Meadows in the Sierra Nevada tend to occur along low-gradient geologic benches at elevations from 1,500 to 3,000 m where they can be recharged annually by snowmelt. There, water can slow, spread, and infiltrate into spongy, organic soils, and a high groundwater table can persist late into the dry season. These conditions support vegetation that is predominantly herbaceous plants, including sedges, other graminoids, and forbs, but also woody plants such as willows that can tolerate low-oxygen soils. The result is a habitat that is valuable out of proportion to its size. In the absence of degradation, wet meadows improve a catchment’s water quality and predictability by attenuating and dispersing flood flows, filtering water through hyporheic exchange, and retaining sediment. They store carbon, create natural fire breaks, and support a diversity of wildlife; great grey owls, for instance, rely on wet meadows in the Sierra Nevada for vole prey.

The Google Earth - QGIS - Google Earth loop for trail design can be time consuming and may not find the ideal route. Draw a route, export it, calculate grades based on LiDAR elevations, find out half the segments are too steep, go back, redraw, re-export. Repeat.

I shoot a lot of macro and nature photography, and I’m terrible at organizing it afterward. My photo library was a mess. Half the folders were named by theme (“mushrooms”, “insects”), half by event (“Alaska”, “Long Tulsa Visit”), and a couple were just labeled “Random” and “Temp.” A mushroom photo from a vacation shouldn’t have to pick one category. I couldn’t remember if the Temp photos had been transferred already or not. A hot mess.

Arcata has a climate that confuses people. It doesn’t snow, it rarely gets hot, and January looks about the same as July on a thermometer. The precipitation is a different story. Nearly all of it falls between October and April, and the summers are dry enough to make you forget it rains at all.

The world is insane and my prescription for making it less insane is goats. Here’s a map showing where one might go to surround themselves with goats. There are 34 counties in the US with more goats than people.