A Short Photo Essay of one of my vacations:
Quiroste Valley is located off a little dirt road off Highway 1, somewhere between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. In early August my uncle Chuck invited me to visit this archaeological site and see all the beautiful beaches Santa Cruz has to offer me. I was honored that he wanted to share these special places with me and happily drove down. Uncle Chuck introduced me to the digging team (who were a bunch of young PhD candidates and new college students) and told me about the project. Apparently, the spot they chose to dig at is the exact location of an old Muwekma Ohlone village. The mission was completely respectful of the Ohlone people, no graves were to be disturbed and one night on the dig a few tribal members came down for dinner. The mission was simply to learn more about the lives of the people that used to live in the villages based on what we recovered from remains of shells, churt, coal, and various other key elements left behind from centuries ago.
I got to help a bit on the actual digging and recovering of small objects. When I wasn't doing any work I was taking pictures or down at the beach, or both!
The beaches on the Santa Cruz Coast are fantastic. The experience was all the more amazing because my uncle Chuck knows EVERYTHING about every spot on that coast. He has the "key" to every gate and fence throughout the area, and was more than happy to give the same access to some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen to me.
"We are standing in the exact center of what used to be a thriving village."
Uncle Chuck introduced me to many of the native plants. He showed me which ones were used for medicinal purposes and which ones were holy plants.
I got to get my hands dirty as well! I learned how to carefully brush dirt away from an object I wanted to extract and how to gently lift it from the earth.
One of our big finds of the weekend was a perfectly in-tact abalone shell about 4 feet underground. Watching the team extract it ever so carefully and gently was incredible, and I had to fight the urge to simply pop it out of the dirt.
Being out in the valley was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life so far. There were tons of stars, pretty clouds, and on the last night, a double rainbow!
Every single beach i visited was absolutely amazing. "It's all yours now," Uncle Chuck told me.
Having gone to UC Santa Cruz 20 ago, uncle Chuck was able to give me the full student tour. I learned about interesting spots that current students might not even know about!
We all had so much fun at this dig, and I got to learn a lot about the native culture that California has. It's a complete shame that this state doesn't appreciate or respect the Ohlone and other coastal peoples more, and that I never learned anything truly valid about the Ohlone people when I was in school...
