First Encounters
When European explorers and naturalists began coming to California a few centuries ago, most sailed right past the fog-shrouded Golden Gate. But those few who did stop here, including the...
Science and Nature
Update: Steelhead on Alameda Creek
2005 “By the Water’s Edge: A Chronicle of Two Creeks” Our January-March 2005 issue highlighted the riparian habitats of the East Bay’s Alameda Creek watershed. Recently, the Alameda Creek Alliance...
West Marin
Driving out to the coast among the seemingly endless ranks of Marin County hills, studded with rock outcrops and spotted with grazing cows, you can feel the calmness that flows...
Vasco Regional Preserve Open for Public Tours
At Vasco Regional Preserve, stone balls the size of dinosaur eggs litter the landscape, the winds burrow into stone, and cup-sized pools tucked into sandstone outcrops teem with fairies (of...
Stone-Boiled Coffee and Other Old Ways
We all have moments on hikes when we dream of being able to live directly off the land, plants, and animals around us. Norm Kidder, the recently retired supervising naturalist...
Wild Gardens
A visit to remnant native grasslands in Richmond or diverse oak woodlands in eastern Alameda County gives a taste of our region’s native habitats. But few of us are aware...
Eastshore Park, Two Decades in the Making
Eastshore State Park, an 8.5-mile-long ribbon of East Bay shoreline between the Bay Bridge and Richmond’s Marina Bay, is proof that many good things don’t come easily. The park is...
New Life For The Laguna
Thirty years ago, few people gave a second thought to the Laguna de Santa Rosa, the North Coast’s largest freshwater wetland. The once-teeming marshland had become a dumping ground. But...
A Landscape Renewed by Fire
Enter the woods on Inverness Ridge and pause for a moment to listen. Natural history weaves itself into stories for those willing to hear—whether teased from the patterns in stone,...
Fire on the Ridge
On a clear January day in 2005, I took a walk up from my house on the east slope of Inverness Ridge to the trail that runs south from Mount...
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