The End Of KRECR And An Unrelated Picture

Here's another view of the Bald Hills, just because it's such a beautiful place. It's unrelated to the rest of the post.

Today was a beautiful fall day. We hiked out to the ocean through the Tolowa Dunes, just one of several amazing ecosystems that surround us. We passed by many different mushrooms on the trail, and way too many of the yellow banana slugs that call this place home, too.

Once we got to the beach, we watched the waves, picked out beautiful rocks and driftwood, got kisses from a dog there with other people, and left as the fog reached back onto the land.

On the hike back to the trail head, we realized that it's almost exactly a year since Michael came back to Del Norte from Pennsylvania. Darcy and I moved back two months earlier, but Michael needed to finish up some work at Delaware Water Gap before coming back to Redwood. In the last year, we have settled back into our community here almost as if we'd never left.

When we left Del Norte for Pennsylvania, the last place we stopped was Darcy's school, the Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods, known as KRECR (pronounced krecker -- with a short 'e'). We had asked Darcy if she wanted to see our empty house or just remember it as we lived there and she chose not to see it empty. So she went to school like any other day and we picked her up in the afternoon and drove out of town with very heavy hearts.

Her classmates and after-school friends had loaded her down with gifts -- unexpected things I needed to find space for during our long drive across the country. She also had a pea shoot to try to keep alive on that drive. (You can see it in a Pennsylvania hotel here.)

Darcy started back at KRECR just three days after flying back from Pennsylvania last year. She had a great year. 

She went back again this year. We had high hopes despite a staff change over, decreased enrollment, and other issues, but KRECR was facing serious hurdles. After weeks of late night discussions, we moved Darcy to a new school this week. It was a difficult decision, one we didn't make lightly, and one that created a lot of sadness and guilt in our family. We wanted to support the school. We tried to hold on during a difficult transition. In the end, we just couldn't let Darcy watch her school fall apart around her any more.

For most of this week, I had put away the sadness. My last three minute encounter at KRECR on Darcy's last day had made me so angry that I hardened my heart to the school's troubles and moved on with my life. The anger was justified, but the cause isn't important now.

Yesterday, KRECR announced that it will close after December 19th. There are simply not enough students left to maintain the school. At first, even hearing this, knowing that a dear friend's heart would be breaking with this news, I couldn't feel sad about it because of those last three minutes.

But truly, KRECR is bigger than my last encounter and it's bigger and better than this shortened school year. It was started with love to bring an alternative to this community, one focused on place and culture. It's goals were to help every child thrive at their own pace, to instill a dream of college in a community where that is so often not the dream, to use restorative justice to resolve conflicts in a more meaningful way than suspensions and expulsions allow, and to create a school that honored this place and the people who have lived here since time immemorial.

We gained two new school board members in this week's election. Neither of them, based on the non-partisan debate I attended, seem likely to support the kind of learning environment we valued at KRECR. It would be nice to think that we could bring some of what we loved about our school to the larger school district. In very small ways, maybe we can. But a larger overhaul of the system will require that all parents stand up and demand change and put tremendous pressure on the school board. 

Darcy was elected last month to be KRECR's school historian. Now that it is closing, it is up to all of us who loved the school to make sure its legacy is not judged by its last few months.

Ah, Christmas On The North Coast

Four years ago, when we moved to Crescent City in the fall (for the first time), we stayed here for Christmas and spent Christmas day on the beach. Darcy still had curls (I miss them!!) and she played with a stick on the beach:



So today we made it into a tradition: Every time we move to Crescent City in the fall, we're going to spend Christmas day on the beach and take a picture of Darcy with a driftwood stick:

Yes, it was warm enough to be barefoot on the beach. I didn't even bother to bring shoes at all. She's taller, her hair is straighter, but she is still our beach-loving girl. With an afternoon visit with friends, she got her feet in both the Pacific AND the Smith River for Christmas. Life is pretty darn good.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you are making great family traditions, too.

Brrrrrrrrrrr!

It's been unusually cold here on the far North Coast. As you can see, we've had very hard frosts the last three or four days and they are claiming that we might actually get accumulations of SNOW tonight. IN TOWN. On the coast of the great and mighty Pacific Ocean.

