Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure

Skinny-Dipper Detained, Cuffed and Cited at Montecito Hot Springs

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Jack Elliott

ADIDAS: All Day I Dream About Soaking.

“Absolutely insane. I’m blown away. Complete apathy on so many forest issues, yet this is what they decide to enforce? Bullshit.”

–Anonymous, Montecito resident of local birth

“‘If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, ‘the law is a ass — a idiot.’”

―Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1837)

On February 14, I was forwarded a video from a close friend showing a man being handcuffed by two Los Padres Forest Service law enforcement officers at Montecito Hot Springs.

The video was taken by another, different person who I’m acquainted with and speak to somewhat frequently.

We believe the ham-fisted use of force over the naked recreationist, who was permitted to dress prior to getting cuffed, is clearly unmerited and for trivial matters of no honest, real concern or consequence whatsoever.

Ostensibly, the harmless skinny-dipper was detained and cited for breaking the law by moving a few small creek stones to partially rebuild a little soak pool damaged by storm runoff.

But that’s actually not really what was happening here.

Properly seen, this is the latest skirmish over public access and use of the Montecito Hot Springs in a simmering battle between average recreationists and well heeled oppositionists, between the common interest of the many and the special interest of an elite few.

Recall Brian D. Fitzgerald’s fit, the incident where a Hot Springs Lane homeowner was caught red-handed leading a demolition crew to destroy the pools:

Fitzgerald’s Fit: Man Leads Work Crew To Wreck Montecito Hot Springs

Dissecting Docherty: Eagle Demo & the Hot Springs Wrecking Crew

And so the hapless stonemover’s actions appear to have provided a pretext for the oppositionists, by way of the Forest Service, to send a loud message to the recreationists at large: SCRAM!

The firearm speaks louder than the calmy folded hands. We are not fooled. This is an act of aggression.

Context

A soaker cited for moving small stones to stack mere inches high to pool water.

At a place where we’ve seen nature pile stones and sediment over three feet high in a slug of debris 40 feet long in a single night’s rainstorm, dramatically lifting the height of the entire creek bed.

Storm runoff does nothing different than we humans do in moving rocks and altering flow, other than doing so with far more force, consequence and permanence.

The Montecito Debris Flows in 2018 killed at least 23 people and destroyed or damaged several hundred homes. Runoff flowing out of Hot Springs Canyon that morning contributed to the natural disaster. My wife knew one of the victims.

It was that natural event on the mountain that brought about the current state of existence and public use of the Montecito Hot Springs as exists today.

Humans moving stones around to form small soak pools is utterly inconsequential by comparison, no matter how you measure it.

The pools are impermanent, insignificant, benign. They’re shallow and modest in depth and size and respectful of place and setting.

We don’t believe the pools alter the flow of water in ways that cause any measurable harm whatsoever.

All the water flows downstream at the same rate in the same general manner and course as happens without the pools.

Does it make sense to dispatch law enforcement and cite people?

The use of force by the Forest Service in our local woods appears intended to squelch public recreation.

That’s a mighty peculiar strain of public service.

Pipe carrying hot springs water to select private interests holding rights. Let them have their fair share of water undisturbed. Let the people have their fair share of water undisturbed.

An Attack

The day the citing happened the creek had been tossed and turned over by runoff from recent rains.

It appears the arrival of Los Padres law enforcement officers was preplanned and consciously timed. This looks like a calculated hit.

Did the Forest Service go in expecting people (of goodwill and decent intentions) to be diverting water (repairing the pools after a rain), so the dissident transgressors (harmless folks) could be made to face justice (railroaded)?

For minor “illegal” maintenance of legal pools?

Hot Springs Trail tramps.

Making violators of well-meaning folks seeking good clean fun in pursuit of happiness.

How does this serve public interests or the general welfare?

An armed raid carried out under the guise of protecting a California waterway.

The law in this instance was employed as a blunt tool, if not wielded as a weapon like a cudgel, to accomplish the ulterior motives of the oppositionists trying to smash recreational use.

A show of brutish force to make a loud statement.

This was meant to inject a chilling effect into the hot springs scene and scare and intimidate common folk.

Why isn’t Brian D. Fitzgerald made to remove the sign he bolted to a creek boulder, which is inaccurate and misleading and misplaced?

Doublespeak

“The Montecito hot springs have been used by the public as well as the native inhabitants in this area since long before Los Padres National Forest came into being.”

“Our position continues to be that we are not removing the bathing pools, as that would amount to eliminating an established and appropriate recreational use. That said, we are also not approving building more pools there.”

–Andrew Madsen, Forest Service spokesman, as quoted in Noozhawk

Macfadyen of Noozhawk said of Andrew “Milquetoast” Madsen’s mealy-mouthed statement:

“In one of the most adroitly lame statements I’ve read in a while, Los Padres National Forest spokesman Andrew Madsen gave a master class in avoiding responsibility.”

