Gallivanting in the Gavilans

Springtime finds us roaming the Gavilans, those steep but not high mountains between the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas Valley or the Coyote Valley. The Gavilans have many advantages for spring hikes. Several parks are within two hours’ drive, assuring us that Trailhead Joulie will not need to charge to come home. The Gavilans are uncrowded, especially the way we hike them: midweek and early in the day. The Gavilans host great diversity of birds, wildlife, and biome. We hike rolling pastures, meadows dotted with rocky outcroppings, oak woodland, pine forest, shrubby chaparral. All of our Spring hikes fall into the category of Avoid During the Summer because they’d get too hot. 

Gavilan in Spanish means hawk and we spotted many of them, often when being mobbed by starlings or perched on treetops and fenceposts. We could also name the range Buitres for the many turkey vultures that populate the Gavilans. And we’ve become informal, non-competitive bird-watchers. Maya Angelou says, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Typical poet. The naturalist in me disputes that birds sing for no reason. They sing out a warning or a lure. They sing out a distraction to predators. They sing out the promise of sex and the threat of violence: come hither or beat it. 

The birds keep us company on our hikes. So do other creatures, some of which we see. Sometimes we cross a pasture with grazing livestock. JG does not respect the nuances of cisgender male bovines, calling them all “cows” when, in fact, they are steers. Once, driving to Hunting Hollow Trailhead, we saw a thousand-pound bull (he/him) trotting unescorted along the roadway. It was not a wildlife sighting, but still quite dramatic. Unlike the rodeo bulls on TV, he was not aggressive, but then nobody was sitting on him.  Agriculture.com tells me a bull is worth about $5000, so of course I worry about the rancher’s loss as well as the bull’s ability to find his way home. Maybe he was looking for a China shop? I gave him a rodeo bull stage name, Monster Mongo, but maybe he’s like Ferdinand and wants to be called Cuddle Baby. 

As it gets warmer, we return to the Central Coast ranges: the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Lucia Mountains. They have suffered burns in the CZU Lightning fires of 2020, including some of our favorite haunts. I’ll write about them separately.