The Channel Islands are one of the least visited national parks in the system, even though they’re only a few hours drive from LA. They’re protected from the hordes by a moat: the boat ride takes most of two hours.
Edward Abbey’s believed that cars shrink the perceptual size of our parks; we could expand our parks immensely by banning all cars. The Channel Islands are his best proof; they are small in land area, but no paved roads web them. Since North Americans express distance in terms of time, not miles, crossing the few dozen miles of island is thereby transformed from “half an hour’s ride” into “all day.” The hills rise up all around you, immune and indifferent to the petty amount of noise you bring to them. You had better fill up at one of the water spigots in the rough campground, because this land will give you nothing more.
August 2015
I went for the first time almost ten years ago. I went to LA for a trip that was nominally work related, but I also used it to visit friends, and to skip into another national park. I took a day to drive to Ventura, a day to sail out and hike around, and then a day to brave the LAX Airport and return east.
The boat ride turned out to be a bonus I did not plan for — the Channel that you cross to the eponymous islands is a major Pacific migratory route. The August morning dawned spectacularly clear to my New Englander eyes, though it was probably ho-hum to a Southern Californian. Dozens of whales and hundreds of dolphins played and swam around the boat during their long commute. A fair few people came just for the marine show, and would never set foot on the actual islands. I can’t say they chose their day wrong, though they missed so much.
I landed on the island and a helpful ranger asked who was here to hike, and who was here to kayak. Almost everyone else went off to one of the organized kayak tours on the island. I was the only one left. “Did I choose wrong?” I asked. “Is this not a great hiking place?”
“No,” he assured me. “Usually it’s about half and half. This is unusual.”
“I got lucky then,” I said, and meant it. And he then told me about my choices. I had checked the map that morning, and two trails interested me: one went up the spine of the island to a high point in the center. The other followed the eastern coastline, skimming the top of the bluffs and offering the ocean below. Both were dead ends; at some point you had to turn back and rewind your journey. I didn’t have time for both. So I asked the ranger: which should I pick?
He looked me up and down, and decided I was Worthy, and gave me some secret wisdom. “It’s not on the map, but those trails do connect in a loop, here.” He stabbed his finger on the blank nothing the map showed between them. “If you want to, just follow the coastal route here, and at this point, you’ll see a fork inland. There’s even a sign there. I don’t know why the maps don’t print it.”
“If you’re feeling like you have enough time and energy and are up for a little bit of climbing, take it and it’ll join up with the central trail in the hills, and you’ll come right down here.”
Aha. I had my mission. I launched off along the bluffs, and walked by as the glass green waves crashed below. I drifted my hands along the tops of the tall grass dancing in brown waves. The island is an open clean place, the world around visible for miles, without another soul around to bother anyone. My late Mémère would dub it “the kind of place you can fart as loud as you want”. You can even see over the channel back to the suburbs, but I tried to avoid looking that way, and pretended I was here on this island in an earlier, unmolested and unlit age. My cell phone had zero signal. I considered chucking it into the ocean, which might have purified the experience, but polluted the waters, so I declined.
I reached the fork in the trail easily — this trail was very flat after a short climb up to the top of the bluffs. So I ate a quick lunch, and launched up the left fork with gusto. The Ranger had declared me fit and competent, after all, so here I go! I climbed a hill, and then the one behind that one, and then the one behind that. The ocean behind me grew bigger and bigger the higher I got, and the breeze was a little cooler. Another hill, and another. It was the type of landscape where you couldn’t see the final peak; each crest appeared just after you finished climbing the last fold in the earth.
I started to look at my watch. I replayed the boat operator’s warning: “If you’re a day tripper, and you don’t make the 5:30PM departure time, congratulations!You’re now a camper!”
The minute hand was relentless, and I didn’t know how many hills were left. The next could be the last, or it could be the fifteenth from last. There was no GPS or indication of where I was exactly that could save me here. AllTrails was still to come. And so, I hit the Point of No Return. I could turn back and make the boat landing, but not if I went much further; every step forward I took would create the need for another on the return. So if I went forward, there had better be enough time to cover the unknown miles and hills between me and the end of the loop. Maybe the next hill crest was the last one, and I’d see the boat launch an easy mile or two away. But the trail could also loop around a lot, and I’d still be looping when my ride departed, and then I’d be looking for a soft patch of grass to spend the night.
I summoned my nominal adulthood, the faint legacy of my experience in Boy Scouts, and my general respect for nature in its many forms. I decided to turn around, and take the guaranteed path. I was a rule follower as a kid; old habits die hard. Plus, I was nearly out of drinking water, and the sun was hot. Downhill sounded good to me right about then. So I turned, and covered the ground I’d crossed before, and made the boat with 40 minutes to spare.
I almost immediately regretted it. We attack ourselves most harshly for the things that make us most ourselves. “You always wuss out of things like that. You never get the best stories because you’re risk shy.” I could hear the other 11 year olds mocking me for not jumping off the higher diving board back in lost summers. That incomplete loop bugged the hell out of me for years. I suspected that I turned around at the three quarters point. If I’d just gone forward a bit more, I would have punched over the top and been treated to an easy gradual descent over new terrain. My pedometer, after all, said I’d managed to hike almost 14 miles on a 9 mile trail loop.
That memory caused me to push myself more. I started hiking more seriously, choosing the longer paths and harder loops when I had a choice. I carried more gear, a bit more water and some filters as a matter of course, extending my range. The extra weight made the exercise more intense. I looked beyond popular hikes and started choosing the kind that have lots of warning signs at the trail head, and want you to sign in and out of a little book, so they know when to send a chopper to come collect your body. I found valleys and notches and hilltops I don’t think I would have before, if I didn’t have to beat myself up about wussing out on the Channel Islands.
