Brian Sarvis In Noozhawk Echoes Jack Elliott, No Hat Tip

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Jack Elliott

Jimmy J merch. Prototype run, January, 2023.

After six years of silence, Sarvis suddenly spoke. He once more found his voice, in somebody else’s writing. 

We made it easy by providing inspiration and all source material right here on this blog. Which he apparently lifted without attribution to cobble together his own CliffsNotes-version rehash.

Silly Sarvis. 

His misstep is not that he called for forest name change or that he promoted the name Condor. That’s not a problem.

The similarity in Sarvis’ writing to what I had already written is way too close to dismiss as mere happenstance. That’s a problem. 

Dan McCaslin, an outdoor columnist at Noozhawk, two months ago mentioned Jack Elliott and the Condor National Forest name change idea.

The willing suspension of disbelief is required before thinking this similarity is a mere innocent coincidence and that Sarvis was unaware of The Case For Renaming Los Padres National Forest.

This is a blatant ripoff.

Sarvis is a retired superintendent of Santa Barbara Unified School District, which makes this embarrassing faux pas particularly amusing. 

If a student did this at the academy he would receive a failing grade, and then have to answer to the dean if not be thrown out of school. 

A banana slug in the Santa Ynez Mountains, Condor National Forest, June 2023.

I wrote: “Los Padres did not locate their missions within the forest nor carry out their most passionate work there.”

Sarvis writes: “Los Padres National Forest is not the homeland of the Spanish padres and none of our missions is in the national forest.”

And he follows it with: “I have seen no evidence of Spanish padres in the national forest.”

I wrote about the Padres “cutting down trees and diverting water from the forest.”

And I followed it with: “Today’s Mission Pine Spring Camp and Mission Pine Basin Camp in the Santa Barbara backcountry are references to Los Padres’ cutting of timber for construction of the mission in Santa Barbara.”

Sarvis writes: “There is one site where pines were felled by native labor and hauled to build roof rafters for at least one mission.

And, of course, water flowed to the missions just as it flows today to many of our towns and cities.”

It’s not only those instances, but more.

Sarvis writes about “the folly of naming something as magnificent as a national forest after people” and that the “recovery of condors represents an appropriate symbol of our commitment to the environment.”

This came after I wrote about the need to “celebrate the forest itself” with the name Condor, and that “the name would refocus our attention on the forest itself and the wildlife therein, rather than humanity in the form of some dudes or dudette like Cleveland or Los Padres or Lady Bird Johnson. Enough of that!”

I wrote about the condor recovery program that likely saved the bird from extinction and how Los Padres National Forest was its last stronghold of critical habitat prior to capture and captive breeding. Sarvis commented on this as well. 

Everything is math. It actually could happen. It’s not impossible. 

It’s not impossible that Sarvis just may have unwittingly written in Noozhawk about the very same things that I had already written about on this blog and that McCaslin had already mentioned in Noozhawk.

That’s many things, but not impossible.

Unlikely is one of those things.

I can think of a few others.

Sarvis failed to note the reason why it matters that Los Padres did not work or live in the forest and so left no evidence of their presence.

I had mentioned the lack of Padre presence in the forest in challenging the narrative of William S. Brown, found in his book, History of Los Padres National Forest, 1898–1945. 

Brown wrote that the name Los Padres National Forest was “a fitting memorial to its first white users” because they built the missions “adjacent to the national forest area.”

I made the point that Native Americans had actually lived and worked within the forest proper and for no less than ten thousand years.

I noted the absurdity of naming the forest in honor of foreigners who lived nearby, while ignoring the long tenure of Native Americans who lived therein.

I drew this stark contrast between Los Padres and California Indians to make a larger point regarding the racial and racist cultural context of the times.

I offered a number of other shocking historical examples to further flesh out my main point:

The name Los Padres as applied to our national forest was a product of its time motivated by racialist sentiment at best or outright racism at worst. Therefore, the name is illegitimate and no longer acceptable.

Sarvis shied away from that hot potato red button issue and in doing so rendered meaningless his reference to the absence of Los Padres in the forest.

That may be true what he said, but it does not justify a name change. His argument does not fit in with common practice and must be rejected.

This is an important point to make in maintaining the integrity of our original argument on this blog, which we believe to be strongest bar none.

We cannot allow our argument to be highjacked and sidetracked and watered down by a fellow proponent of forest name change.

Highway 126 in neighboring Ventura County is named as a memorial in honor of Korean War veterans.  Of course, American soldiers never fought communists along Highway 126 in California.

The logic of Sarvis’ argument calls into question the memorial names of places and things throughout our country, for which no connection exists to the people who’ve been memorialized.

Clearly, his argument is far too broad in scope and will not suffice.

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Native American Trout Gutter

Posted on May 26, 2023 by Jack Elliott

April 2023

A place in the canyon caught my eye. 

