![\"a](\"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ArchatAnacapa-1024x768.jpg\")
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My sweetheart and I have made two very good decisions in the past few months.<\/p>\n
The first was getting cats. I wrote about that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The second was signing up for a Road Scholar<\/a> trip to the Channel Islands<\/a>, which are just off the coast of Southern California.<\/p>\n I admit I was a bit skeptical of doing a trip as part of a group. I\u2019ve always been a go-it-alone sort. But it turned out to be the best way to see this particular area.<\/p>\n For one thing, we had lectures on the history, geology, and biology of the islands, so we learned a lot \u2013 so much, in fact, that on our trip to Santa Cruz Island, many of us found ourselves in deep conversation with a seven-year-old, obsessed as only a child that age can be, about the island fox and other creatures on the island. (We had walked past him on our way back from a hike and he asked questions of everybody.)<\/p>\n For another, Road Scholar attracts the sort of older person who is energetic and interested in things. Our group ranged in age from about mid-60s to mid-80s, and everyone participated fully and clearly did other things like this either as part of this organization or on their own.<\/p>\n And finally, there is a great deal of pleasure in participating in something where all the planning has been done by someone else. I know some people really like to plan trips, but I am not one of them. I like to pick locations, but not hotels, boat charters, and the like.<\/p>\n Road Scholar is very good at the planning part.<\/p>\n We stayed at a hotel in Ventura, California, and went out to the islands themselves twice on boats that regularly take tourists out to them. While there are campgrounds on the islands we visited \u2013 Anacapa and Santa Cruz \u2013 they are very basic, and for Anacapa you must bring your own water as well as food, as there are no water sources on that island.<\/p>\n I am still willing to camp, but I have to say there is a lot to be said for having a shower and a soft bed after a day of hiking.<\/p>\n I\u2019m prone to sea-sickness, but I used wrist-bands that press on acupressure points and did okay even on our second trip, when the ocean was pretty rocky. And in fact, coming back on the first trip in particular I found myself in a state of blissful calm, just staring at the ocean and not thinking about anything in particular. (The photo above was taken from the boat on that trip.)<\/p>\n That was on Tuesday, April 7, when much of the world was focused on whether the person currently occupying the U.S. White House was going to commit major war crimes in Iran. I knew that was going on and was, of course, quite worried, but it wasn\u2019t on my mind at all as I watched the waves and kept an eye out for wildlife.<\/p>\n Of course, if we had come back to horrors, it might have destroyed the peace of mind that I felt, but as we did not, I got the full benefit. <\/p>\n There are eight Channel Islands, but only five of them are in the National Park. Two are used by the U.S. military and the eighth is Catalina, which has resorts and such.<\/p>\n The Chumash people lived on these islands beginning about 13,000 years ago. Before they showed up, there were mammoths there \u2013 pygmy mammoths (meaning they were much smaller than regular mammoths, though still very large).<\/p>\n It turns out that large animals who move to isolated islands \u2013 and most of the creatures on the islands did not go back and forth, though the humans did \u2013 tend to get smaller, while small ones evolve to get larger.<\/p>\n So you have island foxes, which are related to gray foxes from the mainland, but much smaller, and a species of scrub jay that is darker blue and larger than those found elsewhere.<\/p>\n The mammoths died out after the Chumash arrived. No one is sure if those two things are connected. In general, the Chumash developed a lifestyle in balance with island ecosystem, which did well until the Spanish (and the Mexicans after their revolution), the Americans, and the Russians came along and attempted to use the islands as they used so many other places.<\/p>\n Island ecosystems are more fragile than those on the mainland, and a lot of damage was done. These days the Park Service and the Nature Conservancy and volunteer groups like the Friends of the Island Fox are doing their best to restore the natural systems.<\/p>\n There are many plants and some animals that are endemic to the islands, meaning they are found nowhere else. Others are native and similar to a lot of the areas found in coast California. But of course, there are a lot of invasive species.<\/p>\n And balance is tricky. For a long time, bald eagles spent time in the islands, but they became endangered in part due to the use of DDT. Fortunately, they have recovered somewhat.<\/p>\n Bald eagles like fish, but when they stopped coming to the islands, golden eagles took over their niche. Golden eagles like small mammals, and they nearly wiped out the island foxes. It took some careful study to figure out the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n Golden eagles are plentiful and there are lots of places where they can spend time where their attacks on small mammals won\u2019t upset the system.<\/p>\n The foxes, by the way, are incredibly cute and not at all afraid of people.<\/p>\n One thing that struck me hard and that I\u2019m still turning over in my mind. The Chumash lived there for thousands of years, but it only took a few hundred for the westerners to throw everything out of whack.<\/p>\n It makes me wonder if the efforts to restore the islands should have greater involvement from the Chumash (who are, of course, still around). We keep discovering that the indigenous people on this continent managed the land in constructive ways \u2013 what we think of as wilderness today was in fact lived in.<\/p>\n Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t try to wall off such places, but rather try to live with them in the balanced way that people did for so very many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My sweetheart and I have made two very good decisions in the past few months. The first was getting cats. I wrote about that here. The second was signing up for a Road Scholar trip to the Channel Islands, which are just off the coast of Southern California. I admit I was a bit skeptical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,367],"tags":[1198,1199],"class_list":["post-4580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-travel","tag-channel-islands","tag-road-scholar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4583,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions\/4583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"small](\"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/islandfox1-768x1024.jpg\")
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