Pathways
Hummingbird Sage
Friday night, June 7, 2025
Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara, CA
Tonight I would like to invite you to join me on a hike on the Cold Spring Trail, one of the most beautiful hikes in our Santa Ynez mountains. I walked that trail last Tuesday for six hours. It was my day off and walking all day in the mountains is always my first choice when I have a day to myself. Tonight, I will try to describe where I went on my day off, and to invite you to come along with me….in our minds. While we are walking together, I want to reflect on what happens when we walk, what we might see and who we might meet. How the trails were first created and what happens inside of us as we return, over and over again, to the pathways of our lives.
I did not get an early start last Tuesday, but I managed to get to the trailhead by 9:00, which would give me time to walk to the top of the mountains, where the trail crosses Camino Cielo, to have my lunch and to get back to my car by 3:00. The Cold Spring Trail begins at the bridge where Mountain Drive crosses over Cold Spring Creek. It has been seven and a half years since the early hours of January 9, 2018, when the mountain tsunami, the Montecito Debris Flow, came roaring down the canyons, sweeping away huge boulders, bridges, cars, houses, and 23 human beings. The rebuilt bridge over Cold Spring Creek was finally opened last month. A beautiful, graceful, powerful bridge, clearly made to withstand future floods and mudslides. But I will never return to that spot without thinking back to that morning seven years ago, and the terror that passed through our community, and how very puny all our human infrastructure felt in the face of the full fury of the mountains.
There was a heavy marine layer of fog on the town Tuesday morning as I began to hike. I looked upstream toward the mountains and could not see a thing. I remembered walking in the mist with the first graders and telling the kids about Moses going up Mount Sinai, into the cloud, and meeting there with God. I will never forget one of those first graders declaring “I love these God stories!” I came quickly to the trail junction where the West Fork of the trail goes up to the left toward Tangerine Falls and remembered my hike here three years ago with Henry Drossel (tomorrow’s Bar Mitzvah) and his friends Jack and Alex. It was just three of them, the smallest class hike ever, and I knew that they needed little guidance from me. They worked busily for a long time, moving rocks, diverting the stream, and creating a new pool. Then they headed upstream and began climbing onto the higher rocks. “Use good judgment!” I shouted and prayed that no one would get hurt. Years from now, I think, the three of them will remember that Sunday morning in October 2022. And I will think of Henry, Alex and Jack every time I pass that spot and look out over those high rocks. And I thank God that nobody got hurt.
From that point, the trail climbs steeply, switching back and forth several times before coming to the point where it crosses the stream. This was not a very wet winter, so the stream is not running high and is easily crossable, but we are not in drought. There is still plenty of water flowing, tumbling and laughing in quiet pools and sparkling waterfalls. That place is magic and perfect for gathering a group of kids and telling stories….which I have done there many times. Noah and the dove. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Moses at the Burning Bush. Esau coming back from his long day of hunting, and Jacob cooking his lentil stew.
I continued walking, and as I gained elevation, I saw that many wildflowers were at the peak of their season. The earliest spring flowers were already past. The fragrant ceanothus blooms are done and the tiny white blossoms of the wild cucumber, which were abundant in March and April are now gone and replaced by spiky seedpod balls, dangling on the vine like little green sea urchins. The yellow canyon sunflowers which first opened in the early spring were no longer brand new and looked a little worn out. But the hummingbird sage, for which I have been waiting impatiently, was finally ready to show its intense crimson blossoms. I saw large violet spreads of Botta’s Clarkia, and Indian Pinks and Caterpillar phacelia…which looks just like dozens of little caterpillars, each one with a flower on its nose.
I grew up in Rochester, New York, where the four seasons were everything around us: the snowy wonderland of winter, followed by the muddy thaw and flowing streams of spring, the long, hot, muggy days of summer and the spectacular reds, oranges and yellow of autumn. In my first decade or two here in Santa Barbara, I mourned and complained that I missed the seasons. But now after forty years here, and years of hiking the trails of the front country and the back country, in winter, spring, summer and fall, I have come to a new relationship with the seasons. I recognize how the creamy April blossoms of the chaparral clematis have now been replaced by June’s silky, puffy seed plumes. And how the California Bush Poppies, which were so dazzling in March, are now retreating to make way for the scarlet blossoms of the heartleaf keckiella and the brilliant pink, yellow and white Sierra snapdragons and the intense royal purple blue of the wooly blue curls. After forty years, these markers of the Santa Barbara seasons have penetrated my mind and body as deeply as the changing leaves of autumn, or the still silent snow of Rochester’s winter.
