Local city hiking reveals an urban sheen with its own allure amid arresting vistas of the sea and the town as well as fascinating flora. Imagine you might start out at Stevens Park and roam up onto the Jesusita Trail, or perhaps make an early morning meander atop the windswept Ellwood Bluffs, or even simply saunter up West Valerio Street and slip into 230-acre Elings Park from the inland side — and maybe during a few of these forays you miraculously manage “To See a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower” (William Blake).
There are two back entrances to Elings Park. One sits at the top of West Valerio Street and has parking for perhaps six cars, and a smaller street named Calle Poniente branches right from Valerio. This hilly road leads the urban hiker to a second lesser-used but perfectly legal back entrance into incandescent Elings Park. The last house number on Calle Poniente is 1795, and there are barely two parking spots available here (please respect the neighbors!). Elings remains the largest community-supported nonprofit public park in America.
Founded in 1965 by community leader Jerry Harwin, Elings is a cool place with many fine natural offerings for the local public as well as itinerant tourists. Dog walkers, cyclists, soccer players, birders, hang gliders, runners and plain old hikers amiably enjoy the splendid space, yet it’s usually uncrowded during the week. I’ve been hiking through there since the 1990s, and lately they’ve torn out many of the exotic Peruvian pepper trees and thoughtfully replaced them with more than 250 native oaks. Rewilding Elings. While the main entrance is off of Las Positas Road en route to Hendry’s Beach, the back entrances are near my home on the Westside. (See 4.1.1.)
At the unpretentious Calle Poniente entrance, some scofflaws cut the chain-link fence as you can see in the photo, but the Elings people are conscientious and the discreet gate there has always been unlocked on time (now 7 a.m. despite the sign). There’s no need for hacking through. Right at the hillside entrance, walkers will notice rampant white-blossomed coastal morning glories (calystegia macrostegia) and stunning Matilija poppies.
Beginning my slow trudge up the steep and mostly dirt hillside at the end of April, I notice a few wilting wildflowers, the tall poppies, some chaparral bushes and — oh my! — the native datura plant’s hypnotic even sacred blossom (lead photograph). Lanny Kaufer consistently calls it sacred datura following Indigenous healing traditions, and he notes that datura comes from the ancient Sanskrit dhattüra meaning “white thorn-apple” for its spikes.
This gloriously fecund native likes disturbed hillsides and plenty of sunlight. A member of the deadly nightshade family, poisonous datura wrightii exhibits an extreme toxicity. Esteemed botanist Jan Timbrook stresses that “all parts of this plant are highly poisonous” (“Chumash Ethnobotany,” p. 66; see 4.1.1.). At the same time, as master herbalists and devoted to plant-based medicines, the Chumash and other Indigenous peoples in California “highly valued this plant for its vision-inducing and pain-killing properties. It was probably the single most important medicinal plant of the Chumash.”
Both the expanding bush and the infrequent but gorgeous flowers figure heavily in Indigenous myth and spiritual practices, and this plant symbolizes the matriarchal earth power. The Samala Chumash word for datura — also a natural force — is momoy (or mo’moy). In Thomas Blackburn’s essential primary source compendium of Indigenous stories and myths, “December’s Child,” he records more than 50 pages of detailed narratives featuring “Old Woman Momoy” and “Old Mother Momoy.”
Early European colonists on Nantucket Island termed this constricting plant “Devil’s Snare,” but Toloache is what the early Spanish colonists in California called the intense brew made from the datura plant. The invading American agriculturists hated it and called the “nasty bush” Jimsonweed (and locoweed). The cattle who munched it would go wild for a while, and the big steers became impossible to control. Hacking out as much jimson weed as possible became another part of the white man’s conquest of western North America’s native flora (and people).
Elings Park is quite the jewel, shining bright with two major hills and some choice amenities (bathrooms, drinking fountains, smooth paths). Santa Barbarans and others enjoy it in an interesting variety of ways. I often speed-walk through there from the West Valerio “backside,” but the dog walkers who drive in the front way off Las Positas far outnumber the rest of us strolling happily about.
