Life + Outdoors, The North Coast Journal Weekly

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-november-7-2024-31337438

Looking up and around during the day, it's easy to understand why the ancients believed that we live under a great dome of sky. Extrapolating to the night sky with the stars apparently rotating ...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/cosmic-distances-31337122

As I write this in the limbo of Election Day, I know I'm not the only person who's gone through the past week or longer feeling off. This day has loomed on the horizon, growing as it neared, and...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/through-the-electoral-fog-31337096

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-october-31-2024-31277930

My neighbors were having another loud argument. This time she was chanting "vagina" in his face, and he was chanting "penis" at her. I didn't understand their logic, but the dispute reminded me ...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/salp-cycle-31277923

As days get shorter, I get more eager to spend time outdoors. In September, I hiked in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park on the James Irvine Trail to Fern Canyon and back via Gold Bluffs Road an...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/fall-in-the-redwoods-31277190

"Some Neanderthal populations died out, some got massacred, some interacted and some only exchanged ideas." — Sang-Hee Lee, biological anthropologist at the University of California. What cau...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/our-late-neanderthal-cousins-31219081

The fifth annual Humboldt Bay Witches Paddle on Oct. 19 attracted a record number of witches to Humboldt Bay on stand-up paddleboards, in kayaks and even on an e-hydrofoil board for a warm, sunn...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/water-witches-ride-again-31219070

Pro-tips for haunted house fun If the sun is still up and shining incongruously over the 8-foot-tall skeletons atop the entrance to the Humboldt County Fairgrounds — done up for its seasonal s...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/how-to-be-scared-31163419

"A physicist's speculations do not morph, as if by cosmological alchemy or professional courtesy, from metaphysics into established physics." — Robert Lawrence Kuhn, host of PBS' Closer to Tru...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/plenty-o-nuttin-31101334

I've been a pretty casual birder all my life. I do a little birding every day and often take photos, but seldom range far afield. Sometimes I chase local rarities if they're easy to get to; I'd ...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/temporary-insanity-31101321

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-october-3-2024-31037759

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/september-26-2024-30973180

"Our brains evolved to prioritize togetherness, and conversely to generate an anxiety response when we failed to find it." — Matthew Shaer, The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 1, 2024 Two yea...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/the-cost-of-loneliness-30973176

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-september-19-2024-30909160

I was working in our winter vegetable garden not long ago, when l heard a deep thumping coming from one of the dead red alders nearby. I scanned the tree but did not see a woodpecker; the sound ...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/the-beating-heart-of-a-dead-tree-30909153

On recent a sweltering afternoon, I was fortunate enough to get a personal tour of Los Angeles City Hall. Accompanying me was my new intern who had just been released after eight years of incarc...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/david-three-years-out-30909118

As the prime garden season winds down, you might think you wouldn't have to deal with pests in the garden. You would be wrong. Especially after that unexpected rainfall we had a few weeks ago. D...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/the-pests-of-fall-30909109

"The brain is a 3-pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe 100 billion light-years across." Marian Diamond, neuroscientist In 2021, a peer-reviewed scientific study m...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/the-not-so-incredible-shrinking-brain-30843797

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-september-5-2024-30782054

I was bitten by a radioactive rat, which gave me the superpower of transforming myself from a 225-pound man into 225 1-pound rats. I'm not interested in fighting evil or rescuing people from dan...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/olive-snail-fail-30782051

Participants in the 12th annual Ladies Hat Day at the Races event on Saturday offered some glamour and wild creativity in front of the recently repaired (from earthquake damage) horse-track gran...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/ladies-throw-their-hats-in-30781700

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/puzzles-august-29-2024-30717918

When I asked self-styled "museum artist" Beth Zaiken if I could use her evocative painting of a mammoth for a story, she was quick to point out that the image I attached was not just a mammoth, ...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/woolly-mammoths-the-ladys-not-for-cloning-30717511

Whether you're new to birding or have been around the mudflats a few times, navigating the unspoken nuances of birding etiquette is probably something you've had to learn on the wing. If only th...

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/life-outdoors/ask-miss-birding-manners-30658843