Redwoods and alders on Big River
Last weekend my buddy Al and I found ourselves in a Lewis-and-Clark drill, our obstacles posed by a forest that had existed a hundred million years before humans appeared on the scene to challenge it with their puny kayaks.
We had joined old friends of Al’s from his Mendocino days, Don and wife Petra, and were paddling the Big River, putting in 10 miles upstream of its joining Mendocino Bay at the coast. Nestled in a Coastal redwood forest, the north fork of the river here was relatively shallow and narrow, and the swift spring-swollen waters shoved us into Red alder thickets at each of the many bends in the stream, the trees eagerly reaching out to the sunshine mid-stream. Read More