There’s nothing quite like swimming in the redwoods. It’s more liberating than swimming in a normal pool and less unsettling than treading water in the open ocean. There are no Great Whites in the San Lorenzo River, and the biggest risks are getting poison oak on your way there or maybe stubbing your toe. And even at its chilliest, the water is never as cold as the ocean is around these parts.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Asa Maestas, a Soquel High School junior, is standing on a concrete tee at De Laveaga Disc Golf Course’s fourth hole teaching a novice—me—how to play. Maestas instructs me to throw “nip to nip,” demonstrating as he pulls his disc horizontally across his chest and extends it out toward our target, a metal basket that appears to be several light years away.

We gather in the parking lot at Castle Rock State Park, six people ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-forties, here to learn the art and science of rock climbing courtesy Santa Cruz–based Treks & Tracks. Before we set off on the 20-minute hike to the site, our guide Daniel Laggner, who has a shock of curly sun-streaked hair and forearms like Popeye’s, warns us about what may be the greatest actual threat we face all day: poison oak. “Leaves of three, let it be,” he instructs us. Got it.

Although I’ve lived in Santa Cruz for the last five years, unless it’s a fogless, 80-plus–degree day, it’s unlikely you’ll find me in the water. I’ll dive in on particularly hot summer days if the waves are looking friendly, but I’m not a strong swimmer. I’m the kind who watches the surfers out on Steamer Lane and marvels longingly at their athleticism, but surfing has always looked too physically (and mentally) challenging for me. So I content myself with being a sun-soaking landlubber.

Less than three years ago, Jennifer Heskett Yamaguchi laid on an examination table in Tucson and watched the monitor as a urologist sent a camera into her bladder. What she saw turned her world upside down: more than 20 cancerous tumors—too many to even count—taking over the right side of her bladder.

The party line says California Forward is sailing steadily towards approval of its bipartisan reform agenda for repairing state government, either with a ballot initiative or through a legislative substitute that would satisfy critics on the left and right.

“The federal assault on California’s legal medical marijuana industry is an attack on the sovereignty of California and Californians,” writes one US congressional candidate from Mendocino County.

The death of Shannon Collins on May 7 has prompted a public outpouring of shock and sorrow that’s impossible to ignore. On Monday, May 14, a week after she was stabbed to death in broad daylight by a troubled and violent man she didn’t know, some 300 community members organized by Take Back Santa Cruz walked from the scene of the murder to her shop, Camouflage, on Pacific Avenue, completing the walk she wasn’t able to. Neighbors of the block on Broadway where the murder happened held a memorial on Sunday, and before that friends and family gathered there Friday for a vigil. Hundreds of people—some who knew the 38-year-old Collins, many who did not—have signed online memorials and weighed in on Facebook. The Sin Sisters Burlesque donated the proceeds of their Saturday show to the Collins family. The Rio Theatre put her name on its marquee.

Police are investigating a possible hate crime after a vandal or team of vandals targeted the Holy Cross Church this past weekend. The vandals broke windows, poured paint on statues of Junipero Serra and the Virgin May and climbed on the roof so they could spray paint on the church’s bell tower.