Light as a Feather

Before heading back to Bridgeport and another season working for the Forest Service, I took one final trip down south to visit my family in Ventura—a yearly ritual, since they wouldn’t see me again until October. This would also be the last chance I’d have to take a long hike with my brother.

We’d already made loose plans to camp out on Pine Mountain (an old favorite) and walk to the top but, after I arrived, Steve suggested something new: “Thorn Point,” a place I’d never even heard of; some minor summit in an obscure portion of the Sespe Wilderness—largest road-free area left in southern California—which would entail a much longer drive down into the Cuyama River watershed. But…Let’s go! (I’m always keen to visit new spots.)

These geologically young Transverse Range mountains in northern Ventura County are swiftly crumbling and being washed back into the nearby Pacific (from which they emerged a mere 10 million or so years ago). This process being hindered just slightly by the veneer of dense chaparral that’s virtually impenetrable to humans but a safe haven for everybody else. “Mountain lion country.” Black bears…condors. Thorn Point—not Peak—is just a prominence on an almost 7000 foot high ridgeline midway between Highway 33 and Interstate 5, east of Pine Mountain. Though a mere bump on a ridge, from looking at our tattered old Los Padres Forest map, we could see that it held a commanding view of the entire region. Plus, the map showed a fire lookout on top. And a trail leading there.

            Starting in the early 1900s, a network of these structures was built by the Forest Service. They were seasonally manned by “lookouts” (generally, young men) who diligently kept watch over timbered mountain ranges, all across the western states. Ventura County’s brushy backcountry is—almost literally—made to burn. Huge tracts of Sespe Wilderness periodically go up in smoke and without a strong initial attack by firefighters there’s no way to stop these conflagrations. To this end, starting in earnest during the Great Depression, scores of lookout towers were constructed—some made accessible by primitive road…others, like Thorn Point, only by stock trail—so that fires could be spotted, located precisely (sometimes by triangulation between towers) and reported before getting out of hand. Almost all the towers have been abandoned for various reasons; in part after aerial reconnaissance became commonplace. Ventura County’s decommissioned towers fell into ruin and several burned in subsequent fires, leaving only some charred wreckage and stark, metallic skeletons that look like squat oil derricks. Steve and I have visited a couple of these “ghost towers,” with steep metal stairs ascending to exposed platforms; naked steel joists or empty space in the middle where the lookout’s cabin once stood. Reminders of a bygone time.

           

We were a mile up the little-used trail before vistas began to unfurl. Through our binoculars we could clearly see a short tower frame topped by a tiny, frayed-looking house that was once white but had weathered to gray. The Thorn Point lookout tower appeared to be relatively intact. We were surprised—never having seen one whole—and I hoped (but really doubted) that we’d be able to go inside. Its presence instantly added romance to an already dramatic prospect: directly beneath the “summit,” tan-colored sandstone bluffs were cleft by sheer, sand-filled gullies and all the cliff faces were painted with lichens, mostly in swathes of brilliant oranges and greens. Below them was an expanse of harsh badlands; sinuous ravines separated by knife-edged ridges. The country unfolding below us—a real no-man’s land—was an eroded, tectonic jumble. (We were only a handful of miles from the San Andreas fault.) Our trail, once it’d climbed out of a charming forest of black oak, Jeffery pine and incense cedar (an unusual assemblage in these parts) was lined thigh-deep with lovely flowers. Wading through them elicited a kind of simple, unadorned delight that’s to be found in mountains everywhere. And, for some strange reason, hard to fathom—no ticks! But it was hot and very humid and I was sweating at a steady drip, my T-shirt saturated.

            Climbing higher, into pure pine forest, it began to cool somewhat. We made it up top around noon and mounted those enticing metal stair-steps. Both of us proceeded to explore. It was fairly dilapidated but, amazingly, all the windows still had glass behind their thick wooden shutters. The door wasn’t locked but, sadly, was ajar—probably blown open by a gale—and the inside was a complete shambles. I went in.

There was still furniture, but the fire-finder (an elaborate sighting instrument on a brass turntable) had been removed. Some nice cabinets and a little stool with glass- insulator-tipped legs that lookouts would stand on during serious lightning storms. The floor was covered with junk and trash, which was strewn around the narrow walkway outside as well…woodrat scat and filth sullying what had once been a neat, orderly little castle-in-the-sky. I was just glad the edifice still lived to tell a tale, with a nifty old Forest Service map on one wall and glass still in its windows; lending at least the remote possibility of future restoration. But it was a little gloomy for someone like myself who’s had an enduring fantasy of being a lookout and living in just such a place.

Outside was that unremitting ridge-top breeze; views up and down the twisted mountain range, and waaay down below we could see three of the Channel Islands’ highlands rising above a fog-shrouded ocean. A small band of violet-green swallows—a handsome little bird that lives in mountainous areas—circled around, obviously curious about us interlopers. Steve and I, leaning on the guardrail, soon noticed that it was dull-colored, immature birds and not their white-bellied, green-backed parents who hovered in the wind, just a few feet away, to gawk at us. These young birds had probably never seen the likes of our kind before—not many people came here. The sun beat down on their spacious world; our sweat evaporated in the cooling wind as we were encircled by tiny denizens of the local firmament. They made me feel welcome.

            After a bit I went back inside. Suddenly, I heard Steve (pacing around the walkway, being observed by curious swallows) say, ”Oh!”—both astonishment and awe captured in a single syllable—and quickly stepped to the door just in time to see him draw from a pile of refuse, in a fashion not unlike Arthur’s drawing sword from  stone, a gigantic feather…larger than any I’d ever seen. Slack-jawed with amazement, he held up the great primary wing-feather of a California condor and said nothing. It was almost-black, was almost two feet long, the lower part of its shaft almost as thick as your little finger. It’d been shed during the annual molt while its owner was perched atop this superb vantage point, then held custody by the wire-mesh-enclosed walkway surrounding a far-flung outpost…eventually becoming lodged in a trash-heap.      

I reached out and Steve handed it to me. Neither of us had spoken—stunned to silence, maybe, by this unexpected gift. I held it out into the wind, horizontally, resisting an insistent lift; flapped it up and down, having to hold the shaft with a tight grip. Wow! Wonderfully strong yet flexible, it weighed just a few grams.

Straight away, the circling swallows grew visibly agitated and gathered ‘round, twittering their thin, high-pitched notes. What…what’s this?! Recognition? They know where this came from…they know. (Of course! They have these, too.) But this belonged to their country’s monarch. What might a condor be to a swallow? (These: words to approximate what I felt in an instant.) So I held the condor feather up like Liberty’s torch to see what they’d do. Steve watched intently as the diminutive birds circled, closing—a vortex of swallows—and then one slowly drifted down against the stiff breeze, wings drawn in, and gently lit on the tip. So light, its weight barely registered. I could see those minute claws clinging to the feather’s edge. It perched there, utterly calm, while we had a long look at one another. Quite a look…more like an exchange—eye to eye, with a direct line to that place where the things that matter most go and stay. I was floating; it was one of those proud moments when distinctions blur and time fades unnoticed into a hazy background. I stayed still as the statue whose pose I’d inadvertently mimicked but, inside, was hooting with glee and dancing a little jig.

©2014 Tim Forsell                                                                                     2 Jun 2003, 1 Nov 2014