimes even thrown under their bellies.

All the time it is nearly useless for the enemy to return the shots, as the whole body of the Comanche is hidden behind the horse, and there is nothing to aim at save the foot just projecting over the animal’s back.”

—James Hobbs, Wild Life In the Far West; Personal Adventures of a Border Mountain Man (1872)

The Comanche waged wars of annihilation against other Native American tribes for hundreds of years. Ultraviolent killer raiding was part and parcel of their identity and who they were at that time.

A Comanche raid might entail theft, kidnap, enslavement, gang rape, torture and wanton killing. Including the slaying of small children.

That may be offensive to anybody these days. In the scope and nature of violence and intent toward adversaries like the Apache, there is no question whatsoever that it far exceeded anything that ever happened between Los Padres and California Indians.

Do we change the name of Comanche National Grasslands because it may be offensive?

I don’t think so. That isn’t the argument to be made against the name Los Padres either. It misses the much more serious problem at issue as I see it.

Eagle’s Head on the way to Mission Pine.

Let’s look critically at William S. Brown’s brief chronicle of the renaming of Santa Barbara National Forest in 1936 to Los Padres, as quoted at the beginning of this post.

“The four counties of Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Monterey, in which the bulk of the national forest was located, were all closely identified with mission history, . . .”

That the missions were located in the same county as the forest is a remarkably tenuous connection of no significance. Thinking up a vaguer, more unimportant association might be a challenge.

But that’s the best Brown could muster with what he had to work with, because there isn’t much else to speak of so far as a connection between Los Padres and the forest.

Los Padres did not locate their missions within the forest nor carry out their most passionate work there.

Apparently they were memorialized for, essentially, cutting down trees and diverting water from the forest, maybe some hunting. I’m stating it simply. That was largely their use of the forest in Santa Barbara County, at least.

Today’s Mission Pine Spring Camp and Mission Pine Basin Camp in the Santa Barbara backcountry are references to Los Padres’ cutting of timber for construction of the mission in Santa Barbara.

It was built in part with Chumash Indian labor.

The remnants of the padres aqueduct system can still be seen in mountain canyons.

This is not to make an environmental judgment call on tree cutting and water diversion, but to suggest that what Los Padres did in the forest was not particularly impressive and not worthy of national recognition.

I’d say it, uh, pales in comparison to what our own citizens had accomplished in Condor National Forest.

Barefoot in the mountains of Santa Barbara County.

Through time and space nobody was more closely identified with the bulk of the forest itself than California Indians. Everybody knows this and has always known this.

Even back in 1936, with a more limited understanding of Native history and much less appreciation of Native peoples, the people who named our forest certainly knew who was there foremost and longest.

That close connection with raw nature had long troubled most Americans.

Brown’s reasoning falls apart under the most minimal of considerations and can bear no scrutiny whatsoever.

It seems that the forest itself or human achievement therein did not figure into the naming of Los Padres National Forest. Apparently, there was something else.

Sunset Valley, aptly named.

Brown emphasized race in his history of the forest and whiteness was a topic of interest to him with such phrases like “the first white men” and “the coming of the white man.”

The reasons for this are left unelucidated and remain a mystery to me, other than to conclude Brown was a man of his times preoccupied with such notions.

Brown wrote of the Indians and he noted their long presence and tenure on the land. He referenced in passing white aggression and mentioned in a sympathetic manner the poor treatment of the Indians.

Yet still, nevertheless, in Brown’s words above I see certain people raised up and illuminated, while other people were overlooked. One group of people was white and the other was not, as it happened.

Whatever the case may be regarding intent, the end result was the same. Certain people were ignored and written out of history.

A national narrative might be narrowly and exclusively crafted to suit and advance a particular view of the past, and done so by the people with the greatest access to the systems of power governing and defining society.

I’d like to suggest a correction to Brown’s narrative.

More likely, that was not the trail of Los Padres, but rather, the trail of California Indians that the mission fathers followed. Yet it’s been erroneously attributed to Los Padres as evidence justifying the name of the forest.

Isn’t that what really happened?

Tangerine Falls after the floods and Montecito Debris Flow catastrophe.

In the case of crossing over the Santa Ynez Mountains behind Santa Barbara, a Chumash trail was eventually followed, more or less, by American road builders and now here today we have Highway 154 known as San Marcos Pass, officially named the Chumash Highway.

Los Padres did not come here and start bushwhacking new trails through a virgin steel wool forest of impenetrable chaparral that could stop an army.

