A good friend calls the place "Teardrop". I wondered why, but in my head I imagined a place with beautiful little waterfalls dripping like tears from the rocks. On a quintessentially gorgeous Santa Barbara Sunday we tackled the Teardrop hike with full abandon. I had my secret agenda to figure out why he calls it by that name, but soon realized that this was not going to be an average, ordinary hike. We were celebrating the life and memory of a fallen friend. Chosen ones carried his ashes, and we found a place to scatter them, saying prayers as his simplified essence spread and reentered the biosphere in a new form. A small red newt crawled along the rocks near where we held this ceremony - it was covered in gray ash! For me a poignant example of life already passing along through the food chain, starting a new cycle.
Tears dropped on this hike of the same name, but there was laughter as well -- and sweat! We had to bushwhack our way through completely overgrown sections of chaparral and do a tip toe dance over creek bedrocks and broken tree limbs that served as natural bridges. Each turn in the hike showed another incredible hidden nook and cranny that you felt you could live forever. Smells of fall filled our sinuses and thousands of leaves crunched under our feet. We were eager to try to dip in the fresh water pools to attempt to thwart the seemingly inevitable chance of getting poison oak.
I could not help but start to think about the indigenous people who must have dwelled here in paradise. There were sections of the hike that opened up completely; well-shaded flat mini-mesas right along side the river. These areas contained powerful historical energy for me. It was hard to explain, but I had flashes of past times. Maybe it is just too much Hollywood ingrained upon my brain, too many quick, blurry memories used as plot enhancements in scripts for movies on the big screen. But I could swear that I felt a presence of life in these open spaces by the river that backed up against the edge of the cliffs on the other side. They were sheltered, with a great water source, and bountiful biota to choose from for sustenance.
Trees love water, and the array of foliage was spectacular in all the colors of the transition to winter: oranges, bright reds and dim reds, yellow Maple leaves, all shades of ochre and brown. White mushroom growths clung to the sides of tall Pines like precarious settlements on the sliding hills of Quito. I remember smiling and thinking to myself how lucky I am to be sturdy enough to manage a non-trail scramble such as this. The secrets of the Santa Barbara foothills can only be divulged through a rough hike deserving of jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Without the shirt I ended up with scratches up and down my arm -- but no poison oak yet -- YAHOO!
ER Harris
