Cuyama reveals its character

New Cuyama, Calif. — IN the Cuyama Valley, I keep running into people I would like to be. If I confess this to my friend Jeanine, I think she is going to recommend therapy. She warns me not to lionize my favorite local, Emery Johnston, but that’s going to be hard. Johnston is a big reason we’re here.

Jeanine has been trekking through the canyons ringing this flat valley for decades, but she’s never gone horseback riding with Johnston. He’s been leading pack rides into Los Padres National Forest since the age of 15: geologists and biologists and Forest Service rangers and all manner of recreational riders.

If there were a name I would give this region it would be the Quattro Valley, because it’s made up of slices of four counties: San Luis Obispo, Kern, Santa Barbara and Ventura. We’re here in temperate April, but it will get mighty hot in the summer, when the fields turn bronze and what coastal air comes through the mountains (Cuyama is a transverse valley, running east-west) can’t beat the heat. The valley floor is ranch and oil land through which flows the Cuyama River, a lion in the rainy season and a lamb any other time.

Three state highways wind into the Cuyama Valley: California 166 through Santa Maria in the west, 119 out of Bakersfield from the east, or 33 leaving Ojai from the south. We are coming in on 33, which is the prettiest. As I hug its curves, Jeanine reads to me from “A Traveler’s Guide to California’s Scenic Highway 33,” which she assembled from extensive interviews with backcountry legend Jim Blakley. It’s filled with the history of the people, the geology, flora and fauna.

We stop 6.6 miles from Ojai at a padlocked gate outside Wheeler Hot Springs, a rustic, late-1800s spa that’s been closed for the last few years. Ancient palm trees are reaching for the ridgeline. We were hoping that Wheeler might have reopened in the same grand manner as nearby Bodee’s, a restaurant that was closed when Jeanine worked on the book. The new Bodee’s has rib-eye with Gorgonzola cream and porterhouse with roasted garlic horseradish reduction. I suspect that’s not what the old Bodee’s served.

We stop again at mile 21.7 to hike up the Potrero John Trail. There are bobcat and deer and weasel tracks. It’s gorgeous scenery marred only by the skeletons of the cottonwoods killed in the 2002 Wolf fire.

There are many more reasons to stop along 33: swooping vistas in between the blue mists of the ceanothus, red rivers of sandstone and pewter hunks of Cozy Dell shale. But we have a dinner reservation at Sagebrush Annie’s in the teeny community of Ventucopa, near the junction of the 33 and 166.

Larry Hogan bought the red restaurant 17 years ago, installed his daughters as cooks and built a small arena to hold rodeo events. “I love the valley so much I wanted to get people up here to see it,” he says. “It’s one of the most incredible places in California.” But the restaurant business was hard. One daughter moved away, and just as the second was becoming disenchanted, Karina Kansky came in for dinner six years ago and never left.

Karina is the Julia Child of the Cuyama Valley, a culinary savant and Francophile. She and Jeanine chat in French as they catch up. When they switch back to English, the talk is of food. Karina wants to do more food pairings with wine now that Larry is producing a prizewinning Cabernet Sauvignon out of grapes from the nearby Barnwood vineyards. I ponder what Larry McMurtry would make of a wine-loving cowboy.

The menu at Sagebrush Annie’s consists primarily of steak, cooked over red oak on a barbecue out back. Karina makes the mushroom soup that opens the meal, her own salad dressings, salsa, steak sauce, appetizers and desserts. Everything we eat is memorable. When we walk outside into the vast expanse of the Cuyama Valley alfalfa fields, it feels like a fever dream.

We check in to the Cuyama Buckhorn motel by starlight. The bar is still open; it’s the town of New Cuyama’s primary watering hole. Outside most of the rooms are slumbering Harley-Davidsons. To reach New Cuyama, we have turned onto 166 where it meets 33, both popular routes with motorcyclists. The Buckhorn reminds me of every California byway cinder-block motel I stayed in as a kid in the ‘60s. It’s a bed and a roof, says Jeanine, but the next night her roof leaks during a rainstorm.

