Splendid--but Still Isolation

The North Coast and Humboldt County offer many wonders.  Recently a travel writer for the New York Times Magazine exulted:  "The sights of Humboldt County, Calif., can be hard for the rational mind to reconcile. Its hysterical shifts in landscape and weather conspire to make you feel, in the most pleasurable way possible, that you are going out of your head. A day’s drive in Humboldt carried me past what appeared to be: a Hawaiian beach, an Icelandic coastal flat, a swath of rustic Switzerland, an elk-thronged Montana prairie, a street in San Francisco, the Ewok moon of Endor, a prop village from a musical about the Gold Rush, and Allentown, Pa. The dawn brought blue skies, which turned to brilliant sunlit rain, then hail, then sleet, then driving snow, then back to full sun refracting into a huge rainbow that seemed like the meteorological equivalent of a crazy person’s laugh."

Besides the beaches and the ocean itself, we have these wonderful trees.  That's the Avenue of the Giants south of here (both of these photos are from the New York Times story.)  This is a piece of the old Route 101, more or less parallel to the multi-lane part of the "new" 101.

But there is another aspect to living here: our isolation.  In many ways it protects us.  But it has its drawbacks, too.  And when our delicate lifelines to the rest of the world are disrupted, it can cause problems.

Here's one of them...

  This is the result of a "mudslide"--more like a hillside toppling into the highway--on our lifeline to the south, Route 101.  The slide is reputedly 600 feet wide and 12 feet high in places.  It's a bit more than an hour south of Arcata, and it's going to close 101 for days at least.  There are not too many good alternatives for truck traffic, and we aren't served by railroad here anymore.  A few days may be just an inconvenience, especially to the folks down there around Garberville.  But it does suggest another side of living here. 

 

And while we're on the subject of Humboldt--when this blog got entered into a certain competition (completely unbenownst to me until about an hour ago) for the best Humboldt County blogs, all those experts at ESPN were outraged.  How could this be, when there are so many blogs clearly more qualified, with bigger audiences and local relevance?   Blogs that have been household names for years!  The VCU of HC blogdom! Well, the field has been narrowed, and apparently, Captain Future's Dreaming Up Daily is in the Final Four.  March Madness for sure!