In the 1970s, young journeyers from urban and suburban America seeking to reinvent themselves in rural environs began moving to Mendocino County digging in and working to gain the skills they would need to thrive in this new home. They built lives and raised families. Eventually, of course, this phenomenon became known as the Back to the Land Movement. Roughly speaking we are now at the 50th anniversary of the beginning of that wave.
Posts published in “Essays”
You certainly don’t need me telling you that the past three years of these prodigiously destructive wildfires are unprecedented chapters in California history. The last week has seen a series of one ominous event after…
Here, along the Albion River, we are getting some much needed rain. A hard rain often sends our cattle uphill. Unfortunately, some of the current herd don't have sense enough to stay close to the…
A Humbolt County staff report states that sea level rise is “a significant threat to every aspect of life on the North Coast” but opinions on how to react to it are divided. Based on…
When I left prison, back in early May of this year, I never looked back. Literally, not turning around to give that misbegotten hellhole one more second of my attention, and figuratively, casting the memories…
K.C. Meadows has been the Editor of the Ukiah Daily Journal since 1997. She talks about growing up in New York, how she landed with her husband in Mendocino County, opines about Donald Trump and…
As I write this the death count in the Butte County Camp Fire stands at 64 but is climbing. Just 24 hours after the conflagration started, heavy smoke had already drifted to the North Coast…
It’s getting to be that time of the year in northern California when some of us, often called “spiritual sluts,” celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza and Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, which I enjoyed in Hanoi for the first…
During fire season, I always think about Mike Davis, author of one of the most — pardon the pun — incendiary essays in the annals of SoCal letters: “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” I…