I think this has caused some problems here and there. This water-whatever-it-is shares a campus with Darcy's school and there was a worried looking plumbing person looking at it this afternoon when I arrived to pick her up.

Luckily for us, this weather did not arrive until after our Thanksgiving guests had come and gone. The nights were chilly, but the days warmed up nicely. This allowed Darcy to introduce her cousin to some of her favorite things:

Playing on the beach

Finding tide pool creatures (in this case, a BIG sun star)

Sunset

Moving across the country and back again in just over a year was never our choice of how life would go. But here are a couple reasons we did the "back again":

These pictures represent more than a gorgeous sunset on the beach. Darcy and Michael could go to the beach easily to enjoy that sunset because of our amazing social network here. When living with our friends became detrimental to Darcy's sleeping needs a month after we moved here, other friends offered their "one and a half bedroom" guest house for more or less as long as we needed it. The guest house is separated from this beach by one house and one road. So Darcy and Michael walked down the driveway, across the street, and there they were, on this unbelievably beautiful stretch of the Pacific coastline.

From Reading To Stage!

A couple years ago, Michael and I helped our friend Ruthe by joining other friends to read her fantastic play, This is Crescent City, out loud for the first time. It got some edits out of that reading, a few more suggestions from my helpful cousin Seth, tons more work and sweat and thought from Ruthe, and last night, it premiered on the stage with the Lighthouse Repertory Theater!

The play is about our town's history and present, and what makes people choose to stay here. Our local newspaper has given it good coverage and with luck, that will be just the beginning of the conversations this play will inspire.

We'll be seeing it next weekend and babysitting so other friends can go see it this weekend. If you're nearby, you should choose a performance and GO. 

(And if you were admiring the poster, that's good. It's Michael's handiwork! Ain't he great?)

Rainy Places Should Have Something Like This

This is a very purposeful blog post. At the north end of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (our current park) is the town of Milford, PA. There's a place there called Have a Hoot Family Fun Center and the times we've taken Darcy there, I am always overwhelmed by how much a place like Crescent City needs one of these. So I took a lot of pictures to show this point.

There are many elements at Have a Hoot. I spent one visit searching out manufacturers tags on some of them because, well, they're awesome. Most come from a company called Prime Play and, in fact, Have a Hoot is the featured photo on their Family Fun Center page. It's a better picture than any of mine for showing the overall set-up and a raised view of the high ropes course. But here's Darcy on the ropes course, too:

And a picture showing a few more of the high ropes elements from the ground:

There's a climbing wall in one corner that can be seen clearly in the linked picture, and then, on three walls of the building, is a multi-story human habitrail of fun. (If you don't know what a habitrail is, check one out here.) It's hard to show how completely amazing this is (I don't even have a picture of the trampoline part, for example), but here are some images:

Fun!! There's also a laser tag area (seen in the last picture; the top of it has more habitrail (or Ballocity, as it's properly called, I believe) and lots of arcade games, although they're definitely secondary attractions. Overall, it's an amazing, active, indoor play space that is even affordable! I think it's six dollars for a two hour session. This place also has a concession stand and a party area, so a lot of people have kids' birthdays here. For a place as rainy as the North Coast, it would make a world of difference!

Darcy Jo Love

Our girl is an amazing person. We are her parents, so we would believe that no matter what. One of the things that has constantly amazed and touched me deeply is that so many other people believe that, too, and are quick to tell us and show her. She is truly loved by a measurable percentage of Crescent City's population. I say this not to brag about my girl (although I'm not adverse to doing so). I say this because I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of love showered on our Darcy Jo in the past weeks.

Michael said lovely words at our last dinner with friends on Thursday night. He claimed that he understands why people want to be friends with me, but is often surprised that people are genuinely and equally fond of him and his company. I think both of us could say that about Darcy. I sometimes think that our family is welcomed into society because everyone loves Darcy. We are merely her transportation staff.

