2020/12/20 Winter Solstice stroll at the Monarch Grove and Deveroux Slough at Ellwood Mesa

Santa Cruz Island visible off the shore of the Ellwood Mesa. 

Winter Solstice and perfect bright climate (can't call it weather) beckoned to us to explore the shoreline and eucalyptus forests just North of UCSB.

We started out at the Ellwood School parking lot on the mountain side of Hollister Avenue, rode across the Mesa out to the cliff edge, proceeded South to check out the slough, then meandered back through eucalyptus groves and grass fields.

Five-ish miles in two-ish hours, just enough to stretch out the equines' legs and get us out in nature.

A section of the Ellwood Mesa has been set aside as a preserve for the Monarch Butterflies. Tragically, today we saw NONE.

Here are photographs taken there in 2011:
 

We used to see branches so covered with the orange magnificence that you couldn't see the green leaves they clung to.

And with a certain irony, the news headlines today read:

But in the year 2020, when everything that could go wrong seems to be, this is just another insult to injury. And there being nothing we can do about it, we went for a ride and enjoyed the day.

The path out to the Mesa skirts the edge of the eucalyptus trees that have been badly damaged by the droughts of the last few years.

With no effort made to water them the trees are on the verge of collapse, and with them will go the habitat the Monarchs relied on.

Once on the Mesa, the view of the Islands and the sea. The oil platform still dots the channel, and several more run up the coast, despite it being a marine sanctuary.

Once upon a time we used to be able to go down the cliffs to the beach and ride, but the Snowy Plover preservation plan has quashed that. One member of our group grew up boarding her horse nearby and riding wild through these trails, down onto the beach, being a thoroughly wild thing. As we walked the civilized paths she regaled us with tales of naked escapades and drunken near-death exploits.

Nature abides, and how wonderful to be out from behind a computer and seeing landscape stretching away in space.

                                                                This is the wicked little sign that forbids equines and dogs from going on the beach. In an age where people want to rat out their neighbor for not wearing a mask, we dare not trespass. 

And these are the oil tanks that offshore oil used to be pumped in to.
But after several spills, they were abandoned and this area became part of a "wetland restoration" project to "mitigate" the careless use of the land.

When I was last here 4 years ago this was a native plant propagation lab, filled with plants that were being transplanted out into this landscape. Now it seems abandoned.

This used to be a lush golf course, filled with men in absurd bright plaid outfits and little golf carts whizzing around.

                                                     This is my photograph of this same area in 2011. It was actually quite lovely.

NOW it is a deserted waste of trampled dirt.
Airplanes constantly growling above add to the post-apocalyptic feel.

Equines forget nothing. Does Tobe remember this as lush grass and disturbing golf carts?

Signs forbid entry and call it a restoration, but it looks like a defeat.

We are forbidden entry, but I say it all looks like it could use a delivery of manure compost to mulch these dried up bushes.

Then we followed the road out to look at the slough.

I may be sounding uniquely cynical in this commentary, but I found the sight of masks on so many people dreadfully sad.         Here they are, out in the fresh air, walking or bicycling alone, wearing a mask as if they believed the magic Virus could drift on a breeze and kill them.

And then, there it was, the slough. Almost dried up. A tiny trickle of water ran in a stream down the center. For comparison, here is a photo I took from near this viewpoint in 2011:

Few egrets hunting today, in what I had always seen as a rich ecosystem teeming with life.

 

I felt like a ghost in my own life.

But we all know you can't go home again, so it was onward with today's trail ride, time to turn back toward the starting point.

Which involved navigating not one but two metal span bridges that made more noise with every hoof step than any equine would like to hear.

Somehow this plover monument that bears a passing resemblance to male human anatomy felt like a big f-you to anyone who wanted to run amok on the beach with their horse or dog, or have a lush golf course at the seaside. Of course our native with childhood memories was doubly aghast, as she wondered where buildings like the old golf course club house had gone.

Just dried caked mud now.

And crackerbox housing

smashed densely together where once milkweed grew.

This is this field in 2011  

Ah, sweet Goleta, the formerly Good Land.

But before we left it was opportune to take some portraits of my trail companions, with Santa Cruz island as the backdrop.

Noe on Marcos

Maggie on Woodie

                                            Jamie on Mosca

                                           Deborah on Carbon

                                and I'm a bit of a blur on Tobe Mule

so I will close with this photo of us down on the beach in 2016

and here we are

making memories every day.

As the world spins in a pandemic, 

and nothing can be taken for granted,

least of all the measure of our days.

###### PAT FISH ######

### FIN ###

2018/10/6 Elwood Mesa and the Devereux slough

A beautiful sunny day and a triumvirate of riders took the opportunity to explore the recent changes to the terrain around the University of California at Santa Barbara campus.
We rode for 2 hours and covered 5.5 miles, glad to be out in the fresh air.

