Chester my backpack companion

 

Lost Coast, California

This is the story of my relationship and travels with Chester. Just so you know, Chester had a life before this life that could be called the pre-existence. One might balk at the notion of a pre existence for logical reasons. By definition, it’s impossible to exist prior to existing. Nevertheless, all evidence suggested Chester existed prior to my knowing that Chester existed. It's also clear that Chester had relations with others prior to me. To care about previous relationships is petty and mean, especially since Chester is a backpack I purchased in a thrift shop for ten bucks in Chester, California. If I were being anthropomorphic and I am, Chester was male due to broad shoulders but you never know. Lots of women and non-binary people have broad shoulders. Chester’s namesake was the town.

Packed but resting in the parking lot in Shelter Cove,
the south terminus of the Lost Coast Trail

The day before going to thrift shop,  I flew to Medford, Oregon and rented a car. From thence, I drove south and east to pick up my daughter and son in law at the end of their 184 mile backpacking trip, which ended in Chester. They hiked several sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. 

We had a few days to kill before our flight home to Alaska and wanted to make the most of the time. They suggested we could go to the Lost Coast and backpack and I told them I didn’t bring a backpack. I brought a guitar but not a backpack.  Incorrectly, I suspected that after 184 miles, they might be done backpacking and car-camp.  After we finished our coffee, we decided to check out the thrift shop and that was when I met Chester the orange backpack. 

The Klamath River, Northern California

Chester, California is a small town in the northern Sierra Nevada an hour or so west of the Red Bluff on highway 36. It’s pretty there and it's on a big lake. Chester the town is hot and dry in the summer like much of interior parts of northern California. It’s far enough north that it might be in Cascades. It’s transition zone. Lassen Peak is just to the north of Chester and it’s a Cascade peak. 

Highway 36 most definitely not the quickest way to travel across CA east to west. The only way for highway 36 to be less remote is for it to not exist. There is a spot with no services for 98 miles. The thrift shop’s proceeds benefited The Humane Society. Resting against the wall of the thrift shop was an external frame-pack, a vintage from probably the seventies. I didn’t notice the waist belt was broken as was one of the zippers. Over the next week every zipper would break. I cobbled together a waist belt with the belt for my pants.

 After buying groceries in Red Bluff and eating really good Mexican food, we got back on 36 and headed west. We camped near the top of a mountain pass on National Forest Land. I don’t think you can have freedom without public land. The sunset impressed. In the morning we continued west along highway 36 in search of the Lost Coast. 

Sydney and David

For those of you that don’t know California, the Lost Coast is easy to find using any online map. It’s a stretch of beach and associated uplands stretching for about 35 miles in northern California. It’s called the Lost Coast because you can only access it by roads at the north and south termini. The Lost Coast itself is only accessed on foot or horseback. We drove to the small town of Shelter Cove at the south terminus and only backpacked one night. We hiked in a few miles, camped out, and hiked back to Shelter Cove again the next day. It’s also called the Lost Coast because it’s the least developed coastline in the United States outside of Alaska. We bought a rotisserie chicken prior to driving to Shelter Cove and carried that chicken in my faithful steed Chester. The weather was cloudy and cool which was a relief after being in the heat. It was 95 degrees in Red Bluff, the only large community on Highway 36. it's not that large.

 

Camping spot in Six Rivers National Forest off Highway 36

So there we were, Sydney, David, Chester and I, lost and found on the Lost Coast. We camped by a mouth of a creek that was full of trout and probably chinook salmon. It’s hard to differentiate juvenile salmonids while standing on the bank. You can’t see the shape of the spots and parr marks but you can see that there are spots and parr marks. Both rainbow trout (steelhead) and chinook salmon are classed as salmonids. Both have vertical lines called parr marks and dark spots but the shape of each is unique.  The creek provided fresh water and the beach provided copious driftwood for a fire. The following day we headed to Clam Beach campground in Mckinleyville, CA. I used to live in Mckinleyville. Clam Beach differs from the Lost Coast in many ways. There’s a freeway nearby, a parking lot, a fee to camp, and an outhouse that smells like an outhouse. The fee, I am told, was installed to keep homeless people out. That seems a shitty thing to do. The smell of the outhouse was honest about what it contains. Clam Beach’s best feature is that it’s public camping adjacent to the communities of Trinidad and Arcata. It also nice that once you get to the beach itself, you can’t hear the freeway or smell the outhouse. The beach is nice. We went on a short hike in Trinidad and ate some great food at one of my favorite restaurants. 

