Is so small

It's everywhere around you, though you may not notice.

Swimmers are dipping in under optimum conditions to cross the vast famous waters between vast famous landforms.

Late summer is the Season of the Big Swims.

They would have escaped my notice, too, until I became what passes for a swimmer a few years ago. Now, through a facebook™® community of swimmers, I sense the big events acutely.

Only a few attempts reach the non-swimming (some have dubbed "swuggle") world.

Perhaps, for example, you land lubbers saw the blurb, on Page 3 of your hometown newspaper, headlined, "Swimmer becomes first woman to reach Farallones."

That was Kimberley Chambers last week, swimming 30 miles from the Farallon Islands under the Golden Gate Bridge. Only four swimmers had succeeded before her, all men.

The first swimmer succeeded in 1967, and then came a nearly 50-year gap until in the last two years the attempts spiked, ushering in a quick spate of successes.

Kimberley is also one of fewer than 10 people who have swum the seven classic marathon ocean crossings — The English Channel between England and France, the North Sea Channel between Ireland and Scotland, the Molokai Channel in Hawaii, Cook Strait between the islands of New Zealand, Tsugaru Strait between the main islands of Japan, the Strait of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, and the distance between Catalina Island and the mainland of California.

A week before the Farallones success by Kimberley, a New Zealander living in California, an Australian-Californian named Simon Dominguez attempted to be first to reverse the route, swimming under the Golden Gate to find the tiny and spiny rock outcropping of the Farallones, far out in the cold blue Pacific.

The most real of dangers stopped him, when a great white shark approached him three miles from his destination. Sharks flock to feast on the breeding seal and sea elephant populations there.

Even the powerful sports-talk radio station KNBR in San Francisco spoke of Kimberley and Simon — not by name, mind you — interrupting the steady chatter diet of San Francisco Giants, National Football League, Golden State Warriors and prize fights to mention how crazy two people were to have done the impossible.

You might also have read, "Woman swims a triple crossing of the English Channel."  That was Chloë McCardel, an Australian who completed her feat in 36 hours. She swam the first leg of the 21-mile crossing (though it's far more than 21 miles after tides push swimmers around) in just over 11 hours — and swam even faster on her second leg.

McCardel also set a record last year, swimming 80 miles nonstop in the Bahamas.

These are swims you may have heard about, and I have had the pleasure of meeting Kimberley and swimming with Simon, who last year also crossed the English Channel. A documentary film crew is preparing a movie of Simon's attempt.

Here are some swims you might not have heard about, no less monumental.

France heard Bel's roar.

Annabel "Bel" Lavers last week also crossed the English Channel.

Having met her in the facebook™® community, I got to design a logo for her event, which her crew wore on their hooded sweatshirts.

Ebullient and funny, Bel seemed to attract a global following for her attempt. Many in the United Kingdom stayed up through the night to watch her 17-hour crossing, following a real-time GPS beacon blip across their computer screens.

Bel's blog includes a thorough question-and-answer about preparing for an English Channel swim, so comprehensive it makes me want to jump in and go. She also swam for charity.

As did Ion Lazarenco Tiron, a Moldavian who lives in Ireland, this week having completed the cold North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, raising money for the people in Moldova. Though he had announced his attempt a while back, he went silent for a long time until finally announcing his finish yesterday.

Ion Tiron swims the North Sea for his homeland.

I got to design something to commemorate his success too.

I'm leaving out so many stories, of Londoner Simon Fullerton attempting the North Sea before a painful shoulder forced him out, and of Philip Hodges, in Cambridge by way of Australia, also taking on the North Sea, and of many others crossing the English Channel.

More swimmers I have met will soon be crossing from the Channel Islands off California to the mainland. Still others have crossed England's great lake, Windermere, in the meantime.

I missed the opportunity finally to crew a long-distance swim, for my friend "fast" Karl Kingery, who swam with me almost every day at Lake Natoma near Sacramento until he moved to Colorado for a job.

Karl late last month swam the 21-mile length of Lake Tahoe.

When I texted him from afar, excited about him being able to cross Tahoe under the full moon, the taciturn mountain man swimmer replied simply, "Finished it yesterday. How was the full moon?!"

I had flubbed the date of the swim, and his eloquent summary came in three words, "Finished it yesterday."

While Karl crossed Lake Tahoe, marathon swimmer Craig Lenning was to embark on a triple crossing. Unfortunately, their pilot boat went dead in the water, Craig got out, ending his swim to help with the boat, and Karl finished his crossing.

In the jade, meditative waters of my lake, regarding the bridges towering above my head in the growing amber sunlight, I think of them, their accomplishments and heroic attempts, and dream.

Another fine example of California's gold

It was the best of television, it was the worst of television.

