#Tolowa Dunes State Park

[thorsenmark]

Taking in the Sight of a Pacific Coastline at Tolowa Dunes State Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the California coastline with a view looking to the south at a pod of California brown pelicans flying my direction as I walked along the main beach area in Tolowa Dunes State Park.

[morningcallsphotography]

Centre of the Universe Tolowa Dunes State Park Crescent City, California

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[thecommonmag]

By CATE LYCURGUS

Tolowa Dunes State Park, California

Sandy showed us how. She placed the shovel’s tip a few inches from a tuft’s base. Angled the handle back a bit, just enough to loosen the grass before she lowered, hand-pulling. This way, she explained, down to the source. Awards went to the biggest pile, longest root (you cannot burn grass off the dunes; the network just shoots back again), cleanest area too. Tawny tips waved in small breeze from the lagoon, off the lip of sea. But the grass is pretty, C said, and somebody murmured, agreeing. He traced the rake in arcs, looking down, but couldn’t swirl it far. European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) grows in clumps from rhizomes that spread four meters each year, so it’s no surprise beachgrass defines large stretches of Pacific coast. Pretty till you get a spine in your glove, E admitted, wincing. Until you get down close.

So we moved, bandanaed, low to the ground and followed each root with slow hands, first clutching masses of dry-rust spikes, taking care not to wrench. I cringed at the snap of a crackling tuft—no good in doing that, I told the team, calling them over. We have to be more careful, more thorough. I watched them run fingers along each chord under topsoil of silt and go—two, four, eight feet out before a group heave-ho! To eradicate means being ever at-the-source, putting down one’s foot before bending, before ripping into light. The sun blazed full and as we burned I knew the piles would burn too, those mounds of grass stacked like monuments, like expansion razed.

As a Californian born and raised twenty miles from the coast, I grew up assuming beachgrass was natural. Native. Looking back, I’ve no reason to think this; most of my surroundings were not native, not eucalyptus lining our block, car models hugging the sidewalks. Even my parents came west from elsewhere, just before my birth. Most things had a newness to them: new tech, new development, new arrivals.  Even the oldest buildings had to have survived the quake in 1906, again in 1989.

Given their own age, I thought these teenagers might balk at days of weeding. We’d come with groups from all over the West to create intentional community, work on construction and repair projects, and learn from a place unlike home. We thought we’d be raising things up. Digging, pouring concrete, erecting decks/ramps/stairsets, awnings against the sun. Which had started to beat stronger. Our piles towered tall as a regulation-rim, but looking in the opposite direction, the acreage felt endless. Z turned to our Tolowa Dunes guide—after we leave, won’t it just grow back? She pointed to the ground where a stalk of reed peeped above sand. Good eyes, cleanest sweep, and it won’t completely—so we yanked and we yanked and we played games of Contact, hoping it reseeds less.

You don’t have to go far to uncover the tangled roots of a place, one dependence stacked on another. In corners of this home state of mine, while roofing trailers at dead-end service roads where no way cuts through and no water runs—smelt rivers have been dammed dry—I tried to explain the satellite dish, the plot of pot nearby. How it’s really impossible to judge anything in all or any cases. And everyone’s an invasive, D reminded us, all a little squeamish. It’s hard to know who’s who, when intruding, intruded upon. Sandy explained that in coming West, along with murdering or removing hundreds of thousands of native people (120,000 in twelve years in Northern California, not to mention entrenched Rancheria enslavement), settlers also ushered in beachgrass, conquering vast swatches of dune, crowding out whole worlds.

No hordes of sawzall toting folks, truckloads of concrete, or board feet of lumber can suffice; none can bring back thousands of lives long-ago wrenched.  So maybe more than repairing roofs, it’s attention that we’re fixing. On what we’d rather not see. Weeding like this might even be a certain type of reparation: pulling out what invaded, uprooting our givens. As the afternoon slumped on, we paused for salty breaths. Sand loosened, ground shifted under our feet, as will layers of history. C pulled a tuft and uncovered beach buckwheat (Eriogonum latifolium), a bona fide native surging back as the seascape changes. Coral-colored pompoms shook off confetti flowers, lifting across the mounds and sprinkling patties of elk dung, drying. They caught in a mat of velveteen leaves—Phacelia argenta found only on these beaches, in this stretch of county. From which bees collect silver hairs to line their ground nests, not to mention the dips and divots of hollowed warmth where western snowy plovers lay clutches of creamy eggs—oh little lovelies, flit close, flit closer, show us what we do not know.

Cate Lycurgus’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. A 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellowship Finalist, she has also received scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and was recently named one of Narrative’s 30 Under 30 Featured Writers. Cate lives south of San Francisco, California, where she conducts interviews for 32 Poems and teaches professional writing.

