Clik here to view.
Long Lost Trail Discovered, Hiking In A Time Of Lockdown And Distancing
Jack-in-a-crack doing what he does. Wandering. Searching. Hunting. Looking. Seeing. Sometimes discovering. Looking to get my hike on, and so surveying various trailheads through my car window during...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wind Poppy (Papaver heterophyllum)
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Carrizo Plain Elk Under Full Moon
Tule elk graze Carrizo Plain. Two photographers perched before one end of Selby Rocks outcrop shooting the moon rising over the broken spine of white sandstone. We drove past, along the meandering dirt...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Parks Management Company’s Red Rock Racket and the Secret Green Ticket
Kid on a rope. Like a river, like a river, sh- Like a river, like a river, sh- Like a river, like a river Shut your mouth and run me like a river —Bishop Briggs River To the River. The River. To the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Condor Cave Reference On Redwood Log, Disney California Adventure Park
Chumash pictograph, Santa Barbara County “Native people drew spiral pictographs—sets of concentric rings radiating out from a center—on cave walls and rock shelters in locations where they are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Honeysuckle in the Highlands
Honeysuckle in the woods of Scotland. “Wherever there is suddenly more light, flowering plants also try their luck, including honeysuckle. Using its tendrils, it makes its way up around the little...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Petroglyph, Santa Ynez Mountains
“The symbols of shamans were potentially dangerous because of their material spirituality connecting them to the sacred…The vulva itself was considered unusually perilous. For example, a Northern...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rename Los Padres National Forest? Race and Recognition In the Woods
Should Los Padres National Forest be renamed? In the roiling social wake of the George Floyd killing, and the peaceful protests and the violence and destruction that erupted across these United States...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Myth Of Wilderness and Ethnocentrism, Race and Recognition In the Woods
Los Padres National Forest, Santa Barbara County “The evidence strongly suggests that the prehistoric Indians’ effect on the environment can no longer be ignored by scientists and government agencies...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wolves, Grizzlies and the Howling Wilderness of Change, Santa Barbara...
Sierra Madre Mountains, Cuyama, Santa Barbara County Chief Standing Bear of the Oglala Sioux once stated that his people “did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the...
View ArticleResuscitation
Car headlights swept the blackness revealing a whirling glimpse of dirt parking lot that flashed in the night. Boulders ringed the empty lot before a backdrop of lumpy drab forest. Two men stood bound...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Halibut, One Arrowhead
The artifact as found sitting center frame. What? Where? I found this copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Diary, tucked into the children’s section for sale at the Goleta branch of the public library. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Summer of Serpents of Rattlers Beware
California mountain kingsnake on Figueroa Mountain. Not to be confused with a California kingsnake: Killer Kingsnake Eats Water Snake “To combat the boredom, I occasionally drove over the coastal range...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Halibut Surf Fishing
“Conservation of animals and plants was a burning, emotional, personal issue. A properly socialized individual had a powerful sense that the wild world was feeding him, and he ought to be as grateful...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Foreclosure
They outlawed walking in the forest. They said it was too dangerous. They told me it was “critical” that I didn’t walk in the woods for my “own safety” and that of others. They said the conditions in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Horripilation
A summer morning in the Santa Barbara backcountry. Weigh your counsel, Priest, he said. We are all here together. Yonder sun is like the eye of God and we will cook impartially upon this great...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lion’s Mane, the Smart Mushroom
“H. erinaceus can be considered as useful therapeutic agents in the management and/or treatment of neurodegeneration diseases.” A comprehensive review of the therapeutic effects of Hericium erinaceus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Condor Man
Sespe Wilderness The condor soared for hours on its nine-and-a-half-foot wing. The great vulture had drifted one hundred miles without a single flap floating on plumes of heat blowing skyward, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ancient Artifact: Erratic Chipped Stone Crescent
“Orr recalls only surface finds of crescents in the Santa Barbara area of California. He states that crescents have been found in late sites but feels they are early intrusive crescents brought in by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fossil Redwood Stump, Florissant Colorado
A 34 million-year-old fossil redwood stump at Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument in Colorado. In Colorado for a spell I found myself finding my way through forested lands I had never seen to see...
View Article