🌿 In Your Backyard – Southern California’s Wild Kin

A Rooted Reflection on Sacred Plants, Mythic Beasts, and Re-Enchanted Ecology

Weird Sisters, pause with me for a moment. Take a breath—not a shallow one, but the kind that fills your ribs and settles your bones. Smell the dust, the herbs, the salt-tinged breeze if you're close enough to the coast. This land is alive. And if you listen, really listen, it’ll whisper back.

This entry in our ongoing Living With the Land series focuses on Southern California, home to a sun-scorched choir of plants and animals who have survived colonization, cement, and centuries of forgetting. But their stories? Still very much alive. The spirits of this land haven’t gone anywhere—they’ve just been waiting for us to notice.

Let’s get to know some of your wildest, witchiest, and most wondrous neighbors.

🌱 PLANTS OF POWER

1. White Sage (Salvia apiana) – The Misunderstood Elder

Indigenous use:Sacred to the Kumeyaay, Chumash, and Cahuilla peoples, white sage is used in closed ceremonial practices—rituals rooted in prayers, community, and responsibility. It is not a casual “vibe shift” tool—it is a revered elder.

Settler impact:Let’s be honest: white sage got commodified. What was once sacred became trendy—tied up in string, mass-harvested, slapped on Etsy, and labeled as a "smudge kit" with no cultural context. It’s more than disrespectful—it’s ecological harm and spiritual theft.

Today:White sage is endangered in the wild due to illegal harvesting and climate stress. Poachers have literally raided Indigenous land for it.

What to do:If you’re not Indigenous, don’t wild-harvest or casually buy it. Seek Indigenous sellers if you feel deeply called, and even then—pause and ask why. Instead, work with ancestral herbs from your own lineage: rosemary, mugwort, lavender, or garden sage. They’re powerful, they’re abundant, and they’re yours to build a relationship with.

Mythos to Know:In many Kumeyaay traditions, white sage is not just a plant—it’s a spirit ally. Its smoke is said to carry prayers skyward. Think of it as a phone line to the spirit world—don’t make prank calls.

2. California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum) – The Humble Healer

Indigenous use:This scrappy, drought-tolerant plant is a traditional medicine and food source for the Tongva and other coastal peoples. It feeds bees, cools inflammation, and supports digestion. It’s no diva, but it’s a powerful healer.

Settler use:Overlooked in favor of “proper” crops and imported grains. Ripped out, replaced, and largely forgotten outside of Native communities.

Today:A pollinator paradise. Its flowers feed native bees through long, dry summers—essential in a world where pollinators are under siege.

What to do:Plant it in your garden. Celebrate it in your spellwork. Offer it a place beside your herbs and roses. Let the bees bless you for it.

Mythos to Know:Though specific buckwheat myths are scarce, it’s often seen in broader Indigenous teaching as part of the reciprocal food web—a sacred agreement between plant and people, where what you harvest, you also protect.

3. Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) – The Hollywood Ancestor

Indigenous use:Known as “California holly,” the red berries were eaten fresh or dried by the Chumash and Tongva. They were also used in ceremony and to honor the spirits of the land.

Settler use:Settlers loved the festive red berries and used it as decoration, unknowingly naming Hollywood after the plant. Yep. That Hollywood.

Today:Still common in chaparral ecosystems—often unnoticed or dismissed as ornamental.

What to do:Leave the berries for birds. Honor it as a cultural ancestor—a literal namesake of our modern myth-making capital. And maybe, just maybe, whisper a little truth back into that star-chasing place.

Mythos to Know:No official “Toyon goddess” exists (yet), but let’s be real—if the fae were native to LA, they’d build their courts beneath its glossy leaves. This is a threshold plant—it asks: What story are you here to write?

🐾 ANIMAL ALLIES & ARCHETYPES

1. Coyote (Canis latrans) – The Trickster Guide

Indigenous view:Coyote appears in nearly every tribal mythology across California as a trickster, teacher, and sometimes cosmic clown. He creates, destroys, lies, learns, and leads. He's not evil—he’s wild. He teaches lessons through mischief.

Settler view:Declared vermin. Poisoned, hunted, fenced out of land. But he always finds a way back.

Today:Coyotes are masters of adaptation. They roam freely through LA’s alleys, hike canyon trails, and raise pups in the suburbs. They are the original urban witches.

What to do:Respect their space. Don’t feed or fear them. Learn from their liminality—they walk between worlds.

Mythos to Know:In Cahuilla stories, Coyote helped place the stars in the sky—only to scatter them in impatience, creating constellations. He’s flawed, funny, and ultimately necessary.

2. California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) – The Sky Ancestor

Indigenous view:The Yurok and Chumash hold the condor as a sacred spirit, often associated with the heavens, death, and rebirth. A bridge between sky and soul.

Settler impact:Poisoned, hunted, and driven to near extinction. Only 22 remained by the 1980s.

Today:Thanks to fierce conservation (often led by tribal and ecological alliances), condors are slowly returning.

What to do:Support organizations that protect them. Say no to lead ammo. And when you see one—offer it a prayer. That’s an ancient soul up there.

Mythos to Know:In Chumash creation myths, the condor is a solar spirit—a being of immense power whose wings beat thunder into the sky.

3. Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) – The Little Guardian

Indigenous view:Though not always named directly, lizards appear in many Southwestern tales as protectors, messengers, and boundary keepers. In some stories, they hold fire. In others, they mark sacred places.

Settler view:Feared, dismissed, or squashed.

Today:This sweet little sunbather is a literal health hero—its blood carries a protein that kills Lyme disease bacteria in ticks. Magical and medicinal.

What to do:Keep your rock piles, garden edges, and shady corners wild. Let the lizard live—it’s warding your space whether you notice or not.

Mythos to Know:In some Navajo and Hopi stories, lizards teach resilience and agility—the wisdom to sit still when needed, and run fast when it counts.

🌒 Closing Reflection

“What if the magic you’re looking for is already watching you from a branch or blooming at your feet?”

Too often we think of magic as something far away, cloaked in velvet and mystery. But the deepest magic is often local, humble, and entirely visible—if you know how to see.

Tending the land doesn’t always require a ritual knife or a jar of moon water. Sometimes it’s:

• Learning a native plant’s name

• Not mowing down a weed with purpose

• Leaving a lizard to bask in peace

• Whispering gratitude to a tree that grew here long before you
  

Start where your feet are. That’s where the wild kin are waiting.