Читать книгу Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur. Your complete guide to the trails of Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness, and Silver Peak Wilderness онлайн

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The arrival of spring varies with the timing of winter rains. If rains continue until May, expect incredible wildflower displays through summer, while an end to rains in March turns the hillsides gold as dry season descends on Big Sur. Expect encroaching fog by late spring as the North Pacific High returns offshore, spawning cold-water upwelling.

CHAPTER three

Big Sur Cultural History & Lore

IMAGINE A LAND OF STUNNING BEAUTY with a wealth of resources, where thousands of steelhead swim upstream along crystal clear creeks and rivers. Grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions roam sheer mountains that jut toward the heavens. Sea otters, seals, and whales forage in nearshore waters. Condors, falcons, and eagles soar overhead. Acorns, wild berries, nutritious herbs, and medicinal plants flourish amid valleys and hillsides. This vision is perhaps what early Europeans saw as they explored the vast wilderness inhabited by the American Indians of Big Sur.

American Indians

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE PROVES that people have lived along the rugged Big Sur coast for some 8000 years. When Spanish explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries arrived in Big Sur, the native population numbered nearly 5000 people among three separate coastal tribes: the Ohlone (from Point Sur north to San Francisco), the Esselen (from Point Sur south to Big Creek and inland to the upper Carmel River and Arroyo Seco watersheds), and the Salinian (from Big Creek south to San Carpoforo Creek and inland from Junipero Serra Peak north up the Salinas River valley). These groups differed dramatically from one another, adopting different languages, religious beliefs, customs, and dress.