"the native people of this coastal area - the Rumsien Ohlone and the Esselen - lived in a world of natural beauty and abundance for thousands of years."
i just got to santa barbara. it was a great trip this morning on the train. yesterday after arriving by bus in pismo beach i meandered around the pier for a while and then went to the train station to see if i could get on a train to santa barbara. the next one was to be at 7am the next morning. i had mistakenly thought i had a couchsurfing host, but he was not able to host me. so i hunkered down and spent the night in the waiting room of the station. the room provided shelter from the wind, but is not a fully enclosed space, so i had to keep bundled up in my sleeping bag. i meditated, ate food, drank tea(able to get hot water at a starbucks), played a little mbira, and chatted with one guy who stopped by for a while. i looked like a hobo, but i was just waiting for the next train.
i was not too cold, but a little uncomfortable on the hard floor. the previous three nights were more comfortable, on beds of evergreen needles (pine, redwood, and cypress). i felt so blessed to find comfortable places each night. really the station was not too bad, just the hard floor.
i took a little side trip in Big Sur, up a winding road in a redwood-lined canyon called Paulo Colorado Canyon. my hosts in Seaside had mentioned a guy who has a place somewhere up there and had some connection to a goat farm? i'd decided it was too out of the way and i probably would not find it, but then when i got to the road i said, "here i go!" and headed on up. maybe it was the trees calling me. anyway i ended up finding lloyd's place, called Merlin's Perch, after talking to several locals who i stopped on the road.
the property has an AMAZING view facing the coast (helps make the steep climb worth it). lloyd was not there, so i gave myself the tour. on these steep slopes there is a terraced garden with many fruit trees. a redwood tree here and there... a couple trailers are set up for seasonal WWOOFers. it looks like there is a lot of trail building/maintenence going on and that more planting is intended.
the nearby neighbor was also into gardenning and said she was going to put in a vinyard! Ecology Action and John Jevons came up, and when i told her i had visited there she was excited. we really hit it off. an interesting thing she does in her garden is to grind up her own coarse bone meal for her plantings. she felt it had great benefits, and of course it does! sadly she did not have her composting system functioning well. her food waste goes in one of those rotating drum contraptions and did not have enough carbonaceous material mixed in. she complained of the fly problem, but didn't seem receptive to the solution i presented of using cover materials as a biofilter. i would have liked to stay and help her build a nice pile. i know that intervention is not always effective though. i wish her all the best in her pursuit of relative self-sufficiency!
wednesday, the 20th, was a pleasantly social evening at a restaurant called Nepenthe in big sur. the young bartender, apolo, had the most welcoming and kind spirit, and recognized the good spirit in me. i connected with everyone around me very easily that night. it was my solstice celebration a day early. i ended up sleeping outside the henry miller memorial library and leaving before they opened the next morning.
just a little north of the town of cambria i stopped to observe the elephant seals occupying their beaches. there were babies talking with their moms, bulls fighting, and huge, old grandpas snoring. it was cool to see the whole scene. along the way through big sur i saw a couple of coyote, other seals, and many birds of course. wonderfully wild coast despite the highway's infringement.
at the bus stop in cambria i meet a fellow about my age who had been a small farmer in skagit valley, near my home of orcas island, in the past few years. we talked a lot as we waited and then on the bus to the next town. for me it was a very important discussion. he felt that it was important for small farmers to be big enough so that they don't get shouldered out by the really big guys. a good example of what he thinks is an appropriate example is nash's organic produce, who opperate in washington state. i could see there was a conflict in this young man, which i could really relate to, between the desire to be of most help to my community (humanity as a whole?) and the instinct to farm in a very intimate and sensitive way, for which we sacrifice the 'efficiency of scale'. we can see that there is a transition step, or many steps, that agriculture can take on the way to that ultimately more holistic practice of subsistence farming. i'd like to see every human live a long and healthy life. but the health of the whole we are a part of, i believe, requires that we adjust our populations to what our environments can support.
diversity is what i see as being the source of health. if we choose to share the blessings of life with all the other creatures we will live on happily!
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