Darcy's last day of school just confirms this view for me. After a wonderful evening with a dozen or so close friends and a night spent in the home of the ever-generous, gracious, and much-beloved Leonard-Rhodes clan (our house was empty), Darcy did early-morning yoga with our hostess and we all ate huckleberry pancakes (one last gift from our garden/yard). Then off to school, somewhat coincidentally in the same outfit that started this school year:

Her teachers and class showered her with gifts (which I have to find proper stowage for in the trunk this morning) and hugs. Our good friends at Vita Cucina shared their own daughter's birthday glory by providing cupcakes to the whole Cohort A that were for both B's birthday and Darcy's departure. More gifts followed from her after-school contingent, who has posed for a group picture earlier in the week that was framed and gifted yesterday.

Darcy's fans (well, one fan anyway) even met us at the school when we went to pick her up to be sure he could say a proper good-bye:

We have extended our fictive-kin family while in Crescent City: there is no doubt about that. Darcy will forever have extra honorary aunts, uncles, and siblings on the North Coast.

One of her friends went the extra mile, however. The beautiful elder Miss W was sporting a homemade shirt expressing her sentiment for the day:

And this proves my point. We all got bone-crushing hugs from Miss W. I personally got four, all of them long-lasting. But only Darcy Jo got the t-shirt.

Oh, how we will miss you, our Crescent City friends. Never doubt that. You will be welcome in our home always, no matter what national park is outside our doorstep at the time.

Step One

It's a small step, but we have said our farewells to friends and places in Crescent City. Our stuff is on a moving truck (or in our car in Oregon or our pickup in Wyoming). We are in Ashland with a zonked-out Darcy and two parents very close to joining her in dreamland.

Some highlights of the day:

Watching the truck drive away from the house

Eating a last lunch from Vita Cucina

Being surrounded by good wishes from good people

Seeing Darcy Jo showered by gifts and hugs and love from her school mates

Going to the Medford Trader Joe's on its Grand Opening: that's right -- they opened the day we are leaving

A last drive along Crescent City's beautiful coast

One more drive through the redwoods on Howland Hill Road

Almost three years ago to the day (I think we arrived on October 18th and we've left on the 19th) that we first came here, we repeated some of our first stops. It has been a tremendous three years and this place has shaped who our child will be in many ways.

Tomorrow: Lake Tahoe and the kokanee salmon!

Time Speeds Up

We are down to days now.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, everything that's going in our pickup has to be in it. Uniforms, bike, a few kitchen things, my gift box of spice mixes, box of files, golf clubs, gas cans, propane tank, extra Darcy comfort items, heavy winter gear...all destined to travel by Tacoma. We're handing it over to a friend who will drive it partway across the country for us because driving two vehicles 3200 miles and trying to meet up for meals, hikes, and stretch breaks just doesn't sound like fun. We'll meet up with friend, truck, and stuff somewhere near the Ohio border and drive just the last day or two separately.

Thursday morning, anything that the movers aren't packing either has to be out of the house or labeled very, very clearly as DO NOT MOVE because our experience tells us that anything not nailed down will be packed. Quickly and efficiently packed, with no time to notice that one thing we'd planned to carry with us disappearing into a box.

Friday, we will leave. We are not ambitious about that afternoon of driving. Darcy will go to school, but probably not the after-school program. The plan is to stay in Ashland, OR, just 2.5 hours away.

It's crunch time. Here are a few random pictures for you to enjoy.

 Darcy and her friend K at the end of Camp Tall Trees Girl Scout camp.

A beautiful late-June day in Del Norte. Rock slide in pouring rain at False Klamath Cove.

Darcy and T at Big Dune.

View from a fire tower near Willow Creek.

Rangers point. (At Ballard Locks.)

Library envy in Eugene, OR, after a successful banh mi hunt.

In Which I Hold An OCTOPUS!!

Yes. You read that right. I held an itty-bitty, adorable OCTOPUS:

I've been watching the tides for the last couple weeks, hoping for a good opportunity for one last round of tide pooling before we leave our gorgeous North Coast. Today, there was a minus tide (meaning that the low tide is below the average low water line) at a reasonable hour (5:35 pm). Often, minus tides are at unreasonable hours like three in the morning. I love to stalk the tide pool creatures, but not by flashlight in the middle of the night. It seems rude.