 

Lost Coast

The following day we hiked to the Arcata community forest and hiked in the redwoods in the morning and made a big fire on the beach near Trinidad in the afternoon. In the evening we went to a comedy show in Arcata that was laughable. Really. We laughed a lot. We stayed at Clam Beach again. Northern Humboldt needs more public land. 

The broken T was not intended. A comedian tripped and landed on it.
That was funny too. Nobody was hurt except a sign

The next morning we went to the Farmer’s Market on the plaza in Arcata. It’s an overwhelming display of agricultural products, freshly made food, and local crafts. There was a band playing Cuban music. It was much fun and it happens every Saturday in Arcata. In the afternoon, we went to Flint Ridge in Redwood National Park. There’s a free hike-in campground there and a view overlooking the mouth of the Klamath River. It’s spectacular.  The sunset was impressive again which was nice because the previous days sunsets were kind of underwhelming. Once again, I stuffed old Chester with all I needed to spend the night and packed in. Every day another zipper broke. I think ole Chester has seen many miles of trail and the vinyl is started to erode. Still, Chester was a faithful companion, and I had zero complaints.

Cooking brats over a fire in Humboldt County.
Luffenholz Beach

Sign along Highway 36

The second to final day of this venture was a short hike in Jedediah Smith State Park in huge redwood trees and swinging from a rope swing on the South Fork Smith River. The river was named after Jedediah Smith, not Joseph. That night we drove to the Illinois River, which is in Oregon, not Illinois. It’s a beauty of a river. There are unusual and endemic plants along the Illinois due to basic (high pH) soils. If you ever find yourself in the $8 Mountain area, it’s worth a stop. The following morning, we drove to the Ashland/Medford area. We ate Indian food and hung out in the park while waiting for our flight home.  The last thing I did before checking my luggage was to empty my gear from my faithful companion Chester and set him/her/them next to a trash can at the Medford airport.  Chester’s zippers were shot to hell and it seemed time to take a final trip to oblivion. We all get to oblivion sooner or later.   Chester’s adventure with me was a great time.

 

Sunset, Redwood National Park

Bravo the Tico dog and healing the Americas.

Just so you know, I once met a dog that I call Bravo Tico because he was brave and from Costa Rica. I also should point out that not everyone globally agrees on what the word America means. In my opinion, it's a minor disagreement compared to some we have these days.

Photo from yesterday's run. 

I went on a run yesterday at a trail in Juneau and my thoughts drifted to how to help the United States heal. I also tripped on a rock and fell to the ground and scraped my elbow so maybe I should have been thinking less about morality and more about where to place my feet. If you think I came up with a definitive answer to how the United States can heal, you can quit reading.  I came up with an abstract painting, not a photograph, so it's a reflection of what reality feels like. I thought about a brief encounter I had with a dog a while back. We can learn a lot from dogs. You can also quit reading if you don't want to read about politics. 

I met this dog while staying in a small town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica several years ago. I woke up early to go on a run. It's odd that I wake up earlier on vacation than I usually do at home but I digress. We were staying in a little cabin by the beach with rain forest inland. My run took me down a dirt road leading into the jungle. At the beginning of my run, I saw a yellow lab lying flat on his back in the middle of the road, slowly wagging his tail from time to time. I trotted past the dog, he looked at me briefly, and continued to slowly wag his tail and sun his balls. I continued to run down the road.  About ten minutes later I stopped to listen to a group of howler monkeys scream like mad fiends. I suspect their screams were partly that they didn't like another primate invading their rain forest and partly because that's how howler monkeys have fun. I continued my run and saw some brightly colored birds making a ton of noise. I am not a good birder but I suspect macaws. On my way back to our cabin, the yellow lab was still lying in the middle of the road. I don't know how long it had been but not a short amount of time. My second encounter with yellow dog differed from the first because this time there was a pickup truck coming in opposite direction. I had not seen another human all day.  I increased my pace to try and warn the dog off the road before he got hit by a truck but he didn't want to move. He looked up at me, but I guess he liked the feeling of the sun on his balls. The truck driver slowed to a crawl and waved as he eased past me and the yellow lab.  The last time I saw the dog, he was still lying in the road, slowly wagging his tail. The United States might heal if we can muster half the courage of that dog. 

