The ambling creekside trail we trod links picturesque Davy Brown Falls and secluded Lost Valley Camp within the heralded San Rafael Wilderness, about 50 miles from Santa Barbara. Despite more than 50 years car-camping at my beloved and historic U.S. Forest Service Davy Brown Camp, only on this past May 7-8 did I “discover” the mini-waterfall displayed in the first photograph.

After setting up cooking gear at the official Davy Brown Camp, wild Pete, Ryan and I drove one more mile to nearby Nira Camp and set off on our planned short hike to Lost Valley Camp on the Manzana (see 4.1.1 Driving).

Nira has often been termed “the gateway to the San Rafael Wilderness,” and it serves both as an official Forest Service campsite and has an adjacent Nira Trailhead parking area.

Heading roughly east and against the Manzana’s strong flow, we started out by fording the wide creek and strolling beneath gray pines (Pinus sabiniana) amid thick chaparral.

We were walking by 10 a.m., a bit late, so planned on heat and donned protective clothing: long trousers and shirts, wide-brim hats, gloves, heavy boots, dark sunglasses, hiking poles and loaded fannypacks.

I’ve written extensively about easy camping with children along this local watercourse. Back in the day, I hiked with my 3-year old son to Lost Valley and overnighted.

When you pitch your tent and set up camp in one of Lost Valley’s two legal campsites, it’s obviously dirt camping. This elemental rawness becomes great fun for children, and juvenescent adults (no electronics allowed). All the state provides is the iron grill and wooden table, permission to light campfires (4.1.1.) and the close proximity to the creek. Sometimes we find available down firewood, but I often avoid fires.

In the Lost Valley Camp photograph, you can see Ryan and Wild Peter in the background as well as a tidy pile of kindling firewood left beside the table by a previous anonymous camper. There’s no charge at any of these backcountry sites.

We did not overnight at spectacular Lost Valley. We left the pristine camp exactly as we found it, and on May 7 campfires were still legal (check here for fire regulations. If we had backpacked, we would certainly have filtered the water from adjacent Manzana Creek. By mid-July, the creek here will likely run underground or be too low to easily filter.

Munching on good snacks at Lost Valley — sitting at the table feels good on my aging back — we inhaled pine-scented oxygenated backcountry air with gratitude and some silence. Warm winds wafted through bearing pine scents and soothing the skin. We were keeping a close eye out for rattlesnakes on the way back since they like the growing heat of mid-spring, and came across this long gopher snake.

When using this section of the named Upper Manzana River Trail, make sure to choose the “high trail” at the junction noted; down low there are two impassable sections.

As we returned to our truck temporarily parked at Nira Trailhead, we observed that this is an excellent water year on the Manzana.

Returning the one mile driving back to our pre-set campsite at Davy Brown, we admired the old homestead area that the historical Davy Brown chose, where two creeks intersect.

A couple of the 10 sites have direct access to enticing pools in which one can splash after a short but hot day on the trail.

Davy Brown Creek flows copiously near all the car campsites and the water-music melodies entrance the ear and entice the imagination throughout the night. Just above the small streambed, the hillsides have rapidly dried out, and it looks like summer up there already. There are still stands of wildflowers, but most of the grasses have already lost their spring green allure.

Davy Brown was a man for many seasons. Born in 1798, he was supposedly a cabin-boy on a privateer in the War of 1812; he reputedly rode with Kit Carson and was widely acknowledged as a sharpshooter, a skilled hunter who was a renowned bear-killer. We know he lived to a respectable old age, dying at 98 in Guadalupe. However, for at least 15 years, he held out here on Davy Brown Creek about a mile above the much larger Manzana, of which Davy Brown Creek is a major tributary.

I’ve been visiting Davy Brown Camp since the mid-1970s and only twice have I found the creek completely dried up (this means it’s gone underground). Brown lived there in his 80s and 90s!

Part of my attraction to the area is how old man Brown could endure the many discomforts he must have experienced there. I don’t think there was any road back to our camp in the 1880s, so the best way in might have been the Davy Brown Trail, which starts high up on Figueroa Mountain Road, and that could be demanding for horses or mules. We do know Davy had two work mules that helped drag in downed trunks for the essential winter fires Davy and his friend Boy would have needed.

After a night out beside the table and firepit and overnighting in Davy Brown Camp, Wild Peter led us to a recent discovery he had made. With Ryan, we walked up the very short camp road to the topmost official campsite (with the huge boulder), skirted it by hiking past the “water silo” (with bullet holes) for perhaps an eighth of a mile.

There were two challenging water crossings of the small rivulet in this section, and one was quite difficult. Then we suddenly came upon the mini-waterfall that I hadn’t noticed for more than 50 years (first photo). It will likely dry out when upper Davy Brown Creek recedes under the hot blasts of summer sun in the backcountry.

It’s a lesson in diamonds right before your eyes, but you cannot see them for the dust and little screens and drifting leaves of accustomed memory. That low waterfall a few hundred yards up the stream from camp has been there off and on, depending on the recent rainfalls, for thousands of years. I’ve nearly always hiked up the Davy Brown Trail in Fir Canyon, although that is now compromised by poor trail conditions.

4.1.1.

Driving directions to Davy Brown Camp and Nira Trailhead: Highway 154 to Armour Ranch Road at the Santa Ynez River bridge. Turn right. In about two miles, turn right again on Happy Canyon Road, which becomes Sunset Valley Road at the signed Cachuma Saddle, and drive to signed Davy Brown Camp; Nira Trailhead (and Camp) is another mile or so and the road stops there. It’s about 47 miles.

The one-day shuttle: Drive to Nira from Davy Brown Camp (you have set up your overnight there already) and begin hiking east (northeast) for one mile to Lost Valley Camp. Upon your return to Nira, drive the one mile back to your Davy Brown Camp site for the overnight. Check the fire conditions and whether campfires are allowed here. At Forest Service Davy Brown Camp, the self-charge is $30 a night; there are envelopes for deposit.