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Mushroom Madness 
Fungi can cure or kill, nourish life, and also decompose it back into soil. Fossil evidence for fungi is limited, but the ability to analyze molecular data has led to revelations about the evolution of this extraordinary family of...
Fool’s Gold: The Myth of Tiburcio Vasquez 
“And still of a winter’s night, they say,  when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon  tossed upon cloudy seas,    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight  over the purple moor,    A...
Billions in Flight: Migratory Birds 
Autumn doesn’t officially begin until the equinox on September 22, but all across North America birds are already on the wing—billions of them. Migration times and destinations vary based on the species and variables like weather and food sources—some...
One-Room Schoolhouse 
Back to school. A hundred years ago in Topanga, it would have been on foot—and often barefoot—to the little, red, one-room schoolhouse by the creek in the bend of the dirt road.  Public education in California was still relatively...
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Desert Voices 

“‘Just now our blood dances to other music.’ They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted walls.” The swallows in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows...
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Desert Daytrip 

A desert experience doesn’t always require one to crawl on hands and knees through the thornbush and cactus, regardless of what Edward Abbey says. Anyone seeking cactus, sandstone, and volcanic peaks need look no farther than our own Santa...
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Chapparal Yucca 

We saw the white fire of the yucca, Lighting the mountains— And still along the trail Spring’s flowers lingered for summer. —Madeleine Ruthven, “Yerba Buena,” Londelius Came to the Mountains, 1934 In late spring and early summer, thousands of...