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“He may be just a tramp, a guy that likes to roam about this great country without any special aim, just to thank the Lord for these beautiful mountains.”
-B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
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“. . .here, where there are still the silences and the loneliness of the earth before man, . . .”
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Recently Read
- Eating Poison Oak
- Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island: A Female Robinson Crusoe (1897)
- Mono Narrows Camp
- Matías Reyes, Santa Barbara Mission (1887)
- A Treasure Hunt For Chumash Pictographs and the Vicious Protector
- Bedrock Mortar On Munson Creek, Pine Mountain
- Rock Art Ramblin', Searching For Chumash Pictographs
- White Ledge Peak, Santa Ynez Mountains
- Fitzgerald's Fit: Man Leads Work Crew To Wreck Montecito Hot Springs
- Arlington, Cathedral, La Cumbre Peaks Scramble & More
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Latest Dispatches
- Raking the Forest: Anderson, Trump, Kuyper
- Initials of J.D. Reyes (1907)
- Last California Grizzlies Seen In Santa Barbara National Forest? (1926)
- Eccentric Artifact, San Marcos Foothills Preserve
- Fog Drip Morels
- Naming Santa Barbara’s Modoc Road
- Mark of Conquest; Benchmark and Mortar
- Hat Tip to the Selfless Samaritans In Service to Others
- The Intelligence of Coyote Tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata)
- The Journey of a Root (1907) and Plant Intelligence
- Santa Barbara County Morels
- Hollyleaf Cherries Golden Morph
- Barefoot Prints In Volcanic Ash, Hawaii (1790)
- Skinny-Dipper Detained, Cuffed and Cited at Montecito Hot Springs
- Red Horny Toad
Lunar Phase
Tag Archives: History
Santa Barbara Shore Whaling (1870-93)
A cold drizzle falls steadily from a heavy marine layer blanketing the coast, as six men heave a ragged plank rowboat across dampened sand to the water’s edge. With rough, cracked and calloused hands sucked dry of moisture by constant … Continue reading →
Posted in Santa Barbara
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Tagged Beach, Cojo, Fishing, Goleta, History, Ocean, Spearfishing, UCSB, Whales, Whaling
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2 Comments
Laguna Blanca Lake
Laguna Blanca lake surrounded by the sprawling green fairways of La Cumbre Country Club. The shifting of earth’s crust along nearby fault lines created the depression known as Laguna Blanca Basin in Hope Ranch, an unincorporated suburb in Santa Barbara … Continue reading →
Posted in Santa Barbara
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Tagged Chumash, Geography, History, Hope Ranch, Indians, Laguna Blanca
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Santa Barbara Seen Through A Sailor’s Eyes (1835)
In the following passage taken from his acclaimed travel narrative, Two Years Before the Mast (1841), Richard Henry Dana, Jr. describes landing on the beach at Santa Barbara on January 14, 1835 after a five month voyage from Boston. Dana … Continue reading →
Native Steelhead of Yore
Claude M. Kreider fly fishing for steelhead trout on the Santa Ynez River in 1942. “And here—only one hundred and fifty miles from the great Los Angeles metropolitan area—flows the Santa Ynez, the most productive of all the little steelhead … Continue reading →
Posted in Santa Barbara
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Tagged Angling, Bradbury Dam, Fishing, Gibraltar Dam, History, Lompoc, Nature, Photos, Santa Ynez River, Steelhead, Writing
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6 Comments
John Muir Writes of Davy Brown
“In Calaveras County they wrote that Brown bagged ten grizzlies during one week in 1849. John Muir referred to Brown as the most famous bear hunter in the Sierras in his book, ‘Our National Parks,’ and a meadow in the … Continue reading →
Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure 