This tree is in Humboldt County – barely. This sign at the lower right is the Humboldt County boundary – sorry that it’s a bit blurry.
Humboldt County, California, is one of my favorite third-order administrative divisions. It is, after all, where I was born and spent my childhood. But only a geography nerd like me would conceptualize it as a “favorite third-order administrative division.”
There’s an anecdote about this boundary sign, and Arthur’s role in my childhood. Arthur and I were traveling somewhere. I was around 12 or 13 years old I think. We were driving somewhere, a long road-trip in his 64 Ford Falcon that was his main car for several decades. I don’t remember exactly where we were going. It was late at night, and I needed to pee, so as one does when traveling rural highways, we just pulled over and I peed beside the road. It just happened that we’d stopped by the sign at the Humboldt County line. Later, I realized that I’d lost a shoe. It was obvious to both of us that my shoe, which I’d not been wearing, had fallen out when we’d stopped, somehow. So several days or weeks later (I don’t recall exactly), we were headed back home. I’d completely forgotten about the lost shoe. Arthur stopped abruptly and circled around, so we were pointed the same direction as we’d been traveling before. He stopped the car on the gravel by the roadside. “Open your door,” he said. I was puzzled – I really had forgotten about the shoe. I opened the door. “Get your shoe,” he said. Sure enough, sitting on the ground below the door was my shoe. He’d managed to park the car in exactly the same position he had done last time. He truly had a phenomenal spatial memory, “back in the day.”
I drove up from Eureka back to Forest Grove, today. I stopped in Arcata and took a walk around the town, and talked to Peggy and Latif, who are close friends of the family and who live in the house that I grew up in. Many things changed… many things the same. It’s good to revisit old places.
[daily log: walking, 5km; driving, alot more]