Back in the mid-19th century, famed editor Horace Greeley told the American democracy’s pioneers, “Go West, young man!” Today, for denizens of this South Coast, the route toward wilderness heads east — back into those depopulated chaparral acres of Santa Barbara’s harsh and dry backcountry (4.1.1.).
These hills contain sacred Indigenous sites as well as American pioneer sites such as the Manzana Schoolhouse.
Indigenous cultural resources include remote rock shelters that conceal compelling ancient rock art — including this transmorphic “bird” pictograph: This image is the one reproduced on the elegant new Forest Service sign in the first photograph.
I’ve followed this reverse-direction east since the early 1970s, and for decades the constant joy simply arose out of brisk walking into a pristine glory clad mostly in low chaparral, but with a few signature creeks offering riparian splendors and shade.
Along upper Manzana Creek, for example, we hiked beneath tall sycamores amid various kinds of oak and many useful native grasses.
Thorny and resilient chaparral covers more than 90% of my beloved 200,000-acre San Rafael Wilderness, and only a few higher formations like the San Rafael Mountains attain the elevation good for conifers like Jeffrey and ponderosa.
However, I’ve kept plugging away at serious backpacking and hiking into my 60s and now later 70s, and friends like guru Franko and wild Pete press me to answer, Why keep on moving about like this? Why not stroll in Alice Keck Park or lounge an hour or two at the beach?
My hiking comrades both know I had enjoyed an earlier career in ancient history and Mediterranean marine archaeology, which meant frequent travels to Europe and Cyprus Island. A half-year fellowship studying Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York filled my head with wondrous images but also inclined me to elevate these old European aesthetic norms above artworks and artifacts from other regions.
This is the idolatry of “western civilization,” so to speak, and the hegemony of old white men — think “from Plato to NATO.”
This is the way I explain — or even defend — my complete ignorance of (and interest in) Indigenous California rock art and anthropology at that time, more than 30 years ago.
Eurocentrism manifests today in several ways, not least in the anti-immigration fervor which seems never to aim at white European immigrants. English and Spanish are European-based languages. Thus, it was only after roaming the vast Santa Barbara backcountry for more than 20 years that I slowly become aware of Indigenous California rock art — of the profound beauty of these alluring images right here in our local desert backcountry.
Although Campbell Grant’s magisterial tome, “The Rock Paintings of the Chumash,” had come out in 1965, I only obtained my copy in the 1990s — testimony to my blinkered Eurocentrism and frequent summer research trips to Greece, Cyprus and Israel.
While I walked on with hike after backpack after trek into our own mysterious backcountry, my awareness of the aura back there and the strange power back there grew and grew. The crazy-looking twisted rock formations drew my attention on every side.
My academic curiosity led me to heavy reading in California anthropology and Indigenous art. But I also recall that guru Franko began to show me some actual Chumash pictograph sites in the San Rafael Wilderness.
On my own later, I would respectfully visit (never enter) a few of these sacred areas, e.g., note this enhanced photograph of an important cultural resource in a local rock shelter (and compare it to the original photo I took in the cave in second photo, above):
The easy walking goal on this hike was up the Manzana to handy Fish Camp, at the base of Fish Peak where we knew there were two nice backpacking overnight spots with wooden tables, firepits, and even a sanitary throne toilet (with wooden screen).
As wild Pete and I hiked through Lost Valley Camp in early February, we felt saturated with stimulating backcountry vibes as the fragrances changed, the flowing Manzana’s water-music hummed, hawks flew, lizards crept, and the only other big mammals around were five small mule deer browsing in early grass.
As a member of PIP — Partners in Preservation — since 2016, I’ve moved around even more extensively in these five federal wildernesses only to realize the staggering volume of Indigenous (durable) rock art right here in our local backcountry.
Only by the merest chance did my “micro” individual life tend toward travel outward (three years in Europe) foster incessant forays inside the USA, mainly east into the Santa Barbara backcountry.
By the 1990s, my attention focused more and more on these sophisticated rock art designs, some of which have been replicated on Chumash basketry design and sand paintings.
I was over 40 years of age when I realized the archetypal power and overpowering beauty of Indigenous aesthetics despite years touring European art museums — I’ve visited scores of museums in western Europe. Thus, the inner travels east into our still fierce Santa Barbara backcountry wildernesses have blended with those earlier years traveling outward back to my own western cultural heritage in central Europe.
It’s another eternal return both in time and in space (one branch in Europe, another branch right here). I’m a descendent of Scots-Irish immigrants who has fallen in love with these arid hinterlands.
I constantly head back there, mostly to cruise about and absorb the aura. I am convinced that these continuous ambulatory excursions strengthen both the spiritual and physical heart. It’s become a sort of choice-less choice, and I tell my friends I have no plans to stop this rambling at all until entropy, Father Time, Yama, Thanatos or Fate will end it for me!
4.1.1.
These five nearby federally designated “wilderness areas” include about 500,000 acres of the 1.75 million-acre Los Padres National Forest: San Rafael, Sespe, Dick Smith, Matilija and Chumash wildernesses. I hiked to Fish C. before our recent mid-February rains.
Driving directions to Nira Camp (the 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 (becomes Sunset Valley Road) and drive to the end (Nira is two miles past Davy Brown Camp where this road dead-ends). About 90 minutes each way for about six-mile round-trip.
See Dan McCaslin, “The Eternal Backcountry Return” (Sisquoc River Press, 2018).
Map: Brian Conant, “San Rafael Wilderness Trail Guide and Map” (2015).