Every ride starts with the tacking up. The animals ride naked to the meeting point, and then patiently wait while they get saddled and bridled and readied.

Tobe takes longer, mules have significantly more gear, so I appreciate that my riding companions are patient with us.

And Tobe, in turn, is patient with me.
I genuinely think he enjoys exploring around, and also my mentors assure me that he forgets nothing. So he remembers this trail quite as clearly as I do.

But oh my gosh,
last time I rode out from here this was a big open field leading up to a golf course.
Now it is crammed full with cheap clapboard housing.
A distressing loss of open space.

And almost immediately we start seeing the signs.
This was a beautiful trail meandering through the eucalyptus grove, connecting to the Monarch Butterfly Preserve. Now it has been deemed too dangerous to travel through. The years of drought have taken their toll on the trees, and rather than selectively thin and trim them the Government has chosen to forbid public access.

And the massive Venoco oil and gas storage tanks are still here, even though it was my understanding that they had withdrawn from processing oil here and were paying for the restoration of the damaged wetlands.

Piles of materials tarped off and left as rubbish still hold puddles from Wednesday's rainfall,
in an area that was actively being replanted with native perennials when last I was here.

And oh my gosh, the golf course has been utterly stripped.  No grass, no trees, no brightly dressed men zipping around in electric carts.

It is now a desolate wasteland.
The trunks of the eucalyptus that used to shade the periphery are lined up alongside the road, and the only signs of life within are the tracks of machinery moving through the dirt.
Progress.

On the ocean side of the road there are signs forbidding and limiting entry, but I see little evidence of the reintroduction of native plants that was so in progress just a few years ago.

And this

CAUTIOn BEES
sign is beyond pathetic.

Like the old joke sign "PLAN AHEAd". 

Presumably a college educated person scrawled this.

We saw no bees. Nor do I fear them.

But ah, the Devereux slough.
Usually it is filled with local and migrating birds, but today it was silent.

A lovely natural place, giving a respite and visual refreshment to the many people we saw walking, biking, pushing baby strollers.

Coming up and walking toward the University and Isla Vista we saw a field blooming with poppies, at the entirely wrong season of the year.

Tobe looked puzzled too.
Living outdoors as he does, he is much more responsive to the changes in weather patterns, and usually I can predict what the winter weather is going to be like by how much hair coat he prepares. On the observational hair-o-meter I now predict a warm winter. He has not yet begun to change into his winter coat.

Next we walked past the rather charmingly dilapidated UCSB Stables. I thought at one point of stabling Tobe there, I qualify as an alumna, but made other choices.

This is the Red Barn, which in my days at UCSB was the setting for concerts, revelries, and absurd performances.

Now it sits desolate, surrounded by manure piles.

It has been cordoned off, and no attempt is being made to preserve or repair it.

Sad to see another bit of history collapsing into ruin.

Then we stride on toward the cliffs and the beach overlook.
On the left is the edge of the student community Isla Vista, and far out on the path the first of the lads carrying surfboards that would present a challenge for Tobe.
The self-preservation instinct of mules is legendary, and today was the day he learned not to spook at surfboards.

On the horizon is one of the oil platforms, and on the sea below surfers hang ten.

At this point every time we saw surfboards Tobe would stop and take time to assess the threat.

He has keen eyesight, and this was a new shape and movement.

I love taking portraits of the people I ride with, it is a special gift I can give to thank them for accompanying me on adventures.
Here they are next to the Campbell Cross at Coal Oil Point Reserve, that has a knight on horseback at the bottom of the sculptured face.

This is a photo from a few years back of Tobe and I here, when the grass was greener.

This gardener popped up out of the bushes to ask what we were doing at the cross, and then pointed out something I'd never noticed before. He said the rumor is that Colonel Campbell was a Mason, and lo and behold there IS a Templar cross set in the bricks of the pillars at the entrance to what he said was once the graveyard.

There is also a very old conical dovecote built of stone, largely unremarked upon by the surfers heading for the beach below.

He said Colonel Campbell used to enjoy releasing the doves for his hunter friends to shoot.

How different times are. Nowadays we are not allowed to go onto the beach for fear of disturbing the snowy plovers.

Sad Tobe, he does love to run on the beach and enact the Black Stallion scene that all equestrians love to experience.
But not here anymore.

Like the honking geese above, we turned for home.
Another day in nature well spent, the perfect antidote for the highly detailed indoor hours that tattooing demands of me.

"I'm your biggest fan,

California,

I'm coming home."

- Joni Mitchell 

##########FIN ### PATFISH##########