Night Light of the North Coast: Camel Rock

The stars set behind Camel Rock in this several-minute exposure. Camel Rock’s
illumination comes from the lights of several houses on the hillside along Scenic Drive
behind us. Their light was faint, but with the sensor gathering it over the course of many minutes it was enough to light up the foreground. The clouds were coming in quickly from the north.

The rugged and varied northern California coastline is one of Humboldt’s most beautiful treasures. Sweeping shallow beaches are punctuated by stretches of scattered sea stacks large and small. Hand in hand with the beauty lies the danger of some of the steeper beaches, with furious undertows that are not to be trifled with.

Houda Point Beach lies at the transition between the long, smooth sweep of Clam and Moonstone Beaches and a wild bunch of sea stacks extending north to Trinidad and beyond. South of here the coast is fairly rock-free until past the Eel River delta well beyond Eureka, while to the north the coastal waters are littered with great rocks, some small and some standing tall as towers.

Camel Rock is just off shore at Houda Point. It’s one of the first of the sea stacks north of Moonstone and among the largest. At the lowest of low tides one can walk out to it, but the night my brother Seth and I were there the low tide of .06’ was too high for us reach it. We were near the cave that faces Camel Rock, which I’ve shown in other Night Light entries, but the winter’s storms had changed the lay of the sand since last we had visited and we weren’t able to reach its mouth without getting wet.

One can access Houda Beach from a turnout on the bluffs of Scenic Drive just north of Moonstone Beach. A steep staircase gouged into the hillside, the “Stair of Grief” as I call it, leads down to the beach. The grief happens climbing back out. If you aren’t in shape, these steps will make you wish you were. But if you’ve negotiated the stairs up from College Cove you’ll be fine here.

“My God, it’s full of stars!” Dave Bowman’s words from “2001” echoed in my mind as my brother and I stood on the glossy surface, the stars both above our heads and beneath our feet. Indeed, our tiny planet bobs in space a mote among the stars, themselves small in the vastness.

To see previous entries of “Night Light of the North Coast,” click on my name above the article. If you’d like to keep abreast of my most current photography or peer into its past, you can follow me on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx . I update my website mindscapefx.com less frequently, but you can contact me there.