Five counties, a tumble, a hike, and a pair of long-sought lizards….
Inspired by Inaturalist and the proliferation of enthusiastic county birders, several years ago I decided to try and photodocument 250 species in each of California’s 58 counties. This pursuit has led me to places I never expected and pushed my interests and identification skills far beyond what I was focusing on before. Because of this project I’ve been impressed by the surprising botanical similarities and differences between central California’s coast ranges and the foothills of the Sierra. I’ve come to appreciate the weird, disjunct populations of typically Mojave species in parts of San Benito County’s Panoche Valley and have struggled through the identification of marine alga.
For my wife’s birthday we decided in June to backpack Humboldt County’s Lost Coast Trail. This trail is just under thirty miles long and runs from the Matolle River to Shelter Cove and much of it requires walking on soft beach sand or long stretches of unstable cobbles. Additionally, there are several stretches, each between three and five miles long, that are completely impassable at high tide as the waves crash against the seaside cliffs. The first day out I was thrilled to take pictures of dune wildflowers and saw a decent-sized haul out of Northern Elephant Seals. On the offshore rocks were Steller’s Sea Lions and over the four days of backpacking, at least five North American River Otters were observed in the tidepools, sunning on the cobbles, or swimming through the surf.
As anyone who knows me can testify, I have gazelle-like grace and balance. Admittedly, it is the grace and balance of a bumbling, easily distracted, drunken gazelle carrying a lopsided 45 lb. backpack. While crossing one of the first of many slippery, cobble-filled streams I took a tumble and bashed my camera on the rocks in the shallow creek. Water got into the camera and disengaged all the rings on the lens. Fortunately, the lens itself wasn’t cracked and after about 15 minutes of fiddling and coaxing and foul language I was able to get the lens working again. The camera itself was another matter. It wouldn’t allow me to change any of the settings or it would start scrolling through settings on its own. Sometimes it would allow me to erase pictures, other times it wouldn’t. Sometimes the autofocus would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. Still, I had a camera that while persnickety and damp, still worked well enough that I was able to add several lifers and quite a few new species to my Humboldt list. I was also able to take pictures of some of the most beautiful, isolated stretches of coastline I had ever seen. At times, we were the only people visible along miles of empty beach. We hiked along grassy, coastal bluffs and stepped over scattered whale bones while carefully traversing high piled plateaus of surf-round cobbles. We completed this portion of the trip over four days and three nights with plenty of time for lounging and exploring.
Next up, Fort Bragg and more Joshua Trees….