On the Cold Spring Trail at about 1,500 feet there are two solitary Eucalyptus trees. I’ve always wondered who planted them, how they got there. Whatever their story, after walking for about an hour and three quarters, they offer a natural resting point. Not many people climb past those eucalyptus trees and sometimes on a really hot day, that’s as far as I go. But on this Tuesday, the sun was just beginning to pierce through the clouds, and the marine layer lay below me like a thick blanket, covering the streets and buildings of our town. I felt ready to carry on.
I passed an older couple, a man and woman, whom I have seen on that trail many times over the years. I have no idea who they are; we have never stopped to talk. But I have probably seen them hiking fifteen times over the years. Every time I see them, I think to myself “will I still be hiking when I am their age?” We passed each other, and said hello, but as ever, did not stop to talk. Continuing on, I caught up to a solitary hiker moving in the same direction as me but hiking slowly. When she heard me behind her, she turned and asked how far I was going. I said “Camino Cielo” and I asked “what is your plan?” She said “I had been planning to go to the turnoff to Montecito Peak, but I’m questioning my life.” “That’s a good spot to turn around,” I said, ignoring her invitation to talk further, and I walked on.
After another hour and two more miles on Cold Spring Trail, under a clear sky, the sun was shining but not too hot, and the marine layer was far below. Surrounded by a profusion of wildflowers, I came out at Camino Cielo. The Way of the Sky. Or The Way of Heaven, depending on how you translate Cielo. I clambered to the top of the mountain, stripped off my hiking shirt which was drenched with sweat, and sat down to eat my lunch. An organic carrot from local farmer John Givens, which as any of our Netivot kids can tell you, are the most delicious carrots you have eaten in your life. A very small PB and J sandwich, a couple of oranges, and three dates. I was in el Cielo, in heaven.
Then I turned on my iphone to check messages. Because the reception is good up there, and it had been several hours since I had been reachable. I had emails about the terror attack on the Jewish Run for Their Lives group in Boulder. Were we issuing a statement? What additional security measures were we taking? These were reasonable questions, but I regretted turning on my phone. It was my day off. It turns out that two of the burn victims were close friends of close friends of mine. My friends and my community are deeply shaken by what happened in Boulder. But did I really need to turn on my phone in that place of beauty and peace? For what purpose?
I made my way back down the mountain. I needed to get back to my car by 3:00, in order to get home and ready for a cooking project I had scheduled with my granddaughter at 4:00. On the way down, I stopped to take pictures of each of the flowers: the heart-leafed keckiella, the bush poppies, the black sage, the hummingbird sage, the clematis seed plumes, the spiny flox, the golden eardrops, the wooly blue curls and all the rest. I thought “I need to post these in FaceBook and let everyone know that all of these are blooming on Cold Spring Trail right now!”
By the time I got home, my granddaughter was on her way, and I needed a shower to be ready for her. The world did not need another Facebook post…even of those beautiful flowers, and to be honest it did not need another Face Book post about Boulder, Colorado. I needed that day with the flowers and my memories, in the mist and the sunshine on the Cold Spring Trail. My granddaughter and I needed to cook together at the end of the day. We need to be here tonight, praying and singing and creating Shabbat together. We need to be able to put on the red Run for Their Lives shirt and walk together with the 230 groups worldwide, including here in Santa Barbara, peacefully but unafraid.
I do not know who first walked the Cold Spring Trail. We do know that it was walked by the Chumash, for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Before them, it may have been a track laid down by deer, or coyotes or mountain lions. A pathway takes many feet and many years to become an established trail.
It is no different with the pathways of Torah. Our stories. Our memories. Our rituals. Our ways of living together. The Torah is a Tree of Life to all who hold fast to her, and all of her supporters are happy. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. Shabbat shalom.