I was grateful for that push. But I still had unfinished business on the Islands themselves.
March 2023
Work brought me to southern California again in March of 2023, and it was finally time to finish this nonsense. Another stay in Ventura, another boat ticket, boots, and a much bigger water bladder came with me this time.
I would tackle the loop from the other direction. That would get me up the spine and done with the big climb first. Then I could descend in full vision of the flat bluff-side path for the end. I had solid boots and poles. I had the full route map downloaded on AllTrails. And once the boat released us, I started right away up that hill spine trail, determined to see just how much time it actually took me to do that loop. I would conquer this unfinished challenge, and know the full extend of my decade-old shame while retiring it for good. I’d celebrate with a snack and an hour reading my book before the return boat home.
That winter was the first a true California rainy season in years. The island was shocking green, not sere and brown. Last year’s tall grasses were matted down, and their green children grew up around the stalks. The trees and bushes exploded with flowers. Clouds drifted back and forth at eye level, caught by the hilltops. For a good hour, I had no view other than the mist that clouded around me. My rain jacket came out early, and stayed on.
Rain doesn’t stop an outdoorsy New Englander by definition. So I climbed up a bowl valley, then followed switchbacks up to the central ridge line. My view was compact and hemmed in, thanks to the clouds, but it still felt big. Even bigger, maybe, since we couldn’t see the whole thing spread out below us.
I wasn’t totally alone this time, but saw a whopping six other hikers along the trail. It’s easy to avoid other hikers if you want to; you just adjust your pace so you leave them behind or let them advance ahead of you, and that maintains your own bubble. I surprised a few foxes, but never snapped a photo of their rapid flight. I walked along some narrow saddles, only 90 minutes into the hike. I could now taste the easy victory ahead of me.
I didn’t stop for breaks much, apart to snap a very few photos, and kept my pace going. After a while, the trail drifted downwards. I found myself below the cloud line again. I could see the open plain and bluffs and green grasslands again, with the ocean beyond them. It was rougher and grayer today, but still the land was silent and indifferent to me. But I had not yet reached the point where I’d turned back last time around.
I hiked another hour, and still did not hit the stacked hills. I looked at AllTrails, and realized something. This trail…was really long. I picked up the pace a little, risking a stumble on slick wet rocks. I hopped along another saddle that I’d never seen last time around, through some low bushes that were in full spectacular flower. I emerged again on the north side of the hill, and sighted the bluffs, huffing a little at this point, until I reached the bluffs and the coastline where I know I’d been before.
And I had an hour left to book it back. I took the last three miles at a fast pace, no stops, and marched up to the boat launch with little time to spare. I carried half the mud on the island embedded in my pants, and plopped down at the last bit of bench available.
And finally, I caught my breath as the truth sunk in.
My theory of cowardice and shame? My failure to just push forward a little more and make it? That packet of self-hatred I turned into a guidestar of self-improvement to drive myself up hundreds of miles of trails and backwoods over the last decade? It was total bullshit. I had not been a wuss at all ten years ago. If I had not turned around, I would have been screwed. That ranger misjudged me. I should have realized it. That happens to me a lot. People instinctively think people of Great Height are correspondingly athletic. But I wouldn’t have ended up a 6′ 6″ debate coach if I had any such talent.
I rode the boat trip back to the civilized shores in silence, chewing on a granola bar. In my pre-approved script, I should have been thinking “See! I totally could have kicked that islands ass all along!” But instead, I was sitting on my own freshly kicked ass. I got back to port, then to the cheap hotel, where I washed off all that mud and nasty exercise. I went to drink a bucket of water and mildly overeat, while pondering the revelation.
—
When you travel with people, you don’t focus on the strangers around. But if you travel alone, and listen, you can hear an awful lot of ridiculous things. Overheard bullshit in National Parks is often of the finest grade. One lady at Acadia Park complained that the rocky shoreline wasn’t better designed for her stiletto heels. A German tourist in the Canyonlands wondered why many of the mesas were built with no access to the top. A wheezing dad started kidding-but-not-kidding about wanting an escalator at Zion. And one red faced man yelled at a park attendant who stood between his RV and an unstable cliffside road in Kings Canyon.
Most of the real nonsense boils down to the expectation that the park and its nature was created for us to enjoy. In a legal sense, that is true, but the park is not just lines on a map, and the legal fictions that force us to respect that part of the earth more than the rest. Nature itself is not there for our purposes. The cliffs and bison and trees and rains move to their own agenda, and if you try to count on them to follow your schedule, instead of adapting to them, you’ll just be disappointed. Santa Cruz Island was not built, is not crossable in one afternoon, and does not care about how long you have until the boat departs.
So I unlearned the lesson of the Channel Islands, which is the same as learning one. Caution is good; it’s one of my life goals to never meet a search and rescue party from the business end. But in unlearning my disdain for caution a little, I realized there was another one buried beneath it. Ever since that first August day out in the Islands, I started spending weeks in nature, not just afternoons. There’s time and space enough, even in this the smallest part. I sat at the Upheaval Dome for 45 minutes once, marveling about how the desert comes alive after you shut up for five minutes and listen. I read an entire book laying back on a slab of rock in Banff. When the path ahead and your ability to follow it outstrips your schedule, the easiest thing to change is the schedule. So next time I go to the Channel Islands, it’s time to bring a tent.