BEATING AROUND THE BUSH : An Homage to Chaparral

The sun is strong, the trail faint, and we are up to our hats in chaparral. “I think,” Bob McDermott says hesitantly, swinging his machete at the six-foot-high ceanothus growing in the middle of our path, “we’re still on the trail.”

We are bushwhacking north up Horse Canyon in what seems at the moment to be a futile attempt to locate a 40-mile-long missing link in the California Coastal Trail. The link we’re seeking is not a new trail but a very old one, now desperately overgrown with chamise, ceanothus, Fremontia, manzanita, scrub oak and yucca--the shirt-sleeve-shredding community of life called chaparral. Beneath our boots, faint traces of Horse Gulch Trail can be discerned, but chaparral has grown over it in a three-foot-high canopy, compelling us alternately to crash through the brush or crawl on all fours through it--in either case taking an awful beating from the horns, thorns and leathery leaves.

Actually, my friend McDermott, trail coordinator of the California Coastal Trails Foundation, and I came to this remote section of the Santa Barbara back-country for flagging, not flogging. Equipped with lengths of blue ribbon, we are supposed to be flagging the trail--that is, tying the plastic strips onto bushes to enable hikers with less pathfinding skill than we to stay on the trail. As the brush gets thicker, however, our flagging becomes motivated not so much by the noblesse oblige de hiker as by another reason: The flags will prove invaluable if we’re forced to abandon this expedition and make our way out of this Godforsaken place.

Jim Blakeley is the party responsible for our immersion in Horse Canyon. A contentious, square-jawed scoutmaster of a man, he has spent many of his 60 years gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of Los Padres National Forest trails. Blakeley is chairman of a Santa Barbara organization called CRAHTAC (County Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Council) and obsessed with walking and talking trail. In the “war room” of his home, an 8x10-foot den chock-full of trail dispatches, maps and aerial reconnaissance photos, he outlines our expedition: McDermott and I are to depart the Sisquoc River at the mouth of Horse Gulch at 0600 hours, proceed upgulch, ascend the south fork of La Brea Canyon, climb up and over into the drainage of Roque Canyon, bushwhack up this canyon to its junction with Kerry Canyon, follow the Indian Trail and then the Willow Spring Trail to California 166, where, we hope, three days later, a cold beer and a car will be waiting for us.

Blakeley stresses the importance of our mission: “This is a vital link in the Trans-Santa Barbara County Trail.”

“And a crucial link in the California Coastal Trail,” McDermott adds.

My job is to describe this stretch of trail and the harsh land through which it passes. Judging from the grim expression on Blakeley’s face, it is harsh country indeed.

“We’re not the first ones to realize the importance of this trail,” he lectures. “From the turn of the century foresters were aware of the need for this route, and in 1909 construction began. The trails were maintained and used until the war.”

“Vietnam?” I ask.

Blakeley grimaces. “World War II.”

“Has anyone used the trails in the last 40 years?”

“Bears,” he says. “They’re the only ones who can stand pushing through the brush. I’ve done about 80% of the route. The chaparral is brutal. Impassable.”

“I like chaparral.”

Blakeley’s big square jaw drops and he stares at me as if I were poison oak.

“The yucca blossoms . . .,” I fumble. “The clouds of blue and white ceanothus . . .”

I’m given a map and a handshake and shown the door. “Good luck, brush lover,” Blakeley says, shaking his head in warning. “People go crazy out there.”

People do go crazy out here. As we beat through the brush we spy Wheat Peak, named for Hiram Prservid Wheat, an 1890s homesteader from Wisconsin who, it was said, had the power to heal with his hands. Hostile Indians were so impressed by the spiritual theatrics of this white man that they inscribed his wagon with a sign indicating that he was to be granted protection. Modern back-country homesteaders with a theatrical bent include Jane Fonda, John Travolta and Ronald Reagan, all of whom, it’s safe to say, are a little unusual.

We too are feeling like a couple of wild and crazy guys as we buck the brush in Horse Canyon. Black sage is the most powerful of antihistamines, and after sneezing our brains out we have become thoroughly intoxicated with the smells of chaparral and spring. (Crush a sprig of sage between thumb and forefinger and you release that characteristic odor meaning chaparral country: tortured sandstone formations, warm dry winds tickling the skin, a coyote in the bush, a condor in the heavens.) Here we come, Supermen of the chaparral. Faster than a speeding brush rabbit, able to leap bladderpod in a single bound!

