Notebook 6: Rain. Start of October

Water has been falling from the sky again. It may not fit Humboldt County's standards of rain, but it's good enough for me. It started as fitful showers of the sort you can escape by waiting half an hour or driving half a mile, but as the fall chill snuck into the air, the storm clouds responded by growing bigger, darker, and more tenacious. The results have been nearly a week of soft and steady rain broken by the occasional squall and few stretches of patchy sun to dry the world out again. During a particularly percussive afternoon downpour, I finally got to bust out my nice new impermeable raincoat only to discover that it was about fifteen degrees too warm to be wearing that much nylon. Eventually I just had to accept that it was OK for my hair to get a little wet.

So far the biggest change to occur at my site is that everywhere that had been dry packed earth is now clammy clayish mud that coats the bottoms of my shoes the instant I step off the asphalt. Meanwhile, the water droplets clinging to each blade of grass have had a similar effect on my shoes and pant legs. As for the spots that were already a bit muddy, they have turned into little puddles of cloudy water an inch or three deep. Fortunately though, I can reasonably postpone my plans to buy waterproof shoes. The ground has been so thirsty because of the drought that a single sunny day is enough to wick the dew off the grass and turn the ground solid again. At least that's what happens where the sun is shining.

The North Coast region has a lot of natural features that conspire to keep the ground nice and clammy. The first is the cool coast air which brings not only the rain, but also the famous fog. Lately, I've gone out most mornings amid vast banks of fluffy whiteness that limit the horizon to fifty yards or so, transform the airport lights into huge celestial orbs, and make the drive through the lowlands between McKinleyville and Arcata feel like plowing through soup. By ten AM or so the fog has pretty much dispersed, but the moisture still lingers in the air until some time in the mid afternoon. The other reason Humboldt gets so damp is, of course, that it's home to the tallest trees in the world. Now, there aren't any coast redwoods near my airport site (or at least not any big enough to be immediately identifiable as such), but there are many other big trees to provide cool, shady places for water to pool and moss to grow. Linger in these spaces, and it becomes easy to forget that summer only recently ended

Some of the trees, like the enormous alder tree in my backyard, are imported and planted by people, but many of the trees at the airport site are native and appear to be too old to have been planted since the 1940s, when the airport was established. This leads me to believe they are a remnant of the forest that was cleared to build the airport. Less than a mile from the my site is a largely intact swathe of evergreen forest that stretches for miles. Perhaps the trees still remember.