Awe adventures to go on!!!! This is what happens when you go climbing with boys from the reservation. We drove out into the desert my Pauite climbing partner and the Native crew and found this petroglyph. 

And then again going home just makes me want to go for another adventure... and another... and another till I forget to post all the adventures we've been on!

New adventures will be posted soon!

The only cure for homesickness... is going home...

This was one of the most beautiful wildflower blooms I have ever seen in my lifetime. I had to go home one more time to see it! AND then go for another adventure! However going home was going on a adventure...





~Leaving the mountains for the ocean...


~Our first nite was spent in the poppies!



~We awoke in a field of dreams...


~Meet Cyndarella! My good friend, travel companion and a great lady! Through thick and thin she is no fair weather friend. I am grateful to know her and have her as a friend. We are both call the mountains and sea our home. So we are homeward bound... to the sea!

~Everyone should see this place! Please bliss out by going to the Antelope Poppy Preserve now!


~If you live in California this is your backyard!



~We saw 8 rainbows on the way home! One in the poppie fields that followed us for about 20 miles... I had to photshop and make this one a wild art piece!
~Two in Gorman...


~One overlooking Quail Springs Ecological Learning Center in Cuyama. This rainbow was mystically disappearing and reappearing! And the others we wished upon...


I just finished a Permaculture internship on a 200 acre farm there in the distance! While at QS they told me a legend about this land. They say it was once a beautiful forest with rivers and streams that salmon and trout once swam in. Until one day the desire to mine the Mojave desert of its resourses came into the peoples heart. They clearcut all the trees near the Mojave desert and then traveled to Cuyama Valley to clearcut this entire area. With 24 hour logging trains they hauled the timber overland into the Mojave desert to make mines. The Chumash who are native to this area say there was once a spring in every valley and when the loggers came the rivers and springs dried up. The Cuyama River once ever following empties into the Sisquoc River and then into the Santa Maria River that ends in the sea. I wonder if the salmon try to return and find this river and if we can bring back the rivers so they can swim upstream in the Cuyama Valley again?
At Quail Springs they belive we have the power to make the rivers come back alive again! While there I learned some of the ways we can do so! I think you know now what I wished upon...



~Here we are taking a turn down a long dirt road to one of my favorite secret spots in the back country~ secret springs in Cuyama! One of my Native friends calls me "Maya take the long way home". I guess I am living up to my name scince this spring is 24 miles from the main road that already adds an hour or two to our drive home. It is just that I like to see wildflowers and fill up my water bottles from the earth in rare places! Cyndi said her head ache went away after we drank from the spring water.
~We saw a jack rabbit in Cuyama along the way.


~I remember Jeff Johnson once called me a water snob when I made him empty his .40 cent store bought water and refill it at a beautiful spring ouside Yosemite Valley before climbing part of El Capitain. I say I just like the adventure to get to the water! Obviously!


~A river once followed here...


~Favorite swimming holes with rare lupins and chia by the Sespe back home!


~The tunnels that mark the gateway home! And my favorite spring at home below...


~Good ol' Farmer and the Cook! I helped get a grant so every Ojai valley 5th grader now goes to this farm to learn how to grow organic food!


~Home at last working by a new tomol Uncle Ray is building on a art piece with Auntie Sue.


~And of course the ocean was blown out! Spring is here!

This morning...

Powder day... today!
"So many times in my life I was told I my ideas were crazy, that I wouldn't be able to achieve them. But I loved what I was doing so I went ahead anyway. Some things came out like I planned. Some made a turn of direction. Some I am still working on. But life isn't about the outcome of an idea. It's about what happens every day." -Dave McCoy 95 years old. Creator of the first tow bar at Mammoth Mt.

~Powder day on Mammoth Mt today!

"The key is to wake up every morning on the positive side and put your heart into whatever it is that you are doing. Set small achievable goals. One man does little on his own, but if you truly have an upbeat and encouraging attitude, then others will want to follow your ideas and you become the leader. Try to make every day better than the day before, not just for you, but for everyone around you because people are the most important part of the ride."

So I am off to climb a mountain today and kick off the road dust from a short trip home! I would rather celebrate these Earth Days by climbing a mt. For back country powder lasts all day.

~A sneak preview of the trip through the WILDFLOWERS back home! Wildflower pictures to come up next!

One Day On Earth - Original Trailer

Friends check this out! I was just invited to contribute to One Day on Earth on behalf of the Gaviota Coast! See us coming to theaters near you soon!


Visit One Day On Earth

April fools, it’s still December in the mountains!

After I got a real bad case of poison oak the week I was supposed to be on a surf trip heading to the islands for the first south swell of the summer and then heading north to finish a back country snowboarding/rock climbing season here in the Sierras, I was then hit with altitude sickness. Can you believe it? I did not surf the islands because the p.o. started heading in places I did not want it to go~ like my eyes!


And then when I got to the Sierras I was dizzy, sick feeling, overcoming p.o. while trying to follow my dreams, get a good local job and move into a cute cabin, it was well... an adventure. Yvon Chouinard says "It's not an adventure till something goes wrong." Everything seemed like it was going wrong so it was an adventure.

My first night away from home after leaving the coast and wind chopped surf I spent on the Carrizo Plain in a field of wildflowers as far as you can see. The drive north was...

Be you too full!!!!

And my second night was in a blizzard. It has been snowing almost everyday since I got here! Powders days in the middle of April for the last three days… WHAT? I have only heard this in locals legends. The kind mountain people tell stories about.

Recovering from altitude sickness that held me down for about a week my body was not able to move around my cabin in Sunny Slopes never the less reach the summit of a mountain. I had been struggling with getting winded on the smallest jaunts cross country split boarding...

You see, the recession hit me equally as hard last year and me and my pocketbook could not afford to go north to the snow. So I was not able to train in the mountains last year.


I heard jobs were real hard to come by on the mt last year too. So now that I earned being here it is just like my first season back country snowboarding I have been hiking and riding the mountains starting small and going bigger and higher everyday loving it!


Then my first real day in the mountains I finally climbed, reached the summit and rode powder all the way down the mt I climbed!




It seems like it is starting to warm up however it could be another April fools day and snow again! With blue skies and spring conditions the snow is still good! Its off to the hot springs now!

The Trailhead
It always seemed "The Dream" was beyond my reach. It was like my good friend Evita, Buenavita as I like to call her, says, it's like "You don't know that you don't know, ya know?". And sure enough I did not know. Would that day ever come and be THE DAY I started living my dream? Or would it be a majikal journey through an oracle leading to a portal... the day I woke up and started living my dream seems to be like a young warriors training, a practice of the way, and not nearly at the height just at the trailhead. Into the blizzard I drive!