The majesty of Point Conception is a condensation of all the majesty that is California.  An idea of such beauty was born in the human imagination of the 1500’s in the form of “Califia”, the warrior queen of a mystical and alluring island called “California”. This is the place, America’s storied “Left Coast”, where a great land and sea finally meet.  It is an island only in theory and state of mind, separate and exceptional.  This spectacular gift that is California’s coastal intersection is on and around the “hip” of Point Conception, a physical embodiment of Yin and Yang, earth and water, that is Northern and Southern California.

Its name has been many, from the Chumash “Humqaq” to “Cabo de Galera” (“Galley Cape”) in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the Spanish/Portuguese conquistador.  A month of storms had prevented Cabrillo from rounding this formidable point.  On December 8, 1602, Spaniard Sebastian Vizcaino sailed past the point and renamed it “Punta de la Limpia Concepcion”, or “Point of the Immacualte Conception” in honor of that day’s
Feast of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, which is still observed.  The name remains in its English abbreviation, Point Conception. 

Before it had a name, Conception was and still is a distinct geographic “cleave” between the colder, more turbulent and wilder shores of California’s north and the warmer, serenely inviting beaches of its south.The solitary Point Conception lighthouse stands at the division, an entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel. Blinking silently, it’s beam is visible to ships as far as twenty miles out at sea. It beckons relief in softer seas for those storm-weary, rugged mariners caught in the Pacific’s angrier elements. Conception’s coastline is sensual given its raw elements of wind, wave, sound, and the blue-white stripe of long, untouched beaches. Rugged cliffs stand alongside wind swept sand dunes, bared sandstone, and carpets of ice plant. Spanish settlers brought the succulent as a water source in case the unfamiliar surroundings were arid. The Chumash Indians before them knew otherwise.

Here then a Chumash Indian mother balances her baby while harvesting and gathering food. On the water below, Chumash men bring their longboard plank canoes ashore.  The pleasure of wave riding is familiar to them.  Do they know of their mirrored indigenous people across the Pacific, Hawaiian by name?  Both deftly navigate the waters around them and build highly sea-worthy vessels. Using the crude oil tar from the ocean, the Chumash cleverly seal their canoes so that they may explore their own islands and beyond.  When day is done, their faces turn north to honor the sun’s exit. Their lives are defined by the deliriously spiritual beauty before them.  They are inspired by and use an abundance of resources, whale bones for reinforcement, tulle mats for roofing, redwood trunks and ocean tar for boats, charcoal for drawings and pigments for color.  Resourceful and spiritual, the Chumash have a sophisticated social and cultural hierarchy led by shaman astrologers.  In all decisions, mapping and interpretation of the heavens dictate their communal governance and stewardship.  A deeply revered trinity of ocean, sky, and land gifts the Chumash their cultural and spiritual coordinates.

The Chumash were Point Conception’s “first people” and “Chumash” is a name that evokes industry (the “bead makers”) as well as adornment (“seashell people”).  These people saw themselves as a product of both the Pacific Ocean, its beaches, islands, and caves and of the rolling yellow hills, creeks, trees, and immense plains.  Their culture spoke to the influences of both. Point Conception, land and sea, was called “Humqaq”, life’s western gate, where souls travelled through a sacred portal to the hereafter.

The secret of time and perspective here soars with the Red-tailed Hawk, whose lofty eye has recorded all below him.  He has sailed over the ocean breaks, the
Santa Barbara Channel, the coyotes, bobcats, breaching whales, small rodents, and human figures who’ve populated the space below.  Carpets of grass, live oaks, wildflowers, and ocean reefs are within his view.  He has seen time wash away life as the Chumash knew it and pour forth “progress” with the frigates of conquering conquistadores, Spanish and English missionaries, Vaquero’s and their vast herds of cattle, the railroad, automobile, and a solitary lighthouse whose sweeping light pulsates in the early morning dark and at dusk. This hawk sees all, the ancient, the rustic, and the pristine as well as the ghostly visage of a lighthouse muse.  Could she be Califia herself?  More recently, he is witness to the age of human flight in the form of rockets, jets, and helicopters lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.  This is a testament to and an ultimate test of the adaptability of wildlife to human “progress”.  Yet, people flock to this place to return to a forgotten time when animal and human might dwell, even thrive, in the cradle of an unadulterated natural beauty beyond imagination.

