Window to the Wilderness
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Journal of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance |
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Sometimes in the sunless depths of a cañon the trail would lead us to
some gentler retreat, where a cool spring was surrounded by bending
ferns, and graceful alders, and clumps of young redwoods. Here we
would stop to breathe our horses, and drink from the spring; and as we
watched the loosened leaves float down from the alders, soundless, and
the dusky light in the tops of the redwoods, and the notched leaves of
the fern above the still dark water of the spring, the peace of Nature
fell upon us, and it was easy to understand how baffled and
world-troubled spirits of all ages, and those too finely strung for
the world's discords, have been drawn to such places as a refuge.
Mary L. White, "Over the Santa Lucia", 1892
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igh up the coastal slope on a sun-washed spur-ridge of the Santa Lucia, an age-old live oak has riven its place in a cleavage of rust and golden vaqueros sandstone. At the downslope edge of the
weather-worn outcropping lush green grasses sparkle in the warm
mid-morning sun, accented by wild golden violet and purple shooting
star. A stemmy bush of poison oak grows close to the stone for warmth,
trimmed with oily red bursts of the season's first growth. From a
crevice in the rock emerges a fence lizard to silently bask, one eye
following a red-shouldered hawk low across the cobalt sky.
