Before Miquel Josep Serra changed his name, this was a wilderness along the California Coast. Father Junipero Serra was one of the early Spaniards responsible for the Franciscan mission settlements from San Diego to Monterey.
I tried to imagine the coastal plains covered in wildflowers and native grasses. It might have been easier without the howling of the eighteen wheel trucks on Highway 101 below us in the fog. It’s a good exercise to imagine what once was out there along the Gaviota Coast, before the weeds, before the Spaniards and certainly before the highway below. I probably got it wrong, as I imagined waves of orange California Poppies and blue lupines. It might well have been quite different from that. Maybe a little more fog would help blur the view to something like it was.
A new trail in our county seemed like a good reason to join the Santa Ynez Natural History Association for a Saturday hike. The Bill Wallace Trail (BTW) was dedicated in 2002 to our former county supervisor for his work on environmental concerns on the Gaviota Coast where his namesake trail is located. The trailhead is at the entrance to the Ocean Mesa RV Campground near the El Capitan State Beach. In the early years only hikers with a State Park docent were allowed on the trail; now it’s open to the public.
We walked through the RV campground to use the restroom and discovered many new plants, all natives of the county. They are already making a pleasant impact on the landscape of the campground after just a couple of years.
A golden-orange breasted oriole clutched the dark stalk of last year’s mustard while we waited for the rest of the hikers. As I watched with field glasses, I lost the oriole in flight as it crossed paths with a sparrow. Song sparrows hidden in the field of weeds serenaded as we crossed the coastal flat beside the campground on the way to the uphill beginning of the trip.
The sign pointed both east and west for the BTW. We chose the hard side of the equation.
Tim said, “The worst part is at the beginning. It’s just the first mile.”
He pointed to a line map showing a dotted trail across flat paper.
“After we get back in here it levels off and there are flowers and native plants.”
He held up a yellow note page with a handwritten list of birds and plants he saw on his scouting trip two weeks earlier.
“There are easily twice as many species as I noted. Many were not yet flowering and I think we’ll see more flowers this time. It might take about five hours to go to here.”
He pointed at a location on the map that is somewhere out there.
The trail is an abandoned Texaco Oil road that has been mowed in recent days. The fog-wet grass and the clay mud make for slick walking, especially in the steep slogging through the weedy landscape of that first mile. Clay and grasses combine with each step to made adobe bricks under our feet raising our stature and weight. Filling the lugs in our boots, the adobe renders our soles as slick as any smooth sole we might have chosen.
Most trails offer a bench that is dug into the hillside by years of walkers or trail builders with shovels or occasional trail dozers like I once saw in the Grand Canyon. Here the trail is a slanted, mown area with the same slope as the rest of the hill. Hikers were breathing heavily while taking several short steps to stay upright over their feet. Slipping back required careful balance and new thought for the next attempt up the steepest runs.
Tim pointed out, “Everything you can see here is a non-native plant.”
It was true, there were thistles, mustard, exotic grasses and other weeds everywhere we could see in the fogscape. Once this area was covered in wildflowers, many producing seeds needed for food by the Chumash. Especially desirable were chia sage and red maids documented by the Spanish explorers in the 1700s during the mission era. Chia was offered as a gift everywhere they went along the California Coast. Over the past 200 years, exotics have pushed out the native plants from their natural habitat. In the higher latitudes and on less desirable soils, the natives still hold their own with their special local adaptations giving them more advantage.
Where there is usually a view of the channel, we saw fog. Through an occasional window out to sea our view included twin oil rigs off the coast. In the canyon to the east of us we could see the refinery humming away down there to cracking hydrocarbons needed for our oil addiction.
It was interesting to read this is a wilderness in one description I found online. According to our congressional Wilderness Act of 1964, wilderness refers to areas without improvements. A refinery on one side and a camp with many cabins, a road and a few meeting rooms seem to qualify as improvements or development I suspect, even to the most jaded congressperson. So I would say this is not a wilderness trip, but one where nature is still a part of the experience. Wild things do live there to be sure.
Tim pointed out a Lincoln Sparrow. This bird is an unfortunate confusion to me, as it looks a good deal like the song sparrow with its chest blotch. I’ll probably puzzle over the field book trying to figure out the markings before another field trip.
Up higher we began to run into more native plants. Mountain mahogany, ceanothus, poppies and even some purple needle grass put in appearances. The needle grass was only seen in the middle of the old roadway. It seems to be pushed out of the surrounding area by the exotics, though it might simply be covered over and still growing out there. Black sage, not yet blooming, is by the trail along with a group of rare truncated lupine displaying their fine flowers shading from fuchsia to the common lupine blue on the same stem. Owls clover in pink and some with white bursts stood out in the old roadway as well. If chia is still in the area, I missed it and I suspect anyone trying to supplement their diet with even small amounts would be sorely challenged to find enough.
At one point the BWT marker pointed down to the right, but Tim pointed up the hill ahead.
“It’s this way. There are more native plants and a canyon we’ll get to see up there.”
We did see more natives, with large stands of the bright blue fiesta in full bloom. There were sedges in a damp area around an old road cut and a small stand of woodland stars in another area. We spotted blooming black berry and blue dicks blooming sporadically along the trail. Live oaks with their male catkins bloomed profusely, but they are often missed in their subtle yellow-green. The canyon had an expanse of white-blossoming ceanothus that appeared below us. While on the far side, a cascade of exotic cape ivy from South Africa covered a huge expanse as a mono-culture. Apparently there are several canyons suffering cape ivy choking all other plants according to my fellow travelers.
A group of turkey vultures settled on a bulging rock outcropping. Online I learned a group of vultures is a kettle while circling in the air, so named perhaps after the movement of air bubbles in a boiling kettle of water. If a group is in a tree for the night, it’s a roost of vultures and when they are feasting on carrion they are a convergence. Sitting on a rock, I guess they are just a group. It should have been a murder of crows for dramatic effect. Later, they kettled up in the sky and though they are harmless, they held an ominous air. For Whom the Bell Tolls came to mind.
After slowing our pace for the native wildflowers and plants, we grew cold of feet and damp of spirit. We voted with our 26 wet feet to forgo the pleasures of the remainder of the trail to another warmer, dryer day. We made our soggy way down through the village of cabins maintained for guests of the El Capitan Canyon where we walked the paved road back to the trailhead.
Not a wilderness and certainly challenged by all the weeds, the BTW provides a large showcase for wild plants, flowers, birds and occasionally a mammal. Thanks, Bill Wallace for fighting the good fight and making it possible!
