Look what I got today. It's the photo taken at my high school reunion in Southern Humboldt this summer. A lot of the class couldn't make it, but I'm really glad I took the trouble to fly down from Alaska because I was able to satisfy a lot of my curiosity about what happened to my classmates after we graduated.

Anyway, I thought I'd share this picture since, as many of you know, I grew up in a place that feels like the end of the Earth. Growing up behind the Redwood Curtain, I missed out on a lot of things that many of my current friends probably took for granted. The twenty-first century is beginning to invade Southern Humboldt, and it really isn't the same as it was when I was a child. But everyone in this picture grew up with the same distorted view of reality as I did, which might explain why so many of them have moved back to Humboldt County since graduation.