I remember reading somewhere that high adventure, like high treason, often comes with a hefty price tag. If you manage to finagle your way past the king’s men relatively unscathed, then you are not doing too badly. My battle scars from the adventure last weekend are mostly psychological. I can expect the night terrors to […]
Life + Outdoors
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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 […]
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Out for blood
The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. — Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier Thankfully, there were no splashes of blood on the Northern California Community Blood Bank’s Bloodmobile last Monday, although blood bank nurse […]
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Wastin’ time
The sun shines and the air fills our lungs with that peculiarly invigorating scent of dead fish and salt: lunchtime in Eureka. The Tyvek home wrap on Bayfront One (or, rather, Bayfront One Mk. II, a building crossing its metaphorical fingers that it will not be burned down before it has a chance to be […]
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Photographing the garden
This spring, a group of garden bloggers got the idea to post a photograph on the 15th of every month showing what’s blooming in their garden. (If you’d like to check it out, just Google "garden bloggers bloom day" and you’ll see what I mean.) It’s a great idea to use a garden blog to […]
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Summer retreats
Summer seems to be here, finally. Two weeks of beautiful weather — the week before finals and the week of , according to the students’ lament. Now it would seem the ubiquitous summer fog is back, with only dribbles of sunshine falling through. When it does, the beaches are in full-bloom with red-tinged alabaster bodies. […]
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Night vision
I crept along, trying to keep my skittish white pickup on the narrow road that climbs above Bear River Ridge while peering the few visible feet ahead into a white swirly fog. One missed turn at a rash 15 mph, it seemed, and I’d be floating free, descending through the foggy gray twilight to a […]
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Kinetic konfusion
Here she is, 2007’s Rutabaga Queen! All hail Emma Breacain, aka Emma the Emchantress, crowned queen of the Kinetic Sculpture Race at a ceremony Friday night! "I’m so excited," her majesty said afterwards. "It’s something I take very seriously. I put enough work into my campaign that most people would consider it insane." Indeed. For […]
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Tax-free beauty
Sunday was a beautiful spring day — the most beautiful day of the year in the Humboldt Bay Area, as likely as not. Inside Pierson’s, a gardener worked her way to the garden center’s cash register bearing her selection of annuals. She had picked out some petunias, some snapdragons, some violas, some nasturtiums. When he […]
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Grass au Naturel
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 […]
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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 […]