We practice different bushwacking techniques. McDermott’s Army training reasserts itself and he marches through rather than around the brush. He punches out the bushes with a one-two combination of macho and machete. My technique is more evasive and skin-saving. Emulating a tailback, I straight-arm the opposition, and with legs pumping, let my forward momentum carry me through. If I’m about to be ensnared, I spin, pirouetting through the limbs of would-be tacklers. This technique works splendidly with chamise, ceanothus and sage, but I meet my match with a scrub oak. Dancing along, I’m stopped in my tracks by what seems to be the entire defensive line of the New York Jets. Suddenly the ground disappears from under my boots. A branch grabs my backpack and I’m suspended in midair. I struggle to free myself but am caught fast, like a side of beef on a meat hook.

“Marcus Allen, you’re not,” he chuckles, freeing me with his machete.

We struggle out of Horse Canyon with increased respect for the hardy heather. Crossing over to the south side of La Brea Canyon on a washed-out trail, we meet my old nemesis, a plant repelling any bushwhacking technique--poison oak. Alas, the body builds up no immunity to poison oak. In fact, dermatologists believe the more you get poison oak--or poison oak gets you--the less resistance you have to future encounters with the plant’s toxic oil, urushiol. I agree with the dermatologists. After a dozen doses in as many years, my skin has become a magnanimous host.

While McDermott charges through, I decide discretion is the better part of valor and attempt to sweep the nasty bushes aside with a stick and crab sideways down the trail. The sap is most toxic in spring, I remember. If I wasn’t so allergic, I’d consider this member of the sumac family a pretty plant. Poison oak is particularly conspicuous in fall, when its leaves turn a flaming crimson or orange. However, color is more a response to heat and dryness than season; its “fall color” can occur anytime in California. Here in La Brea Canyon, the leaves on some plants are turning yellow and red while the majority are putting out green leaves.

Mind over matter. I will not get poison oak. I will not get poison oak.

Hiawatha Camp brings an escape, an end to a long day. Brush has all but overgrown this abandoned campsite on La Brea Creek and we work hard to clear the fire ring and flatten out a tent site. Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha” inspired the camp’s name, although it’s difficult to understand why. The banks of anemic La Brea Creek are hardly the legendary shores of Gitche Gumee.

And beyond them stood the forest,

Stood the groves of singing pine trees,

Green in Summer, white in Winter,

Ever sighing, ever sighing.

No singing pine trees around here, only smoky-blue twilight settling over a 360-degree panorama of chaparral.

Much of the chaparral problem (yes, there’s a problem and it’s serious) is one of perception. California is a state of immigrants, who often bring their provincial floral biases to the Chaparral Belt. Transplanted Easterners are particularly unappreciative of chaparral. Every time they venture into nature they expect Hiawathaland: lush meadows, singing pine trees, babbling brooks. They are forever comparing chaparral to a “real forest,” with chaparral inevitably getting the short end of the botanical stick.

On the surface of things, it must be conceded that chaparral lacks the aesthetic appeal of an Eastern hardwood forest. California’s sun is a thirsty one and for more than half the year chaparral at close range appears to be a pale brown mass of shriveled herbage. But look closer, for it’s a very special and beautiful brown, unique to California. The brown of California’s back-country and that of the East’s backwoods are completely different. Here, little snow or rain rots the herbage or drains away its vitality. Chaparral grows ripe and aromatic, bursting with a life that has not been diluted, blanketing slopes and canyons with the effect of bear fur, so that it seems this sun-kissed country has the yielding surface of a living creature. The brown of California is the brown of regeneration, not decay.

It’s going to be a cold night. In chaparral country the temperature often falls 50 degrees from high noon to dawn and sometimes plummets from 100 degrees at midday to the 20s at night. We spread a tarp on the ground and sit next to our small brush fire. We won’t unroll our sleeping bags until bedtime; we want to save the day’s warmth inside them. Our tuna surprise bubbles over the low flame. (McDermott will not tell what he added to the tuna, noodles and powdered Cheddar-cheese substitute. “It’s a surprise,” he says.)

The sky fills with stars. The brush that hides the earth does not obstruct our view of the heavens. Orion’s Belt arcs over the San Rafael Wilderness. The Milky Way pours down upon Hurricane Deck.

I throw a manzanita branch onto the fire. Even chaparral’s critics have to admit it burns well. However, nobody since Moses has taken any inspiration from a burning bush.

Too bad. One need not be a pyromaniac, merely a chaparral admirer, to enjoy a brush fire. I observed one recently in these mountains, a few miles above Santa Barbara. Truly, an inspiring sight! Fire doesn’t race across chaparral--it moves steadily, making a clean sweep. The thick leaves distill their oil in hissing sheets of white flame. Sometimes the flames leap from bush to bush like a forest fire, but more often as one bush burns, the flame dies down and the fire creeps through the ground litter. The heat of the burning litter ignites the lower branches of the next bush, and it too flares up.

