“But to the Athsheans, soil, ground, earth was not that to which the dead return and
by which the living live: the substance of their world was not earth, but forest.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Word for World Is Forest” (1972 science-fiction novel)

According to my voluminous — and generally tedious — journals, I’ve camped out near 7,500-foot Reyes Peak at least 25 times during the past half-century. In 1983, I led a four-day Crane Country Day School backpacking trip with 35 students. We set off from lofty Reyes Peak and dropped down to Haddock Camp on Piedra Blanca Creek, then to 6,600-foot Pine Mountain Lodge Camp, on to riparian Piedra Blanca Camp, and finally we forded the Sespe River to waiting cars (a shuttle backpack).

When wild Pete and I overnighted at the same Reyes Peak Campground on June 4, we planned to hike up to the formal peak itself after leaving our gear at the campsite.

However, we first noticed the many natural changes at the lovely campground since the last time we had enjoyed it in October of last year.

There are just six car-camp sites, and they line the last mile or so of pavement, usually with an ocean-ward vista that may include the northern Channel Islands as well as Catalina. I write “may” since heavy marine fog often obscures these views, as we encountered even driving up Highway 33 past Ojai.

Only one other car was parked there (at No. 6), and a lack of machine noise helped me decouple from those cities in the plain far below.

Late spring wildflowers speckled the austere and rocky landscape, including Indian Paintbrush, colorful red Penstemon, and what Peter identified as yellow California Goldenbanner (Thermopsis californica), which I’d never noticed before.

From the access road, we admired acres of blue ceanothus, which glowed like its own floral ocean and furnished a delightful lilac fragrance.

Around one Penstemon bush, a thin and sinuous yellow racer snake slithered onto the trail, startling me for a moment, and there were the usual assortment of lizards basking on the warm sandstone, petrified in the sun. Again, like the Goldenbanner. I’d never seen a snake up here, ever, but they are known to be present. Hikers beware: There are rattlesnakes.

Right in the campground beneath the ponderosa and Jeffrey pines, I discovered another new aspect to the Reyes Peak area: a profusion of what some botanists have deemed a rare native plant — the showy snow flower, or snow plant.

This crimson glory, scientifically known as Sarcodes sanguinea, can be termed “a fleshy herbaceous perennial” and does not possess chlorophyll. It is found only in the far western United States in our Sierra Nevada and also in the Pacific Northwest. I have seen these flowers in the southern Sierra Nevada above Kernville, and they are well-known in Yosemite.

From my reading, this fleshy (sarcodes) plant likes mature, moist and shaded conifers above 3,000 feet — but the profusion we happily observed was not in a moist environment. The above-ground portion begins to grow in late spring, as the snow melts, and presents a dramatic contrast with the snow (if the surrounding snow has not already melted, as is typical).

While I’ve always noticed a few of them up at Reyes in spring, this time we found a snow flower bonanza, sometimes 10 to 15 at once.

Without chlorophyll, they cannot utilize the sun’s energy via photosynthesis — meaning the pure-looking snow flower is actually a parasite living off the amazing fungal network beneath the pine needles (and snow in winter). The now well-known mycorrhizai fungi in the soil link the tall conifers above in what I certainly would define as a “mind” (see 4.1.1. mycorrhizai).

The fungi themselves live off the conifer’s roots, and the opportunistic snow flower parasitizes (feeds on) and gets energy from the fungi. This web of intelligent life exalts and astonishes humans, and some of us assert that just as certain rivers “live” and have “being,” these higher-altitude old-growth conifers have a central mind linked by their faithful fungal network below.

I noticed a hummingbird feeding on the “fleshy” red snow flower — I had never seen a hummingbird up here before, either.

From the campground, we drove another mile on a dirt track — 4-wheel-drive is a good idea here — to the end. Walking along the marked trail after a few hundred yards, start right up the very steep path to the summit. (Do not take the leftward trail leading down to Haddock Camp, where I led my eighth-graders 42 years ago.)

Spectacular views all around struck our eyes at the summit of Reyes Peak. Forested everywhere and no roads visible at all — unless you look far down into the Cuyama Valley and the distant Highway 33 (and sometimes Highway 166). The entire walk is only three miles, but quite steep, and I absolutely needed my heavy boots and twin hiking poles.

Back at the comfy U.S. Forest Service camp, we studied the beautiful conifers and worried about their fate at the humans’ voracious hands. We noted some of the beautiful sugar pines with their very long hanging pine cones, and I recalled that this very tall tree is especially valuable as lumber.

Reyes Peak Campground and Reyes Peak itself are on the much larger massif called Pine Mountain. In 2023, I wrote about the U.S. Forest Service’s dubious plan to “thin” (read chop down) old-growth forestlands in this area. The Forest Service now has another logging plan to “thin” more than 90,000 acres in national forests in California, such a complex topic I will describe in my next column.

Wild Pete and I scoured the area as we have for years and found no sign at all of historic wildfire damage up on Reyes Peak and its surroundings. Old-growth conifers are certainly present, including plenty of conifers valuable for commercial logging.

I’ve been hiking the area since the 1970s — absolutely no need for such drastic clearing in the “Mount Pinos Forest Health Project” (which the courts have allowed) or the new one covering 90,000 acres.

In science-fiction master Le Guin’s haunting novella “The Word for World Is Forest,” she writes about “days like the leaves of the forest.” When we reduce the forest’s leaves (or pine needles), we reduce our own existence on this green platform I call Mother Hutash and Mother Gaia.

Perhaps the world’s massive forest cover serves as a sort of unifying mycorrhizal network for us, which we muck around with at our peril.

4.1.1.

Drive south on Highway 101 to the Highway 33 turnoff just before Ventura. Drive through Ojai and continue on scenic 33. There are four solar-powered stoplights on this section but with no waits longer than five minutes. Drive past Rose Valley (signed) to the signed right turn to Pine Mountain Road. Drive seven miles to the end of the pavement. Campsites are $30 per night, many of them first come, first served.

The best map is Tom Harrison’s “Sespe Wilderness Trail Map,” which does show the sketchy trail to the top of Reyes Peak itself.

On the brilliant snow flower: fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/sarcodes_sanguinea.shtml. On the mycorrhizal network, scientists know it’s not just a passive system for nutrient transfer; it’s also an intelligent network that underpins many aspects of tree life, including communication, resource sharing and even aspects of what could be considered “intelligence.” University of British Columbia forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has led this research.