Ascending Pimkolam with Maria Ocarpia

by Ryan Masters, June 21, 2020

The Salinan world is protected by Prairie-Falcon and Raven. From its beginning, these two heroes have saved hapless humans and animals from all kinds of threats: a jealous old woman who carries the ocean in a basket, for instance; a snake born of a whirlwind; a singing, one-footed limestone beast; even a rock named Xiu.

Prairie-Falcon and Raven stories, which can be delightfully ultra-violent, were preserved (along with a good hunk of the Salinan language) when an elderly Salinan woman named Maria Ocarpia told them to the ethnographer J. Alden Mason in 1916. Maria’s stories sweep from Morro Rock to the Salinas Valley, yet they describe the Santa Lucia Range, in particular, as a land of dark magic and fatalism, but also a place where justice eventually prevails.

Prairie-Falcon is nowhere to be seen, but Raven is perched on a nearby fence post as I close the trailhead gate behind me and step onto the baking hot, horse-fly-patrolled trail to Pimkolam. At 5,857 feet, the distant peak is the highest point in the Santa Lucias. It’s 4 p.m. I have six miles and 3,724 feet of elevation to gain before dark, mostly up. Fortunately, today’s the summer solstice so five hours of light remain.

The trail winds northeast from the emerald swimming holes and dramatic granite bluffs long known as “Indians”. It forks in a meadow dominated by a boulder the size of a metropolitan library. The seeds of these grasses and flowers are an important part of the traditional native Salinan people’s diet. I take the left trail, following it beyond the stone citadel and into a wide canyon that funnels up the southwest flank of the mountain. Before long, the trail reaches a lush oasis. I pause to enjoy the spring until a cloud of winged, biting biomass drives me on. In a grove of oak, I meet a day hiker on his way back down.

“You going to the summit?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“Then it’s just you. No one else all the way up.”

“Beautiful.”

What’s In A Name?

Two hours in, I’ve gained enough elevation to see Fort Hunter Liggett to the southeast. Mission San Antonio de Padua hunches innocuously at its heart, nearly lost amid the modern military base. Yet there was a time when this little mission represented a force more fearsome than the U.S. Army. Father Junipero Serra claimed the place on July 14, 1771, establishing a third site for the California Mission System amid a cluster of 20 Salinan villages.

Before long, of course, the Mission System evolved into a lucrative livestock and agriculture enterprise built upon the backs of Indian slave labor. The construction of the church at Mission San Antonio de Padua began in 1810. By that time, 178 Indians already lived at the Mission, mostly Northern Salinan, but also some Yokuts and Esselen. By 1805, the number of Indians living at Mission San Antonio de Padua had increased to 1,300.

It was the beginning of the end. Salinans had prospered in the region for roughly 1,500 years before Mission San Antonio de Padua appeared like bad magic in the valley, immediately and permanently disrupting their subsistence patterns. Across California, Spanish missionaries seized Native lands and pressured them into working for various Mission industries. Ensuing epidemics wiped out tens of thousands. Many were assimilated into the Mission System, a grim phenomenon detailed in Randall Milliken’s excellent book A Time of Little Choice.

In 1851, California Governor Peter Burnett declared “a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct” in his state of the union address. As a direct result, many California Indians assumed Spanish names and melted into modern America. By 1902, only a few Salinan families remained in the Santa Lucia Range.

The trail cuts back and forth along the steep chaparral coulee. From alien bud to luminescent blossom, yucca in various stages of bloom dot the muscular terrain. The psychedelic flowers of the Woolly Bluecurl stand out in all their surreal violet splendor. I pause to drink water and stare deep into the bloom’s galactic coloring. The vivid color’s depth is disorienting, nearly hallucinatory. In a thousand years of trying, a human could not recreate the complexity and nuance I find there. As I wade through manzanita, birds gorge themselves on ripening berries around me, their excited chatter echoing through the steepening canyon.

It’s a time of abundance here in the Big Sur backcountry. Despite the bludgeoning heat and hardscrabble veneer, this place is an Eden. According to the Ventana Wilderness Alliance (VWA), the remarkable nonprofit responsible for clearing trail, raising awareness, and keeping this land open to the public, nearly half of California’s plants can be found growing in the Santa Lucia Range.

As I ascend, I periodically glance south, the way I’ve come. The enormous granite bluffs of “Indians” bulge from the distant ridge like monolithic faces, stoic witnesses to my suffering. A strong breeze is blowing along the ridge above, perhaps a welcome respite from the insects. I can hear a spring tumbling down the near-vertical ravine to the east. Its source must be within 500 feet of the summit.

