I had a very nice trip to northern California just before Christmas to see a
couple of my shipmates and some other friends 'behind the Redwood Curtain" in
Arcata. Beach combing between Arcata and Crescent City around the Humboldt
Lagoons was quite interesting ... didn't find any really special rocks but some
of the pieces of sculpted Redwood driftwood, centuries in the making between
the forest, the trip down the streams, and sloshing around in the ocean and
further sculpted and polished on the beaches made for some quite remarkable and
irresistible collectibles. Now that they are back home here, I'm not sure what
I might do with them, but they still look good and so far I'm not shaking my
head asking why I picked that one up. The doors for individual creativity are
wide open.

I also spent a morning roaming the back roads out of Crescent City in the
Jededia Smith Redwoods and the Stout Grove. It was raining off and on after a
night of high winds on the coast and dark in there but incredibly peaceful and
the rain so quietly filtering down through the Redwoods was most eloquent. I
also bore witness to a most rare event as one of the ancient 1500+yr giants
toppled over. Death of a Giant. It just simply fell over for what appeared to
be no particular reason. It simply was it's time. The whole thing took 30-40
seconds, all in such slow motion as if Father Time literally seemed to stand
still or at least slow enough to pay homage to the death of a towering ancient
giant which has silently watched over expanding humanity and all of our
comparatively trivial trials and tribulations. The fall sounded like a long drawn
out rumble of thunder as root by root, each slowly tugged at the spongy earth
and snapped eventually giving way and slowly crashed down through the
surrounding forest and rumbling over the sodden forest floor littered with the debris
of it's brethren predecessors. So, in answer to the question, "If a tree falls
in the forest, can you hear it?" ... I'd say emphatically "YES!" Breaking
the otherwise utter silence, the whole experience simply gripped the soul like
few other events ever in my life.

Birth, life, and death in nature in extremes, 2003 has been a year with most
extreme contrasts ranging from the very first moments of watching a twitching
miniature jelly bean sized egg giving way to a crack then the hatching and
birth of an Allen's Hummingbird at my Central California Coast gray whale
study/research site, experiencing unlike anywhere else on this Earth, the
extraordinary wealth of marine life, mammals, and countless tens upon tens of thousands
of seabirds (the ultimate and pinnacle of all pelagic trips!) as we tightly
zigzagged back and forth across the Humboldt off Peru during the just recently
concluded 4-1/2 month marine mammal / seabird cruise in the Eastern Tropical
Pacific, to a really stirring and unexpected grand finale in witnessing the death
of a giant California Redwood at year's end. In retrospect, this final event
places an appropriate emotional bookend not only to the passing year, but
bookends a humbling perspective on my own temporary and short life on this planet.

The serendipitous bird list for a rainy Christmas Eve in the far northwestern
California Redwoods was a short one but each and every one was special in
it's own way (in chronological order: Common Raven, Varied Thrush, Spotted
Sandpiper, Dipper, Winter Wren, Great Blue Heron, Common Merganser, Red-tailed
Hawk). May the new year and 2004 bring you a bountiful wealth of birds, wildlife,
and experiences in nature even those in it's most simplest of terms. Happy
New Year!

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Richard Rowlett
Seattle / Bellevue (Eastgate), WA, USA

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought" --Albert Szent-Gyorgi (1893-1986).
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