Photo by Flickr Creative Commons user throgers

[archangeltama]

Tolowa Dunes State Park Kellogg Loop trail, northern California had the biggest amanita mushrooms I’ve ever seen.

It’s a pleasant walk up a forestry road for a bit, before the trail detours off the road and around a wetland. There, in a grove of hemlock, was a shroom.

Over a foot and a half tall and a cap at least 8 inches wide, this mushroom was a monster. And then I noticed another, and another, just crowding this trail on each side, like 30 giant mushrooms.

I flipped my lid. They are were so shiny so red and so poisonous.

Returned with camera next week and they were all gone.

Amanita Muscaria VI por Vanessa RG

[sprntrco]

Stuck in the #sand. Looks like 70 psi ain’t cuttin it. I need a #4x4 #sprintervan (at Tolowa Dunes State Park)

[observabledifferences]

A wild porcupine has been spotted! #wildlife #nature #porcupine (at Tolowa Dunes State Park)

[goingrvway]

Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge - Illusive St. George Reef Lighthouse - Battery Point Lighthouse

After attending church at the Calvary Chapel of the Redwoods, just north of Crescent City, we to the coastline around Crescent City.  We tried the  Tolowa Dunes State Park, but when you park a large sand dune blocks your view of the ocean.  So I headed south into Crescent City, headed for Point St. George.  But first, we found a nice parking area along the way right in front of the Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge.  Pictured above is Castle Rock.  It looks lonely in the picture…but pictures can be deceiving. This island, and the surrounding rocks, are full of life.

The islands features allow it to host more than 100,000 breeding seabirds of 11 species, as well as provide haul out grounds for harbor seals, northern elephant seals, California sea lions, and Steller's sea lions. . We can hear the seals and sea lions, even though they are a half mile off shore along the 14 acres of the National Refuge.  If you click on the picture to the right, you can see more seals on the rock in the foreground, but look at the rock in the back…all those black dots are birds!  One of the birds I have never seen up close in the wild are the Puffins…and this island is full of them…but it is too far off shore to get a good picture with our camera…one would need a super duper zoom lens for that.  Frankly, Puffins might be in the picture…but again, might not.  The Refuge is home to many birds.

A mile north of the Refuge is Point St. George.  To the left is the living quarters of the men who manned the lighthouse, and if they had families, they lived there too.  St. George Reef Lighthouse was one of the least sought-after assignments in the service. Five keepers were typically attached to the station, and they worked in shifts of three months at the lighthouse followed by two months here with their families.  The lighthouse itself if six miles off shore…on a tiny rock island.  The lighthouse was built between 1887 and 1891, with the station’s twelve-inch steam whistle activated on December 1, 1891 and the lighthouse was finally lit for the first time on October 20, 1892.  Being six miles off shore, I could not get a clear picture of it…in fact, the mist was so thick I could hardly see it out there.  So in the picture to the right I have drawn a red arrow pointing to the lighthouse…that is the best I could do…a shadowy figure out there in the dense mist.  Oh, how would you have liked serving out there?  Or being one of the family members who stand up on the overlook of a large sand dune, covered in weeds, looking out trying to see where your loved one was working.

The above picture, taken by MKC Roger S. Wright and found at the Lighthousefriends.com website, shows the Coast Guard Cutter Blackhaw going out to service the lighthouse, probably between 1971-1990 when it was stationed in San Francisco.  (As a side note:  This ship was used in the movie The Hunt for Red October, depicting a Soviet icebreaker and its crew.)  This picture shows the large elliptical pier, which holds the engine room, coal room, 77,000-gallon cistern and the base of the lighthouse.  In large storms, waves would crash OVER this base, which is 70 feet above the ocean, and spray would hit the top of the lighthouse, “causing the tower to tremble and the men to fear for their lives.”  Who would ‘want’ to serve on this rock island?  No wonder it was “one of the least sought-after assignments. “  By the way, this lighthouse is the most expensive lighthouse ever built by the USA.  Costing $752,000…equivalent to $20 million today, and cost twice as much as its first estimates (seems they had construction overruns even back then!)

As I was atop a grassy sand dune, Marcia was below in the parking lot with a wild bunch of boondockers and other visitors.  Yes, it is a place one could overnight…would we?  Uh….no…not here.  So we drove back south to the Refuge area, and eventually further along Pebble Beach Drive, headed towards Battery Point.

