Author Archives: Jack Elliott

Parks Management Co’s Selective Fee Enforcement

A valley of mixed woods, Condor National Forest, Santa Barbara County. RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”  If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters.  You can kill them with this … Continue reading

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Otter Point, Gaviota Coast

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Ridgetop Tank, Santa Ynez Mountains

The ephemeral pool forms on the bedrockhigh on a sandstone ridgehundreds of feet above the creek, otherwise filling the canyon with the sound of its rushing water,but for the displaced croak of frogshole up in a lone pond in the … Continue reading

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California Name Origins: Joseph Wood Krutch, The Forgotten Peninsula (1961)

Detail of Nicholas de Fer’s map from 1705 showing Santa Barbara Channel. An excerpt from The Forgotten Peninsula: A Naturalist in Baja California (1961) by Joseph Wood Krutch detailing the suspected origins of the name California: Most of the place … Continue reading

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The Extraordinary Rains of August 2023

The organic curves of chaparral-cloaked Condor National Forest. I’m growing like a seedRain’s been falling on me — KT Tunstall, Feel It All “I’m wondering if we won’t see August thunderstorms.” I wrote that in June, a freak premonition. The … Continue reading

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