Hiking for Hunter

**Hiking for Hunter**

Trigger warning: This is a short story about searching a rugged coastline for a missing person.

"I had never been part of a search party before.

This morning I saw there was a call for volunteers to hike the rugged coastline where a local 21-year-old was missing at sea.

He had entered the Pacific Ocean here several days ago, his canoe had washed up less than one mile from where he entered the ocean.

I had an hour drive, north, to the parking lot where the search party and volunteers were staging. The drive is a winding stretch of lonesome highway with various ocean overlooks and redwood tree forests along the way. I quieted my mind during the drive and asked Spirit to guide me.

I saw visions with my third eye: I saw a green house and a narrow, dirt driveway with grass on both sides and down the middle. Bordering the driveway was a line of large, crumbling Cypress trees.

I was supposed to cross this property and follow this trail to the beach. The message from Spirit was as clear as day.

During my drive I started stressing about meeting up with the group of volunteers. How would that work? Would I have to leave my car and ride with a group? Would other people want to ride with me in my car? Would I want to drive others? I was trying to prepare myself for how it all might work. My social anxiety crept in, and suddenly my mind was making excuses why I didn't need to meet the group, how I could "just go up the coast by myself and walk", and "have just as much chance of finding him", etc. I took ahold of my breath and calmed my mind. I evaluated my thoughts; I was just trying to avoid interacting. But I need to. It's part of my healing.

I continued breathing mindfully... slow...

Ok, in my vision I had seen where I was supposed to go, but I didn't recognize the area, or the house in my vision.

How was I supposed to get there, Spirit?

I knew I had to stay aware and look for clues, the universe would tell me exactly what to do.

I decided to tell that little voice in my head to stuff it, and continue with the plan to join the group effort...

I arrived at the meeting spot at ten minutes past the hour. A large group was visible further down the parking lot. I swung into the nearest open spot and parked the Prius. There were already little groups of people hurrying off, out of the driving wind, already on their mission. I didn't know if I was too late to join a group, and receive search instructions. I parked and walked towards the group to see what I could do. The wind blew in gusts that must have been 30 mph or better. After all, we were gathering on the south-facing side of Trinidad Head, one of the most prominent features on our coastline. Strong wind whipped up bits of sand from the beach, it bit my face, I squinted my eyes against it and dug my face down deeper into the collar of my coat, and the protection of my scarf.

I approached the crowd and entered it. I joined the inner circle, closest to the small folding table covered with a huge white board outlining the search areas; which were seperated into roughly 1/4 mile stretches of beach between landmarks. The rest of the table was piled high with drinks and snacks for the volunteers.

A man named Corey announced that they were looking for volunteers to go off-trail, onto private property and hike the bluffs and beaches. "This area has a lot of the blue clay, so be forewarned, it's pretty treacherous." Later I found out that Corey is Hunter's father.

He mentioned needing a group for Martin's Creek, then he said there was a green house, and the owner had agreed to let us access the beach below. I knew from my vision and message from Spirit- this was the place for me.

Before I could say anything, another man about my age volunteered to go to the green house, his name was Jade. I took a few steps towards him, "I'll join you there, if that's alright." Three more people behind us joined in. One more on the way to the car. Six of us total headed out to comb a stretch of beach about 1/4 mile long, as the crow flies. More groups would be on the beach and bluffs on either side of us. We had lots of eyes and ears looking. I felt confident.

Jade jumped in my car and the other people followed us to the green house. This was Jade's hometown, and he knew the exact house. What a great coincidence that I had been standing right next to him. That I had appeared at HQ just in time to hear Corey talk about the green house, wow. I felt my vision was really leading me. I felt so connected in. Sure enough, the house had the same driveway I had seen in my mind's eye, the cypress trees, everything. I shared the details of my vision with Jade. He was pumped. I said, "I really think we can find him." Jade says, "Let's find him....We really need to find him today."

My body filled with tingling energy. I was full to the brim with hope for Hunter.

A winter storm was on the forecast, bringing with it days of heavy wind and rain that would interfere with search efforts. I parked on the street across from the green house, and after a few quick introductions our group was marching across the expansive, mowed lawn of a 4,500 sq. ft vacation rental. We came to the edge of the private property, the bluff, and looked for access to the beach, which was about 150 yards below us. We needed an access point down the first initial bluff drop off of about 15-20 feet.

This stretch of beach is about as wild as it gets. It might as well be the Napali coastline, just much colder. It's a 300' wall of crumbling hillside, held together by a variety of beach grasses, craggy looking trees, and boulders. The majority of it is actively sliding into the ocean. The best of the bluff soil consists of loose rocks, which are uniform in size and color, and sort of resemble decomposed granite, or asphalt grindings. They crunch and compress when you step on them, leaving a flat, foot-shaped spots that are easy to follow- as long as it doesn't crumble underneath your weight. Every step is a gamble. As you work your way nearer the ocean, the footing gets worse. The soil here is soggy wet with water. Soil and rocks give way to vast stretches of thick, blue mud that is nearly impossible to cross. Cracks and crevices in the hillside leak water in streams like kitchen faucets. Nothing here can be considered stable. Even the trees are shallow-rooted and tired of holding on, they crumble apart when you touch them. There are portions of this bluff I crossed that I never even saw the soil- I was walking on a thick mat of grass, unsure how deep it really went. I was floating on brush. I would set my foot down on something that felt solid, and my foot would just sink down two feet lower, never coming into contact with anything below, I stopped sinking when I moved my weight. I scurried across the brush, thankful I was light enough to mostly float on top.