After clambering up the steep hillside where I spotted the datura bush and dying wildflowers, the summit at Godric Grove boasts the moving white marble “Sculpture for Danny” and wondrous double-views of the Pacific Ocean. Off to the right (south) over Hendry’s Beach, I descry the shimmering sea, and when I swivel left toward the mountains and Santa Barbara Harbor, mine eyes behold a second ocean gaily dancing with tiny whitecaps.
Roving about without a plan, I find myself merging with Blake’s visions as the British Romantic poet finishes his “Auguries of Innocence” quatrain with:
“Holding Infinity in the palm of my hand / And Eternity in this brief hour.”
Non-linear deep time and the flow-thinking that arise from experiencing such infinitely running “primeval time” really do connect with our ideas of eternity and infinity (and divinity). As Anthony Kronman contends in his challenging book “Beyond Disbelief”:
“The idea of eternity gives us the ‘running room’ we need to set goals that are by definition unattainable because they cannot be reached in any period of time.” (32)
Since we are living creatures defined individually by an onrushing death event, Kronman contends that “deep disappointment is our fate” in this scientific era. However, when I plan now for something later — I’m hoping to manage a flight to Germany this July, for example — “I must be able to disengage myself from my immersion in the present” (pp. 32-33). Thus, endless time (eternity) has to be defined in limited temporal (linear) terms, a contradiction, and this in turn requires some kind of “faith” or idea of divinity “Beyond Belief.”
Back in 1995 when my inspiring mother died, one of my sisters had a memorial plaque (via a donation) placed among some young trees at Elings Park. Maybe her spirit’s presence stimulated thinking about wilting wildflowers and disturbing datura as I ambled along.
The Chumash knew about these matters like most Stone Age people (many far advanced in thinking about death compared to linear-dominated westerners today), and they certainly were aware of time beyond the temporal moments in which they found themselves enclosed. In their cosmology, they envisioned three worlds (sometimes five), and they stared death right in the face. This winds us back around to appreciating and even accepting the value of personal-death awareness. In Stone Age societies, at times showing more sophisticated thinking than our own highly technological death-obsessed societies, the Chumash and other Indigenous groups performed spiritually-invigorating ceremonies and rituals upon the death of society members. We may be able to see this visualized on a peculiar rock art artifact discovered by former UCSB anthropology professsor Jim Deetz in 1965, and now held by the UCSB Art Museum. In this portable painted stone altar, we observe malevolent spirits (nunasin) from the lowest world (c’oyinashup) being partly obliterated by black asphaltum deliberately poured over them.
In my book “Trails Into Tomorrow,” I speculate that the poured asphaltum over the four red-brown semi-venomous centipedes symbolizes an animistic rejection of death (p. 99-100 with Fig. 8-2).
Roaming about atop one of Eling Park’s twin hills, you may fall into such a deep time and slow-thinking reverie, recall vivid memories of the past and simultaneously imagine future events requiring auguries of infinity and Blake’s eternity in an hour meme. However much one rejects religion, we need these feelings of eternity and divinity (faith) in order to wriggle through our care-worn urban lives.
Note: All parts of the native sacred datura plant are highly toxic and poisonous. Do not touch or collect this plant.
4.1.1.
» Elings Park’s main entrance is at 1298 Las Positas Road. Click here for more information.
» J. Timbrook, “Chumash Ethnobotany” (Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2007), pp.65-74 for datura with L. Kaufer, “Medicinal Herbs of California” (2021), pp. 214-217; William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence” (1803). Thomas Blackburn, “December’s Child” (1975) pp. 101-151 for Mother Momoy stories; Anthony Kronman, “Beyond Belief” (Yale University Press, 2022). M.L. Soini’s rendition of the painted Chumash altar stone from Soxtonocmu appears in Dan McCaslin’s “Trails Into Tomorrow” (2021), Fig. 8-2, p. 102.
— 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 Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.