The character of the mountain. The viewshed through the canyon of the Pacific Ocean and Santa Cruz Island.

Geography and aesthetics.

I felt compelled to go there. Years passed before I went. 

A comfortable and firm fit with flat surfaces for thumb and forefinger.

I walked through the forest and this chunk of stone gleamed from the shadows, down in the surface of the dark soil, rain polished.

On a mountain of golden gritty sandstone, in the gloom of heavy marine layer overhead, the glassy bright chert stood out like a light in the night.

On closer inspection, an artifact, a tiny blade of a sort crafted by human hands, Chumash hands.

The wad of stone may have looked ordinary and natural at first glance, but it held subtle signs of having been knapped. I could see tiny pressure flakes that had been popped from the stone one at a time in overlapping sequence to create a serrated edge.

The particular design was striking, too, a form I had never seen. The small crescent shape along the serrated edge calls to mind a gut hook on a hunting or fishing knife.

Yet, I think the hook form may have been even more pronounced when originally made. It appears to have been broken off and that the crescent edge may have been larger.

I like to think of the artifact as a Cold Springs Canyon trout gutter. Although I imagine it could have been used for numerous other purposes, and I’m assuming the original Native locals processed such fish in a similar manner as we do today.

Who knows how the tool was used?

We fished the creek for the last time thirty years ago. Before the protective prohibition on coastal stream fishing of the 1990s to protect southern steelhead.

The latest official assessment was just reported, its findings grim. With sharp declines in southern steelhead numbers the species remains the most critically endangered on the West Coast.

We’d catch and release wild rainbow trout with barbless artificial lures. The trout were eellike and wiry, but ferocious in their fight, true to the species. The artifact rested in relatively close proximity to where we’d fish.

The point edge is remarkably sharp and slices through a callous on the palm. It would work well for opening the gut cavity of trout to be cleaned. But again, it appears broken so that sharp point edge at the top of the crescent may be incidental. 

And although it may appear like nothing more than a rough chunk of naturally broken stone like so many others, it feels smart in the hand and fits quite well when gripped properly.

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The Elusive and Fleeting Fire Poppy

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Jack Elliott

I found the fire poppies once more, trailless along a tributary fork of a coastal creek high in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Five years had past since my last sighting.

I think the fire poppy, Papaver californicum, may be among the rarest of wildflowers in this neck of the woods, although not officially listed as such by state or federal government. 

Consider the contrast between some seldom seen wildflowers found in Condor National Forest.

The Ojai fritillary is considered rare or endangered by the California Native Plant Society, which says it meets the definition of the California Endangered Species Act and is eligible for official state listing.

The perennial Ojai fritillary is a bulb that sprouts and grows nearly every single year in the exact same spot. It may not be easy to find the first time, but once found it remains so.

Calochortus fimbriatus, the late-flowered mariposa-lily, grows perennially in similar fashion and is also considered rare or endangered by the California Native Plant Society.

By contrast, annual fire poppies may bloom for only a single season in the same place following wildfire or may reseed and sprout again for several years in a row at most.

And then they’re gone, not to be seen again for many years.

Within several seasons the larger woody plants grow back and blot out the sun and the poppies disappear, their seeds buried under heavy leaf litter and shaded by an umbrella of forest canopy.

Other poppy seed may remain viable for a century or more.

The seeds of fire poppies, I presume, may rest dormant on the mountain for decades before finally sprouting again, triggered by wildfire. The blooms are typically few and far between through space and time, elusive and fleeting. 

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Return To Scene Of Lion Standoff

Posted on March 25, 2023 by Jack Elliott

I returned to the place of the lion faceoff, to measure the distance between us on that day; the most memorable day of my life in the Santa Ynez Mountains of Condor National Forest.

Using the yard measurement instrument of the common stride, as taught to us at Monte Vista Elementary school by Dr. Ehrenborg when playing football, I paced off 30 long steps.

And so it was over 90 feet.

Ninety feet sounds far to me when spoken of, sounds really far. Ninety feet also feels close when facing a lion, frightening close.

If asked before I had measured it, while sitting in town telling the story or whatever, I would have said the distance was much closer, maybe half as far.

How many loping strides would it take the big cat to close the distance? Not many. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

I walked up to the spot feeling uneasy. It’s hardly a stone’s throw from the road. I wanted to look around more, but I did not feel comfortable enough walking deeper into the woods, far from the road and my vehicle, with its alarm, the panic button in my pocket.

There are now places in the forest, certain settings, that I do not venture into alone for fear of a possible lion attack. It sounds ridiculous. I’ve never in my life thought much about lions when hiking.

The feeling will subside with time, surely, but for now things are different out there.

I see a lion track now and I turn circles, eyes darting around the creek, the rocks, the hills, wherever, all over. 

Yet, I don’t ever really expect to see a cat. I’d like to think I’m being vigilant, but I know it’s driven by anxiety.

