Reflections on The Santa Ynez Valley Women Hikers

The women walk. On this day we walk through grassy meadows and soft pale sand at a neighboring ranch, trails dense with brush and branch, the muck where cattle trod, the shoulders of mud that slope into a vernal pool. We stop to ponder a pond whose surface is distinctly bifurcated into a section of clear glassy water and one of chartreuse algae as vivid as paint, an oddly dissonant composition, weirdly beautiful. There is a dead coyote on the ground, its fur still healthy and thick, its stomach bloated in death, flies just beginning to investigate. Behind a barbed wire fence stands a shed from a century ago, sagging slightly at the seams, its door hinge rusted, a small square of window dark with dust; the exterior timber turned green, gray, and russet, a testament to how time and weather can transform everything into art. There are wildflowers in abundance: Bushes of purple lupine, cream cups, and baby blue eyes in an electric blue imbued with violet, an incomparably delicious color, a color that delights and invites, and we drink it in.

There are hiking groups like this all over the country. This one, The Santa Ynez Valley Women Hikers, was started in 1978 by the late Lloyd Mills and friends, and its beloved tradition of Wednesday walks has continued across the decades. Members have come and gone, but the fundamentals remain unchanged: We plan carefully, tread lightly, and look out for one another.

We walk and we talk, and we are a small parade, a flotilla on foot, an irregular procession that breaks into sub-groups and rearranges itself but generally flows and follows the course. We are a river of sound: voice and footfall, crunch of gravel, airborne wisps of laughter. I pause and listen. Language blurs and merges into music; the sound becomes a murmur embracing me, and I feel a communal comfort. Maybe I fixate on the sunlight filtering through trees, the familiar forms of mountains in haze, a serpentine outcrop, a tiny white butterfly. “Every walker,” writes Rebecca Solnit, “is a guard on patrol to protect the ineffable.”

Once, I decided I would try to discern what specific subjects came up in conversation, and whether there were themes –– call it cheap sociology on the trail. If you want to know what women talk about, or at least what these women talked about on this particular day, the subjects included books; caregiving; flowers (mostly savoring their loveliness, but also plant identification); the usual litanies regarding knees, hips, diminished bone density, and the aches that now accompany us. But there are unexpected philosophical forays as well, such as wonders versus miracles, or are they one and the same?

We walk segments with different ladies, then move on to someone else. I call it speed-dating. There’s nothing intentional about it, but this is how it tends to be. At one point, I found myself walking alongside KC, and we were discussing writing, memoir in particular, and to some extent, our own family histories. We have talked now and then about the loss of people we have loved and our shared conclusion that the best way to deal with grief is to turn it outward, manifest it as compassion, or kindness, or service. When my brother died, for example, I decided to become a teacher. I wanted some good things to happen because he lived, and in so doing, to extend the impact of his life and keep his spirit alive, whatever that means. It helped a little.

You wouldn’t think this was the type of conversation taking place amidst this merry procession of hikers, but we really do range from the frivolous to the profound. There’s venting, too, and advice-giving, and many expressions of gratitude. And there is a palpable sense of mutual caring and camaraderie. We have become a tribe, looking out for one another, governed by an instinct to ease the path, if possible, quietly amazed that we are here together in this unlikely world.

We share a love for this Earth, with its mystery and weirdness and breathtaking beauty. We saunter and sigh, we sweat and kvetch and climb to a shady space beneath the oak trees where we sit on the ground and dine on whatever morsels we’ve put into our backpacks, fleetingly resembling ladies in a painting of a 19th century garden picnic; in our own way elegant, in broad-brimmed hats and functional attire, passing around strawberries and dried persimmons and malted milk chocolate robin’s eggs.

We are well aware of the troubles beyond this idyllic place. There’s a shadow on every heart these days, but it’s all the more reason to be outside, in the hills and backcountry and mountains and meadows, observing things growing and quietly continuing, the things that will sustain us, the flowers and trees. We are grateful to be here, walking. Passing through, trudging along, a little community in motion. We need one another, and we know it. The challenges will never stop coming, and the losses accrue, and none of us is young, but we pool our wisdom and propose our theories and point out the marvels, and we steady one another in a wobbly, but constant, way.