An example of a marine terrace is the surface on which McKinleyville is built. At some time in the past, roughly 85,000 years ago, this terrace was barely below sea level, and that is why it is flat. Land above sea level was eroded down by rain and surf, while submerged land was built up […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inLife + Outdoors
High honor in Hoopa
On a recent fall afternoon at the Kim Yerton Memorial Library, in Hoopa Valley, library branch manager Kristin Freeman described over the phone the scene inside the warm, wood structure which is shaped to resemble a xhonta, a traditional house of the Hupa people. A carved wood eagle perched in the round window, through which […]
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What the FERC?!
Driving down U.S. Route 97 this past September in the Lower Klamath Basin in Oregon, Klamath Water Users Association Executive Director Greg Addington told me he expected the settlement talks to end in November. "The settlement talks?" a reporter with the California Farm Bureau asked from the front seat of Addington’s Suburban. Do you live […]
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Will Global Warming Harm Our North Coast?
Fossil fuel combustion has already increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 36 percent over pre-industrial levels, from 280 ppm to 380 ppm. This contributes to global warming because CO2, despite its low concentration, effectively absorbs outgoing thermal infrared radiation. (Other greenhouse gases are water vapor, methane and ozone). The correlation between […]
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Gifts for Gardeners
We gardeners are not — I repeat, not— difficult to buy for. The only thing you need to know is that the items you see advertised as gifts for gardeners — floral-printed oven mitts, silver trowel-and-spade earrings, CDs of peaceful bird songs — are actually not gardening gifts at all. They are gifts with a […]
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Do Forests Protect Our Oxygen?
Our comfortable levels of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2 ) are attributable to photosynthesis: H2O + CO2 = CH2O + O2. It is thus reasonable to assume that forests are needed to preserve the oxygen we breathe. But that is a common misconception. A mature redwood or Amazon forest busily recycles its products, […]
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What’s so amazing about anemones?
Among all the fantastic products of three billion years of evolution, such as intricately constructed ears, eyes and skeletons, the most amazing exists within primitive anemones, corals and jellyfish. The stickiness you feel when touching anemones in local tide-pools is a consequence of thousands of microscopic harpoons launched into your skin. Each launching mechanism is […]
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Asters Up Front
It was a perfect day to be in the garden. There had been just enough rain to make the ground damp and easy to dig, but not enough to turn it to mud. More rain was on its way, but not right away. Time to start transplanting. I’ve been working on this gradual transformation of […]
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Civil Disobedience
It was Sunday, a clear and warmish fall day, sun sitting low in the sky, with no wind even on the coast — a perfect day for civil disobedience. It all started some months ago with a letter to the Journal from one Benjamin Garlick. He’s pushing 40 now, but I knew him as a […]
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Trick our Trucker
His friends, until recently, called him ZZ Top. He had a dark bushy beard down to his chest. He had a belly, too. Mark David loves his drink. And tobacco, and chocolate. And he and Loretta Bradford, his life-love and full-time co-pilot, would be out there on the open road, trucking lumber and pipe and […]
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Bottled and Blessed
Yes, yes, from Oakland to Baltimore they’re booting the bottle from city government offices and fancy restaurants. The bottle of water, that is, which activists have taken on as yet another villain in the fight to save the planet from choking on plastic or drowning in deep-puddling carbon footprints. Bottled water, critics say, creates mountains […]