I knew the moment Marcia took this picture that it was a great shot.  In the middle distance you can see a building…that is the Battery Point Lighthouse.  In the distance, the mist covered hills south of Crescent City.  To the right, the scenic coastline, and in the foreground, the limb of a tree and vegetation infested coastal land.  It really shows the majestic coast here at Crescent City.

A bit further down the road there was a turnout where I was able to position our motorhome for a shot with the lighthouse, which is to the left.  Across the street from the turnout is the Brother Jonathan Cemetery, dedicated to those who lost their lives in the wreck of the Pacific Mail Steamer Brother Johnathan at Point St. George's Reef, July 30, 1865.  The ship was carrying 244 passengers and crew, together with a large shipment of gold. Only 19 survived, making it the deadliest shipwreck up to that time on the Pacific Coast of the United States. The boat had faced bad weather from San Francisco all the way to Crescent City where it anchored on that fateful Sunday morning.  It continued on to Portland that afternoon, but the fierce weather and seas forced it back as it neared the Oregon border just 20 miles to the north.  As it neared Crescent City, it struck a rock in the reef of St. George.  Although there were enough lifeboats for everyone, only a single surfboat, holding eleven crew members, five women, and three children managed to escape the wreck and make it safely to Crescent City.  The loss of life in this wreck was a major factor in the building of the Lighthouse along the reef off of Point St. George.

There is a parking lot near Battery Point Lighthouse, one that would fit a 30’ RV or smaller…if it wasn’t already full of cars and RVs.  But we were able to get a good shot of the lighthouse as we drove through.  Congress authorized the building of the lighthouse in 1855, and in 1856 the lighthouse was lit and was active all the way through till 1965, then reactivated in 1982 as a navigational aid.  It survived the Tsunami of 1964 which was caused by the Great Alaska Earthquake. 

    As we left the Battery Point area this hot rod pulled out right in front of us.  With my brother-in-law Arny being such a Hot Rod Junky, we just ‘had’ to follow it.  Hope you enjoy the pics there Arny…I haven’t a clue what it is other than it looks good.  For us, it was another night at the Florence Keller County Park & Campground, even got that great pull through that we had on Friday night.  New batteries worked GREAT, we were able to have the floor’s isle lights on all night and still had a 12.5 charge on the batteries.  But off to Oregon to turn in the old batteries, and find us another park to stay in.

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[patbertram]

Journey to the Center of the Universe

Journey to the Center of the Universe

Yontocket is the center of the universe, according to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ people, the place where the Master of the Universe created the first people. This area is now the Tolowa Dunes State Park, a place of dunes, forest, and sea.

Invasive beach grasses were planted by settlers to keep the shifting sands at a standstill. Those grasses crowded out native vegetation, so much of the area no longer…

[thorsenmark]

Wide Open Spaces in Tolowa Dunes State Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the north while walking along the Pacific Ocean coastline in Tolowa Dunes State Park. The overcast skies and off and on drizzle helped to create what I felt was a minimalist feel to the image captured.

[thorsenmark]

A Sunday Vacation Along the Shores of the Pacific Ocean in Tolowa Dunes State Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the north while walking along the Pacific Ocean coastline in Tolowa Dunes State Park. The overcast skies and off and on drizzle helped to create what I felt was a minimalist feel to the image captured.

[thorsenmark]

Taking in the Sight of a Pacific Coastline at Tolowa Dunes State Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the California coastline with a view looking to the south at a pod of California brown pelicans flying my direction as I walked along the main beach area in Tolowa Dunes State Park.

[thorsenmark]

Waves Keep Rushing to the Shore by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the south while walking along the Pacific Ocean coastline in Tolowa Dunes State Park. The overcast skies and off and on drizzle helped to create what I felt was a minimalist feel to the image captured.

[thorsenmark]

In Flight Over the Waters of the Pacific Ocean at Tolowa Dunes State Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the west while taking in views of a pod of California brown pelicans in flight at Tolowa Dunes State Park. My thinking in composing this image was to zoom in with the focal length to include only this one portion of the birds. The rest was the matter of attempting to line up the ocean and overcast skies to kind of sort of blend in as a backdrop and minimize that while focusing on the birds.

[thorsenmark]

Spending Sunday Morning and Watching Pelicans Fly by Along the Pacific Coastline by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the California coastline with a view looking to the north at a pod of California brown pelicans flying by as I walked along the main beach area in Tolowa Dunes State Park.

[thorsenmark]

Pelicans in Flight by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the California coastline with a view looking to the west at a pod of California brown pelicans flying by as I walked along the main beach area in Tolowa Dunes State Park.

[thorsenmark]

A Lone California Brown Pelican in Flight by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the west while walking along the Pacific Ocean coastline in Tolowa Dunes State Park. The view is looking at one California brown pelican in flight to my front.