So we went. Darcy left a birthday party before it was over and we arrived at Point St. George about an hour before the full low and started seeing sea stars and giant green anemones almost immediately. We were already having a good time when I saw something shiny move in some gravelly sand just in front of me. I stooped to get a closer look and saw that it was an OCTOPUS. I'm just a little excited about this. I got to hold an OCTOPUS.

I put my finger near it and it grabbed right on. We had a ziplock bag with us to watch things close up, so we got some water and put the octopus in it for a minute or two before returning it to a tide pool. Once it let go of the bag and swam off, we could see the puffs of sand from the water it shoots out to propel itself. It was unbelievably adorable. Since we didn't get a great picture, here's a picture of what I think I held, a baby Giant Pacific Octopus.

When John and Stef visiting us a little while ago (read about their North Coast adventures here), Darcy convinced them to try going tide pooling even though it was almost high tide. They played along and didn't get to see much. Here are some pictures of what they should have gotten to see:

Top photo has ochre stars and giant green anemones, among other things, on an isolated rock and pool teeming with life. The bottom photo is a rock half-covered with aggregating anemones. They're closed up and a bit sand-covered, but amazing. Here's another view:

The shore birds were in abundance, too. We saw gulls, some small plovers, pelicans, oyster catchers, and another that we haven't positively identified yet. It was wonderful. Here's Darcy with the leather sea star (she learned at marine camp that if you sniff their underside, it smells like garlic, so she always checks them out):

And then another isolated rock. We had a wonderful time. Beautiful low tide, wonderful creatures, a good view of Point St. George lighthouse, and, because it can't be said enough, I held an octopus.

The Murals Of Crescent City

Bad blogger! Without the pressure of the actual NaBloPoMo behind me, I managed to skip yesterday's post. It was a long day and the move is so fast approaching at this point, that the stress is building a bit. But I'm trying to make up for it today with a few highlights of our beautiful murals. 

Crescent City is very lucky to have an active mural society that creates at least one new mural in town every year. (You can see more murals at that link, by the way.) Some of them are painted and others are made of tiles in a stained-glass style. It's pretty awesome, in such a small town, to have such a wealth of gorgeous murals in public spaces all over town. 

Our municipal pool has several murals. Two beautiful tile murals outside:

I love the detail in these pictures, especially the reflections of the boats in the water. Just to give you a sense of the size of these murals, here's a picture of the enormous building they grace:

Inside, the pool is also decorated with two more tile murals in the lobby and one enormous painted mural alongside the pool:

That's our beautiful lighthouse in detail. It's getting too late at night to try to stitch pictures together to give you a single view of the massive pool mural, so here it is in a few pieces:

I took all these while Darcy was taking her swimming lesson. She really loves them and is so close to passing her first level. Luckily, our pool is close to downtown, so even with only a half-hour lesson to work with, I also walked over to one of my favorite painted murals in town. The mural society occasionally does a mural-in-a-day project (which blows my mind). The artist creates the piece and (I think) sketches it on the wall before bringing in volunteers to paint under supervision to get it done in a day. This amazes me, especially when they create something like this:

This commemorates the 1964 tsunami that destroyed most of downtown Crescent City. Just above the small plaque on the right lower corner is a line that marks the high water line on this building. Just below the plaque are the painted names of the volunteers who helped create the mural.

Nearby Pleasures

Crescent City and surrounds have lots to offer, but we do go further afield at times. One of my favorite places to look for wildflowers in the spring and early summer is a trail along the Rough and Ready River near Cave Junction, Oregon. We stop there occasionally on our way to Grants Pass, Medford, and other parts of Oregon on I-5.

Here are a few pictures of this year's blooms:

The other plant-of-interest at the Rough and Ready are a handful of Ponderosa pines. We learned last year during our first trip to Bend that Ponderosa pines smell nothing like what you'd (or I'd) expect a pine to smell like. They smell something like the intersection of vanilla, dried orange peel, cinnamon, and something else. If you ever find yourself near a sun-warmed Ponderosa, act like Darcy and stick your nose in a crack in the bark to sniff deeply: