With December comes the freeze. Moisture settles as fluff on the high peaks and passes, slicks roads and parking lots, frosts rooftops and windshields and, on occasion, bounces pellet-like onto the coastal landscape. Night-dark comes early; headlights barely pick out that elk herd clustered on the highway shoulder, or the thick-furred bear racing across a curve, and the creatures burrow into memory. Dreams focus on home-early, dinner-warm.
Forgotten: the preceding weeks of prolonged autumn, tawny and bountiful; summer’s long light, life, festivals and, in the mountains, months of smoky worry as forest fires stormed; spring’s relentless optimism; and the beginning — January, as icy as December but lovely and hopeful as spring.
Well, that’s what photos are for: to remember. In this issue, we give you a year of Humboldt, outdoors, in a selection of photos taken by longtime Humboldt County resident Ken Malcomson.
— Heidi Walters
This article appears in Humboldt Outside.