White ceanothus, sometimes called “mountain snow,” blooms in Rattlesnake Canyon. 
Toyon bushes with their scarlet berries adorn Rattlesnake Canyon. 
A muddy Rattlesnake Canyon Trail in early February. 
Purple nightshade blooms in Rattlesnake Canyon. 
A swallowtail butterfly. 
White ceanothus dots Rattlesnake Canyon.
Astronomers tell us that the official date for spring 2020 is March 19, the earliest in 124 years. My own local hiking observations supply powerful anecdotal confirmation that spring has erupted much earlier than that, with masses of blooming white ceanothus decorating frontcountry slopes (c. megacarpus) even in very early February.
Sometimes called “mountain snow,” this hardy chaparral shrub exudes a wonderful fragrance, and right now the lilac smell wafts over our local canyons. Called washiko (and sekh) in Samala, a local Chumash dialect, the native Americans preferred the blue ceanothus sekh and used the hard stalks as digging sticks and fenceposts. Jan Timbrook informs us that the Chumash also utilized pieces as awls in basket-making and as pry bars to remove abalone in the intertidal zone (see 4.1.1. books).
As readers know, most Stone Age world cultures have rites and ceremonies either celebrating the arrival of spring’s succulent solar rebirth, or imploring their deities and spirits to ensure the sun will indeed “return.” Solstice literally means “sol turning,” and answers prayers that the orb will bounce back higher in the sky after winter’s devastation, thus bringing plant and animal re-animation.
Toyon bushes with their scarlet berries also festoon local frontcountry trails such as Rattlesnake Canyon, often intermixed with the white and blue flowering ceanothus. Sometimes called “Christmas berry,” this ubiquitous heteromeles arbutifolia plant was used in many ways by the Chumash. The red berries are edible, and local native Americans ate them well into historic times. Toasting the berries in a steatite olla was a favored preparation, as well as soaking them in water for a few days; they do taste sweet. The toyon wood was hard and often utilized in the same ways as its neighboring ceanothus bushes. I have often detected remains of the toyon berries in coyote and bear scat.
In the deeper backcountry reaches, I haven’t detected as much of the white ceanothus yet. We didn’t see any hiking up Piedra Blanca Creek on Valentine’s Day.
On Saturday, Feb. 7, hiking along the Rattlesnake Canyon Trail about 7:30 a.m. with wild Peter, it began raining fairly hard. A robust group of eight or nine women hikers came scurrying down and said it actually had been hailing up ahead! Amazed, we trudged on after donning our light raingear (I always have a rain jacket in my fanny pack) as the precipitation continued. Within 30 minutes, it waned; however, it then disappeared, and we trudged ahead in light mud. A day later, almost all evidence of this brief rain had disappeared, and it feels like the drought has begun again already.
Moving higher on muddy trails, happy to have my twin hiking sticks and trying to stay off the mucky sections, we turned it early just before the Tin Shack Meadow. On our way down, we met several groups of parents with young children, all enjoying the post-rain blush in the hills.
Late in February on another venture in Rattlesnake Canyon, we observed the beginnings of the wildflower bloom in the form of lovely violet-and-yellow purple nightshade blossoms alongside the path.
My own unscientific theory is that the plants, at least, may somehow “sense” that this is a curtailed winter, and since after that good rainfall in January we received almost nothing in February, “they” collectively decided to celebrate early and germinate quickly. While not so many bees were flying about — the planet is in a critical shortage of bees as this Anthropocene progresses — I observed a few large, colorful swallowtail butterflies germinating plants.
These signs of a very early spring — flowering purple nightshade, swallowtails, green “winter grass” beneath oaks, blooming white ceanothus, and hordes of adult humans with their progeny on the friendly trails — experientially confirm that spring has wildly sprung already, perhaps mirroring our earliest astronomical spring date since 1896.
Before early summer heat completely dries out the front- and backcountry, push yourselves out there with the family to enjoy the radiant spring coming at us. Note: There's lots of poison oak, too, and the first rattlesnakes have been seen locally.
4-1-1
» Jan Timbrook, “Chumash Ethnobotany” (2007), pp. 50-51 for ceanothus uses (illustration p. 52; for toyon berries see pp. 91-94 with an excellent illustration on p. 92).
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
