Upper Manzana Creek Trail
Editor’s note: This article was first published by Noozhawk and is reprinted here with permission.
By Dan McCaslin
Day hiking or backpacking along the enchanting Manzana Creek in our beloved San Rafael Wilderness is Dr. Nature’s strongest prescription against the cosmic city blues.
One can read Charles Taylor’s Cosmic Connections as I often do, but the stronger drug lies out yonder, up the hill and over dale to the broiled and brown backcountry. When I can’t get out there (or Rattlesnake Canyon) three times a week I begin to experience early onset ASBD [Amerikan Slow Brain Death]. Of course, it’s my metaphor so there isn’t any such neurological condition called ASBD, yet many sources think humans today suffer endless distractions and drown in screen-time and the entire digital nightmare (Jaron Lanier and Jonathan Haidt critiques).
Although much of our pristine local backcountry was re-opened by the USFS in late August after the (Santa Barbara) Lake Fire ended, many folks were prevented from heading back there due to the known presence of ash on the ground, summer’s fierce heat everywhere, as well as some very high temperatures in early September.
When wild Pete and I pulled into Davy Brown Camp at 6:50 a.m. on Sept. 16th we hadn’t been in or near the San Rafael Wilderness for a couple of months, and of course the rapacious Lake Fire, which began July 5th , had forced the long government shutdown in the first place. (The Lake Fire burned almost 40,000 acres.)
Fire names are strangely concocted: I think of this summer fire “back there” as the second Zaca Lake Fire, and much of the burn area was around Los Olivos, including about half of UCSB’s important Sedgewick Reserve on Figueroa Mountain.
We all owe gratitude to the fire fighters and the Los Padres National Forest people for saving Davy Brown Camp despite a very heavy fire and in July’s furnace. Fire fighters with chain saws and heavy equipment had cut down chaparral on one side of Sunset Valley Road. This action, and pulling the debris away, meant “one side of the valley” would resist burning while the other side was quickly singed and flames whipped through. However, we can clearly see how these California chaparral wildfires jump around and sometimes singe large areas of the grasses and small bushes; however oaks and sycamores will often survive.
Out of the eight good campsites at Davy Brown, only one was occupied, so we moved quietly to check out beautiful Fir Canyon since we knew it was likely within the Lake Fire’s burn area. Alas, large and clear signage by USFS stated that the Davy Brown Trail in Fir Canyon had been closed for safety reasons, and in fact all the local trails here on Figueroa
Mountain remain closed for hiking.
We peeked into Fir Canyon at the bottom of Davy Brown Camp and could see that the fire damage is heavy. There are heavy piles of white ash everywhere, a lunar landscape in places, and you can smell ash in the air.
We hopped in the truck and drove the final mile on Sunset Valley Road to Nira Camp, the gateway to the San Rafael. Near Nira we noticed three horse-trailers and four vehicles, so a pack group had gone down the Lower Manzana Creek Trail and almost certainly to Manzana Schoolhouse Camp (9.5 miles). Note: the three campsites en route are closed: Potrero Canyon, Coldwater, and Horseshoe Bend.
Accurate signage by the USFS led us to aim for the Upper Manzana Creek Trail toward fabulous Manzana Narrows Camp (7 miles). Fish Camp is three miles further along, while gorgeous Lost Valley Camp is just a mile upstream. But my hiking goal was more modest: to walk along the rushing creek with the merry Wassermusik and audacious bird cries, sauntering about until I feel like stopping.
I held a simple focus on making each step deliberately, with full consciousness, searching for cosmic clues or some kind of omen. The terrain is bad in places, including some creek crossings, so progress was slow.
I attempted to slow it all down by roaming creekside, checking out spiderwebs and butterflies, enjoying the fingerling fish in the fertile water, noticing that the jet flying high above supplied the only machine noise around.
After crossing the Manzana there at the Nira Trailhead you can amble along, and soon make sure to take the “high” route — we used to say the horse route — since at least one section of the lower trail route has become impassable. Uh, impassable at least for a creaky 76-year-old, although I knew it was an easy jump and quite possible … still, caution and valor and that rot!
With one-pointed focus on the physical path itself, the boulders and rivulets, resurgent foliage, poison oak, lizards … despite the fire’s destruction I detected new life springing up, even when Fall hasn’t begun. We observed fresh growth of the sweet and succulent wild cherry back here: holly-leaved cherry (prunus ilicifolia) out of which the Indigenous peoples made the islay dish, made from the dried pits of the cherry plant.
I strongly recommend hiking east, upstream from Nira Camp, on the Upper Manzana Creek Trail: this side was not burned in the Lake Fire, unlike some of the Lower Manzana Creek Trail. Even the burned side has huge islands of unburnt
chaparral, and I observed sycamore, oak, and even some gray pine tree survivors within the burn area.
This fire ecology system will spring back within three to five years.
* * *
Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor cogently argues that we lost our easy avenues to a cosmic connection once the machine age took over, around 1750, and this loss has obviously been intensified by the digital and now AI revolutions.
Just go listen to Jonathan Haidt’s talk on February 20th at the Arlington — humans, especially young western humans, feel alienated, isolated, and stressed. Busting out onto nature’s free trails is one easy “avenue” to slowing down, tuning into a cosmic connection, focusing on very concrete and simple things, literally placing one foot before the other, step, repeat, walk more and worry less.
Haidt, in The Anxious Generation argues that children, especially girls, suffer greatly from so much screen-time and virtual play, and he writes: “If parents don’t replace screentime with real-world experiences involving friends and opportunities for independent activity, then banning devices will feel like pure deprivation, not like a world of opportunities opening up.”