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Regional celebrants of 4/20 last Friday may have felt torn between two settings: forest, or beach? Several thousand chose forest, converging upon Arcata Community Forest's Redwood Park -- one obvious reason, we'd think, being that apparently the greatest height to which a redwood tree can, in theory, grow before the water poops out is 420 feet. Or maybe it's just a good place to party.
A smaller tribe settled for the Pacific. One guy parked his car on Scenic Drive south of Trinidad to watch the sun slowly rappel to the ocean as whales spouted water and surfers bobbed by the Camel. An artist descended the short, steep cliff path to Luffenholtz Beach to etch a gigantic pot leaf into the wet sand and, for clarity's sake, scratched a big "420" next to it -- there, now even the birds soaring over would be in the know. And many went straight to Clam Beach to plunk tents in the sand.
Ah, Clam Beach. Sun, waves, dunes. A mellow crowd. Though it wasn't always so, said Bob Walsh, Humboldt County Parks Supervisor. He stood at the entrance to the Clam Beach campground Friday afternoon, turning away hopeful campers. It was 4:10 p.m., the campground was full, the fees of the lucky hundred-some campers who'd already checked in safely deposited in The Magic Kingdom -- a rusty old beat-up lunchbox sitting on a table at the makeshift entrance. A steady stream of other official sorts came and went. "We decided we needed to man the campground about four, five years ago," said Walsh. Things had got crazy -- "out-of-towners" burning pallets on the beach, littering, and rattling the nerves of nesting snowy plovers by thrashing about collecting driftwood to burn and letting their dogs galumph wherever.
But all was calm. The park employees had firewood for sale, and they scanned the dunes for trouble. The campers -- mostly kids from Redding -- sat around in the sand talking, or loafed inside tents. "We're the parents of the teenage kids' party," joked Walsh. A truck from Mad River Biologists came through. The driver stuck his head out the window to natter with the park crew. He was, he said -- pinching thumb and forefinger together ironically -- "just a little bit" worried about his plovers. "My blood pressure goes way up" on holidays like this, he said.
But the kids, and stray adults, were behaving. At one large campsite, 11 young guys, the oldest maybe 21, sat sleepily in the sand, legs half-curled in blankets, heads tousled, faces already wind-burnt. Dan, their spokesman, said yeah, they'd come here for 4/20. "It's a good place to hang out because people are less strict here" than in Redding, he said. "But we come to Clam Beach a lot anyway. This is a beautiful place."
At another campsite with a pale blue tent, mellow had an edge. Two brassy voiced young women were draining a whiskey bottle while their two young men stood about looking slightly self-conscious. Waves crashed beyond the dunes. Time ticked. Tocked. And then one of the women yelled, "4:20! Whooo!" and punched a button on her cell phone and shouted into it harshly, "4:20, bitches! Whooo! Shasta County! Five-three-o! Whooo!" All around the campground, fingers fumbled with glass pipes and rolling papers, flicked lighters.
The mood at a nearby camp also had a slight edge -- not whiskey-bit, but political. An older woman, a local named Cathy, stood with friends at a picnic table. She had on a black T-shirt with a pot leaf and red cross design and the words, "The Humboldt Cooperative Quality Control Team." She wore a pendant made from a quarter, with the metal around Washington's head cut away to form a pipe in his mouth. "I couldn't get up to the [Redwood Park] celebration because they didn't have enough handicapped parking," she complained. "And I'm a patient." Arthritis has crippled her hips, knees, back. She walks slowly, with a cane. "There are times I can't keep food down because of the medication I take. The only thing that can get me started eating again is smoking." To her, "4/20" is the day to celebrate pot as medicine -- which is why she went up to Redwood Park earlier that day. When she complained to a police officer there about the lack of parking, the policewoman said it wasn't an official event -- nobody had applied for a permit, so nobody had the authority to designate more disabled spaces.
