What was that thing? Getting out of the Jeep and poking the squirming mass with a stick didn’t help to clarify the issue. I flipped the creature over, identifying it as a kingsnake that for no rational reason appeared to be biting itself – a colossally wasteful activity for such a beautiful July morning. Puzzled, I leaned in closer until I could make out something odd about the snake’s mouth… there was a lizard head inside it. The snake wasn’t actually biting its own tail… it was being attacked by its current meal, an alligator lizard!
Although almost the entire lizard had been swallowed, the wily critter was hanging on with its powerful jaws, refusing to accept the inevitable. It wore the snake’s head over its own as if it were a hooded sweatshirt, and cracked an eye open to gaze nonchalantly in my direction. Its attitude seemed to say, “No big deal. I can keep this up all day if I have to.” Indeed, the kingsnake had certainly bitten off more than it could chew, and this would soon prove to be an appropriate theme for the day’s adventures.
I continued on to the Red Rock trailhead, where I parked and saddled up the mountain bike for a three-mile ride to the Gibraltar Reservoir. Like most man-made lakes in drought-afflicted Southern California, Gibraltar was currently at 30 percent of capacity, and dwindling rapidly. The reservoir lies nestled between the San Rafael and Santa Ynez Mountains, and a tunnel transports water from its depths to the faucets of Santa Barbara’s thirsty customers. There would be no hope for a recharge until late autumn or winter, when the rainy season began in earnest. Until then, these hills would bake mercilessly in the dry summer heat and water levels in the county reservoirs would continue to drop.
To avoid being baked myself, I set off at midmorning and pedaled up a dirt access road, high above the parched, white stones of the Santa Ynez River bed. The surrounding hills were comprised of layers of shale and sandstone, thinly disguised with a coating of olive-gray scrub and dry grasses. This time of year, the landscape looked dusty and exhausted, like a worn-out piece of clothing with the seams and threads showing.
At Gibraltar Reservoir, I stashed the bicycle and proceeded down an overgrown shoreline trail on foot. If I had been legally allowed to swim in the man-made lake, I might have dallied in the tranquil waters for a time. However, this morning my destination lay another two miles up the valley – the Sunbird Quicksilver Mine. Abandoned by its owners in 1991, the mine became the responsibility of the Forest Service, who had neither the money to preserve the site nor to demolish it. The mineshafts were gated, and the corroded ruins were placed behind a chain-link fence to protect the public. Still, the place made for a worthy attraction, as long as the prickly presence of star thistle along the trail didn’t sour one’s interest too badly.
When I had my first glimpse of the Quicksilver Mine, I was reminded of a shantytown, for instead of a series of separate buildings, only one main structure existed, with several ladders, sheds and additional rooms crudely grafted onto its bulk. This fortress of splintered wood and corrugated metal seemed barely able to hold itself together, and only by using rusty pipes, chutes and smokestacks as crutches could it continue to stand. A warped bridge of planks and rails connected the mineshafts on the hill to the top of the structure, where cartloads of cinnabar ore were once dumped into a mechanical contraption that crushed and heated the rock. The mercury hidden inside the ore evaporated, but then was condensed, bottled and sold to California Gold Rush miners, who used the toxic element to separate – or quicken – precious metals from gold or silver ore. Hence the more poetic name for mercury – quicksilver.