Many chaparral plants choke out the growth of other vegetation, even their own kind. The arid climate slows the recycling of dead material into the soil, so Nature must find another method to clean house: fire. Dead buckwheat, fallen yuccas and tinder-dry chaff of all kinds accumulates and is cleaned out by fast-moving brush fires. Contrary to what TV reporters say while standing near smoldering hillsides, fire is actually a beneficial pruning process. After a fire, there’s prompt revival. Brush fires move rapidly and seldom damage root systems. Within a few weeks, using stored ground water, plants send green shoots above ground. Some chaparral seeds, like those of ceanothus, require the heat of fire to crack their coating, thus allowing them to germinate after the next rain.

Winter showers bring spring flowers to fire-cleared areas. Owl’s clover blossoms early in spring, and later in the season yellow, orange and red monkey flowers dot the hills. (Viewed head-on, the petals resemble a monkey’s face. Each flower, like each primate, has a different expression.) Mountain lilac covers the slopes with a veil of white and blue. Golden California poppies and yellow Mariposa tulips add to the riot of color. Let the chaparral burn! Though those who lose their homes undoubtedly feel otherwise, fire is a trade-off for a carpet of wildflowers and the health of California’s chaparral.

I stir the dying embers of our own little fire and with the help of a little firelight and a lot of starlight find my sleeping bag. Faraway, a coyote howls at the sliver of moon suspended low on the horizon. My cocoon radiates its stored warmth, my belly gurgles contentedly at the half-digested tuna surprise (the “surprise” was that it was edible; McDermott’s cooking usually is not). Before I can watch the moon rise, it is sunrise.

A no-nonsense sunrise. A low yellow flare in a cloudless sky. I struggle into cold boots, shuffle up the hill into dawn’s light. I’ll follow the sun as it warms the land back down-slope to camp and breakfast. I’d better take charge of the morning meal; McDermott’s the only one I know who can burn instant coffee.

I can never tell direction by the sun in these mountains. It always seems to come up the wrong way. The mountains trend east-west, meaning as I hike upstate along this stretch of the California Coastal Trail, the sun sneaks up behind me. “Up the coast” in other parts of the world is taken to mean north, but in the Santa Barbara back-country it’s west, toward the sundown sea.

Time to inspect the forest. I refer to the elfin forest that lies all around me, a million acres protected by the Los Padres National Forest and including the San Rafael Wilderness, the first Wilderness Area in America set aside under the federal Wilderness Act of 1964. “San Rafael is rocky, rugged, wooded and lonely,” remarked President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the San Rafael Wilderness bill on March 21, 1968. He was right on three of four counts: rocky, rugged and lonely. Not very wooded, though. Ninety percent of the wilderness, in fact 90% of the Los Padres, is chaparral. Did the President, did Congress, did anyone know the homage they were paying to chaparral?

“I believe that it will enrich the spirit of America,” President Johnson declared. Enriching my spirit is a helluva lot of chamise. The gray-green bush is the most prolific member of the chaparral belt and probably the most common plant in California. Eight percent of California vegetation is chaparral, and 75% of chaparral is chamise. It’s not thorny, but has stiff, leathery leaves that lash the trespasser. From the summits of the coastal mountains it sweeps down to the sea, an impassable three- to eight-foot-high barrier. In the last century, someone who died or was lost in the “chamisal” was said to have “wandered off into the Jimmy Sal.”

Chamise may also be the most dangerous plant in California. It doesn’t burn, it explodes. A curse to firefighters, it lives up to its common name, greasewood. Chamise thickets burn with intense heat, like a grease fire, sending up huge clouds of black smoke.

One would think that a plant as common as chamise would be ignored, but the Indians, a practical people, used it for medicine. Oil from the leaves was rubbed on skin infections. Chamise tea by the gallon was supposed to cure syphilis, as well as tetanus and rabies.

Chamise may be the most populous, but ceanothus, with its blue spikes, is the showiest chaparral shrub, at least in spring. Often called California lilac, this 3- to 12-foot-high evergreen blossoms with clouds of blue, white or lavender flowers. About 20 different species of ceanothus grow in California, with the Bigpod and Wartleaf varieties predominating here in the Santa Barbara back-country.

Toyon too can be a showy plant, but not in spring. Also called Christmas berry, it features large clusters of bright-red berries and dark-green leaves. The berries, which look like -inch-diameter apples, appear around Christmastime. Toyon is also called California holly. This last name was given to a certain Southern California city where movies are made.

