Jim Hight was trying to quit weed and alcohol when he moved to Humboldt in 1996.

It was the heyday of the black market Green Rush, and as a newcomer he saw (sniffed?) temptation around every corner.

“In those days, you couldn’t walk around Arcata without smelling the grow houses – which triggered a lot of cravings for me,” Hight told the Outpost in a phone interview.

Now nearly 24 years sober with the help of 12-step programs, he has immortalized his struggles in Jonah, a character in his debut novel: Moon Over Humboldt.

Jonah is a recognizable archetype from Humboldt’s recent past. A young Earth First!-er type fresh up from the Bay to save Mother Earth, the curtain opens on his endeavoring to stay off the pot amidst an Arcata scene rife with mystery source wafts and generous buddies. Enter Bill, a lifelong logger whose son struggles with methamphetamine addiction, and Jonah’s black-and-white worldview evolves.

Hight said that the inspiration for the two main characters, who hold predictably divergent opinions on best practices for forest management, came when he was on the bus between Arcata and Eureka.

“It was raining like heck, the windshield wipers were slopping back and forth … Driver’s going 45 or whatever,” he remembered. “And there were two people talking about the rain, different generations, young, mid-20s, and 50 or whatever.” 

As the older passenger (seemingly more experienced with the North Coast wet) reassured the younger, recalling bad floods of years past, Hight said that Bill and Jonah began to take shape in his mind. 

“I was yearning for a story of connection between people who are divided and polarized,” he said.

The social cleavages Moon Over Humboldt explores are familiar terrain for Hight. As a former staff writer for the North Coast Journal, a job he described as “getting paid to get a master’s degree in Humboldt County,” exemplars of local culture and opinion were his bread-and-butter subjects for years. As the book’s “about the author” blurb states, our area’s real-life characters – “loggers and forest defenders, fishermen and scientists, ranchers and dairy farmers, small-town mayors and tribal leaders, county sheriffs and cannabis growers” – fascinated the former Southern California city boy.

“I interviewed people on all sides of the timber controversies, and came to really respect and appreciate them,” Hight said. “People who thought clear cutting was the right thing to do and had done it for years or generations, and then people who thought it was decimating the countryside and causing flooding and exterminating species and stuff … That conflict narrative led me to imagine the characters in Moon Over Humboldt, who are totally divided.”

“But once they meet and start getting to know each other through the 12-step programs, they find that not only do they have a lot in common, but they actually really need each other in ways they don’t understand,” he continued.

As Bill and Jonah’s stories unfold over the course of a wet winter, Hight introduces readers to other personalities that may strike a familiar chord in Humboldt hearts and minds: Mike Doyle, the kind-hearted, large-bodied environmental center director; Owl, the pacifist-environmentalist; King, a retired rodeo cowboy with a ranch down Shively way … the list goes on.

To sociable readers who were around in Y2K Humboldt, some characters may ring of real people. Hight specifically shouts out Tim McKay of the Northcoast Environmental Center and Bill Boak of Boak Logging – men who “modeled courtesy and respect for their ideological opponents” – in the book’s closing gratitudes.

And for those more interested in places than faces, landmarks such as the Orick Peanut or the tree at J & 10th in Arcata bolster Hight’s realistic worldbuilding. Hight said that working on Moon Over Humboldt became a way to vicariously visit the places he missed after he and his wife fled the mold that was causing her health issues in 2018.

“It was a great joy to just drop myself into downtown Arcata, or a foggy evening in Eureka,” said Hight, who now lives in Colorado. 

For readers attuned to recent history, Moon Over Humboldt’s place in time may be perplexing: The characters’ Timber Wars stances feel more Redwood Summer (1990) than the post-smartphone, pre-Willits bypass/marijuana legalization moment the story depicts. 

But by condensing decades of cultural reference points, Hight creates a present rich with the past – a backdrop of diverse attitudes and happenings coexisting outside their own timelines as an amalgamation of the colorful histories that have landed Humboldt where we are today. 

“The book is not what you call historical fiction. It’s not. It’s fiction, fiction,” he said, adding that the book is ostensibly set around 2010.

The tensions in Hight’s literary version of the North Coast universe (old-timer vs. newcomer, earth vs. economy, New Age vs. Christian) ultimately set the stage for the story’s central themes: addiction, how it’s experienced both by those suffering and those who love them, and recovery. 

“This is where I got sober, this is where I turned my life around,” Hight said of his decision to set the book in Humboldt. 

While the author made clear to the Outpost that he does not claim membership in any particular 12-step fellowship (keeping with the programs’ tradition of anonymity), Hight’s words in and on the book show how valuable the steps have been in his life. 

And as his characters search for the strength of forces outside themselves, the power of the programs’ community – and of Humboldt’s – surfaces.

“I’ve never read fiction about the 12 steps that didn’t sound like bullshit,” reads one review in the “praise” section of the book cover. “This is no bullshit – 100% on the money.”

It is no bullshit: Moon Over Humboldt is clearly written by a journalist and recovering addict who has collected real stories of temptation, regret and redemption for recreation as fiction. 

But in the repackaging process, Hight also seemingly slipped in touches of the extraordinary.

For instance, both Bill and Jonah come off as men with above-average social graces, abnormal self-awareness and superhuman self-reflective abilities – as men who react to hard stuff with empathy and compassion when their real-life counterparts might let insecurity take the wheel. 

As Hight explained, his characters act like the man he wants to be.

“In that regard, they may be a little unrealistic, but as a fiction writer you can make people more heroic than they might be in real life,” he said.

The combination of Hight’s believable world and relatable yet aspirational characters is what makes the book such a tear-jerker of a page-turner. 

“Jimbo, I used to like you, but now that you’ve managed to make me get all choked up and cry, I’m not so sure about that,” wrote local logger and long-time Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor Mike Hess in Moon Over Humboldt praise.

Especially in an age when societal divisions and hard truths of addiction are rising to our community’s surface, it’s dang moving (and fun) to read about a world that sounds a lot like ours full of people as good as we could hope to be.

Hight will be in town at the end of this month to perform readings from, sign, sell and chat Moon Over Humboldt. Catch him at the Fortuna Library on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 6:30 p.m., the McKinleyville Library on Thursday, Aug. 29 at 4 p.m., Northtown Books on Aug. 29 at 6:30 p.m. and Eureka Books on Friday, Aug. 30 from 5:30-8:30 p.m. 

(The Eureka Books appearance will not include a reading – just chatting, signing and selling for that one.) 

Information on local 12-step programs can be found here.