by Geoffrey Coffey | Apr 24, 2004 | Locals Only
Shifting identities and strange alliances occur along the wildland-urban interface, where natural ecosystems collide with cities and the side effects of human industry. Plants and animals living along these intersections must adapt to changing conditions, or perish....
by Geoffrey Coffey | Mar 27, 2004 | Locals Only
Once upon a time, Twin Peaks stood as one mountain, a united man and wife. But the couple quarreled long and bitterly, until at last the Great Spirit cleaved them with a bolt of lightning. The neighborhood has been quiet ever since — or so say the chroniclers of...
by Geoffrey Coffey | Feb 28, 2004 | Locals Only
Here in earthquake country, the land moves in puzzling ways. Take Montara Mountain, a San Mateo landmark at the uppermost edge of the Santa Cruz Range, whose steep heights plunge dramatically through the fog down into the sea at Devil’s Slide. It looks like the...
by Geoffrey Coffey | Jan 24, 2004 | Locals Only
Leave your car in the parking lot on Skyline Blvd. in the Oakland Hills and step through the unknown, remembered gate onto the huckleberry path. Inhale the aroma of rain on the wind, a perfume mixed with the bouquet of a mature bay forest. Sheer rocky knolls punctuate...
by Geoffrey Coffey | Dec 3, 2003 | Locals Only
A heavenly light shines this evening 800 feet above San Francisco Bay. Closer inspection reveals six strings of bright white bulbs hung from a 30-foot pole atop the peak of Angel Island, a tree-shaped beacon lit for the holidays. The architects of this symbolic arbor...
by Geoffrey Coffey | Nov 29, 2003 | Locals Only
Standing solemnly in the middle of the hectic San Francisco peninsula, San Bruno Mountain nurses a pocket of pre-Colombian life largely unchanged by modern times, a rural island in an urban sea. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson ranks this site among the...
