#CROSSWORD QUIZ POP CULTURE SANDY SERIES#

In the older soils beneath was a small depression, unremarkable in appearance, but epochal in its significance for Paleoindian archaeology. He ran a finger along the darkest one, a coffee-colored signature of a distinct geological moment roughly 12,000 years ago, when a global flash freeze briefly returned the Earth to Ice Age conditions. The island is a well-preserved time capsule, and the archaeologists unsealing it are already stumbling upon extraordinary finds, especially in Arlington Canyon.īraje scraped away part of the cliff’s face, revealing bands of ancient soil, cleanly differentiated by color. Better still, Braje explained, its sedimentary layers have never been scrambled by gophers, because no burrowing rodents have made it across the channel. And now that it’s part of Channel Islands National Park, the island is uninhabited but for a small campsite, the ranger’s headquarters, and Park Service housing, where we were staying. Its landscapes have suffered few injuries from commercial development. All I’ll say is that we were close enough to the coast to smell the sea, but too far away to hear the waves.įrom the April 2017 issue: Welcome to Pleistocene Park Braje asked me not to reveal the grid’s precise location. All were remnants of a grid that archaeologists had pressed into the cliff’s sedimentary layers, so that anything lodged within them could be dated. Another length of twine was strung horizontally a few feet away. When we reached the canyon’s lower terrace, Braje stopped and pointed to a length of twine strung vertically against a cliffside. I followed close behind, wading through pale-turquoise sage and Day-Glo-yellow poppies, dodging cacti that looked like spiked Ping-Pong paddles. On our first morning hike, in Arlington Canyon, an Ice Age watershed on the island’s northwestern edge, Braje walked the canyon’s lip, looking for the gentlest slope before bounding downhill. I joined an expedition led by the archaeologist Todd Braje, who has spent 15 of his 45 years doing fieldwork in the islands, during which he has acquired a feel for their primeval landscapes. Last August, I traveled to one of the largest of the Channel Islands, Santa Rosa. Despite their proximity, the islands are seldom visited by Californians, who mostly know them for the way their silhouettes interrupt the horizon of a Santa Barbara sunset. Even on mist-free days, when their golden cliffs can be glimpsed from the mainland, few people seem to take much note of them. Like apparitions, California’s Channel Islands sometimes vanish in the morning fog.

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Editor’s note: This article is part of a new series called “ Who Owns America’s Wilderness?”

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