By Phil McKenna I recently spent a February afternoon hiking at Baron Ranch with friends. It was a beautiful day; the sun was warm, the air cool. The front country of the Santa Ynez Mountains can be quite breezy, especially …
By Nina Warner As a long-time Santa Barbarian and outdoor painter, I’ve never found a lack of beautiful sites to paint. Since retiring from a 25 year tenure as an art professor at Santa Barbara City College, I’ve been able …
By Janet Koed March 22 is World Water Day with the theme of “The Value of Water“ Santa Barbara Channelkeeper’s Watershed Brigade is organizing a March Challenge. We all agree that ensuring our coastline is litter-free is an important part …
By Mike Brown Jalama County Park is not your typical county park. Wedged between the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve and Vandenburg Air Force Base on the Gaviota Coast, it’s a slice of rural California for day trippers, RV campers, …
By Reeve Woolpert One way to see terrain is as a water collector or watershed — let your eyes flow over the landscape like raindrops. The principal contours of the Gaviota Coast mark the many pathways taken by precipitation as …
By Phil McKenna Jalama Canyon Ranch is a 1,000-acre ranch nestled in an inland valley at the end of a dirt road that heads west from Jalama Road, the scenic drive that runs between Highway 1 and the beach at …
By Janet Koed Many years ago, in high school, I took an occupational placement test. The results suggested I should become a forest ranger or a lighthouse keeper. This profile suits me well for walks on isolated beaches during times …
By Janet Koed Migration Patterns of the Western Monarch On Tuesday, I received a text from Charis van der Heide, asking if I wanted to join her for the Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count the next day. I jumped …
By Greg Helms One of the great assets of the Gaviota Coast — and of our work to preserve it — is the biological richness created by its combination of sea and land features. As a volunteer board member with …
By Janet Koed You never quite know what you’re going to get when you sign up for a paddle up the coast from Haskell’s Beach and that was true for the nineteen of us on a guided kayak trip on …
