Fort Humboldt State Historic Park in Eureka sits on a bluff overlooking Bayshore Mall, making it easy to plan a forthcoming attack on Bed Bath and Beyond. Picnic tables are scattered about on the lawn where fiddlers play for birthday parties. Besides seeing where U.S. Grant was quartered in 1854, the main attraction is the logging museum, where steam engines take passengers in a V-line, slowly forward for fifty yards on one track and backward on the other. John Bauer, of the Eddie Bauer family, operates a Dolbeer Steam Donkey, invented in 1881 by Eureka citizen John Dolbeer.
Maintaining the Steam Donkey is his hobby. His real work is taking a World Religions class at College of the Redwoods, as he prepares for life beyond Eureka as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. Speaking of religion, the hellish orange heat he fuels in the belly of the donkey is a perfect metaphorical match for the heavenly black holes in the galactic trunks of the North Coast's fallen redwoods.
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