Like chaparral flora, chaparral fauna is not, at first glance, particularly noble. It’s doubtful that Lorne (“The New Wilderness”) Greene or Marlon (“Wild Kingdom”) Perkins would stalk the beechey ground squirrel, brush rabbit or California pocket mouse for his TV show. Chaparral reptiles such as the Coast horned lizard and Western fence lizard engender little interest, as do typical invertebrates: the ceanothus silk moth and hedgerow hairstreak.

Contributing to chaparral’s anonymity are its characteristic birds, the scrub jay and rufous-sided Towhee, which are neither the most brilliantly colored nor the most majestic denizens of the air. And the wrentit, whose distinctive call, an increasingly rapid cadence of notes on a single pitch, has given it the appellation “voice of the chaparral,” cannot be said to be the most musical of feathered songsters.

Me, I prefer the call of the California gray quail, another familiar voice of the chaparral. The East Coast quail, usually known as the bobwhite, calls “bobwhite, bobwhite.” Here in the West, the quail speak Spanish: “ Cuidado , cuidado .” Take care, take care.

Descending sandstone slopes back to camp, I pass a plant with armaments that make other chaparral plants seem almost weaponless in comparison. This hostile native presents a formation of fixed bayonets, thrust upward and outward, each yellow-green blade narrowing to a deadly needle-sharp point. The stalk rises high above the neighboring bush and blossoms with clusters of creamy white, delicately scented flowers. More often associated with desert rather than chaparral environments, the plant is a member of the lily family. Whipple Yucca and Our Lord’s Candle are two of its common names. Like a trained soldier, the yucca always seems to occupy a strategic position, atop a ridge line or rocky outcropping. This strategy accents its steadfast beauty.

Also within sight are several stunted versions of the oak tree called scrub oak. These squat trees rarely grow taller than man-sized on the southern, or warmer, slopes, but often exceed 10 feet on the northern, or cooler, hillsides. It’s one of the most water-conserving members of the community. During the heat of summer, scrub oak leaves discharge a waxy substance, to prevent evaporation. The leaves also curl downward, like upside-down spoons, to offer less surface to the sun.

To Spanish settlers, scrub oak looked like a plant from back home, and they gave it the name chaparro. The territory where chaparro grows we now call chaparral, and that is why cowboys wear chaps.

No chaparral inventory would be complete without mentioning woolly blue curls, a bush with elaborate clusters of two-lipped, blue-purple flowers covered with a dense purple wool. And Fremontia, ornamenting the brushland with its dark evergreen leaves, yellow flowers and bristly thistles. And aromatic lemonade berry, which guided early California farmers to plant citrus, because where lemonade berry survives the winter, so will lemons and oranges. And California buckwheat, host to a zillion bees. And mountain mahogany, king of the mountain, its short, hardwood trunk, leathery leaves and dense profile helping it survive on wind-swept slopes where nothing else grows.

So much for the morning inspection. Except for the yucca, which stands head and shoulders above the rest, chaparral plants are a communal lot, life crowded upon life in a struggle for survival in the humus-poor soil. I have described chaparral as a forest, and it is a forest. Despite its Lilliputian appearance, it functions like any other, catching and conserving water, stabilizing slopes, sustaining wildlife. Still, the Los Padres is considered one of America’s most worthless national forests. Those areas not smothered in chaparral consist of barren sedimentary rock, which testifies to this land’s former undersea life. The elfin forest defies all human endeavor. We can’t log it, farm it or ski down it. Chaparral country boasts no boatable lakes, few fishable streams and virtually no extractable minerals. It is undoubtedly a harsh land, wild and worthless, a frontier that can be pushed back but not conquered.

I think that I shall never see a,

Poem as lovely as manzanita.

It’s tough rhyming lines when branches are tangling the legs. This morning we meet lots of manzanita, varying in size from prostrate shrubs to woody trees. Its branches are a handsome maroon, and now, in spring, flowers hang from them in clusters of tiny pink and white bells. This bush is so prevalent in the Santa Barbara back-country that we really ought to name at least one mountain range the Manzanita Mountains.

There are said to be 68 paths to heaven, of which one is the true way. As we bushwhack along the bottom of Roque Canyon, we often mistake a gap between bushes for the trail, or a narrow gully where rainwater has scarred the land for the true path. The stiff manzanita branches part unwillingly as we press through; then they snap back, their broken points flicking like switch- blades. McDermott and I agree that it would be easier cutting through the Amazon. We tack back and forth through the bush, marveling at how ingeniously this trail utilizes little ravines, sandstone ledges, hog’s-back ridges and dim vestiges left by the lower animals.

