We did not originally have Pinnacles on our bingo card for this year of nomading. But when the circumstances of our stay in Salinas changed (see the Salinas post for those details) we pivoted. We camped at a super interesting and beautiful ranch within striking range of the park. We woke at 6am and drove bleary eyed and basically in pjs to the very small parking lot that was our target. Once there with our space secure, we made a pot of coffee, dressed, and prepared for the day.

Our plan was to see condors. And we put in our best effort, climbing, scrambling, and scooting up 1800 feet of elevation for a 7 mile hike. It was probably my most technical hike to date, and I really enjoyed all of it, except maybe the last hour which started to feel tedious as I was tired and ready to be done. But my emergency supply of snacks came to the rescue and gave me the attitude adjustment I needed to do that last push. We saw a lot of incredible things, but unfortunately we did not see condors. We saw lots of vultures which gave us surges of false hope. We saw acorn woodpeckers and their impressive larders. We saw myriad songbirds and interesting flowers and plants. But no condors. They are there, though.

It was the condor crisis of the 1980s that I think is the first time I really started to glimpse a world outside of my own corner. It was a big deal that the condors were going extinct, I remember that. As a young pre-teen a full continent away, the closest thing I knew of the California Condor was Beaky Buzzard from Warner Brothers Looney Tunes. Ecological awareness wasn’t really part of the zeitgeist of Lynn, Mass back then, and we didn’t have nest cams or drones to feed us constant data. But somehow (news? social studies?) word of the imminent extinction of this bird with an inconceivable wing span of 9 feet captured my interest and my concern. How could a species go extinct? People were talking about it. Average people. And then not so average people. News anchors. Politicians. Conservationists. It was a big enough deal that people, even young, clueless, naive, city rats started thinking more about the wider world.

California Condors are still considered critically endangered, but their population is increasing. And even though this city rat didn’t get to see one this time around, I did my level best to meet them where they are at. And they still have me thinking about the wider world.