Follow the logic and be amused over the incoherence of Madsen’s policy statements and Forest Service actions.

If the Forest Service forcibly prevents maintenance rebuilds of existing pools already deemed to be established and used appropriately, then in practice the end result of their policy amounts to the elimination of the pools.

It’s the same as if the Forest Service purposefully destroyed the pools along with Fitzgerald; the pools ruined, just accomplished by different means, nature.

It’s a theoretical distinction without a practical difference in the end. It’s a dishonest, passive aggressive policy of purposeful ruination.

What an insult. Do Andrew Madsen and Daryl Hodges think we’re thoughtless idiots? They treat us like fools.

Funny how Madsen pretends to speak so fondly of the historical and long standing use of the hot springs as a justification for their continued existence, even slipping a reference to Indians in there.

Very lame, indeed.

Now it appears clear that the unstated policy of the Forest Service is for the hot springs to be washed out and destroyed by natural forces.

The “established and appropriate recreational use,” “since long before Los Padres National Forest came into being,” is promptly ignored when not serviceable by the federal government, as if it suddenly means nothing at all, whatsoever.

We are expected to forget it, Madsen? Take a hike.

Record of Wanton Destruction and Forest Closure

Local press wrote a puff piece introducing Santa Barbara District bossman, Daryl “Scare All” Hodges, as he is affectionately now known in this neck of the woods.

They told us romantically how he grew up “running wild up and down the creeks.”

Now Hodges serves to pester folks for soaking peaceably in creeks. He’s come a long way, indeed.

Let it be known, the Forest Service in this instance was used to thwart public use of one of the greatest public resources and founts of health and well-being on public lands in Santa Barbara County. A place with a history of human use thought to stretch back in time so far it can’t even be known for sure.

How about that?

A travesty of public service.

Will the Forest Service and Daryl Hodges be the death of this prehistoric peoples’ treasure? Will they steal our gem from us through strong-arm tactics?

It is not an unfair question. The Forest Service already has such a track record of state-sponsored vandalism toward natural hot springs and the people’s property.

They are known already as miracle killers.

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Andrew Madsen, Daryl Hodges, Forest Service, Hiking, Hot Springs, Los Padres National Forest, Montecito, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Mountains, US Forest Service, Wilderness | 1 Comment

Red Horny Toad

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Jack Elliott

Out for a walk with Larrold. An unremarkable lesser ridge among the rumpled hills. Chapparal, pine, gravel and grit.

Then a flash of tiny red life running cumbersome from the fringe of the trail. Startling in its ochre hue and firing a frantic scramble to capture the specimen amid a tangle of woody mountain weeds.

Fortunately, the little bugger resorted to playing dead for defense and made the apprehension possible.

Sometimes, when this small, horny toads easily get lost in the duff and are unfindable despite their relatively big, wide-gauged bodies. They also hide buried in sand.

Photo imagery doesn’t quite convey how striking the coloration appeared in the field when seen for the very first time.

The lizard would blend in better out in the purply-reddish sandstone of the Sespe Formation of Ventura County, but it was seen in the Santa Ynez Mountains behind Santa Barbara, where the sandstone is predominantly golden, which happens to match the common coloration of most local horny toads.

I have never seen a red horned toad before, ever, or even heard tell of one being seen around these parts. I wonder how uncommon, if not rare, such a red morph might be.

Decades into our Santa Barbara adventure and we’re still seeing new things out there for the first time.

The search continues.

Related Posts:

Horny Toad

Finding Frontier In the Forest Conquered

Searching For Soul Outside the Cage

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Adventure, backcountry, Hiking, Horny Toad, Lizards, Los Padres National Forest, Nature, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Mountains, Wilderness, Wildlife | 1 Comment

The Economy of Direction and Sharing of Secret Places

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Jack Elliott

Clouds over the Santa Ynez Mountains, December 14, 2024. Akin to the asperitas clouds of November, 2023.

“Rumours circulate about entry points which might give access to unseen spaces. Secrets are jealously guarded, closely shared. The subculture has its subcultures. Just as certain climbers prefer granite to gritstone, and certain cavers prefer wet systems to dry ones, so explorers have their specialisms.”

—Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Play it close to the vest. You know the rules.

An underground economy serves as a primary path by which the location of sought after places in Condor National Forest are disclosed; the seldom visited sites and the sensitive and exceptional places unlisted in guidebooks and on webpages.

This unmentioned economy of direction bound by etiquette serves effectively as a community governor to screen for proper individual character and to regulate the flow of people.

A petroglyph in the wilderness of Condor National Forest. It’s well-worn and barely visible, but a dandy!

Consider an analogy with surfing.

Surfers wait years, sometimes decades, for a particular break to come to life working properly, to its fullest potential manifestation in power and form.

