Santa Barbara Sacred Spaces

1. Painted Cave

Santa Barbara County and the Channel Islands are host to a variety of spiritually and ritually significant sites for the Chumash people, whose traditional homeland spread for many miles along the coast of California between San Luis Obispo and Ventura. The earliest traces of the Chumash go back some 10,000 years, but archaeologists reckon that their "golden age" or Late Period began around 500 C.E. and ended shortly after 1800.

Painted Cave lies near the summit of San Marcos Pass, some twelve miles from Santa Barbara (known as Syukhtun to the Chumash). It is in the coastal mountain range, at 2,600 ft. elevation. The cave, measuring some 22ft. deep by 8ft. in width, is elaborately covered with rock art (called "pictographs"), examples of which are shown below. More information on the cave and its art is available at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which has a highly informative series of Web pages on Chumash Indian life, the Painted Cave in particular.

Entrance to Painted Cave (upper left), East wall (lower left), and West wall (right).

2. Shalawa Burial Site

This marker is the only durable public reminder of an ancient Chumash burial site at Shalawa (now Hammond's) Meadow. Its protection is a local cause célèbre. Here, from the Syukhtun Web site, we quote a story about a Chumash elder who has been trying to preserve this meadow from development:

"His name in Chumash means "obsidian," and with his wife (whose name means "dolphin"), he has been protecting the meadow from the ravages of developers, vandals, university-trained grave-robbers and rich senior citizens who allow their dogs to defecate inside the sacred medicine circle. He says the meadow has been a place of ceremonial gatherings since his earliest childhood, and back many generations to the ancient times of these dead ancestors buried here, among whose bones the many gophers now make their homes. [...] The Chumash are the caretakers of the western gateway of the Pacific at Humqaq, now known as Point Conception. [...] Syukhtun was the largest and most influential of Chumash villages, the center of a culture which stretched from Big Sur to Malibu, and inland as far as the central valley. [...]

"He was taken to Shalawa Meadow by the elders as an infant, when his training as a doctor began. (At that time he only recalls the tobacco ceremony being performed there.) He dislikes being called a "shaman" and says he doesn't know what this word means. [...]

"There has not always been a medicine circle on the meadow. In 1979 he became disgusted over local residents throwing litter, draining dirty oil from their cars onto the ground, vandalizing and robbing graves - they get $500 for a complete Chumash skull. [...] The Chumash cemetery had to be protected from the American Dream. "Obsidian" put up a small painted medicine pole in the middle of the meadow, as if to say "this is sacred ground." When he returned the next day, the pole was stolen.

"As the months went by, several replacement poles, successively sturdier and sturdier, were in turn stolen. In 1985 "obsidian" and "dolphin" made a small circle of stones around the medicine pole, which they took down after each ceremony to prevent another theft. Then they erected a very big brightly painted pole which thieves simply found impractical to steal. The vertical pole is the umbilical cord connecting the people to the earth mother Xutash. The horizontal cross-bar is the duality of the world. From colored yarn at each tip seagull feathers dangle in the wind. Seagull is the cleanser. Midway up the pole are deer antlers, and beneath these the bands of four symbolic colors: blue for Ocean, red for Earth, black for Owl's Wing (sky), and white dots (Milky Way)."

3. Gaviota Hot Springs

It is hard to imagine a more peaceful or naturally sacred environment for communing with nature - provided that the natural calm is not being disturbed by rowdy visitors - than the two-tiered thermal pool that exists in the Las Cruces National Forest, uphill from Gaviota state beach. Its coordinates are latitude 34.503, longitude 120.219. It is a warm rather than a hot pool complex, reaching a maximum temperature of about 99 degrees, the upper pond being warmer than the lower one. Bathers usually slip in quietly so as not to cloud the water (the bottom is silty). The ponds are not deep, and there is a scent of sulfur in the water.

To reach Gaviota Hot Springs, one drives north on Hwy. 101 about twenty minutes from Santa Barbara. After the freeway leaves the coast and heads inland, take the Highway 1 exit (the one marked for Vandenberg Air Force base), but do not go there if you care about holy ground! Rather, turn right at the STOP sign and double back for about a quarter-mile along the chain link fence to the parking area. A parking fee (last reported at $2) needs to be deposited in a lock box, and there is a porta-potty available. One then follows the trail (a dirt road, then a hiking trail) uphill for about a fifteen minute hike. The springs have always been clothing optional, no doubt from Chumash times forward. Relax and enjoy!

4. The Beaches and the Seashore

Anyone who visits Santa Barbara's beaches soon comes to appreciate their special luminance and their soul-stirring beauty. Visitors and year-round residents often include "beachwalks" in their daily routines. They take time out for a stroll, to the accompaniment of rolling waves and the calls of frolicking shore birds. Some of Santa Barbara's beaches are broad and sandy, while others skirt past magnificent bluffs and cliffs. In Chumash times there were many settlements along the area of the present Santa Barbara shoreline, Syukhtun being the most prominent. A stone marker at Santa Barbara's beachfront today, on Cabrillo Blvd. a block from Stearns Wharf, at the corner of Chapala St., recalls those precolumbian days with some tile illustrations and text.

5. Anapamu - the "Rising Place"

All cultures that practice any kind of religion (and which doesn't?) tend to hold high places in high esteem for purposes of worship and other rites. "Anapamu" (a prominent downtown Santa Barbara street name today) originally would have signified, in Chumash, a topographical summit. There are still several such heights within or very close to Santa Barbara's city limits: the present-day "Mesa" area, Campanil Hill, Hope Ranch, and the promontory behind the magnificently-situated Mission—all are candidates for the "Anapamu" sacred space used by the Chumash since time immemorial.