You may know it as Dog Ranch or perhaps Dead Man’s Drop Forest, but forget that. The parcels immediately to the west of Samoa Bridge are now officially the Samoa Dunes and Wetlands Conservation Area. “We’re looking to re-introduce this place to our community,” says Mike Cipra, who heads up Friends of the Dunes, the […]
Get Out
Posted inLife + Outdoors
A Flâneur Wanders the Streets of Eureka
The French word flâneur isn’t a word you hear much around here. It originally meant a 19th century male who loitered, strolled and wandered around Paris. Although born 100 years later, Henry Miller, who meandered all over Paris in the 1930s, was one. After he left France, he wrote, “There are scarcely any streets in […]
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The Accidental Birder
I have yet to purchase my first pair of bird-watching binoculars. My Canon point and shoot camera is not fancy. The feature that sold me on it was its telescopic zoom lens. It’s the perfect tool for a budding bird-watcher, which is what I seem to be. Fortunately, my favorite bird, the red-tail hawk, thrives […]
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Small Fish in a Small Pond
San Diego’s the kind of place that’s so big, you’re basically just another nobody unless you were at the top of whatever you pursued — at least that’s how it was for me while growing up. There wasn’t any support to “just be.” If you weren’t hustling, competing or making big money, you were wasting […]
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Nightwalkers
I am a child of the night, daughter of a third-shifter dad who had a penchant for 2 a.m. sky watching. The feel of night is different in unexplainable ways, more so in big cities, like where I grew up — block after block of hushed porches and weak nightlights painted to the tune of […]
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Swimming with Otters at Big Lagoon
Blue skies, eagles, osprey, otters — those are the attractions that compel Humboldt caterer Lauren Sarabia to drive up to Big Lagoon and swim three mornings a week. Although as a kid she played in pools in Los Angeles, she didn’t become an open water swimmer until five years ago, when a friend invited her […]
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Hiking in Place with the Ramblers
The North Coast, with its wealth of natural environments to explore, from mountains and marshes to river trails and redwood forests, is also rich in hiking groups. Recently I checked out one of the oldest: the Ramblers. We met promptly at 9 a.m. at the Ma-le’l Dunes south parking lot on a sunny Monday morning. […]
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A Bicycle Ride Among the Giants
At 7 a.m. on Sunday, the forest is quiet, the temperature cool, the road sparsely used by cars. This is an ideal time to ride my bicycle on the Avenue of the Giants. Once sunlight starts filtering through the canopy, the asphalt and I are dappled with light. Although I have lived in Humboldt County […]
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Van Duzen Venture
My spouse and I follow winding State Route 36 on a lovely July day. We, like many, have not been out in a long time and it feels good to be wandering, even with masks. We follow the bends and gentle curves that weave through Hydesville and Carlotta, the landscape changing from river bottom to […]
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Alone in the Fog
I could feel bubbles of panic on the edges of my mind but I forced myself to concentrate on my breaststroke. Arms parting, arms parting. Focus. I knew if I started worrying about hypothermia, exhaustion or the cramping in my right leg, panic would cause me to shake or flail. Focus. Focus. Ten years ago, […]
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Rough Waters
The water level on the Trinity River is just right and the hot summer weather is ideal. But a month after local white-water rafting businesses received approval to reopen from county and U.S. Forest Service officials, company owners say that reservation numbers are still modest. School and church groups have all canceled and the absence […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Building Trails and Resilience
Humboldt County has come a long way from the days when railroads dominated the conversation about economic development and few local politicians saw trails as a community priority. It took trail pioneers working for many agonizing years to complete the Hammond Trail. And the Bay Trail seemed forever mired in a mountain of feasibility studies […]