Field Notes

Walking on Samoa Beach during a nor’wester a few stormy days ago, waves crashing towards the shore, I wondered if the Pacific Ocean had been named in irony — ‘pacific’ was the last thing that came to mind. Turns out, though, that the man who named our western sea was dead serious — and grateful. […]

Next month’s Godwit Days will bring birdwatchers to Humboldt Bay from all over, complete with their binoculars, telescopes and cameras with telephoto lenses. All these devices employ essentially the same system of optics to make distant objects seem closer, a system that dates back about 400 years. Most reference books give the date for the […]

The first time I kayaked up the Mad River Slough, which empties into Humboldt Bay about three miles west of Arcata, I was told that this was the old Mad River channel. Of course, the Mad empties into the Pacific directly now, across from Arcata airport, but if you look at the accompanying map, you’ll […]

Every seven days, a new edition of the North Coast Journal appears in Humboldt County, regular as clockwork. What’s so special about seven that it forms the backbone of our calendar? After all, the week follows no natural cycle, as is obvious when you realize that other cultures have gotten along quite happily with three […]

Humboldt’s wintry cold and rain will, I promise, give way to warm and dry weather … and eventually to long summer evenings. That’s when you’ll probably find me, around sunset, sitting in my kayak at the south end of Indian Island, cradling a glass of Shiraz and watching one flight after another of pelicans whooshing […]

“Try to bring in ‘Humboldt’,” said the editor of this fine weekly paper when I signed on for this column. ‘No problem,” I replied, hoping I’d be able to find some link, somehow, somewhere … …which is why my heart leapt last week as I stood at the base of the world’s largest structure — […]

Among the gases produced by volcanoes are steam, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. In 1953 Stanley Miller sparked these gases with a Tesla coil to simulate the lightning that often accompanies volcanic eruptions. Recent analysis of the resulting goop, forgotten for decades, revealed 22 amino acids, many of which are the building blocks of life (Bada, […]

When I consider monumental works of humankind, I think of the Great Pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Saturn 5 rocket, the Panama Canal, Boulder Dam … and Perry Collins’ Overland Telegraph. The last mentioned isn’t usually included in those lists of "mankind’s greatest achievements" for the good reason that it was […]

Trying to stargaze from downtown Eureka is a bit like someone suffering from agoraphobia setting up camp in the middle of Times Square: not the smartest move. Still, the optimists in our ranks can try to spot a few glimmers in the night sky, especially the most prominent ones. My shortlist would definitely include the […]

When I’m kayaking the lower reaches of the Klamath, it sure feels like a one big river. Over 250 miles long, the Klamath drains an area of nearly 16,000 square miles, about four times that of Humboldt County. Yet it’s puny compared to its big brother on the west coast, the Columbia, which is five […]

Water is a weird and wonderful substance. Most liquids are made up of essentially separate molecules — gasoline molecules, for instance, have little attraction for their neighbors, so each is pretty much independent. Water molecules, in contrast, have relatively strong attractions to their neighbors. If they didn’t, water would be a gas, much the same […]

My wife Louisa is an open-water swimmer. Her idea of a good time is to don her thin (1/8 inch) wetsuit, slide into Humboldt Bay off the C Street dock, and swim around for a good 30 minutes. Maybe 50 minutes in summer, when the water is warmer. My job, as her “spotter,” is to […]