My entire thrust in writing these hiking columns has been to counter the enervating trend to remain indoors by offering moderate to extreme day hikes and backpacking treks in Santa Barbara County.

I usually emphasize bringing family members along, especially children, since the human young folk suffer the most from this overwhelming tendency to stay inside.

Outdoor enthusiasts had been eagerly awaiting the reopening of the local Los Padres National Forest after the punishing California climate fires. After regional forester Randy Moore announced the reopening Oct. 9, wonderful hiking has ensued for all.

On Oct. 16, my two colleagues and I drove 2½ hours to the glorious Reyes Peak Trail in order to hike to the summit of Haddock Peak in the Sespe Wilderness (see 4.1.1.). This path leads to Haddock Camp on Piedra Blanca Creek.

We were concerned with the mid-October heat as well as smoke from fires to the north, so we left Santa Barbara at 5 a.m. and parked at a free parking spot in Reyes Peak Campground, next to site No. 3. We began hiking from the end of Pine Mountain Road by 7:45 a.m. in the cool. (We wore N-95 masks in the vehicle and had the windows partially down.)

After a few hundred yards on the signed old road, we ignored the informal trail leading straight up to Reyes Peak and chose to follow the main trail “left” and inland, down toward the Cuyama side. This Reyes Peak Trail (22W03) was formerly called “The Piedra Blanca Trail” and drops more than 1,000 feet in its meandering descent to Piedra Blanca Creek and Haddock Camp.

There is no water along the entire 5.8-mile descent, but enticing stands of healthy conifers dot the steep hillside like a million fragrant and festooned wooden poles.

After a very short distance, there are signs indicating the entrance to the sacred Sespe Wilderness — no motorized vehicles, no chainsaws, no bicycles and no open fires (of course).

I led 35 adolescent students down this trail in 1983. We found barely enough water at Haddock Camp, and it was grueling to get everyone safely to the Sespe River over at Lion Camp (four days).

This time, my friends and I chose to enjoy the conifer-laden old-growth conifers bedecking the upper slopes of 7,400-foot Haddock Peak (pronounced HAY-doc). Contrary to some commenters, there was very little of that dreaded “ladder story” that spreads wildfires faster.

We strode downhill, mingling with the trees on a clearly marked bucolic path, and wandered about three miles, perhaps a bit less. Studying the Tom Harrison Sespe Map and recalling the trail’s lower section from the 1983 backpacking trip, I knew we wanted to stay up fairly high for three compelling reasons.

Smoke-covered mountains seaward from Haddock Peak. (Dan McCaslin / Noozhawk photo)

We needed to remain far above the smoke, the lower reaches cross a hard chaparral zone best avoided, and we wanted to bushwhack up the slope at some point to reach Haddock Peak itself.

The smoke from several climate fires colored the entire horizon seaward, making us glad we had angled to the Cuyama.

Up at the 7,400-foot Haddock Peak summit, we couldn’t smell smoke or hear any white noise at all, since even the passenger jets have disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. The wind blowing gently through the ponderosa and sugar pines caressed our machine-haunted ears as we ate princely meals at the fairly barren summit.

I carried 2.5 liters of water along with two sandwiches, apple slices, nuts, and licorice for dessert. Although extremely beautiful with a deep blue sky, there wasn’t much evidence of larger life-forms, but a few hawks sailed about, and the insects and tiny critters burrowed eagerly into the many giant fallen timbers.

Off to the north, we picked out old-favorite Reyes Peak, looming taller at 7,500 feet — and from an angle I’ve rarely ever seen. The battered trees at Haddock’s summit have been bashed by winds for centuries, and some dead ones stand as sentinels against the oncoming Anthropocene.

New Yorker writer and historian Jill Lepore calls our time period “The Great Confinement” because of COVID-19, but she also knows that this unhealthy yen to self-enclose indoors began long before the pandemic’s outbreak (see 4.1.1.).

Well before this current quarantine period, Americans and Europeans spent more than 90% of their time indoors. Lepore wonders if it may even be too late to avoid a world where “only the poor go outdoors while the rich live in zones of personalized indoor health.”

Many of us, even in splendid Santa Barbara, remain self-enclosed indoors far more than we actually have to be.

Have you read the statistic on obesity among Americans, young and old? We huddle within like porcupines in their dens.

Lepore claims the new “social porcupines” aren’t hiding inside, rather they are “like squatters, or Goldilocks, or Airbnbers, lovers of the great indoors.”

All of those advertisements to make your house or apartment a “smart” space with every type of app and gadget to entice you to remain most comfortably indoors directly affects your waistline and mental vitality. Zoom won’t bring you a sense of awe or deep time.

A Danish company, Velux, has determined in its advertising wisdom that 21st century humans belong to the “Indoor Generation” — with the attendant plague of depression, stupor and inner darkness.

OK, sure, it’s selling skylights, which makes sense. Its website has a gimmick with a pale and sad little girl who comments that all this indoor darkness began when we left nature behind and remained cocooned indoors. She’s channeling Richard Louv’s prescient “Last Child in the Woods.”

My deepest concern, as a teacher of children and a hiker, is how parents model the indoor lifestyle to their children. “Aww, let’s watch the Dodgers in the World Series together” rather than go shoot some hoops with them in the driveway.

“Let’s watch Lebron and the Lakers dismantle the Heat or that terrific National Geographic special on gorillas” rather than go to the hassle of driving 90 minutes to Figueroa Mountain or Reyes Peak for a modest outdoor hike.

Why not jump in the family car right now, with a few supplies and eager kids, flee to Reyes Peak and scamper down the Reyes Peak Trail in the direction of Haddock Camp?

We need to rewild the planet and “break up the Anthropocene,” but at the same time rewild our own minds and refuse to accept human-caused individual “self-enclosure” (see 4.1.1.).

Pondering this as we left following a long day on Haddock mountain, we saw a young woman boldly striding into the forest right at the Reyes Peak Campground — off into the woods for some solitary rock climbing and meditation!

4.1.1.

» Bring plenty of water on this trek. Directions: Drive Highway 101 south to Highway 33 in Ventura. After Ojai, continue on using the Maricopa Highway (33) to Pine Mountain Road, turn right and it’s seven miles to the Reyes Peak Campground. Drive through, and the dirt road ends in 1.5 miles. Begin hiking there (signs available). Reading: Sespe Wilderness Trail Map (Tom Harrison Maps); Jill Lepore, “Is Staying In Staying Safe?” The New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2020, pp. 67-71; Steven Mentz, :Break Up the Anthropocene” (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

— 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.

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