A couple of weeks ago, a friend was complaining to me about the number of chemicals that an ordinary person can get exposed to in a typical day. "And then the weed and feed guys come by," she said, "and who knows what gets tracked into the house from the lawn?" It sounded as if […]
Life + Outdoors
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Faculty Shrinkage
"I believe that this is the worst," said Humboldt State University Provost Rick Vrem, addressing a standing-room-only crowd in the university’s Green and Gold Room last Tuesday. "I believe that the future looks brighter for us, potentially, than it has for some time." The occasion was an emergency meeting of the Academic Senate, the corpus […]
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Nuke Trail
We were at the end of our walk on King Salmon Beach. My dog led the way along the worn path through the dunes toward the seawall, where our car was parked. It was chilly out, gray-skied and getting dark – similar to my state of mind. April was a piece of crap month and […]
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Tiny Landscapes
When I look at the images I pull from my camera I often find that there are pictures within pictures. I can crop the image and find two, three, even five powerful images within one frame. As a photographer and a reveler of beautiful natural areas it is easy to get caught up in grand […]
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Take 8: The Sunset Western Garden Book
At this year’s San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, the Sunset staff had put up a sign showing every edition of their famous "green book" going back to 1954. The caption asked, "Do you remember your first?" I remember my first. It was the sixth edition, about 13 years ago. I was shamed into buying […]
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420 at the Clam
Regional celebrants of 4/20 last Friday may have felt torn between two settings: forest, or beach? Several thousand chose forest, converging upon Arcata Community Forest’s Redwood Park – one obvious reason, we’d think, being that apparently the greatest height to which a redwood tree can, in theory, grow before the water poops out is 420 […]
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Tall Ships
Had Captain Jack Aubrey had the occasion to board the Lady Washington, docked in Humboldt Bay since last weekend, and take it for a spin around the bay, his face might have darkened with dismay at the brig’s unhealthy complement of civilians bumping about, getting in the sailors’ way, holding soda pop cans, answering cell […]
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Ode to Spring
Springtime in Humboldt County has to be my favorite season. Some will argue summer is best. I’ll admit that it is hard to beat jumping into a turquoise pool on the un-dammed and naturally warm South Fork of the Trinity River while steelhead swim past, but as inland temps soar the companion coastal fog gets […]
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Beachcombing
It seemed like a good place to look for the dead. The tide was ebbing, leaving behind orange crab casings, their goathead patterns staring blankly up at the gray-milk sky; huge clam shells jutting from the sand like small white tombstones; and sand dollar skeletons slowly fading from purple to bleach-bone white. A bitter north […]
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Recovering from the Freeze
At the plant sale in Trinidad a couple weeks ago, everyone was talking about what they’d lost during the freeze. Many of us were still having a hard time believing that it had happened at all. "It was just one freeze after another," someone would say, shaking her head. "Night after night. It never let […]
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Nielsen Rated
Friday afternoon at the Adorni Center, a brilliant spring day. Seals swam up and down the harbor, clearly visible from the great glass wall on the north side of the big multipurpose room. It was a momentous day. Inside, 37 sworn officers of the Eureka Police Department – just about the entire force, except for […]
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Mean Streets
On a Saturday night in Arcata, I walked in front of the bars on the Plaza with Officer Heidi Groszmann. Thankfully, I was not under arrest – just going with her on her rounds as a part of my four-hour ride-along. Whether it was a traffic stop or making rounds on the Plaza, Groszmann was […]