But maybe it was better to be at the beach, anyway. The cops sure were relaxed. "We're not here to rain on anybody's parade," said a cheerful Sheriff's deputy. "I don't care if anybody's smoking marijuana. We're just out here to make sure everybody has a good time. You know, last year there were kids stealing other kids' beer, and their pot. We're just here to look out for the bad apples."
-- Heidi Walters
Had Captain Jack Aubrey had the occasion to board the Lady Washington, docked in Humboldt Bay since last weekend, and take it for a spin around the bay, his face might have darkened with dismay at the brig's unhealthy complement of civilians bumping about, getting in the sailors' way, holding soda pop cans, answering cell phones -- "sorry, you have the wrong number" and "I'm in the bay, where are you?" -- pulling on ropes, asking impudent questions of whoever was at hand and approaching the captain as if he were a mere boy in need of a scolding. And Stephen Maturin, he'd have paled at the dull disregard most everyone showed toward innocent life -- that harbor seal caught swimming between the Lady W and its traveling companion, the Hawaiian Chieftain, just as the two vessels decided to engage in noisy cannonfire competition; that osprey's nest stacked like a giant pitchforkful of hay on a long wooden pole near the peninsula; those greater scaups peddling frantically to get out of the way. And oh, was that a long-tailed duck? Stop the boat! Ha, as if they would.
Don't know Aubrey and Maturin? Then you've got
some reading to do: Patrick O'Brian's 20 (plus one unfinished)
seafaring novels that take place during the Napoleonic Wars.
Familiar with the sophisticated odd couple of adventure? Well,
then, you're in!
Just kidding. These tall ships, ambassadors of the American Sail Training Association (ASTA), are for everyone to enjoy. They are replicas of actual 18th century merchant ships -- the original Lady, trading in furs, was the first American ship to travel between the West Coast and the Orient (1788). The replicas, built in the late 1980s, travel the coast throughout the year, enlisting and training volunteers and teaching schoolchildren about the Pacific Northwest's maritime history (and, said one captain, they are slowly beginning to build relationships with tribes along the coast, for whom tall ships represent past oppression and a significantly altered history).
They're merchant ships -- shudder the thought that
prize-hungry captain Aubrey would have been saddled with such
a plebian command. Still, he likely would have smiled at the
competition in the bay last Saturday afternoon -- if he was on
the Lady, that is, which is a bit like his beloved old
Sophie and has a seasoned captain to boot. As rain squalls
whipped through canvas and drenched passengers and crew, the
Lady's green-eyed Captain Evil Ryan, dark ponytail sticking
out from under a green felt fedora, stood aft, occasional nudging
the tiller with his butt to correct the brig's course. He shrewdly
watched the Hawaiian try to beat up the bay behind them.
She flew only two sails, for some reason. She faltered. Finally,
she caught up. There was shouting. "Argh, we're gonna fire!"
(it sounded like). "We're gonna fire!" repeated the
crew. Everybody lifted their elbows and stuck their fingers in
their ears as the steward/gunner packed a three-pounder with
gunpowder and shoved a stick wrapped with sweet-smelling smoldering
rope down it and yelled, "Fire!" Kabomp! Captain
Evil Ryan hollered to his first mate, "Rise stacks and sheets!"
"Rise stacks and sheets!" the first mate yelled to
the crew. "Rise stacks and sheets" the crew shouted
back, leaping to action. 
Captain:
"Helm's a-lee!" First mate: "Helm's a-lee!"
Crew: "Helm's a-lee!" and leaping again for ropes.
First mate: "Mainsail haul!" Crew: "Mainsail haul!"
And so on, as the ships circled the bay in an old-fashioned dogfight, the Lady's gunner racing between the maindeck's two three-pounders and the stern's two one-pounder swivel guns. The Hawaiian fired. The Lady fired. It was smoky. The Hawaiian fell back, again, and, still not hoisting enough sails, had to start her engines to catch back up. At which point, said Captain Evil Ryan, "We pretty much win by default." Yet the competition boomed on another good hour or two. Practice makes perfect -- Aubrey would approve.
-- story & photos by Heidi Walters
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