Moments in Dirt and Ink

Arcata Community Forest Click for map I thought I could at least get a little hike together to ring in the new season. Winter is scheduled to start off with rain, though, and I got choices. I chose to actually do the little hike on the one day in the coming week that might have sun. It had changed to "fog", but the predicted weather seems very volatile at the moment. So on the one day not expected to rain (for the moment), I headed off for a through hike of the Arcata Ridge Trail. A looping trail now descends to the road so climbing narrow, steep steps is no longer required! A view out on the weather and there is some fog. It's not exactly the best time to meander through the forest. It's one of the few times one might manage not to find any flowers blooming in the undergrowth. The mushrooms have been coming and going. The patch of clintonia offers some interesting patterns as the leaves die off. There are some extraordinarily red waxy caps , som...

Arcata Community Forest ( map link ) I decided it was time to take a lap with the camera to show off the flowers. They start in January, some of them only having taken a few months off. They haven't seemed all that thick yet. I started at the big entry on Margaret Lane. A map and some rules on entering under the 2nd growth redwoods. Follow the trail past a diversity of green. Passing tall redwood trees with thick, fibrous bark. There's not usually banana slugs hiding in the cracks, but today there is. Where the loop starts, one may choose a bit of a warm-up stretch with little ups and downs or head for a steady climb instead. I turned right for the first. One of the more ephemeral water flows in the forest. There's a couple segments of trail that are thickly lined with milkmaids .

Arcata Community Forest ( map link ) I finally noticed that the trails previously marked as "private road" and "no entry" are now half numbered trails on the newest version of the Arcata Community Forest map. This comes about from the 20 acre Lima Expansion purchased in 2018, and been open a while. Disappointingly, they didn't even name these new trails along with not quite giving them their own numbers. The rest of it somehow became less of a maze once I paid a little attention to the names even though they're only found on the map signs and the online map. The bottom of Meadow Trail (trail 3) as it climbs. I had wanted to get a space at trail 3 (Meadow Trail, but where's the meadow?), but decided against squeezing in beside the two cars already there. I wandered down from the main parking area instead to start up the hill. This trail shows some old paving as it climbs. I figured that would get me most quickly to the first of the old "pr...

Arcata Community Forest ( map link ) I decided to make a reprise of my old wander looping across Janes Creek twice . This one still has the same fundamental parts, the basic loop involving the South Fork Janes Creek Loop Trail and the second loop with Lower Janes Creek and Upper Janes Creek Trails (more commonly known as 6 and 7 because that's all the signs say), but I decided to connect them together a little differently. Still starting on Diamond Drive because I rather like that trailhead. There could be some support that the Long Loop Trail (17) should get included since it's the uppermost trail crossing over Janes Creek, but it fails in not having Janes Creek in the name. Hey, thems the rules. Into the woods from Diamond Drive. There were some nice patches of trillium, this one even with one aging into some purple. I took off for the upper/lower loop first, passing the lovely trail 10 (Vista Trail) heading for 8 (Forest Loop Road, a nice meaningful name found...

Arcata Community Forest ( map link ) We woke up Wednesday morning with snow falling. Big wet flakes were plopping against the ground after only half surviving the journey down and not surviving contact with the ground. More waves of snow came throughout the day, only sticking to the most exposed areas in a thin layer. As the light started to dim in the evening, it began to stick properly. It built up until the morning dawned with a blanket of the stuff. There was snow all the way down to the beach ! Things were less thickly covered by the time the sun got to shining a bit on the trees, but still plenty more than seen in a decade. A look along Panorama to a patch of backyard trees. The garden rhododendrons have been blooming a few weeks, but the wild ones won't be for a few months. Down the stub end of Margaret to another patch of private trees holding rare snow. Up the steps and into the community forest itself. Yeah, it's not all that much snow. Snow was on th...