In The Beginning . . .

Walking down into a drying creek bed, all I had expected to find was a few types of grass and reeds flattened and long since dried, perhaps some aluminum cans faded beyond recognition and other assorted bits of industrial waste products like bubblegum wrappers and Starbucks cups, instead I discovered something that brought me back to my early childhood.
 It was a crayfish husk; sun bleached and dried out, barely even an inch long, with dirt encrusted on the underside of the carapace, missing several legs on the side that had been exposed to the elements, it was beautiful.
What color remained had faded into soft rose petal pink highlights on a maize background, it was so startling to discover this little skeleton of a creature I had grown up with in such a small size that I just sat in the leaf fall, among a patch of flowers I had gone down to look at in the first place, looking at it, spinning it to see if indeed this tiny thing was the creature I remembered from my childhood, and I remembered that to a child things seem so much bigger.
Here in my hand I held this teeny tiny crayfish that measured barely an inch in length, when as a child I could remember catching crayfish no smaller than 2.5 inches long, with the largest one seeming to be as big as my parents hands (and me being a horse person, this puts the crayfish at about four inches long). In my many escapades in the creek behind my house, I do not believe I had ever come across a crayfish so tiny, although to be fair a crayfish so small would have no trouble hiding under the niche of a rock or in one of the moss beds that dotted the creek upon feeling the disturbance a large group of children aged 2 to 5 and their parents made while romping through the shallow waters of the creek.
 I meticulously sketched the crayfish husk in my notebook, and made note of its location so that I could ask my professors about it later, as I had not expected to come across crayfish in the creek that cut right through the college campus. Upon my return to the meeting place I had shown the husk to my professors, Dr. Rasmussen had me examine the crayfish more closely than I probably ever had before. I took note of the three legs and set of claws, making it resemble a lobster, or even a scorpion for that matter.
I will have to return to check on the creek when it has some more water in it to see if I can find some living crayfish, and perhaps check to see if they are all equally small, or if there are any comparable in size to the ones of my childhood. I should also look into returning to the old creek bed behind my house to see how the crayfish population there has done over the years.

During a field trip to the Charmlee Wilderness Park I came across a kind of hummingbird sage looking bush, however the leaves were shiny and a darker forest green instead of the almost mint leaf look hummingbird sage has. The leaves had a very similar growth pattern to hummingbird sage, so I was confused until I came across hummingbird sage that I could positively ID as hummingbird sage. I will have to look into what type of plant it was that I came across.

To the left is the unidentified plant

Hummingbird Sage

I am glad that the weather was clear enough that I was able to glimpse the ocean during a break in the clouds at least once while exploring the ranch house ruins. We ware also give a great panoramic view of the meadow, however not even fifteen minutes later the storm clouds and rain had reduced visibility to less than fifty feet in either direction.

View from Ranch House lookout

I had also noticed along the trail that there were some burn scars and charred branches below the undergrowth. This indicated a massive fire had ripped through the area, however there was enough older green growth to indicate the fire had occurred several years prior. I was able to identify several  young coyote bushes that had no burn scars, meaning they had sprouted after the fire. Being familiar with Coyote Bush and its growth patterns I approximately aged the two little bushes between two and three years old, after investigating the history of the area I found the Camarillo Spring Fire of 2013 had ripped through the area, meaning my estimation of three years was correct.

After taking notes on the fire damage I was pleasantly surprised to run across a strand of yucca plants, some of which had seed pods from a recent bloom, the rest were just the base of the plant. The strand, to the best of my knowledge, runs from the old farmhouse ruins and all along Russell Trail, however by that time the rain had really began to come down and the call was given to head back to our respective vehicles so I was only able to go halfway up the trail before having to turn around due to the extreme weather conditions.