Early August brought foggy foggy gloom, so I hied me out to the West Valley, to Calabasas, to El Escorpion Park, which was known to the Chumash as Kas-ele-wu, Swordfish-God Peak.
It’s a tiny vest-pocket park in L.A., right on the Ventura County border, but it was once the center of an Indian-owned rancho called “El Escorpion,” on a site where the Chumash had long had a town and a holiday resort. The sacredness is palpable here.
The Ele-wu, the Swordfish
The Elye-wun were the ancient Swordfish-Men, a cantankerous, gut-stuffing brotherhood of fishermen who lived at the bottom of the sea just off the coast. If tricked or bargained with, or following their own gluttonous hunt, the greasy, bloody-mawed Elye-wun would drive pods of whales up onto shore at Malibu, where the Chumash gratefully kindled roasting fires on the beach. The Elye-wun would heave whales out of the waves on the points of their “gaffes” which were of course their headspikes, idealized as huge manual harpoons.
Almost as sharp, is the pungent fragrance of the vinegarweed. This is a handsome native plant, with beautiful green awl-shaped leaves and nice purple flowers. It is a starter in disturbed areas, such as the sides of cleared trail cuts. I’d never come across it before, but the not-unpleasant dill-vinegar-chip odor in the grass was a dead giveaway.
The harbinger of the Elye-wun’s hunt was the coastal fog, when their great long white beards hung over the mountains. For this reason, on a day like today, Kas-ele-wu was full of Big Medicine. Below: white sage, buckwheat; white sagebrush and chamise; oaks and a young sycamore. Biggest medicine of all, of course, is momoy, datura, moonflower, the central ritual hallucinogen of the local religion.
this fantastic sage 
…prefers oak shade and shines there, a ghostly greenish-white. 
Beautiful buckwheat 
California Everlasting, drying apace 
so pretty in the oak terrace! 
white sage… 
And “White Sagebrush,” Artemisia ludoviciana 
Like the shade-loving sage, the white sagebrush here prefers the oak shade, and adopts the same spectral coloring strategy. 
Mugwort, valued for its skin-tonic effects, was an important part of the pubertal scarification ceremonies. 
Momoy, datura. This plant still thrives here in the bowl, especially outside the cave entrance. I wouldn’t be surprised if individual plants were still tended and pruned by the Chumash.
Even the wasted-looking grassy slopes can harbor life. Here, wild gourds — las calabasas — still sprawl across the chaparral.
There were powerful shamans here, including Munitz. Kas-ele-wu was a center of the ?antap cult of aristocratic ancestral dances, ceremonies and datura ingestion. The shamans from here nurtured the Chinigchinich religion down in the cosmopolitan Valley below, at Siutcanga and Achoicomenga. The bowl was a place of pilgrimage especially at the Winter Solstice. But I can’t imagine this place is more beguiling than it is now, in August. Look at the reds.
The coral red whips that puzzled me turn out to be the summer dress of dear deerweed. It lends a healthy pink to the chaparral’s cheeks. 
The uplifted crags are full of clefts and caves. My guess is, the south-facing Munitz’s Cave is suffused with a very intense sunbeam, maybe around noon on the Solstice.
On the other hand, the Chumash were great star-watchers, and it is probable that there was some phenomenon of the constellations dramatically apparent there. I Meanwhile, the constellations in the tall grass were the finest stars one could wish.
The Valley Village View 