At 4,200 feet, I reach a narrow saddle in the upper ridge. It’s 7 p.m. The evening sun shines through perforations in a rusted metal sign that reads “S. Lucia Trail” and “J. Serra Peak”. Spanish and Portuguese ships used this peak as a navigation point during early explorations of the California coast. In 1602, the Spanish named the mountain “Sierra de Santa Lucia.” Its name wasn’t changed to Junipero Serra until 1950.

As you’ve probably noticed, I use the Salinan name Pimkolam. (For a detailed explanation why I don’t use the mountain’s government name, you can read a 2015 op-ed I wrote for the Monterey County Herald, “Questioning Junipero Serra’s Sainthood.”) Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. Historically, this mountain separated three groups: the Salinan and the Esselen, who were bound by a similar language, and the Costanoan, who spoke a tongue discrete from the others. Some Salinans called the mountain pimkoia'm, ti'at aula after a plant found here. Hence, Pimkolam. Others called it sta’yokale, which means “deer that has no horns yet or a spike buck”. Maria Ocarpia called it santaluisa, a version of its English name.

Regardless of what it’s called, the mountain plays a central role in her versions of the Salinan people’s origin story. Perhaps not coincidentally, Maria lived near its foot, not far from the trailhead, in fact. She told the following story (complete with eerie climate change warning) to ethnographer J. Alden Mason in 1916:

Many long years ago before there were any people on the earth, the sea suddenly rose, boiling hot, and flooded the whole world. It covered all the mountains except Santa Lucia Peak, which remained about two feet above water. And there on the summit gathered all of the animals with Eagle as their chief. Then he said to Duck, “Cannot you dive down and bring some earth?” “Yes,” replied Duck. “I can do it.” So he dove in the sea. But before he reached the bottom, he became tired and had to come back again. Once again, he entered the water and tried to reach the bottom. At last, he reached bottom and seized a little bit of mud. Then he came up to the top again, but when he arrived he was dead from lack of air. But Eagle took the earth that remained beneath his nails and rolled it in a lump. Then he cut it into four pieces and made balls out of them. Then he threw one of the balls to each of the cardinal directions of the world. Then the sea sank and the world became as it is today. The mountains and the streams and the gullies were made and the sea retired to where it is today.

But some time in the future the rains may end and the world will end again and the people will die. The sea will rise again the world will come to an end. (82)

Oh, To Live on Sugar Mountain

The cool breeze blowing through this narrow saddle is divine. I slip out of my pack, rehydrate, eat. High overhead, a fire lookout tower crowns the summit. To be visible from this distance, it must be huge. Before my calves can tighten up, I strap on the pack and continue. The last 1,500 feet are going to burn something unholy.

As I trundle up the reptilian ridge, the spines of young Ventana Gods sprawl in all directions. Just two-and-a-half-million years old, these titans continue to claw their way to the sky. They are finally, majestically awake after eons asleep beneath the sea. By the time the Santa Lucia Range is done standing erect, geologists estimate it could be 12,000 feet or higher.

I turn to the task of beating the sun to the summit. The trail climbs like a winding staircase through bushy tunnels of ceanothus. Its creamy white flowers shower my head like confetti. They slip down the back of my sweat-soaked shirt and lodge against my skin in sticky clumps. But there’s no time to mess around. I catch glimpses of honeyed light through the dense chaparral as I perform the Ventana Breaststroke up the mountain. The sun’s setting.

The trail crests the ridge and spills on to the north side of the summit’s dome. After hours of vertical canyons and ridges, I suddenly stroll a gently sloping path through a mature forest of coulter and sugar pine like I’m Maria von Trapp. It’s a bewildering transition in this surreal solstice light. The only place I’ve seen a similar mix of trees is Cone Peak. The western sky flares Halloween orange above the coastal mountains. As the solstice sun is rinsed unseen in the eternal glory of the Pacific Ocean beyond, I say a prayer of gratitude that this world can be so terribly, heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

I continue on through the faux-Sierra wonderland in the gloaming. An orchestral hush has settled over the mountaintop. The pine forest is full of evening birdsong. It rustles with wing and claw in the magenta light. This was a significant harvesting site long before the Spanish arrived. People have worked and slept and gathered here for centuries. While the Salinans’ permanent settlements were mostly down in the San Antonio and Nacimiento river drainages, they maintained seasonal encampments like this one to gather pine nuts. As evidence, more than 30 cupules, or small grinding stones, have been worn into the granite on its western side.

