Trending Topics
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...
Editorial

Spring 

Doctor Dolittle, the kindly little Englishman who learned to talk to the animals and would do anything to help them and who has become one of the immortal characters of children’s literature, was inspired not by the author’s childhood...
Editorial

Into The Weeds 

Weeds! They are everywhere this spring, but just because they may be ubiquitous or even invasive doesn’t mean that they aren’t interesting in their own right. There are stories here: history, folklore, and even beauty. Join us for a...
Editorial

Ancient Secrets 

ON THE COVER:“Nature’s first green is gold/Her hardest hue to hold…” writes poet Robert Frost. That is certainly true of the aptly named goldback fern, Pentagramma triangularis, which hides an ephemeral golden treasure of spores behind each triangular frond....
Editorial

H20HHH! 

An almost unimaginable amount of rain has fallen on parts of California and that atmospheric river keeps flowing. Parts of the Santa Monica Mountains have received more than 10 inches of rain just since the start of the New...