The best surfers catch the best waves at the best breaks.

Thus, the most efficient use is made of a highly valuable, fiercely demanded, scarce and fleeting resource.

The worst surfer probably should not get the best wave. Their lack of experience and lesser skills typically ensure that they don’t get that wave.

The best surf typically is the hardest to catch and ride.

And so a beginner does not even bother to expect, and generally will not for good reason attempt, to paddle out to the main peak at an aggressively surfed break and compete in the lineup against salty and seasoned muscled veterans and cranky diehard watermen.

Of course, this may be obvious, like a beginning driver not venturing onto a racetrack; we’re drawing on an extreme example here in order to clarify the general point.

There exists a natural pecking order.

The behavior of beginners is tempered by a realistic understanding of their own limitations, as Inspector Harry Callahan once suggested was wise.

And brought to heel by a healthy respect for those more advanced and skilled surfers who’ve already paid dues and put in hours of work or who are fortunate enough to be natural talents.

In their most primal form of dispensation, waves are allocated by the aggressive use of force; sheer physicality, accented with the occasional stink-eyed glare and pride-wilting vicious ridicule. What’s called localism. It’s the Serengeti at sea.

More or less, that’s how the economy of swell functions.

Once recognized by other surfers as sufficiently skilled, a person might be allowed into a more advanced sphere of operation within the water or boldly take their own place if good enough, and participate in a more meaningful way and at a higher level at a particular break.

Yet, even surfers of lesser skill may at times be allowed into a coveted lineup unharried, after first having proven their understanding and serious respect for etiquette.

Players in this maritime game are well aware that everybody is most certainly not equally entitled to an equal share of the best waves.

Nobody is assured of getting anything, but wet. And all the players know it.

The distribution of this fiercely demanded, fickle commodity to its insatiable consumers is self-regulated in this manner. There are no particular laws, no officials and no formal enforcement.

No authority or arbiter exists to determine or mete out fairness or equality in the lineup and guarantee access. It’s self-governed by the people that visit the places most.

This code of conduct, these unwritten rules, have grown up through the decades organically, from one generation to another, veteran to grommet, father to son, from within, bottom up; a rich cultural shroud bound together through ages with threads of many different hues and from many different individual fibers.

You cannot buy an inexpensive book delivered to your doorstep or read a website while at home in your pajamas to get shoehorned in on the cheap and easy.

Access is earned.

sand filled

Discreet word-of-mouth selects for character.

Directions are not freely handed out to anybody upon request. Word-of-mouth reserved for a select few leaves no cairns in print to later be followed by anybody and everybody.

People sharing details to sensitive places generally do so to other likeminded folks, whom they have reason to trust are respectful partners in preservation.

Yet, at least as importantly, word-of-mouth tempers flow, too.

Private, fleeting conversations distribute people across the land at any one point in time farther and wider, in ways more intermittent and less concentrated, than otherwise happens with guidebooks and websites, where published pages and internet links are readily spread like contagions shared virally and it’s all permanent, for anybody to see, forevermore.

National parks grappling with high volume as Instagram tourism booms — ABC News

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

— Hosea 8:7, King James Version

Published information in books and on webpages serves as crowd force multipliers that can overrun small, singular places with a constant flow of many people.

The wind sown, the whirlwind reaped.

And so it is that this unmentioned underground economy characteristic of backcountry subculture serves its constituents well and admirably, while also helping to preserve the treasures of our national heritage.

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Adventure, Anthropology, backcountry, Chumash, Hiking, Los Padres National Forest, Native Americans, Pictographs, Rock Art, Santa Barbara, Wilderness | 10 Comments

Mandalas Through the Looking Glass

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Jack Elliott

I lay simmering in a scalding hot puddle beneath a gurgling pipe, heart fluttering, riding a rocket of euphoria fueled by endorphins, winter’s slanted morning light illuminating Condor National Forest in an apricot radiance.

Beads of stinky spring water on sunglass lenses catch the sun’s morning glow like kaleidoscopes, casting minuscule designs reminiscent of a wicked virus under a microscope or the sun seen through a telescope.

Then again, the lively images sparkling in the lenses a centimeter before my glazed eyes are remarkably similar to those motifs painted on sandstone abris and alcoves, caves and bedrock walls throughout the forest; those pictographs known as mandalas.

Though colorless and but silvery in hue, the tiny mandalas seen within a single drop of water clinging to sunglass lens are formed of perfect concentric circles, negative and positive spaces accentuating each other, while still others are ringed with triangular teeth.

And in the hazy moment within a liminal realm it appears impossible that there is no connection; that it’s just happenstance; that I’m not onto something now speaking today to what might have happened way back then.

Even if only remote and tangential, I lay there thinking, pouring sweat with pounding heart, there must be some connection.