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 […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Bugs and Buster
Like many parents with young children, we spend an inordinate number of Saturday nights at home doing home things: watching movies, playing games, taking baths, making popcorn, listening to the radio, reading, noodling on the guitar, etc. Mundane, maybe, but still satisfying in a homey way. Sometimes we think about all those shows in nightclubs, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Kids with a capital “K”
Wind pulsed through the domed labyrinth of quartz monzogranite as I scrambled downward looking for a safer descent. The spring sky was a typically cloudless and brilliant blue. Above, the murmur of voices from the knot of students and my co-instructor at the tabletop summit some 20 feet above faded in and out with the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Tim’s Books
It was a melancholy time on the Northcoast Environmental Center’s front porch last Friday. Volunteers had set up three or four folding tables, and on each of them they had placed hundreds of books. These were the books that didn’t sell at a big booksale the weekend previous. Now they were selling for 25 cents […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Get Your Glitter On
If you hiked to the top floor of the Eureka Municipal Auditorium last Saturday night, it might have made you dizzy. No, not the height – though it was plummetous – but the action down below on the dance floor. Nearly 2,000 people had unwittingly formed themselves into a pulsing neon arrow (sans the real […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Pedagogue Cobb
A few weeks past, an explosion was reported at Arcata High School. Witnesses said that it seemed to issue from Doug Johnson’s AP Government class and that it had a vaguely Texan accent. That explosion was David Cobb. Cobb was the last in a trio of speakers to visit the 16 Arcata High AP Government […]