On Monday evening, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department arrested Karuk Tribe Vice Chairman Leaf Grant Hillman in Happy Camp. The previous Friday, Aug. 17, the Siskiyou County District Attorney’s office had filed a felony domestic violence charge against Hillman. Siskiyou County D.A. Kirk Andrus said Hillman, who lives in Orleans, is charged with one count […]
Heidi Walters
Heidi Walters worked as a staff writer at the North Coast Journal from 2005 to 2015.
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Toy Test
It’s enough to make you want to rip off all your clothes and just run around nekked. And to tell your kids they can play only with … air — or, safer yet, only make-believe friends. We’re talking about poison clothes and toys. There’s the latest toy recall, this time by Mattel, of millions of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The chopper
Here it is, Thursday afternoon, and here is Rabbi Les Scharnberg, pawing through the orphaned books on the free-table at the Arcata Community Recycling Center and gabbing with fellow book scroungers. “I’m a compulsive reader,” Scharnberg says. “So am I,” says Rochelle Trochtenberg. They lift books, put them gently down. They seem immune to the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Last bet
In just two months, the Big Lagoon Rancheria may finally throw in its cards on a big hotel-casino project it has proposed to build in Barstow, in tandem with the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians of San Diego County. The tribes’ gaming compacts, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, would allow […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Desert machinations
In keeping with a long-standing ethic — eschewing corporate branding and rank commercialism — espoused by promoters of a gigantically weird art and communal living experiment/festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, this report will be rather vague. We can tell you who: Shaye Harty and her cohort of like-minded non-profiteers who this spring took over […]
Posted inNews
I’m your thimbleberry: The life and times of Rubus parviflorus
“Ramone’s Bakery.” “Hi, may I talk to your baker?” Jon Norris, the daytime baking production manager at Ramone’s on Harrison in Eureka, gets on the phone. “Do you make thimbleberry pie? Or tarts, or scones, or cookies, or … ?” “I don’t know anybody who uses thimbleberries,” says Norris. “You couldn’t get enough of ’em […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Grand Jury’s first day
The long, sterile hallway on the second floor of the Humboldt County Courthouse — the waiting space for those with a court hearing — isn’t exactly known for convivial gatherings of eager citizens, hungrily scanning dry documents and all a-chatter with getting-to-know-you. No, this place is tension’s haunt: compressed voices, eyes anchored to floors or […]
Posted inNews
Big Church
On Sundays you’re lucky to find a spot to park at the confluence of Rohnerville Road and Highway 36. Dozens of cars line the edges of highway and road, and a hundred or so more cram into the big dirt parking lot of the white, old-fashioned church on the southwest corner of the intersection. Which […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Bridgeville limbo
Air pushing upcanyon ruffles the bright leaves of dainty poison oak twining up tree trunks as you exit the green tunnel of foliage that is Hwy 36 onto a dubious spur promising to take you to Kneeland. Suddenly, you’re in a movie-set clearing flooded by evening sunlight. You stop the car to get out and […]
Posted inNews
The man from Alabama
How Tyrone Kelley’s roots influence his forest management Photos by Heidi Walters Laramie, Wyo., summer 1985. The bus shuddered along at a crawl and then stopped, brakes exhaling sharply — whshhhh . The driver pulled a lever, folding the door in with a thud, and stumped down the steps to the ground. A passenger, a […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Dumper duty
The Kneeland Post Office rests on a tiny scraped-out patch of territory high up the Freshwater-Kneeland Road. It’s tucked next to a solidly fenced compound from behind which the skid and squeal of kids playing issued one recent holiday Monday afternoon. The post office itself is a speck of languid past: wood door propped open […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Orick or bust
Been to Orick, lately? No, not through Orick, but to. Pulled over, parked the car, got out, stretched the legs and grazed on the sights? Certainly we’re not posing this question to Orick’s few hundred residents, nor to the handful of plucky merchants who daily tootle out of the hills to unlock storefronts, kick aside […]