Los Padres surely walked through a forest thinned by Native tending practices.

Beyond that, they must have followed existing trails long ago created by those humans that were here for thousands of years before them, as any sensible person would do. They weren’t idiots.

Right?

Weren’t these trails first walked by the Chumash and then later followed by explorers, Padres, pioneers, settlers, stagecoaches, automobiles and hikers?

Isn’t that what really happened?

From my post in 2020:

“In 2007, in support of renaming San Marcos Pass the Chumash Highway, then California State Assembly representative, Pedro Nava, cited a ‘peer reviewed study that demonstrated the profound historical significance of the 8,000-year-old Chumash trail network.’”

A long-lost Native American stone bead seen in Condor National Forest.

Brown continued with the tortured reasoning:

“Furthermore, nine of the old missions were located adjacent to the national forest area, already replete with an atmosphere of Spanish and Mexican days.”

Adjacent. Why is a flash-in-the-pan relative short period of work and life adjacent the forest by Los Padres of greater importance than over eight thousand years of living and working within it by California Indians?

If, that is, the important matter here is the forest and human achievements thereabouts.

It’s a rhetorical question. I’m holding Brown to his own standard to illustrate the absurdity.

I would not expect the forest to be named after California Indians in 1936, but if they were searching back then for people that truly used and knew the forest, then that is the obvious, eminent group of folks.

It’s as if the farther from the forest a person lived or were born and the less relevance the forest had in their lives, then the more likely the forest would have been named after them.

What is this nonsense?

A Dick Smith sketch in his Condor Journal (1979). Mammoth and Mastodon Sign: Reading Trees In the Santa Ynez Mountains

Brown wrote a whopper:

“It was quite logical that the name finally chosen, ‘Los Padres’ (The Fathers), would be met with universal approval, . . .”

That’s diplomacy at the end of a bayonet. I suppose it is logical that the captive will submit and accept anything when he has a steel blade pressed to his throat.

Universal did not mean universal back then.

Universal in 1936 meant some people, such as blacks most notably but also Latinos and others, were denied the vote through various schemes and intimidation or outright force, and segregated or beaten into submission or all of the above and then strung from trees like piñatas.

Let us tell it like it was and not be wishy-washy.

“When any white man in the world says, give me liberty or give me death, the entire white world applauds.

When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one.

And everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n****r so there won’t be any more like him.”

—James Baldwin

There was the Civil War from 1861-65 and the subsequent failure of Reconstruction and the rise of the Jim Crow-era through the 1930s, but one might also look back to the Mexican-American War and see evidence of this long fight over the idea of whiteness.

“The war of 1846-48 provided Americans with a venue to confront their own internal conflicts as they fought a war heavily promoted by politicians and the press in the name of white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy.”

—Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War

In losing the war, Mexico gave up a huge swath of the Southwest to the United States including California. And in California between 1850 and 1935, scores if not hundreds of Latinos were lynched.

During the 1930s, as well, hundreds of thousands of American citizens of Mexican ancestry were rounded up in raids and deported to Mexico without due process, losing not only their security in right of place as citizens, but possession of private property, too.

Those were egregious violations of the most fundamental of all of American civil rights.

That was what “universal” meant back then.

Naming the forest in honor of white men was a much different thing back in 1936 compared to what it might be today if it happened.

Such a naming today would necessarily be more democratic and so stand on the greater legitimacy of organic community consensus. That’s true honest-to-goodness civic nationalism.

In 1936, we are not talking about a benign political majority merely enjoying its legitimate power through the ballot box to shape society in wholesome ways and name its national treasures.

No. That is not how it happened.

Universal approval meant that the hegemony of the white ruling class ensured what they wanted, no matter what, at any cost.

It wasn’t like they allowed anybody else to be in the running. Unless they were literally running, like back to Mexico or for their lives.

Isn’t that how it really worked?

Isn’t that what really happened?

Traces of past human hands, incised grooves.

Brown wrote just a mere nine years removed from the event that the new name was “a fitting memorial to its first white users.”

The word white itself is not “offensive, racist language.” I hope to offer something more intelligent and worthwhile than kneejerk cries of racism.

Language recognizing the first white man to march through wilderness is no more offensive and racist than that recognizing the first black man to do the same. Like for example York crossing the continent.

Nonetheless, Brown’s choice of words is relevant and problematic.

When we consider, as we have, what else Brown wrote, and we place the naming of the forest within some rough framework of historical context as follows below, a picture emerges that taints the name Los Padres.