I didn’t even see the deer. Then, suddenly, they were there, staring at me with their big wet eyeballs in the mottled understory light. The deer materialized out of nowhere in an instant as I finally saw what I had been looking at.

There they stood, fifteen feet or so from where the lion had been standing staring me down weeks earlier.

I had walked up oblivious to the presence of deer when looking carefully to avoid a lion.

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Los Padres Forest Association Backs Forest Closure

Posted on March 12, 2023 by Jack Elliott

Los Padres Forest Association issued an obsequious letter to the Forest Service declaring their full embrace of the two month closure of Los Padres National Forest.

They called the shutout “wise.”

That’s a word of exceptional assuredness. Not just smart, but much more than that, wise. Yet, oddly, they provided no insight into their thinking. 

Why was it wise?

They did not say, other than a vague reference about “making sure people were okay,” whatever that means.

We have been left wondering where the wisdom lies, because their letter held nothing of explanative substance, only a few words of empty rhetoric.

The trail maintenance group—toiling volunteers doing a tremendous amount of great field work—failed to offer any reasoning supporting their opinion; that the forest threatened public health and so it was imperative to close it entirely.

Who knows what happened after the storm? Who knows what’s out there? Better close it. All of it.

That’s the essence of their position. And that’s not wisdom.

The letter thus followed suit with most all other local commentary and reportage about the closure; remarkably superficial and unserious.

Most writers online in local hard news and opinion have served as unquestioning bullhorns for authority and amplified the Forest Service’s false narrative, that the forest is damaged and a threat to our health.

This is an issue of great import regarding public health and the curtailment of civil rights by diktat that has cleaved the people from their public lands.

Yet, even though they chose to take a position publicly endorsing the diktat, Los Padres Forest Association glossed right over the issue in blasé fashion.

The Forest Service closed thirty percent (30%) of Santa Barbara County based on the notion that a few people might get hurt if it remained legally open. 

Opportunities for the betterment of the vast overwhelming majority’s well-being through healthy pursuits of happiness in these public lands was coldly denied due to the purported concern that something might happen to a tiny minority. 

This is not rational policy. And it does not comport with our common experience elsewhere in American life. 

So how is it wise? 

This is a stifling standard of micromanagement, inconsistent with many other areas of our daily lives, where it’s not uncommon for people to get hurt or even killed, and where we accept much greater rates of injury and death, without issuing dictatorial prohibitions to save the people from themselves.

There were “so many unknowns,” Los Padres Forest Association said, casually, echoing the Forest Service.

“We simply don’t even know what we don’t know,” Andrew Madsen said, Los Padres National Forest spokesman, repeating a phrase taken from risk management theory.

But we don’t have to live averse to rational thought and blind to information, fact and reason. And we don’t have to react emotionally out of ignorance in kneejerk fashion to make sure “people are okay.”

We can look to the science of probability for guidance and we can look to our lives elsewhere in society for context and perspective in how we face risk sensibly, rationally.

Pursuits of happiness in Los Padres National Forest are relatively safe compared to many other common activities outside the forest.

How many deaths, injuries and need of emergency services could there possibly have been if the forest had remained legally open? Not many. That’s the answer on that one. If history is any guide to the probability of future happenings.

Only a slim sliver minority of recreationists–a miniscule number–would ever possibly have gotten hurt. 

The American roadway with its rates of injury and death is a horror show relative recreation in the forest. It’s one of many examples. 

Motorcyclist, 18, Killed In Collision On Santa Barbara County Road (March 5, 2023)

Is it not true that a hiker stands a much greater chance of dying on the drive out of town before they even get to the forest than they do when walking in it? 

We can look elsewhere for additional context to maintain perspective.

From economists we understand life as a series of questions about tradeoffs and opportunity costs.

Certain levels of pollutants are accepted by society although known to be harmful, in order that we may engage in industry and common activities we agree in general, on balance, tend to better our lives.

Life is not an all or nothing game. It’s a balancing act.

Why should we have wildly different public health standards applied to our public lands than we do nearly everywhere else in life?

Why should we apply a zero tolerance policy of injury to our public lands? 

How is this wise? Cowboy up, and explain it. 

This is a serious issue. And so serious people grant it serious thought and consideration. 

Los Padres Forest Association appears flippant in their letter, not to have given much thought to the issue at all. They advocate curtailing civil rights without appearing informed by any degree of due diligence whatsoever. 

In my previous blog posts opposing the closure I have offered opinions, surely, even lampooned Stubbs and the Forest Sevice.

But I have also put up lengthy, well-reasoned arguments. And I have offered context from our common lives outside the forest to provide perspective. We stand on principle on this blog, guided by reason by way of facts and information, with a long view. 

Would that Los Padres Forest Association do the same if and when they dabble in politics supporting such serious policy proscriptions that separate people from their public lands. 

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