Just Back: The Pacific Northwest

Mt Baker from Skagit Valley, WA.

I've been away for a week. This was originally intended to be a snowboarding trip but this winter's ridiculously resilient north pacific jet stream has largely bypassed the west coast, leaving places like Mammoth, Tahoe, Mt Hood, the Washington Cascades, and Whistler begging for anything that might be snow. At Mt Baker, one of my favorite powder kegs, they're just pushing the snow around to make runs. It's bad, but the tickets were booked, and it was a good opportunity to visit with my parents and see some other sites. In other words, we were good little tourists. Enjoy some photos from our trip. Feel free to click any image to enlarge it.

Whatcom Creek, Bellingham, WA.

Totem Poles, Vancouver, BC. [and below]

Ruth at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, BC.

Pass Lake, Widbey Island, WA

Puget Sound from Chuckanut Drive.

Deception Pass Bridge.

Point Wilson Light House.

Alexanders Castle, Point Wilson, WA.

Puget Sound from Larrabee State Beach, WA.

A Washington ferry landing on Puget Sound.

Downtown Vancouver, BC.

Bald Eagle(s), Skagit Valley, WA. [and below]

From the permanent Northwest Native Art collection at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). [and below]

Bellingham Bay, WA.

Seattle Skyline.

Mt Rainier

The North Cascades.

Flocking snow geese, Skagit Valley, WA.

Mockingbird Cave

There is painted beauty hidden deep in the heart of Riverside County. I had to go see this for myself because I don't normally associate Riverside with the word "beauty".

This site is located in a spring fed gulch amid a moat of fancy horse properties. Scrubby oak trees and tall stands of  cat tails frame the tepid stream from the spring. A scattering of granitic boulders and several larger formations dot the slopes on each side of the spring. One such formation is a collection of ground level boulders crowned by two large capstones, and beneath these are two very colorful panels of polychrome art.

Large circles or shields accompany a number of crosshatch designs. Several elements here appear (at least to me) to have a celestial connotation. The work is bright and colorful, rendered in red, white, and a blue/black.

On the opposite side of the creek is a flat granite slab with four bedrock mortars. This slab, just feet from the spring, has been described as a "birthing rock. A short pillar beside the the slab has two faded red pictographs of diamond chains on golden water streaks.  A short distance away is an additional BRM.

I was impressed with this site. The colors remain bright and crisp. Obviously any site with a consistent water source would have been an invaluable commodity in this desert region, and the depth and development of the BRMs speak it's prolonged use.

Exploring Lower Piru Creek

Sure feels like it's spring in mid-February, don't it?

I guess that three storms is the only meaningful precipitation we're likely to get this "winter" so better make the most of it. 

The Piru watershed seems to be the place where one can take every uncomfortable and unpleasant thing the SLP has to offer and upsize it. Ticks, poison oak, venomous reptiles, brush, heat, rough terrain, etc... Piru has it in spades. 

I was joined by Nico and Stephen for a combo cycling/off-trail exploration of the Blue Point/Canton Canyon arena. We mountain biked far into Canton, which is a dramatic dry wash of a place. An old jeep track weaves up the north side of the wash. There are sporadic groves of oaks, and lots of intriguing rock formations, even the remains of an old inholding. The trail is good enough that cycling is is an easy ride. We spent a good deal of time checking out the various rock formations with an eye to rock art, to no avail. 

Another part of the day was spent exploring the remains of the long decommissioned Blue Point Campground. We explored up the eastern draw which empties into Piru Creek. Here we found overgrown conditions and a nice collection of large sandstone wind caves. Done with this particular area we splashed back across Piru Creek to the road and explored a similar series of caves on the western side of the creek. The campground itself has gone completely feral over the years and it occurred to me that the USFS ought to just take everything out and let the area revert to it's primordial self. 

Further up the road we met and chatted with the long time owner of Wheeler Ranch, Joe. He's a nice older guy, was curious about what we were up to. He seemed real relaxed, and if you've seen the beautiful little spread his charming cabin sits on you'd understand why. We did a bit of exploring atop a mesa which overlooks his place.

If you're into Piru and flowers, nows the time to be out. Dozens of species of flowering plants have been tricked into an early spring bloom. The hillsides are green and lush. The birds are out. All in all it was a beautiful day for a mellow tour. Just beware, people are already reporting rattlesnakes being out and about.