In the period of time during which the forest was named there was a vicious and violent fight over the idea of whiteness. Of course, this issue had long been fought over in America.

Brown’s remark about white users ties, to some degree and in some manner, the naming of our forest to this long standing fight over race.

Aside from Brown’s comment, however, we should not separate the naming of the forest from the social and political atmosphere in America at that time, of which the name is a product.

The name Los Padres was bestowed in 1936.

That’s twelve years after Native Americans were granted citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

And seven years after David Banks Rogers, first curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, published his book, “Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast.” 

He described a high state of Native American cultural specialization.

Funny how American citizens with a rich and ancient history in the forest, and whom knew the most about it all, were overlooked and ignored.

Instead, they named our forest after the religious agents of a foreign imperial power whom knew almost nothing about it and didn’t do much therein when they did briefly venture into it; a foreign power the United States had just been at war with thirty-eight years earlier in the Spanish-American War.

What is this madness?

Under rump and foot. The boulder they staged this photo while posing on is decorated all over in old Native American rock art.

“No one was white before he/she came to America,” James Baldwin wrote.

“There is, in fact, no white community,” Baldwin declared in his essay “On Being White. . .And Other Lies” in 1984.

“It took generations, and a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white country.”

The creation of race in America was a device designed to advance the political power and economic domination of the white ruling class. This is what Baldwin was talking about.

When Los Padres first came here they were not known as white people. They were known as Spaniards. Only later in America did the Spanish become white, as in Brown’s history book. Viola!

When European immigrants first came to America they were not called white. They were not known by skin tone so much as nationality. They were called English and French and German and Scottish and Norwegian.

They were called Irish and looked askance at and their light complexion bought them little or no acceptance or privilege. This is not to say the Irish ever suffered anything similar in kind or scale that black Americans had; they did not.

Nevertheless, the Irish, with their history of indentured servitude in Britain, were not keen on oppression and so they were in turn hated for it in America. To become white in America the Irish set aside those views.

“. . .the relativity of race is shown in the sea change it entailed, whereby emigrating Irish haters of racial oppression were transformed into White Americans who defended it.”

“On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King outlined a dream of an America where people would not be judged by the color of their skin.

That dream has yet to be realized, but some three centuries ago it was a reality.

Back then, neither social practice nor law recognized any special privileges in connection with being white.”

–Excerpted from the Penguin Random House webpage about Theodore W. Allen’s two volume set, The Invention of the White Race

Update: 4-23-25:

“As early as the nineteenth century, deeds in Brookline, Massachusetts. forbade resale of property to ‘any negro or native of Ireland.’

Such provisions spread throughout the country in the 1920s as the preferred means to evade the Supreme Court’s 1917 Buchanan racial zoning decision.”

—Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law; A forgotten history of how our government segregated America (2017)

Santa Ynez River in fall, linking montane and marine in Condor National Forest.

I’d rather not celebrate the first achievements of each racial category that’s been foisted upon us, these arbitrary and constrictive fabrications. Such celebrations are lost on me.

As Santa Barbara thinker, Kristian Blom, says rather smartly of racial categories in his writings on cultural evolution, they are but “imaginary taxonomies.”

“Culture is Biology. Therefore, it’s irrational to talk about ‘Black Americans’ or in any way creating imaginary taxonomies.

It’s irrational to organize a society and policies around such taxonomies.”

—BlomSays.com

Taxonomies sprung on us from the poisoned well of slavery and that have troubled and divided us and warped our understanding of ourselves and our community ever since.

“Race is the child of racism, not the father.”

—Ta-Nehisi Coates “Between the World and I”

Condor National Forest reading room.

Something of the relativism of race, and how the fight over the idea of whiteness warped society, may be seen in the history of the Mexican-American civil rights organization LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, founded in 1929.

Early in its history LULAC advocated for the inclusion of Mexican-Americans into the American mainstream under the imaginary taxonomy of white.

When a city directory in Texas recategorized Mexican-Americans in the 1930s, LULAC demanded a correction and insisted Mexicans were white.

“LULAC declared that the system was an attempt to ‘discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.’”

–Benjamin Marquez, LULAC The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization

Something similar happened in 1936 when the U.S. Bureau of the Census recategorized Mexican-Americans.

“LULAC engaged in a series of lobbying activities as soon as it discovered that Mexican Americans would be categorized as part of a group of dark-skinned minorities.”

Mexican-Americans sought to identify as white as a bulwark against discrimination and a means to break through the barriers put before them by those in the political majority, whom wielded power with brutal, exclusive intent.

