San Miguel : A return trip to the loneliest of California’s Channel Islands, where northwest winds sweep over ghost forests and sea lions bask in the sun.

It was well past midnight, a time when the after-dinner drinks had long since produced their desired effect and tall tales could be told with a reasonably straight face.

We had gathered on the stern of the Peace, a 65-foot dive boat preparing to set out from Ventura on a trip to San Miguel, the most westerly and northerly of California’s Channel Islands. For now, however, we were content to swap yarns with the crew.

“The biggest thing out here now,” Steve began, gesturing vaguely toward the open ocean behind us, “is commercial traffic in hagfish. It’s a really primitive, jawless fish, and they sell the skins to Korea to make wallets and shoes and stuff out of.

“Its skin is real similar to eel skin, and they’re having a big problem with eel skin right now. A lot of eels--not only electric eels, but a lot of eels--carry some type of electric charge. What’s been happening, they finally figured out, is that the electric charge remaining in the skin is demagnetizing people’s credit cards.”

Our laughter was partially smothered by the sound of the Peace’s engines coughing to life. Soon we would be on our way; 60 miles of ink-black ocean lay between us and Cuyler Harbor.

Steve persisted.

“It’s a true story,” he said. “Really.” But we were no longer listening. The bow and stern lines were being cast off and our attention had turned to the journey ahead. The Santa Barbara Channel is a treacherous stretch, and the seas had been reported as rough. If all went well, though, we would be nearing San Miguel by sunrise.

-- -- --

A dozen years had passed since I first saw San Miguel Island. In 1977 I had arrived by helicopter, flying in with a National Park Service ranger to explore one of California’s most remote islands.

That was in the days before Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary had come into being, and visitors were not allowed on the island, which was--and still is--the property of the Navy.

My trip then lasted only a day, but it produced a lasting series of impressions:

--The 10,000 or more seals and sea lions basking on the rocks and sand at Point Bennett.

--The hauntingly odd “ghost trees” of the ancient caliche forest.

--The giant sea bird rookeries on two offshore islets, Prince Island and Castle Rock.

--The ruins of the old ranch house and the bittersweet tale that lay behind them.

--The lichen-covered monument to Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who landed on San Miguel in 1542.

The list went on, but, suffice to say, the island left its mark. Whenever the smog and the traffic, the noise and the confusion of Los Angeles became too much, I would think of lonely, wind-swept San Miguel. It was just 100 miles from the city, but it seemed a world away.

One day, I told myself, I would go back.

-- -- --

The Peace carried about 30 passengers and a crew of nine, and although there were bunks below deck, it was too warm and pleasant a night to sleep indoors. I found myself a perch atop the engine hatch and, much later, drifted off into a sort of half-sleep, counting stars.

I awoke to a gray world of water and sea mist, broken only by a tinge of pink along the eastern horizon. It was not yet 6 a.m., and we were rounding the far side of Santa Rosa Island, San Miguel’s nearest neighbor.

Gradually, the boat came alive as the rest of the passengers made their way on deck. Before long the sun broke through and breakfast was served in the galley. Then San Miguel and later its natural anchorage, Cuyler Harbor, came into view.

It is not a large island, covering only about 14,000 acres, and at first glance it seems almost barren. Roughly triangular in shape, it has no dominating peak and no trees. Until 1965, the Navy used it as a bombing range; the craters are still visible along the cliffs.

But San Miguel is deceptive, and its 24-mile coastline includes many coves and bays where unspoiled beaches of soft, white sand spill down from untrodden dunes. In springtime, flowers adorn its rolling hills, and fields of wild grass sway to and fro in the ever-present northwest wind.

By now the mist had burned away and the sun shone warmly in a clear blue sky as we dropped anchor in the bay.

There is no pier or jetty on San Miguel, and so, in groups of six or seven, we put on life jackets and climbed into a skiff to make a beach landing.

Ashore, we were met by park ranger Gail Mahoney, who, with the exception of a few marine scientists studying the pinnipeds at Point Bennett, lives alone on the island.

It would be Mahoney’s job for the next few hours to show us San Miguel. The crew of the Peace, meanwhile, would be diving for abalone, halibut and anything else they could turn up for our lunch.

I was anxious to see what changes, if any, had taken place on the island since my earlier visit, and so, with Mahoney leading the way, we set off down the beach and up a steep, narrow path leading up the side of a canyon.

The climbing was not easy but the views were worth the effort. At this time of year San Miguel’s colors come in shades of ocher and brown, and these made the turquoise waters of the bay seem all the more inviting.

The dominant plant life on this part of the hike were the giant coreopsis, also known as the “tree sunflower.” These odd plants, now dormant, bloom only briefly in the spring, when their brilliant yellow flowers are visible well out to sea. To Mahoney, however, their odd, almost human shapes conjure less pleasant images, especially by moonlight or in the fog.

“If you come up here at night, it’s kind of scary,” she said. “It’s foggy and dark and the owls are going by and the coreopsis are staring at you . . . I lock the door and close the curtains.”

Mahoney, who is a teacher on the mainland the rest of the year, spends her summers on San Miguel, working 10-day shifts followed by four days off. This is her third summer on the island.