The Salinan people believe Pimkolam possesses supernatural power. Rock paintings and pictographs found throughout the Santa Lucia Range tell stories of its first people. This peak was also used in ceremony. A National Park Service brochure cites a 75-year-old Salinan man who spent his life on the nearby Jolon Reservation:

John Garcia remembers hiking to the top of Santa Lucia Peak with his family and 75 to 100 other Indians. He recalled that people put holy water in some of the cupules and planted flowers in others. The people must have prayed up on the peak, because he saw them put their arms up over their heads and look up at the sky and then toward the ocean. Garcia thought that these groups of Indians climbed the mountain twice a year, once in midsummer and again in late fall. (NPS.gov)

Maldito in the Lookout Tower

I reach the lookout tower, which is actually located on a false western summit, and step on to its cement-and-iron stairs, gazing up for the first time. I realize the tower, abandoned as an active fire lookout in 1979, is really freaking tall. I’m not a big heights guy. I don’t climb for fun. But the Western sky is on fire and I want to see it from the top of this damn tower so I crawl on all fours up its narrow steps until the wind blows wildly around my ears and I feel fear.

The field notes of ethnographer John Peabody Harrington tell the story of a maldito that lived on this peak and killed those who ventured here. When Mission San Antonio de Padua was first being built, the priests sent some Salinan men to the top of Pimkolam to cut timber for church rafters. As they labored, one caught sight of a lizard basking atop a rock. As he watched in horror, the lizard tore a hunk of bloody skin from the back of its neck and threw it at him, striking the man terribly ill. Helped off the mountain by his friends, the man returned to the mission where local hechiceros, or wizards, sang songs about Pimkolam, saving his life. After the man had been cured, a priest was dispatched to baptize the peak in the name of Santa Lucia.

One must be careful of bad magic. I see the “floor” of the lookout tower is just a four-foot length of metal grate and a few haphazardly placed boards. No thanks, maldito. I stay put and watch night fall over Big Sur from the lookout tower’s top step. This year, the summer solstice falls on a new moon. Daylight fades. Vibrant stars soak into the inky sky revealing breath-taking heavenly bodies.

It’s no wonder the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) seriously considered Pimkolam for its first national observatory in 1957. Fortunately, plowing a road to the peak proved too daunting a task. In 1977, UC Santa Cruz floated the idea of a dark sky observatory. Fortunately, the project stalled out thanks, in part, to a chorus of native voices defending Pimkolam as sacred space. To this day, astronomers consider this peak the best site for a dark sky observatory in California.

A strong gust of wind reminds me I’m perched atop a structurally questionable lookout tower in the dark. I carefully make my way back to solid ground. While the new moon makes for spectacular stargazing, it presents challenges in this unfamiliar terrain. As I fumble about in the dark, I am reminded of Maria Orcopia’s story “The Tarman”.

Once upon a time long ago, there was a man who murdered the people. He had his basket full of boiling tar and when anyone would come by, he would greet them and say, “Hello, cousin!” Then he would offer to shake hands with him and as soon as he took his hand, he would throw him into the boiling tar. Prairie-Falcon and Raven were scouring the country to find all the murderers and came to him. He greeted them and extended his hands. Prairie-Falcon seized one and Raven the other and they threw him into the boiling tar. Then they set fire to the tar with their fire-drills. All ablaze, the murderer ran all over the country with the blazing tar dropping. And everywhere the drop of tar fell sprang a plant of mescal. On the other side of Santa Lucia Peak, the murderer died and there are great quantities of mescal. (85)

A little spooked and utterly exhausted, I slip into my bivvy sack to escape the mosquitoes. Stars poke through the branches of Pimkolam sugar pine, down to where I lay alone in the dirt. According to Maria, a morning star once fell, killing everyone. Fortunately, Prairie-Falcon arrived and revived them. I drift off to sleep grateful for Maria Orcopia’s stories and silently tell her so in a rambling solstice prayer. Tomorrow morning, I will seek out her great quantities of mescal on the other side of the mountain.

Sources & Further Reading

Mason, John Alden. The Language of the Salinan Indians. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. Vol. 14, No. 1, pp 1-154 (1918).

Milliken, Randall. A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810; Ballena Press Anthropological Papers. 1995.

Milliken, Randall & John R. Johnson. “An Ethnogeography of Salinan and Northern Chumash Communities – 1769 to 1810.” Far Western Archaeological Research Group. 2005.

Rivers, Betty & Terry Jones. “Walking Along Deer Trails: A Contribution to Salinan Ethnogeography Based on the Field Notes of John Peabody Harrington”. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. Vol.  15, No. 2, pp. 146-175 (1993).