The "beach" here is a narrow stretch, a 15-foot wide ribbon of grey sand, which is relentlessly pounded by the ocean; which runs up over the sandy beach and erupts onto the giant boulders at the base of the cliff. The feet of the boulders are scattered with large, round stones that shift with every wave. The sound of the stones adjusting and rolling around sounds like something being continually smashed. You watch and listen to the waves and understand the word: break.

We diverge from the small trail we found down the cliff, and make our way to the beach, heading first to the South end of our area, over a huge slide of blue mud. I refer to it in my head as: Shoe-Sucking Blue-Mud, or, SSBM for short. I'm the only one who is wearing what I consider appropriate footwear for this task; two people in my group nearly lose their tennis shoes in the mud. They sunk in, up to mid-calf. Luckily, they were able to retrieve their shoes, balancing on one foot and fishing with the other hand. They wear the blue-grey mud now, like a fashion statement.

The slide is as old as time itself, and it's become home to some of our local beach grasses. Large clumps of pampas grass become welcome anchors against the crumbling blue hillside. I walk over piles of beach grass that could have been taller than me. I wasn't touching the ground- just walking on a thick net of interwoven grass. It's hard to explain. I cross a small ravine where fast flows of water have recently eroded enough dirt from one side to reveal three very old beer bottles: the glass ones with the round mouth. I pause for a moment and think about the folks who might have enjoyed the sunset here so long ago, "a brew with a view," it surely was- all those years ago. I wondered how long it had been since those bottles had seen a human.

I'm right above the beach now. The last twenty yards to the beach below are frightening. High tide was an hour ago but the waves are still ripping up the sand and reaching the rocks easily. With the cliff slide to your back, there's nowhere to run to if a big wave comes in. This beach is dangerous. I am not trying to become the next missing person. This is by far the most volatile portion of the slide that I have considered crossing. It's soaking wet. A mixture of the decomposed rock and small boulders the size of recliners, with that oozing, blue clay mud underneath. I decide not to cross it.

instead of going down the last 20 feet of the slide, I head further west, I go out to a craggy point where I have a stellar view of the beach in both directions. I can hang onto a small spruce tree and overlook the rocky nooks below. I use this vantage point for a while, carefully scanning the beach in both directions. Keeping a close eye on the members of our party. I call for Hunter. The other four members of our party are on the hillside and beach to my right. Two men are combing a wider, safer portion of the beach there. Us ladies are keeping watch of them, and searching the bluffs higher up. We keep calling for Hunter.

As I'm making my way to the craggy vantage point, I see my hiking partner, Jade, bravely descend that sketchy slide section to the beach without too much consideration. He walks the upper edge of that narrow, vulnerable beach quickly. In a few minutes, he's out of sight around the next rocky ridge jutting into the sea to the south. I scour every inch of everything I can see. The other girls and I hike up and down the slide, calling for Hunter, looking for evidence of Hunter, a clue, anything.

It takes me about 40 minutes to work up the courage to descend that sketchy slide section and emerge near the southern most beach of our search area. The tide has been receding, and the water isn't coming all the way up the sandy wave slope anymore. Jade hasn't returned, and I wonder if he will come back this way, or if he met up with other searchers to the south. Our other group members are still combing to the north of me. I'm in the middle of our section. I decide to start moving south, crossing that sketchy portion of the slide, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jade.

I crawl down the slide. My heart is in my throat. With every step portions of the hillside slide down with me. Each step sends a wheelbarrow's worth of material tumbling in front of me. I am mostly worrying about upsetting the one big stone that starts the landslide. I've experienced avalanches in Yosemite National Park. I look at every boulder below me with suspicion. The slide looks like it can go any second. There are deep cracks in the slide, water runs out of them in great streams.

I make it to the beach just in time to see Jade hop on top of a boulder and re-appear to the south. He has something small and black in one hand.

He's holding a shoe!

It's a black, men's Fila athletic shoe.

My heart lifts. Could it be Hunter's?

"If he was canoeing, it's plausible he could be in tennis shoes." I thought to myself as I watch Jade grow closer.

What a good find.

Word of the shoe spreads quickly across the hillside, and across language barriers, through pantomimes and whistles. The whole group gathers excitedly above the craggy point in the middle of our section. We discuss the shoe. Morale is high and hopeful.

Jade sends a text to Corey in regards to the shoe. Cell service is minimal, and we aren't expecting an answer right away.