On my previous visit, the resident ranger had lived in a tent overlooking Cuyler Harbor. Now “home” for Mahoney is a pair of storage boxes, each 10 feet by 20 feet, set at right angles to each other.

“They’re big enough for one and very cramped for two or more,” she said.

Still, they have some of the comforts of home, including a propane-powered refrigerator and stove and a gravity-fed shower using water from nearby streams. The water is unfit to drink, however, and Mahoney has to haul heavy five-gallon water containers to the base from the island airstrip atop the ridge.

“I know exactly how much they weigh,” Mahoney said, sighing. “Forty-five pounds apiece.”

Continuing up the canyon, we eventually emerged on a knoll overlooking the ocean and the curve of the harbor. Here, in 1937, Portuguese civic groups from the mainland erected a cross in honor of Cabrillo.

Covered in yellow lichen and flanked by coreopsis with outstretched “arms,” the rock pile and stone cross are the only physical reminder of the navigator’s death at San Miguel more than 400 years ago. Whether he was buried on the island, on neighboring Santa Rosa or at sea, remains a mystery that is debated to this day.

We followed the trail to the remains of the old ranch house that was home to Herbert Lester and his family during the 1930s. Lester, the self-styled “King of San Miguel,” ruled his island outpost with panache, even going so far as to build a “school” where his two young daughters were taught by their mother, Elizabeth.

The outbreak of World War II spelled the end of those carefree days, and when he learned that the Navy would be forcing him to abandon the island, Lester took his own life. He is buried on Harris Point, alongside Elizabeth, who wrote a charming book about the family’s years on San Miguel.

Little remains of the ranch but a few crumbling walls--heaps of stone, really--blackened by fire, rusting farm machinery overgrown with weeds, and a few rotting fence posts that once marked the boundaries of Lester’s island kingdom.

In a few more years even these reminders will be gone.

“Once in a while I’ll run into someone off a boat who remembers this place when it was still a ranch,” Mahoney said. “They have pretty good stories to tell.”

From the ruins we set off on the longest portion of the hike, heading past the airstrip--”no unauthorized landings allowed”--and across the island to the caliche forest between San Miguel Hill and Green Mountain, 1 1/2 miles away.

Once there, I again noticed a change. On my earlier visit I had wandered at will through the forest’s lunarlike landscape, stopping to touch and photograph the “ghosts” of trees that had grown on the island thousands of years before.

The forest is made up of calcium carbonate deposits called caliche that formed around the trunks and roots of trees, and which remained as a sandcasting of the original plant when the trees died and decayed.

Now, a wooden barrier and a word or two of warning from Mahoney prevented anyone from strolling into the fragile environment.

“A group of fifth-graders could pretty well ruin this in a matter of minutes,” she said.

It was time to retrace our steps and return to the beach where we’d landed. For most of us, the high point of the visit was yet to come, and it was something that was hinted at as we hiked back down the trail: Carried to us on the wind was the distant barking of seals and sea lions. Not hundreds, but thousands of them.

“There are six species of seals and sea lions that come up on the island at some time during the year,” Mahoney had told us before we’d set out from the beach. “I was over there (at Point Bennett) yesterday. I was guessing there were between 5,000 and 10,000 animals. It’s an amazing sight. It’s really beautiful.

“If the weather holds, they may take you around the backside of the island to see the seals and sea lions. But that’s only if the wind does not pick up because it’s pretty dangerous over there with all the rocks.”

-- -- --

We arrived back at the beach with a half-hour to spare before the Peace returned to pick us up. There was the chance for a swim or at least some sunbathing before clattering back into the skiff for the ride to the waiting dive boat.

Once back aboard, we had lunch and then, with a fog bank rolling in over the headlands, set off to circle the island in search of seal-covered beaches.

We found them on the far side, but the scene was nothing compared to the one I had experienced a dozen years before.

Then, a ranger, a photographer and I had approached Point Bennett from the land side, eventually positioning ourselves just out of sight atop a sand dune and looking out over an unforgettable sight: Thousands of marine animals perfectly at ease in their native habitat--northern and California sea lions, Guadalupe and northern fur seals, harbor seals and the huge northern elephant seals with their long, Gallic noses.

Now the weather was too rough to permit the Peace to approach Point Bennett from the sea, and so we settled for some smaller colonies of animals cavorting in more sheltered coves. Still, the effect was dramatic, and we gazed in silence at the displays before us: hundreds of seals and sea lions at play with their pups.

All too soon it was time to leave. The fog was still rolling in and the sea was becoming turbulent. In the eerie, yellow-gray light of late afternoon, San Miguel once again faded into the mist.

And once again I promised to return.

-- -- --

For information on one- and two-day trips to San Miguel and the other Channel Islands, contact Island Packers, 1867 Spinnaker Drive, Ventura 93001, (805) 642-1393. Prices range from $18 to $185 per person, depending on the island and whether a landing is made.

For more information on San Miguel and the other offshore islands, write to Channel Islands National Park Visitors Center, 1901 Spinnaker Drive, Ventura 93001, or call (805) 644-8262.

For a detailed account of the Lesters’ life on San Miguel, read “The Legendary King of San Miguel,” by Elizabeth Sherman Lester, published in Santa Barbara in 1974 by W. T. Genns.