This year's trip was very successful. The
weather, gray and moody as we left home, gradually turned brighter with
sunlight visible over the ocean as we drove. Past Santa Barbara you get
into open space, with the sea on your left and rugged green hillsides on
your right, interspersed with canyons filled with gold-leaved sycamores
and bright yellow poplars. If I hadn't been driving, I would have loved to
have snapped pictures of the view, because it was truly beautiful.
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Each trip to the mission goes differently,
and this time the boys decided they wanted to bypass the buildings and set
out on the trail beyond. The valley circled by the trail can be seen
above. The mission buildings are located in the foreground and to the left
(not visible here, of course.) At right you can see the white of the tiny
spring house, and at center the yellow poplars that surround the hillside
tanning vats, one of our destinations.
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At left: the spring house, a tiny station where water
from the aqueduct system collects before continuing its journey across the
fields and to the buildings. The mission's original water system, starting
at a spring-fed pond and including a narrow aqueduct and a series of
cisterns, is still intact.
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Across the valley from the spring house we
saw four deer, and quite good sized at that. By the time we'd done our
walking and were returning, the deer above had been joined by five more.
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Some distance past the spring house we left the main
trail to follow the narrow path leading up the hillside to the tanning
vats. The grove surrounding the vats is carpeted with ferns, but evidently
not ferns that thrive in the kind of cold we've had this winter, since
vast spreads of them had turned crisp and brown.
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Cowhides, the principal currency of early
colonial California, were soaked in these tubs with some combination of
oak leaves and other natural ingredients to soften them. Every one of the
missions raised cattle and processed hides like this, which is the main
reason that once the Mexican government divested the Church's missions of
their land in the 1820s, leaving them only their buildings, the mission
system soon disappeared for lack of income.
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Following the hillside path past the tanning vats,
where in warm weather little spiders with yellow or red furry tufts on
their backs scurry across the trail, we came to the small hillside cistern
(shown at left), then continued downward until we rejoined the main trail
and reached the big cistern, below, which reminds me somewhat of Roman
ruins you might find in Spain, though these are much more primitive in
their construction.
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| The largest cistern. I'm not good with
distances, but I'd say this cistern is about 18 feet across and stands
about five feet high. |
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