I had to admit it. I was lost and feeling a little meager, the grandeur of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the largest refuge in North America, was swallowing me whole. Located in northeastern Alaska, the braiding Canning River was a maze of channels that separated me from the rest of my group. I […]
The ears were a dead giveaway. As the morning sun warmed the grasslands of California’s Central Valley, it was the large, backlit ears of a San Joaquin kit fox (Vulpes macrotis mutica) that caught my eye. Red blood vessels braiding like a red river lit up each of the fox’s ears, allowing the smallest canid […]
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It’s the mobile basecamp transporting you to hidden natural wonders, where time slows down and the only set schedule moves along on its own course. You’re just along for the ride because you chose to be there, making the drive with enough provisions to see you through on your car camping excursion. All you need […]
The creeks were flowing, spilling over a configuration of cobble that snaked their way to the Santa Clara River. As water pooled up and calmed California newts (Taricha torosa) gathered, the only endemic salamander species in the Golden State. As I rock-hopped upstream, I found one of the orange-bellied newts out of the water, out […]
Straddling the coastal spine of the Transverse Range, I hiked (and sometimes ran) the sandstone sea serpent that rises and falls east to west all the way from the idyllic Gaviota Coast to the stunningly breathtaking Matilija Wilderness, a stone’s throw away from Carpinteria. The chaparral-choked Santa Ynez Mountains are one of the main gateways […]
I’ve been studying to be a docent at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse and learning historical facts. I never knew that the building at the back part of the Courthouse with the turret on top was once our jail. The first floor held the sheriff’s offices (it still does), the second floor was for the […]
It was nearly dark on the Carrizo Plain National Monument. I pulled up in my truck on a plateau of dry, crunchy grass overlooking the Temblor Range on the Elkhorn Plain in the southeast corner of the monument, coyotes yelping in unison in some nameless canyon. I was tired from five full days of guiding […]
“If you ride a horse, shoot a gun, and go fishing,” locals told me, “you’re a Montanan!” Over the next few days, I hoped to earn my membership badge. My wife, Merry, and I had just arrived at the Ranch at Rock Creek in southwest Montana. Set along a mountain-fed stream amidst cottonwoods and evergreen […]
Right in our own backyard sits one of the most beautiful and threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world, the Gaviota Coast. “We should never take this 72-mile long stretch of coast for granted,” said Gaviota Coast Conservancy (GCC) board member Phil McKenna. We were gathered at the Santa Barbara Club for another Lunch & Learn […]
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To get to Half Moon Bay, we had driven up U.S. 101 through crawling traffic in San Jose, dodged the pushy Porsches and Tesla jockeys of Silicon Valley, and finally twisted and turned our way over a busy road through the Santa Cruz Mountains. At the end, though, waited a quiet little farm town called […]
I think after midnight I gave up on those stiff, piercing, westerly winds lying down. It was blowing 50 mph and the temps were in the mid-20s on Wildrose Peak, but the views were easily worth every frigid gust the Mojave Desert had to offer. I decided not to bring a tent to Death Valley […]
It started out just like any other day that I lead a kayak tour on Santa Cruz Island; get folks dialed in with their paddling gear and a kayak briefing before launching them off the beach at Scorpion Anchorage. Spring time on the islands is a dual-edged sword; rolling green marine terraces, island wildflowers, and […]
Surely Clint Eastwood didn’t envision Mono Lake as a sublime paddling destination during the filming of the 1973 Western classic High Plains Drifter, but today that high-desert realm located in California’s Eastern Sierra is just that, with a few surprises along the way. I had heard you needed a permit to paddle the expanse of […]
I think I was suffering from anxiety. Wracking my brain trying to figure out where to position myself for that rare event of a super moon, blue/blood moon and lunar eclipse, a simultaneous solar systematical natural wonder that hadn’t occurred since 1866, I had to force myself to choose. I finally settled on the Carrizo […]