The dirt road leaves the beach
 just to the left of the photo 

The dog's courage arose from NOT doing what I (and the truck driver) thought he should do. His courage arose from doing what HE wanted to do. Deep down every person I know wants to live in a compassionate nation, but we get beat down by the gaslighting.  Everyday some knucklehead (usually Trump) brings up a new thing to fear and we are supposed act like we aren't being gaslighted. Yesterday, there was a fanfare about the how Canada is taking advantage of the United States. With a straight face some people will  forget that Canadians are some of their best friends and that Canada has never been disloyal to the United States. Until now.  Why would they trust us now after we kick them for no reason? Tomorrow we will be gaslighted about something else perhaps even more stupid. We are being gaslighted to believe that the Civil War was not about slavery, that women are better off with limited life choices, that police brutality is not a problem for people of color, and that church and state should not be separate. On and on. We don't have to believe any of it. 

We don't have to echo hate and fear. The government can do a lot of things, but they can't force our minds to conform to their agenda.  The day before yesterday we heard about a plan to displace 2 million people from Gaza permanently, a place they have lived for centuries. Nobody has to agree that it's a good idea and if everybody disagrees, the conversation about the US taking over Gaza will stop. We don't have to agree to a government so small that it can't fit in your bedroom. A government so small that it can crawl inside personal and family decisions like when to have children. A government so small that it tells us when to have sex, when not to have sex, who to have sex with, who sex with, who to marry, and who not to marry.  We don't have to allow the government to plan our families. We don't have to hate or fear immigrants. We don't have to persecute homosexuals or trans people. What did they ever do me? What did they ever do to anyone?  We don't have to agree to any of this stuff. We can resist. Hatemongering is not who we are or at least it's not who I am. Every day we encounter a new line of reasoning for hatred, fearmongering, and division both on a national and global scale. Every day we face a new push to eliminate constitutional checks and balances. I don't have space in this post to list all the threats. It's a new threat every day and many of them are not idle threats. 

Orchid. Cahuita National Park

The dog’s courage was knowing what he wants and not letting some sweaty strange man in running shorts disturb his nap. Courage for humans relies less on arguing with those we disagree with and more on good people having the courage to feel compassion. Given that most people are good inside for the most part, I think it's possible. Every time somebody accuses me and others like me of being woke, I don't have to react. I can ignore it completely or make it clear that I don't agree with anybody that wants to even talk about invading Greenland. It's morally bankrupt. Don't agree with whatever the fearmongering de jour might be. We need to own our own minds and refuse to become part of the fear cycles.  If the act of being woke were not a threat to their grip on power, Trump and Musk wouldn't be losing their shit about “wokeness.” Perhaps woke is what we need. We don't have to storm the capital to resist. There’s nothing patriotic about sedition. We can be the compassionate people that we really are in our hearts. We need to laugh and sing and dance and be free people despite the cages we are encouraged to live in. 

I am not being Pollyanna here. People are going to get hurt and it might you or someone you love and that is why it takes courage to not back down. In the world of whitewater safety there’s a concept called “point positive.” It means that if you see a log or some other danger in the river and you want to warn the raft coming downriver to avoid the log, don’t point at the log. Point at the path the raft should take. Pointing positive doesn’t diminish that the log could kill somebody, but it provides a safe path for the boat captain. We face real threats. Don’t point at them. Yellow dog had real threats, but he didn't have to move, so he didn't move. He was Costa Rican so I think I will call him Bravo. I never heard the dog’s name.  Bravo means brave.

Ice skating. South Twin Lake, Juneau. February 2025.