We meet Johnston in the Buckhorn cafe for breakfast before our four-hour trail ride. There’s chicken-fried steak on the menu. Johnston is greeted with respectful nods and waves. His father, Lamar -- who wanted to be a lawyer but stayed on the family ranch -- was a larger-than-life presence in the community.

As we drive out to Johnston’s place we pass occasional pumps, pipes and tanks that indicate the presence of oil deposits in these green fields. If you were to judge New Cuyama by its cover, you might never get to its magnificent interior.

We ride out to a nearby canyon as a foursome; Johnston’s wife, Kelly, has joined us. He relates a joke he played on a man who asked after her. “She’s in prison,” Johnston told him. He let the man twist for 30 minutes or so before delivering the punch line: Kelly works at a correctional facility. “He’d been afraid to ask,” Johnston says with a chuckle.

Kelly had a thriving saddle-making business before she took an office job to get health insurance and other benefits. Johnston would like to concentrate more on horses -- running his horse camp out of a nearby meadow, leading wilderness rides -- and ease up on cattle ranching. He and Jeanine talk about the trails, which ones go where in this tumble of sandstone, oaks and wildflowers, in which are hidden mountain meadows that the Spanish called potreros.

I can’t believe the birds: mascara-striped lark sparrows and blaze-orange Bullock’s orioles and olive-green Western kingbirds. There are so many quail I remember why they’re the California state bird. Johnston points out bear and mountain lion tracks. We dismount in a meadow and sprawl in the grass as the horses stand patiently tied to trees.

When we get back to the motel we take naps. Jeanine dreams about Slick, the horse she rode that day. I think about how Johnston reminds me of a character from Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses”: the handsome, self-effacing cowboy who knows so much about horses that around them he is confident and kind instead of foolishly sentimental or arrogant.

The next day we make the hourlong drive from the Buckhorn to the trailhead at Santa Barbara Canyon that, if we had a couple of days to hike, would thread us 30-some miles through Los Padres National Forest all the way to Montecito. Sage and manzanita give way to a thicker and thicker tree canopy. We feel like hobbits. Very happy hobbits.

We stop to read the registry at the trailhead as we leave. A hiker has written, “The area behind this sign has no Coors Light, television, no four-wheel anti-lock brakes, no instant cash, no rebates, no individual rooms, no remote control, no Internet service providers. Instead it has ticks, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, thornbrush, wash-outs, overgrown trails and extreme weather.” Leave it to those of us who enjoy it, the writer concludes, and the rest of you go home.

Amen.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A bed, a meal and a backcountry ride

GETTING THERE:

New Cuyama is about 140 miles north of Los Angeles. Take U.S. 101 to California 33 in Ventura. At Maricopa Road in Ojai, 33 veers left toward the Cuyama Valley. After about 60 miles, 33 joins California 166. It’s 10 more miles west on 166 to New Cuyama. There are no services between Ojai and New Cuyama.

WHERE TO STAY:

Cuyama Buckhorn, 4923 Primero St., New Cuyama; (661) 766-2591. Twenty-two rooms in cinder-block cottages painted barn red. TV and air conditioning. Doubles from $49.50.

WHERE TO EAT:

Sagebrush Annie’s, 4211 California 33, Ventucopa; (661) 766-2319. Larry Hogan and wife Karina take to heart their sign: “Through these doors walk the nicest customers.” The idiosyncratic interior looks like someone’s living room, but the place serves gourmet-quality food, with an emphasis on steaks. Open 5-8:30 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. Reservations required. Entrees $14-$26.

Buckhorn cafe, see address above. Country cooking and friendly service. Dinner entrees $8-$12.

WHAT TO DO:

Emery Johnston leads horseback rides into Los Padres National Forest that include day rides, overnight pack trips into the wilderness or horsemanship camps that include overnight stays on his ranch. Reservations recommended a month ahead. (805) 680-2817, www.johnstonhorsecamp.com. A four-hour ride costs about $100 per person.

TO LEARN MORE:

The book “A Traveler’s Guide to California’s Scenic Highway 33 ... From Ojai to Cuyama,” written by E.R. “Jim” Blakley and edited by Jeanine Moret. Available from Pacific Books, P.O. Box 3562, Santa Barbara, CA 93130; (805) 687-8340 or [email protected].

-- Ann Herold