Lost Coast Trilogy, Part One: Mattole to Spanish Flat
On this first leg of the Lost Coast journey, the only lights visible at night are the occasional crab or salmon boat plying the choppy waters. Not many places can you feel isolated like this anymore. Last year, 2006, marked the first year that more of the world’s people lived in cities than in rural areas.
Hiking the Lost Coast demands a welcome shift in the ordering of one’s reality - constant squinting from wind-blown sand, salty lips from sea spray, keeping a roving eye out for sneaker waves, being constantly aware of turning an ankle in steep sand or shoreline cobbles, second-guessing yourself as you charge down the beach when you see a faint trail angle up into the grassy bluffs, trying to identify the plethora of shorebird species and flowering plants amid the freshwater drainages, wondering if the tides will stay low enough to allow passage, and how much more painful the blisters on your feet will become during the ensuing miles ….
Spending three days walking a thin, eroding and shifting margin between worlds can rid one of tension and stress, but it can also create it. Our everyday lives are filled with technological clutter and white noise, so to be able to slough this synthetic yoke is invigorating, but it also provides a continual nagging by awakening a deeper, more elemental reality that lives on long after the hike.
A trip like this really helps you sense that you tread at the edge of multiple, divergent geographies far beyond the obvious aquatic and terrestrial. There is the known/unknown, historical past/unfolding present, footprint of humanity/recovery of the natural world, feeling lost without cell phone or e-mail/realizing you don’t need it, feeling our mortality through isolation/re-realizing we can survive without all our stuff … Perhaps by getting “lost,” we can begin to find ourselves again.
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Today
Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
Open Gardens
outdoors / 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Humboldt Botanical Gardens, College of the Redwoods, Eureka. Roam the 44-acre fully fenced property. $5. www.hbgf.org. 442-5139.
Organic Gardening Seminar
garden / 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Shafer's Ace Hardware and Garden Center, 2760 E St., Eureka. Free lecture by Duncan McNeill on how to create a healthy environment and healthy soils for your plant’s roots. E-mail shafers@sbcglobal.net. 442-5734.
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