During the same period of time Mexicans fought to be white under the law, some 400,000 American citizens and legal residents of Mexican ancestry were illegally deported from California.

In total, it is estimated up to two million Mexican-American citizens, many of whom had been born in the United States, were forcibly relocated to Mexico between 1929 and 1935.

The State of California issued a formal apology in 2005: Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program.

Something similar to the Immigration Act of 1924 which sought overall to “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity” by banning all immigrants from Asia, the mass deportation of Mexican-American citizens during the 1930s was aimed at maintaining white ruling class domination.

What might be described as a herrenvolk democracy, “democratic for the master race but tyrannical for the subordinate groups.”

“The seed of Nazism’s ultimate objective—the preservation of a pure white race, uncontaminated by foreign blood—was in fact sown with striking success in the United States.

What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of ‘race suicide’ during the immigration scare of the early 20th century.

They included wealthy patricians, intellectuals, lawmakers, even several presidents.

Perhaps the most important among them was a blue blood with a very impressive mustache, Madison Grant.

He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.

And, continuing without edit, here’s how these ideas about whiteness informed and influenced U.S. law:

Grant’s purportedly scientific argument that the exalted ‘Nordic’ race that had founded America was in peril, and all of modern society’s accomplishments along with it, helped catalyze nativist legislators in Congress to pass comprehensive restrictionist immigration policies in the early 1920s.

His book went on to become Adolf Hitler’s ‘bible,’ as the führer wrote to tell him.”

–Adam Serwer, White Nationalism’s Deep Roots

__________________________________________________________

“Brenton started my real research into the problems with immigration and foreigners in our White lands, . . .”

–Payton Gendron quoted in the Washington Post, alleged mass shooter accused of killing 10 and wounding three others in a racist rampage on May 14, 2022. He references mass murderer Brenton Tarrant.

_____________________________________________________________

You thought all that was bad enough, I’m sure, Dear Reader. But it gets worse.

In addition to the lynching and violence and deportations and general discrimination, there was also forced sterilization, much of it perpetrated against children.

“What is often not appreciated is that Nazi efforts were bolstered by the published works of the American eugenics movement as the intellectual underpinnings for its social policies.
. . .
The Nazis, when proposing their own sterilization program, specifically noted the ‘success of sterilization laws in California’ documented most notably by the American eugenicist P.B. Popenoe.”

—U.S. Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939): A Contemporary Biologist’s Perspective

“At the age of 16, Iris was committed to a California institution and sterilized.

Iris wasn’t alone. In the first half of the 20th century, approximately 60,000 people were sterilized under U.S. eugenics programs.

Eugenic laws in 32 states empowered government officials in public health, social work and state institutions to render people they deemed ‘unfit’ infertile.

California led the nation in this effort at social engineering.
. . .
Working-class youth, especially youth of color, were targeted for commitment and sterilization during the peak years.”

–Nicole L. Novak and Natalie Lira, California Once Targeted Latinas for Forced Sterilization

“’It’s been so amazing, a little surreal,’” Stacy Córdova, whose aunt Mary Franco was forcibly sterilized when she was 13 years old in 1934, told Noticias Telemundo.”

—California compensates victims of forced sterilizations, many of them Latinas

Continuing with Benjamin Marquez on LULAC during the 1930s:

“[LULAC’s] struggle to eliminate racial discrimination was designed to give Mexican-Americans the opportunity to compete in the economic marketplace on an equal footing with Anglo-Americans. . .and fit in with the white majority.”

“There were political and social advantages to be gained by having Mexican Americans officially recognized as members of the white race.

The group was searching for a formula that would give Mexican Americans free access to the economic market even if the basic assumptions of racism went unquestioned.”

“However, there is evidence to suggest that these political attitudes carried over into the social sphere, and that these early activists did not wish to be associated with blacks socially or politically.

LULAC credited a Dr. T. J. McCamant with bringing the Census Bureau’s classification scheme to its attention.

Using the language of racism itself, it thanked him for helping LULAC discover the ‘n****r in the woodpile.’” [asterisks added]

That was LULAC in an editorial in 1937 when Mexicans were legally white. That was one year after Los Padres was named in 1936.

That was eight years before William S. Brown published his history of the forest in 1945 celebrating the name Los Padres as “a fitting memorial to its first white users.”

This is the same year California parents and LULAC prevailed in a lawsuit against the segregation of Mexican-Americans in Orange County. And two years after the Zoot Suit Riots.

