Dwight Holing's Blog

Mendocino Meandering

My wife, Annie, and I recently drove through five California coastal counties north of our own to explore Mendocino. It wasn’t our first visit there, but every trip yields something new worth sharing. The first stop was in the gorgeous Anderson Valley, whose cool climate nurtures vineyards famous for world-class Pinot Noirs and Alsatian whites. In the one-blink town of Boonville, we grabbed a Horn of Zeese—a cup of coffee in Boontling, the hyper-local dialect spoken there (where a walk is a pike and a party is a tidrick).

From there, we cut north to Comptche to visit Otter Valley Farm, where our friends use regenerative, organic practices to raise goats, sheep, and cattle along with fruits and vegetables. It’s a beautiful, off-the-grid Eden. Just east lies Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve, home to magnificent old-growth redwood groves—including a Methuselah once officially measured as the world’s tallest tree at over 367 feet.

We continued west along a winding two-lane road through the Big River watershed. The sun was shining and the sky was a cobalt blue when we hit the coast. Jogging south on California State Route 1, we reached the Albion River. Crossing required driving over the wide river on a 15-story wooden timber truss bridge—the last remaining structure of its kind on the entire highway. We felt it shake beneath our wheels, a condition denizens say means the bridge is still “breathing.”

A nearby cottage clinging to a bluff—offering a nonstop view of the restless Pacific—became our basecamp. That night, we dined at the Ledford House, a local favorite. By the time we returned, the temperature had dropped and a blanket of fog had settled in, so we lit a fire and fell asleep to the soft hiss of flames and the thrum of distant surf.

Waking to a glorious sunrise, we headed north to the town of Mendocino. Its Cape Cod-style architecture has long made it a double for New England in movies and TV shows, most notably Murder, She Wrote and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. After a stroll through galleries featuring local painters, sculptors, and weavers, we grabbed coffees to go and continued north to Fort Bragg, a historic lumber and fishing town where blue-collar grit meets coastal beauty.

That beauty is on full display at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. A friend who volunteers as a docent gave us a behind-the-scenes tour; she and her husband are longtime residents and regaled us with stories about the county’s long history, culture, and natural resources. The gardens are a blooming jewel and one of the few in the country that front the ocean. Towering rhododendrons flank the entrance, while a glade ablaze with 150 varieties of dahlias forms the heart of the property. Some flowerheads were the size of dinner plates; others mimicked sea anemones. A dizzying palette of cacti, fruit orchards, and diverse flora shared the grounds with rich wildlife. More than 180 bird species have been spotted here, including pileated woodpeckers, red-breasted nuthatches, and ospreys. At the garden’s outdoor café, coveys of adult quail herding their chicks skittered across our feet while a choir of songbirds serenaded us from the branches above.

We ended the day hiking the ruggedly picturesque Mendocino Headlands, which are bookended by forested hills and the ebbing tide. As if it weren’t magical enough, my phone pinged with a message: the ninth book in my Nick Drake series, The Thunder Head, had just been named a finalist for Best Western at the upcoming Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference next month.

On our last night at the cottage, the usual fog cleared to reveal a brilliant night sky. Stars, constellations, and astral bodies reflected perfectly across the water, a mirror image that made us feel doubly lucky to be there.

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Published on July 21, 2026 14:01

Tons of Whales!

Out here in my neck of the woods—or rather, the nearby waters of Monterey Bay—the ocean is absolutely teeming with life. While the California gray whales have already wrapped up their epic 10,000-mile migration north to Alaska, June has brought a spectacular lineup of other giants to our shores. We’ve had front-row seats to the regulars—humpbacks, blues, and fin whales—as well as rare wildcards like transient orcas, elusive Minkes, and deep-diving sperm whales.

The secret to this marine explosion lies beneath the surface. A massive submarine canyon cuts right through the center of the bay, plunging deeper than the Grand Canyon. Combined with powerful summer upwellings that push nutrient-rich water to the top, it creates an absolute buffet for marine life. It isn’t just whales joining the feast, either. The water is practically roiling with massive bait balls, drawn in by thousands of California sea lions and sweeping pods of Risso’s and Pacific white-sided dolphins. It’s an incredible, breathtaking spectacle—and a reminder of just how wild and unpredictable nature can be.

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Published on June 26, 2026 14:09

The Broken Blood Wins Silver Falchion

“Wow!” It may not sound very writerly, but it was the first word that popped out when I stepped to the mike at the 2025 Killer Nashville Awards Ceremony to give my heartfelt thanks for winning the Silver Falchion for Best Western.

The thrill ride continued when I exited stage left and Sara Paretsky (author of the V.I. Warshawski novels and many others) leapt from her seat to grab my arm and say thanks for calling attention to the pressures Indigenous people and US Fish and Wildlife Service workers are facing today. Moments later, she took to the stage and gave a passionate, provocative, and poetic keynote speech about the real threats to our First Amendment rights, including free speech.

To all my readers, a loud shout out for making last night possible.

View my remarks here.

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Published on August 23, 2025 13:46