Either way, California's Gold was must-see TV. Creator Huell Howser died this week at 67, and I'll miss him and his show. Judging from the Internet uproar, so will many, many others.

Gosh!

Huell took public television viewers along on his dream job, to feature every corner and cranny and nook of California. And he just about did.

"We have two agendas," he once told the Los Angeles Times. "One is to specifically show someone China Camp State Park or to talk to the guys who paint the Golden Gate Bridge. But the broader purpose is to open up the door for people to have their own adventures. Let's explore our neighborhood; let's look in our own backyard."

I counted on Huell to show me my state, because at this rate I won't see much of it otherwise.

He showed me China Camp, all right, among dozens of state parks and California's national parks. He took me land sailing in Mad Max contraptions across El Mirage Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert … a mile deep into the earth near Nevada City to hear the caroling descendants of Cornish coal miners … a mile above the earth soaring near Mach 1 with the Navy's Blue Angels … and, of course, high atop a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, among the sisyphean painters in the razor fog and wind.

That's aMAZing!

Huell went to places we could not — with the descendants of William Randolph Hearst on their ranchland and homes below Hearst Castle, say, and out on the protected Farallones far west of the Golden Gate. He showed us with new eyes our own backyards: Our hometowns and their doughnut shops and fruit stands … our county fairs … what William Least Heat-Moon would call the "blue highways" of our state.

He showed where the Zamboni ice grooming machine is made, where In-N-Out Burger plans its fast food empire, where Hot Dog on a Stick started on a Santa Monica beach, where an Oakland family perfected the squeegee that professional window washers rely on.

He roamed where John Muir and Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson had roamed, and paid his respects where thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned east of the Sierra during World War II — always with experts to answer his questions, which were our questions, because Huell Howser was going to these places for us. 

He showed what even Californians have a hard time believing: It's an extremely diverse state, in its many meanings.
 
All the while, Huell Howser infected his stories with unconstrained, sometimes infuriating, enthusiasm. He was never not delighted at everything he covered, at almost every moment.
 
A hulking man, he carried a comically small microphone and towered over many of his interview subjects. He frequently shouted, in a skirling Tennessee drawl, the phrases that have endeared and inured him to viewers. "That's aMAZing! Isn't that aMAZing? Oh my GOSH! Get a SHOT of that, Louie (Luis Fuerte, one of his longtime camera operators)! AhhMAZing! How about THAT!"

Gosh!

He'd look into the camera and repeat mundane facts just given him, elevating them as if epiphanies. He'd ask a question and then not wait for the answer, seeing some shiny distant object and immediately running over to look at it, his subjects running along behind. He'd talk right over an expert's answer, quashing juicy information.

People (me too) made fun of him. Comedians made a living off him ("Look at that! You say that's water?! Look everybody, it's WATER! And boy, is it WET! AhhMAZing!") A drinking game was built around his Howser-isms.

But he knew his corn-pone persona sold. He made a guest appearance on The Simpsons, after all. Homer even paid Huell tribute. And he sold California. He was the state parks' best ambassador, standing in for us. I was really surprised news of his death didn't go national.

Corny as he was, he sold me. I'll watch his show and its many spinoffs ("California's Green," "California's Water," etc.) whenever they're on.

Huell went to my hometown more than once, to explore Mission La Purisima and Vandenberg Air Force Base, and endorse Lompoc's effort to draw tourists with giant murals.

He even helped me get the part-time gig I enjoy, leading tours of Sacramento's Underground. Thanks to a computer glitch, many more people than the venue could hold showed up at a speech he was giving several years ago in Old Sacramento. Parks officials entertained the overflow with an impromptu tour of the underground, which spawned the formal tours today. Huell then produced a show about the underground tours, which I still haven't seen; somehow I've missed many of them.

You and I have a second chance, though: Huell donated his archive of California's Gold episodes, available for viewing, to Chapman University.

One obituary this week called Huell Howser the Charles Kuralt of California's highways, which maligns both men. Kuralt's stories were tightly edited monuments to his bright writing and concise storytelling, while Huell Howser rambled, stories searching for an ending; sometimes he'd just have his interview subjects stand in front of a sign or a landmark and wave, like something out of a soundless home movie. His shows could have used more editing. His was Arthur Godfrey TV in the 21st Century.

Kuralt also sometimes faintly mocked his subjects, softly and cleverly suggesting to viewers, "Isn't this silly?! Aren't we better?"

Huell never ridiculed the people he met. Maybe he thought their life's missions were loopy, but he delighted in meeting everyone.

Someone should take up his mantle. Exhaustive as Huell's search was, more stories await.

Because of Huell, I hope someday to kayak through the sea caves of Santa Cruz Island. Because of Huell, I'm going to buy one of those squeegees and save myself some work washing the windows.

AhhMAZing!