Breakfast Club: Sunny Skies and Summer

breakfast club

the east bay's running newsletter 

Good afternoon!

With the remembrance of fallen servicemen over the long Memorial Day weekend, the summer season has unofficially begun.  This holiday weekend, my wife and I travelled up to Mendocino County for a wedding and the area did not disappoint.  On Saturday we followed an old logging road along the Big River, following the valley for mile after mile of winding firetrail. 

Amid the green of the trees and the clear waters, it was easy to think that we were encountering nature at its most pristine.  But human history surrounded us at all times.  The trail was a vestige of fire roads and rail lines to access the forest, the trees were new growth after massive industrial deforestation, and the river's meandering width the result of former dams and logging erosion.  To quote William James, "the trail of the human serpent is over everything." 

While a brief jaunt on some overgrown singletrack got us our monthly quota of poison oak, the tri…