May 8, 2008

Public and Wildlife Sold Out
Death knell sounding for
the historic Tejon Ranch

I have been one of those lucky few people who’ve been able to spend time wandering on the vast Tejon Ranch. I shot my first deer on the ranch as a teenager, and my family and I have been hunting, bird watching, sitting around oak campfires, and hiking on this 270,000-plus-acre property over the last 40 years since that first deer hunt. The photo on the opening page of this web site was taken on the Tejon. It’s even rumored that my uncle’s ashes are scattered on a hillside above an old hunting cabin that we’ve been privileged to use during that time.
Ironically, I was even there early this week while the finishing touches were being put on a land deal that is the worst of all worlds for the historic ranch (see my news column here). There were rumors in the wind this week about the details, but I didn’t want to believe it would be this bad.
But the signs were there. The developers have been doing stupid things for several years. They had all the flooded trees removed from Tejon Lake because “they weren’t pretty,” ruining top-notch bass habitat. They’ve put in little plots of wine grapes and keep them tended, not because there is any intention of making wine, but because they looked nice and would help sell the multi-million dollar homes. There were bronze European red deer (the dumb asses couldn’t even get native tule elk bronzes made) plunked down in the middle of wild settings all over the proposed development area. There were monuments built and placed in near-wilderness locations to denote where golf courses and lodges would be situated. If it wasn’t so depressing, it would have been laughable.
Yet, if you were able to overlook the bad things, the ranch managed to retain its character. When you drove through one of the gates, you drove back in time 75 years or more. This was a working cattle ranch, really little changed in 200 years. Oh, the grizzly bears were gone (the last one from Southern California being killed nearby), but you could still see a badger (the ranch’s namesake) or a mountain lion on any day, and you would most certainly see deer and dove and quail and more types of woodpeckers, hawks, and song birds than you could imagine. Feral hogs have replaced the grizzly bear, turning the soil under the oak trees just like the bears did, looking for acorns, digging wild onion bulbs on the hillsides, or rubbing against fence posts. On Tuesday this week, I watched a weasel hunt, slipping in and out of ground squirrel holes, and later I was shown a photo of nine condors perched on an oak tree on the north side of the ranch. I photographed a Western Tanager feeding on beetles in a giant, sprawling oak on Wednesday morning.
The wildlife on the Tejon is as prolific as in Yellowstone and probably more diverse, but when I think of the Tejon, I think of oaks. The ranch web site says there are nine different kinds of oaks, some 400 years old. I’ve sat under many of those old giants. Some are like old friends.
Oak fires on the ranch are like a cremation ritual, where you celebrate the warmth, the flames, and the thought-provoking coals the tree limbs provide, toasting their passing. You do that while laughing with family and friends and telling stories. The oaks are always a backdrop on the Tejon, one way or another.
Today, I cringe to think that it might have been over a Tejon oak fire where the soul of the ranch was bargained away for money and control. But a lot of souls were sold or bartered away in this deal, and I suspect they will experience a different kind of fire.