Eternal Backcountry Return

These backcountry hiking adventures in eastern Santa Barbara County mirror the early Anthropocene wanderings all of us perforce must follow in the 21st century. Scrambling with a young boy on the wlld and scenic Sisquoc River, getting lost on "the 40-Mile Wall," seeking solace from the Red Shaman pictograph, following the tragic arc of the Hale Bopp comet and the Heaven's Gate suicides, running out of water at sweet Madulce Camp only to be saved by the Mother... The San Rafael Wilderness east of Santa Barbara remains some of the wildest country in the American West, replete with condors and centipedes, pictographs and petroglyphs, rock wonders and cranky reprobates like the writer and his posse of hikers, The Rattlesnake Canyon Boys.