By the letter of the law at the time the forest was named, those white users Brown wrote of could have in fact been Mexicans.

And yet at the same time, when those users were using the forest they weren’t even really white, as Baldwin reminded us.

It’s all screwed up.

In the midst of this racially charged violent atmosphere of segregation and sterilizations and immigration raids and deportations of natural born American citizens for, essentially, not being white, the forest was named, by the same group of people enforcing this violent regime of exclusion and terror, for foreign white men whom had virtually no attachment to the woods.

I do not think the picture needs to be any clearer.

The name Los Padres must be thrown out.

Consider the case of two memorial plaques in Santa Barbara as artifacts of this fight over the idea of whiteness.

The placement of the plaques in 1927 and 1938 frames the naming of Los Padres National Forest in 1936.

On July 7, 2020, in response to my post pondering the renaming of our forest, reader Paul M. (To be renamed Pablo de la Playa) commented on this blog.

He brought our attention to a plaque placed at the Santa Barbara Courthouse in 1927 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which honored the Gaspar de Portola expedition of 1769 as the “first white men to march through the wilderness of California.”

Father Junipero Serra, most prominent of Los Padres, accompanied Portola on the expedition.

The Portola plaque has since been removed. Another plaque on the same boulder was also removed, which had memorialized “the first white women” to march through California.

Five days later, on July 12, 2020, Jerry Roberts posted a piece on Newsmakers:

Historic Courthouse Plaques Recognize Santa Barbara’s ‘First White’ Men and Women: County Supervisor Gregg Hart Objects to ‘Offensive, Racist Language’

Six days after that, on July 18, 2020, Roberts published an Op-Ed by Frank Ochoa:

Some Reflections on the Disputed Courthouse Plaques – from a Student of Santa Barbara History

The language on the plaques memorializing white people was “clearly incorrect,” Ochoa writes, as “the group was not all ‘white.’”

It was not clearly incorrect. It may be true that not every single person with Portola was white, but that is a strawman argument.

The plaque did not state that the expedition as a whole was white. The plaque clearly stated who was being memorialized. And the men whose title or position were specified were, indeed, white.

In addition, we cannot define the language on the plaques based on what the word white is thought to mean in 2022, but must understand the word as it was in 1927 and 1938.

I submit that it would not have been out of the question to see Mexicans supporting the language and placement of those plaques back in 1927 and 1938, when Mexicans were legally white.

Jose Francisco Ortega, the historical figure mentioned in the op-ed link above, would have been recognized and celebrated as a white man. So too would have many others in the Portola expedition that might not today be thought of as white.

The language on those plaques when placed at the Santa Barbara Courthouse was correct even if it did omit or not mention other historical facts.

The reason to bring this up is to note that there is a larger, far more important point that is being missed by all the people in both of those links.

This was not just a simple and honest factual oversight on the Portola plaque and it should not be treated as such.

The Daughters of the American Revolution intentionally focused on and memorialized white men, while ignoring everybody else. That’s my contention, at least.

The people who placed the plaques were not clueless idiots. They were intelligent, and they knew exactly what they were doing.

As in Brown’s history book, so too with the plaques. Certain people and their actions and certain views of history were elevated, while other people were ignored and written out of the national narrative.

“This is how history and everything else is whitewashed,” Candace the reader commented six years ago here on this blog.

Ten thousand years of California Indian history in the forest was ignored and a few years of Los Padres’ lives adjacent the forest were memorialized.

The language and the placing of the plaques on the boulder at an entrance to the Santa Barbara Courthouse are monuments claiming history for the idea of whiteness, tying the nation to a purposefully exclusive narrative, to be celebrated front and center in the public square with the official stamp of government.

Naming Los Padres National Forest was something similar in kind, to one degree or another, it appears to me.

Place the naming of the forest in historical context along with Brown’s one line comment and it appears to be a monument in legislation to the idea of whiteness, as represented in the visage of Los Padres.

That Brown is correct about Father Serra being white, that we can say this is today factually accurate of Los Padres, would be to miss the larger, more important point about the naming of our forest in 1936, as apparently happened with the two plaques in town.

Tying the next generation of caretakers to their Public Lands.

I’d like to offer an historical aside about how people were ignored and written out of history.

Have you heard of James Beckwourth? Most everybody else hasn’t either.

He was the black mountain man whom discovered a northern route through the Sierra Nevadas now called Beckwourth Pass.

As noted on historycolorado.org:

“By the time the ‘Wild West’ became cemented in the minds of the American population, Beckwourth had faded from view in favor of other, whiter heroes with equally outlandish tales. . .

