Author Terry Beers
I don’t know how many times I’ve driven past the Romero Visitor Center at the San Luis Reservoir near Pacheco Pass. It’s at the end of one of those turnoffs, like the nearby one to Dinosaur Point Campground, that don’t… Continue Reading →
Spring in the Central Valley. Just northeast of Los Banos, the Coast Ranges not far distant to the west, fragile looking cotton seedlings push through grayish brown soil, their fibrous product eventually to be harvested in fall. Between this place… Continue Reading →
Recently, The New York Times “California Today” column updated readers on the latest additions to California’s list of official state symbols: On Jan. 1, the pallid bat, or Antrozous pallidus, and the California golden chanterelle, or Cantharellus californicus, joined the… Continue Reading →
We often walk forest trails in the Truckee area, but this last spring, we decided to try something different, ambling about Lake Tahoe, a place we haven’t visited in a long while. Accordingly, we set out for the Stateline Fire… Continue Reading →
Last February, I posted a piece about George R. Stewart’s landmark ecological novel, Storm, which cataloged the impact of a monster Pacific storm on California. Stewart christened the disturbance “Maria.” In that post, I referenced the heavy rains and Sierra… Continue Reading →
Now that recent rains have completely reconfigured California’s hydrological world—and it’s a record year for California’s snowpack—I wanted to return briefly to the wildflower theme of our last post. Partly because, thanks to the rainfall, we may have a great… Continue Reading →
Driving Interstate 5 through the Central Valley can be a bleak experience, especially during late summer. When I took the trip one day last August, the eastern slope of the Diablo Range hills wore the depressing brown of worn out… Continue Reading →
We live in Northern Monterey County, near California’s Central Coast region. Our back yard perches on the edge of a steep slope, chaparral mostly and dotted with coast live oaks, the slope dropping sharply to a seasonal streambed. Directly across,… Continue Reading →
If you ever travel Highway 395 beneath the rugged eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, sooner or later you’ll likely drive through the little town of Independence, California. The town doesn’t seem like much, but the surrounding view is stunning,… Continue Reading →
On December 28, 2021, the author of the Area Forecast Discussion for the Reno office of the National Weather Service sounded positively giddy that a new record for December snowfall in the Sierra had been set: “New December all-time record for snowfall… Continue Reading →