The blue ribbons we tie to the bushes are the only way we can sign this path. “Monumenting” or “ducting”--that is, piling rocks atop each other (the favored technique in the High Sierra)--is impractical here in the bush; rarely can a hiker see more than 20 feet ahead. Blazing trees with an ax is out of the question; there are no trees worthy of the name to blaze. So we continue beating through, leaving a thin blue line over God’s gray earth.

Bless the brown bears. If the Forest Service has abandoned Trail 30W04, the bears have not. Tufts of fur clinging to the bushes show where they have forced themselves through. Since the rangers stopped ranging here, a few dozen bears have inherited all responsibility for keeping this trail open.

Few Californians realize the contribution bears have made to their civilization. Old Bruin designed many of the best trails, speeding exploration and settlement of the state. One reason bears are such good trail makers is because they’re somewhat lazy and hate to expend unnecessary energy in traveling. And they hate to go down steep hills, I suppose because their forelegs are so short. They therefore are skilled in choosing the best route through the mountains, and once having made the choice, they stick to it until they wear a smooth path. The old prospectors used bear trails to get over passes, and many of today’s best recreation trails are superimposed over theirs.

As I bushwhack along, I worry that without good trails few people will take the trouble to visit California’s great brushland and the prejudice against brush will continue unabated. This prejudice is long- standing. Even John Muir, who usually had a good word for every scenic California vista, complained about hiking through chaparral: “The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot and they are covered with horny bushes from 5 to 10 feet high.”

Californians don’t wait until they are in the back-country to express their prejudice; they do so in the city. Consider how many California motels, coffee shops and boulevards are named “Redwood” or “Palm.” Now try to recall anything named Scrub Oak. Barberry? Bladderpod? Fremontia? Hundreds of shops and restaurants are named “Lake” or “Forest” or “Seashore,” but with the exception of the Chaparral Lounge in Ventura, I’ve never encountered a business honoring the stuff. The very name chaparral is a no-no. Nursery workers, gardeners and landscape architects substitute the terms “drought-tolerant landscaping,” “native flora” or “Mediterranean shrubbery.”

Unfortunately, with the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency, prejudice against chaparral has grown from a state problem into a national one. The Reagan ranch, located at the head of Refugio Canyon in the Santa Ynez Mountains, is blanketed with chaparral. Now the Western White House, the ranch is the stage for the President’s brush-cutting activity. Viewers of network news see the President assaulting it with ax and saw and conclude that chaparral is to California what kudzu is to the South--an alien growth threatening to engulf crop, field and metropolis.

Additional blame for the emerging national brush bigotry must be placed on the White House Press Corps. All correspondents dutifully report that the President took time out from his busy schedule to cut and clear brush. But what kind of brush? And why does he cut it? Reporters never announce, “The President thinned a slope of ceanothus today,” or “The President axed eight manzanita and two scrub oak this afternoon.” Chaparral plants, like the Communists Reagan battles, remain a nameless, faceless enemy.

Perhaps Reagan could explain that he too loves chaparral, its sun-wrinkled surfaces, its highly individualistic plants and animals. He could tell the nation that he realizes his chaparral should burn, but he enjoys the relaxation brush-cutting offers. He could also confess that his aides tell him that the only thing that looks worse on camera than chaparral is burned chaparral.

Thoughts of cold beer put a spring in our step and we forget our torn shirts, our indecently split seams. “We haven’t seen a human in three days!” I shout exultantly.

McDermott laughs. “The Forest Service bureaucrats call this ‘dispersed recreation.’ I think that means nobody’s crazy enough to come here.”

We journey on over the crumbling sandstone, through a prism of tertiary colors, the violet, olive and amber hues of the arid heartland. Our nostrils embrace the hot, dry perfumes. Our eyes contemplate the desiccated beauties, our ears fill with the hum of bees and the chirrup of locusts. And the warm California sun embalms it all in a peaceful forgetfulness.

A hiker’s mind is more selective, and mine is no exception. Already my memory is washing away the more unhappy landscapes, full of plants only a botanist could love, and retaining a single idyllic image: a vision of brush-covered slopes bathed in amethyst during that magical time at day’s end the poets call owl’s light.

Memories, however imperfect, are all you can take from this frugal land. Chaparral even defeats your best efforts at photography. You can frame a High Sierra peak in your camera’s viewfinder, but these mountains of brush sprawl to the horizon, row upon row extending into an azure infinity, overflowing the widest of wide-angle lenses. Your eye can’t hold it all. Only your heart can.