I am still in Campo. The bus does not come until Monday. I spent two nights outlaw camping here.
In fact, as I write this,, I am outside under an oak in the dripping wet pre-dawn edge of light by a creek on the very slab of granite you see in the photo. A century ago, women were actively still grinding acorns in this exact location.
I must say that an upwelling of deeply internalized sadness inexorably rises up and will to this day produce tears if l let it. I ponder the treatment given Native Americans by European invaders to this continent, and it happens.
So I sit in the dark swaddled still by my warm and dry sleeping gear with a tarp draped over my shoulders to the western side where the wet is trying to drive in, and I honor the spirits of this place. It is the only way an empath can get by. The stones themselves tell the stories of murders, robberies, and rapes that happened in this exact location.
Before that though, people lived here in relative peace for centuries. The stones tell those stories as well.
Yesterday, to restore the feelings of comfort rather than horror, I sat on that rock, and did some work on my manzanita walking stick. I added a rubber tip — interestingly found on the trail, and I added a handle to make it more like a cane. The code I’m using for my blog at this time shrinks all photos after the topic photo, so I will show you this work on another day, but it was restorative to bore a hole in a chunk of oak with the two knives I brought. It took me several hours! My stick went through that hole, and I tied it off with some of the line I carried with me.
Also, and this would merit another post, I made a bit of rope from some dead yucca I gathered from the same immediate area.
It would have been better to use that for the top, but time was against that, so I contented myself with a mere study of the yucca here they call, “Spanish Dagger.”
I have not said it, but I need to get this in: This region is far from barren. It is teeming with life! One could easily survive here all year if one’s acorn gathering game were refined. Astonishing, I have seen no deer sign, but there are many small animals. The large populations of hunting birds shows that fact from afar. All night, for example, I was hearing great horned owls, at least three by the voices I heard, talking to each other. By day, the red tails and goshawks are ever present in the skies. I say this because those species all are big eaters, so when you see a lot of them, you know there is a lot of food. They are, after all, at the top of the food chain.
That is a pretty good rule. If you see lots of apex predators, you are seeing an ecosystem in good health.
No deer though. Weird. They must have hunted them off in this locale?
No wolves, no pumas, no bears… Hmmm… yeah.
Relative health, merely OK therefore, but still, they would come back if allowed.
High desert. Hot by day, cold by night. I love it here.
Oh! I forgot! Hummingbirds! This is where the broadtails go for the summer! That species is my favorite. They are the best flyers and they are super aggressive. The males when courting fly straight up like helicopters to impress the females. It is indeed impressive to see them do that. They make a bit of a grinding noise with their wings that is unique among hummingbirds. This is how you can know it is a broadtail without even seeing the bird. (They also have broad tails, but that can be extremely hard to see unless you can watch one working a plant and see their fantastic close maneuver skill.) Broadtails look a lot like Anna’s otherwise. I happened to have gotten a chance to study them closely when a group got blown off the their normal migration route and made nests in my back yard. They had babies!
So I have had pet broadtails who would get very near me unafraid. I have never gotten any of the males to come near, but the older females will drink from hand held nectar feeders. They know me!
So it was with great familiarity I knew myself to be in their home grounds when I first entered this region the twenty-first of March as I began this first attempt to walk the Pacific Crest Trail.
Yet now, as I said, I write in the pre-dawn dark awaiting the sun, preparing to leave this day.
I may have to hitch home. I may have to hop a freight train. I won’t have the money for the bus or the train for five days, but I sure have to go. Now.
One last point. Notice the bits of what looks like flat stones near the holes in the photo? Those are bits of broken pottery that have been sitting there for more than a century. I guess I was the first person to see them and their value in all that time?
Strange planet, Earth.