Finder of Lost Objects or Missing Persons

Anayapa
Muwu
Wit

From up There

"Boney Mountain is a sacred spiritual area, a shaman's retreat, and a place for vision quests. It is a place for meditation. From up there, you can see everything."

          -Charlie Coke, Tiq Slo' 'Eye of the Eagle"
              A Hereditary Chumash Chief

Bedrock

for Earth Day

Bird People

"...three major classes of beings can be distinguished in the narratives:
the First People, supernatural beings, and the nunasis.

The list of species comprising the First People is rather interesting, for many of the animals that one might suppose would figure prominently in Chumash stories -such as bears, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, whales, deer, and elk,

- are either not mentioned at all or briefly touched upon in passing.

Most of the First People mentioned by name are birds of one kind or another..."


from Decembers Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives by Thomas C. Blackburn

Analog Autumn

Was rummaging through some old negs and found these.

All images were taken during various states of different Autumns throughout the past few years.

Top. Malibu Creek (notice the big Blue Heron perched atop one of the branches)
Mid. Upper Sycamore Canyon
Bot. The old Ap at Satwiwa/ Rancho Sierra Vista

Curse of the Chumash

Yucca

If any of you are hurting for a free meal or are just hard on cash you should take note of this hearty and extremely resourceful desert plant, the yucca. If you live around the Santa Monica Mountains or have been driving through the canyons you may have noticed that the yuccas are blooming everywhere. They are late Spring bloomers and often clone themselves after they bloom and die, and that's why you will see a dead plant right next to a blooming one. I love observing this amazingly cool plant that could supply so much popping up all around. If I really knew what I was doing I could use it for so many necessary resources. The yucca can be used for: flowers can be eaten raw, the base can be made into a soap/shampoo, and the leaves could be used to make strong rope. The Chumash used this plant for all of those reasons and probably many more and I'm sure that this time of year was always a great time for them. As the yucca flowers are quite tasty and can be found all over the low lying hillsides.
In these economic times I'm attempting to live more like the Chumash by making use of the native flora around me. The yucca flowers are actually not bad and could probably be made into a few tasty dishes with a little experimentation. So if you're starving after a long surf and don't feel like driving all the way home just head for the hills and grab a few flowers off this resourceful plant and head back out for a second outing.
The plant also gave Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon its name. As Craig Stecyk noted in his infamous article on Malibu, The Curse of the Chumash, the Spanish settlers called the plants the Virgin's Torch because of their brightly colored flowers that shimmered in the sunlight.

California Straight

Where the sagebrush meets the sea along the Chumash Coast, where ancient spirits rise with the fog above the Santa Monicas, and where river mouth pollution equals point break perfection.
The home of muddy brown tubes on warm offshore mornings,
the Cambell Bros' 5-fin Bonzer, and secret places where ghost waves appear and disappear
right before your eyes. Home to the descendants of the Birdman tribe, and one of the last outposts for the riders of the purple sage.