Wheeler Ranch from across the way.

The lone sycamore at the mouth of the truly grand Canton Canyon.

Off Trail in the Cuyama Badlands

This isn't really a post about a trip report. It's more an explanation of what I've been up to.

The photo above was taken on the way to somewhere in the Cuyama badlands, a day which offered a beautiful, rain spattered hike into the colorful ridges and gullies beneath the north slope of Sierra Madre Ridge. The point of this hike, besides the adventure and exercise, was to find a little known rock art site. A Chumash rock art site.

A few weeks ago I was asked what percentage of day trips I go on that never make it onto this page. At the time I said 30% but looking back over the last few months the number is actually closer to 50%. What's missing you ask? The answer to that is that I am no longer going to post anything related to Chumash rock art, and in fact I have taken down all my posts to this page which related to Chumash rock art. There are several reasons for this change.

The most persuasive reason I have for changing my approach to what I post is that I have gradually come to understand that the rock art in the Tri-Counties region has exactly nothing to do with my cultural heritage. I'm not Native American, have never pretended to be Native American, and have no desire to emulate the local Native Americans. But that doesn't mean that I don't have a conscience. There are plenty of areas in Southern and Central California that have highly publicized and easily accessible rock art, and I've seen a lot of it and will continue to post such sites, but I've also been at this long enough that I have begun to sense a subtle difference in perceptions and attitudes toward Chumash art versus similar art by other cultures. 

This difference is difficult to define or quantify but it's there. I think it largely has to do with the competing priorities between the Nuevo Chumash, the Forest Service, the elites within academia, and lay enthusiasts. While it is the lay enthusiasts (like myself) that scour the internet and academic papers for information on these sites, and actually do the difficult work to go out and see them, there is no real effort to use such people as a resource. In fact, the moment one of these lay people starts publishing Chumash art on the internet they find themselves pressured to remove those postings by Chumash advocates and academics. It is easy to understand the Chumash point of view, but the barely veiled hostility and a general air of exclusivity excreted by those in academia toward those who are actually putting in the effort to see these sites as they exist today is rather repugnant. To the best of my knowledge there is no coherent effort to incorporate the more accomplished of the lay people into any effort to protect or document or preserve these sites. An example of such an organization would be the long defunct Partners In Preservation. Instead of being invited to contribute, the lay "experts" out there are dubbed pariahs the moment they step out of the closet and publish. This syndrome is very cliquish, very elite, and very off putting.  I find those attitudes a distraction from my overall purpose, which is to document adventure and discovery within the Southern Los Padres.

There is a lot that people such as myself might be able to offer given the opportunity and a minimal amount of training.

When I first began posting Chumash art on this page I took a lot of heat from various quarters. I rapidly evolved my approach to publishing, justifying my continued publication of the art at such sites by not using the site's given name or any identifiers (landscape or otherwise) which could be used as an aid in finding these sites. Within a relatively short period of time the hate mail stopped but word of my activities continued to be muttered about within the "in" crowd. Even those measures that I implemented to protect the locations of sites was insufficient to quell the attitude that I was some renegade guerrilla of the rock art world (that's a laugh). I have allies and ears, and word would reach me that this or that individual had said something uncomplimentary about my activities and that those sentiments were circulating within certain circles. Whatever. I work with heart surgeons. I have a thick skin. But I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that this high school b.s. never got to me.

I write this not in an effort to garner sympathy but quite the opposite. Rock art has been very good to me. I've made numerous contacts and gained new friends because of my interest in rock art. Many of the people I correspond with have attitudes similar to those I've expressed here. I appreciate their ongoing support and friendship. I will continue to ferret out the locations of these sites, hunt them down and photograph them, but I won't be posting anything from these sites on this page anymore. This is my decision and a conclusion I reached on my own, that being that this is not my cultural heritage and my editorializing on such art is unnecessary.

I'd like to reassure the readers of this page, many of which who have been with me the whole time, that I'm not going anywhere and that I will continue to bring the forest to this page. It's going to be the same quality of stuff I've posted all along, minus the rock art. Understand that if you see a gap in postings it's likely I've been out tracking down local rock art. 

P.S. This little rag I put out turned over 250,000 hits this week. That's not half bad for a niche blog that doesn't use web exposure services or host ad space. I appreciate your interest, your comments, and the friends I've made along the way. Thanks.