“Beckwourth’s story, like those of so many other people of color, was sidelined and dismissed.

“He achieved as much as, if not more than, his most famous white counterparts.

“’The fact is that for a long time he was lost to history because of his color,’ said Edward Wallace.

‘In the 1950s, Hollywood made a movie called Broken Arrow, and Beckwourth was one of the characters…but he was played by a white actor.’”

“People don’t recognize the contribution of blacks to the American West,” said Edward Wallace.

“There were blacks in every aspect of society throughout our history here.”

Sisquoc River

The histories of California Indians in general, and in our local example the Chumash in particular, have been marginalized, sidelined, ignored and forgotten in a similar way as has James Beckwourth’s.

This despite brilliant cultures and remarkable achievements.

In Brown’s history of the forest we see how the accomplishments of California Indians might be overlooked or even possibly attributed to white people.

In both the Portola plaque and LULAC’s legal fight to be white we see how people of other races were subsumed into the relative and imaginary taxonomy of whiteness and how their histories and life stories and identities might be twisted and warped or ignored altogether, whitewashed and forgotten.

I don’t think the forest was the most important matter to those that named it Los Padres.

I think we see this reflected quite plainly in Brown’s words, a rhetorical contortionist straining himself mightily and at odd angles to make so much as even the slightest connection justifying the name.

I think the naming of the forest was more likely a show of misguided white solidarity; the ruling class of the time identifying with Los Padres for no other reason than their race and doing so during a time of intense racial angst.

This happened during the same general time in which nonwhite immigrants were being denied entry to the United States in order to maintain white homogeneity, and while Mexican-American citizens were being sterilized or rounded up and deported, and black Americans were bound up in a web of Jim Crow laws never quite having been emancipated after all.

The same people whom formed the base of support politically, legally, extralegally and socially behind this violent oppression surely must have served too as what Brown called the “universal” support for the name Los Padres being applied to our forest.

How could it have been any other way?

Not that there was a vote taken, but that the only voices that mattered back then where those that were white. It was their way or the highway. Correct?

And we cannot have the same people who punished, threw out of the country or killed anybody they wanted to for not being white naming our forest for white men.

The naming of our forest for Los Padres was fundamentally unjust and illegitimate.

If Santa Barbara National Forest was renamed the first time because the name didn’t make simple sense, since the forest extended into three other counties, too. Well then the hurdle to overcome for renaming was long ago set far lower than we need. We can step right over.

Because it does not make sense either to name the forest after Los Padres whom did so little therein and had virtually no connection to it.

And, most importantly, the name is racially suspect and therefore fatally tainted.

Los Padres have their grand historical monuments, the California missions most prominently. And these shall remain, of course, as much else should as well.

We need not any longer grant them the national monument that is the name of our forest.

We need a name for our forest that every citizen might be proud of and that celebrates the forest itself.

In an epoch, the anthropocene, when the environment is buckling under the destructive pressures of the human race and natural biological systems are collapsing, we need to refocus on the natural world.

Brown wrote:

The four counties of Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Monterey, in which the bulk of the national forest was located, were all closely identified with mission history, . . .

The bulk of the multi-county forest is more closely identified with the condor, being its critical habitat. Now that’s quite logical!

When the forest was renamed in 1936, California condors existed nowhere else on earth but within Los Padres.

“By the late 1930s,” a National Park Service page reads, “no condors remained outside of California.”

As Brown himself wrote back in ’45:

“Los Padres is the exclusive home of the California condor, the largest native bird on the North American Continent.”

The Los Padres should become Condor National Forest.

Walk Condor Trail through Condor National Forest.

The name is obvious, sensible, and sensitive, and particular to place in a mindful and inspiring way.

The name would celebrate one of the most iconic animals in American wildlife and all the world.

The name would also celebrate the incredible story of American conservation which brought the great vulture back from the brink of extinction, after we almost succeeded in killing it off, that is.

In addition, the name would refocus our attention on the forest itself and the wildlife therein, rather than humanity in the form of some dudes or dudette like Cleveland or Los Padres or Lady Bird Johnson. Enough of that!

Language is important.

Such refocusing of our attention and principle intentions through language and name change may also be seen in the current California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which was renamed in 2013 from the old Fish and Game moniker.

Wild animals in California became officially recognized in this reiteration as creatures of inherent value other than things to be hunted and killed for food or trophy.

The Los Padres should become Condor National Forest.

Let it be.