Over time, large swaths of land were granted to a few who would become new stewards of these wide-open spaces.  The largest would be Rancho Punta de la
Concepcion, nearly 25,000 acres, granted to the Ortega family by Mexico in 1837, and stretching along the coast from Point Arguello to Cojo Creek.  Beyond the Mission’s simpler forms of animal husbandry, a culture of Central Coast farming and cattle herding evolved. The Spanish Vaqueros put style and flair into their work.  Not unlike flamenco dance, a precision and flourish of handsome inlaid saddlery, horsemanship, and elaborate loops and lassoing became their discipline.  Imagine the glint of silver on a saddle, flashing like a laser beam, bouncing off acres of mustard fields and rippling grasses. In the distance, gold-brown spangled kelp smooths and weighs sunlit ocean swells.  This is the timeless view of Hawk.  In 1899, the Southern Pacific Railroad was granted an easement through this prairie, which had become Hollister Ranch. The daily trains bring a far off rhythm and reminder of civilization elsewhere. Railroad tracks run north-south across this ranch land, now known as Cojo-Jalama, and its views are a stunning close-up of coastal live oak, wooded canyons, creeks, mountains, the prairie, cattle, wildlife, and reefs.  From a distance, it is the sound of the train that at once stops and marks time, reassuring and haunting in its long approach and seeming finality of passage.  As the hawk soars, below him are great herds roaming and cowboys on horseback riding the land.  There are black and white coyote-like dogs doing the hard work. Campfires signal warmth, a place to gather, eat, drink, and share good company.

Conception is the seismic shift in California’s coastline from its predominantly north-south orientation to a rather sudden east-west jag. The effect of this is dramatic for the complex of tides, swells, breaks, and currents, and the long trough that is Santa Barbara Channel. Because of this juxtaposition of the coast, it is home to some of the best point breaks in the Western Hemisphere. The sum effect is treasured by a newer culture, as in surf, whose “cowboys of the waves”, better known as surfers, have a collective reverence for what is called “The Ranch”. To surf there is a call back to the early days of surfing when aficionados hiked, camped, and roughed it with their boards along the California coast.  So many favored spots are now crowded and intensely urban.  The experience of being on a working ranch with the smells, the train, the coyotes, the cattle and cowboys, the utter beauty, and the sun rising over the water, brings immersion into the spirit of “Humqaq”.    

In spite of the pressures wrought by population, development, and opportunity, the Point Conception of the 21st Century has gratefully been
buffered.Its wilds and beaches are protected by the presence of Jalama Beach County Park, the Cojo-Jalama Ranch, Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Point Conception State Marine Reserve, and Gaviota State Park.On December 21, 2017, Winter’s Solstice, the Dangermond Preserve, also known as the Cojo-Jalama Ranch or Bixby Ranch, was dedicated by the Nature Conservancy in honor of Conception’s “first people”, the Chumash.The Nature Conservancy will now manage and hold in perpetuity these 24,000 acres and eight miles of coastline, which allows our Red tailed Hawk the freedom to hunt, soar, and thrive. It will also allow people for generations to see, learn, and experience California in its purest, most expansively natural form, that of its origins.This rare and priceless gift of conservancy over such a sacred place is legendary in its scope.Money from California’s vast technology industry, in the hands of one couple, is to thank. It landed here without actually physically touching Conception for this purpose, to herald and preserve what the Chumash always knew to be the truth of Nature’s majesty and destiny.