Moldy Old Humboldt Has Grown On Me
After my initial excitement at my arrival in Arcata, I grew to loathe this place, infested with hypocritical hippies, with drizzle droning on for days on end without any thunder or lightning for punctuation, gray as a ghost, unrelenting in its squelching of the sun. The Wife had reservations about moving here, and hated it from the beginning. I came here to earn my degree and get on with my life, and earlier this year, when it snowed at sea level 20 minutes before my spring break in coastal California commenced, the latter goal nearly trumped the former.
But days like yesterday, like a leak in the roof of my psyche, have dripped and dripped over the years, pooling unnoticed in a forgotten corner until I could no longer ignore them. And growing from this imperceptible leak, a fungus has run its hyphae deep in my brain; yes, moldy old Humboldt has grown on me.
Yesterday, yet another dull, drizzly December day, didn’t hold a ton of promise. The forecast suggested that the unseasonably cold and clear break in the storms would hold one last day, and I planned to take advantage of a rare, responsibility-free day by making some grand day trip to some far-flung, unexplored corner of the county (I can’t just escape for a day; Humboldt County covers more land area than three Rhode Islands, and I don’t live near a county line). Furthermore, I got off to a late start, ruling out my usual all-day getaways in the national and state parks about an hour’s drive away. I doubted that anything closer to home would satisfy my wanderlust, and that lingering loathing started to take hold again.
Determined to salvage my day, I donned my raingear and set out for Trinidad Head, the most massive of myriad blocks of remnant oceanic crust strung out like hulking pearls along our local shores. A short trail loops around the Head, and while I’d hoped for something both extensive and novel, it would have to do under the circumstances.
I couldn’t have intelligently designed myself a better afternoon. A storm swirling out to sea set a smashing soundtrack of sizeable swells as I ascended the Head. Pelicans plied the waves, months after I’d given them up for their winter homes in the Channel Islands. I arrived at the craggy nose of the Head with a broad grin across my face, anticipating aloneness with awesomeness. Instead, I shared the best view of the day with (at least) two milling, miniature mice, so immersed in maintaining their metabolisms that they never bothered to hide from my camera. Posted on a bench, a woman's haiku to her lover reminded me of how happy I felt so not alone, whether on the Head, in Humboldt, or in life. Where my camera’s batteries or fading daylight had always failed me before, I finally succeeded in capturing the lighthouse and harbor on (digital) film. I topped off my awesome afternoon ambling among the anemone-encrusted tidepools under the pier; I even found a feisty, one-clawed porcelain crab.
Better employment prospects could lure me away as soon as this summer, and before then, another awful spring could have me cursing this county once again, but I know now that if we do not settle down here, I will remember this place fondly and return regularly.
May your homes make the remainder of your year merry, and treat you well in the years to come.
Ω