We feel we have exhausted this section. Where to go next? I ask if, before we leave, some of the men would brave the beach and search one particular rocky area where the waves are still breaking, there are several boulders together that form crevasses, you can't see them from the beach. I saw them from my craggy lookout point. If someone was brave enough to jump onto one large rock, they could get a good vantage point of the other side of many of the boulders lining the beach. The waves are forced through these natural cracks between the giant boulders, and that's also where things often get wedged when the waves recede. We were looking for Hunter, his black backpack, and more parts of his canoe. The men waste no time and traverse the rocks and search the area I suggested. They find nothing.

We hike back up the hillside in hopes of getting some cellular phone service.

Jade gets in touch with someone at HQ, they respond that Hunter was reportedly barefoot when he launched his canoe. The shoe isn't his.

I hadn't heard any reports of what Hunter was wearing when he disappeared. I assumed he would have on wetsuit booties, at the very least, even if he launched in jeans. This water is cold.

I look out at the ocean. This bit of information sets me back a moment. I try to picture Hunter launching his canoe, his jeans rolled up above his ankles, the sun warm on his face. The deceivingly gentle waves of Trinidad Bay lapping at his ankles.

"It must have been like a pond out here when he launched." I thought to myself. I've crabbed out of a kayak in Trinidad Bay before, I have spent countless hours fishing on the Pacific ocean from here to Cabo San Lucas, I know how deceiving she can be, and how fast things can change.

My hopes of finding Hunter alive began to get shaky.

We see two more groups of people, groups of 5 or more, searching to the North of us. Good, our areas are overlapping then. We acknowledge eachother.

We have finished our section but want to do more. Some of us decide to access the beach from another trail further north, and then walk back to meet the northern boundary of the area we just covered, overlapping yet again. It's good though. Every wave that meets the beach carries something new. Things appear and disappear in a fraction of a second out here.

By the time we reach the vehicles, some of our group is tired and heads out to go home. I can't blame them. That slide hike was like doing two hours on a greased Stairmaster.

Jade and I continue. We use little-known local trail to gain access to a larger beach just a few hundred yards up the coastline. Although here we are utilizing a "trail" to get to the beach, it offers little in the way of infrastructure, even compared to the active landslide we just traversed. The last 50 yards or so are a rope assisted "rappel" to the beach. Luckily, the beach here is wide and safe, comparatively. There's no sand here, the beach is covered in large, flat, round stones about 18 inches across and 5-6" wide. They are easy enough to walk on, but running is out of the question. Keep one eye on the waves at all times.

Jade confesses to me that he was washed out to sea once.

I realize that in the silence we have both thinking about our own close calls, and mortality.

He tells me the story in a distant far-off voice, like he's back in the memory, remembering it and retelling it in the same moment.

"It was so foolish..." he begins, "I was all by myself and, just spur of the moment, I decided to head to the beach and take some sunrise photos. A sneaker wave came right in and grabbed me.... I lost my camera in the waves... I remembered what I had heard about being washed out, that you were supposed to relax and let the current carry you back in.

It did just that: a wave pushed me up and set me down on some rocks... Bruised me up pretty badly, but I was okay. I was supposed to be going out of town that day, no one would have noticed I was missing for days.... No one would have known where to even look for me... I couldn't believe it happened to me..."

We reach the beach and split up. Jade heads south, hoping to get as far as he can and connect the two search areas. I let my eyes scan the beach to the south. The furthest rocks visible to the South look simply inaccessible by foot. It's some of the most rugged country I have ever seen in my life. Since it's just the two of us here,

I take off in the opposite direction.

I reach the section of beach where half of Hunter's canoe washed up two days ago. It's still here, partially wedged under a boulder, above the tide line. The bluff is too steep to drag it up. After all, we used a rope assist for a large section of the trail down.

I can walk safely on the beach here, and do: looking, looking, looking. Calling, calling, calling.

I realize it's gotten to be afternoon already. I pause, sit down to rest, eat a granola bar and drink some water.

I think about what I'm doing.

Three days gone.

I started out looking for a figure, a young man struggling to walk down the beach, a fatigued shadow clutching to a rock, too weak to cry out. A backpack in the water, floating against the backflow current at the base of a boulder in the surf. A canoe paddle skittering over the stones... These are the things I've been looking for, up until now.

Three days gone. Barefoot.

The fact that we might not find him alive enters my mind for the first time.

It might sound silly to you, but I was so filled with hope. So abuzz with energy. Am I'm looking for a body?

The realization of what it would emotionally be like to find him, deceased, enters my mind for the first time.

Jade approaches me on the beach and walks as far north as he can. He's doing the wide pass, and I'm meticulously scouring the caves, the backflows. One of my super powers is my eyesite, I'm confident if there were something here we would have found it. We actually make an ideal team.

Jade walks back from his exploration North. I'm standing near the broken up canoe, again. There are about twenty to thirty pieces of plastic garbage littering the dry stones around me.

"There's more garbage washed up on this beach than we have seen anywhere else," I said. "I'm not surprised his canoe ended up here."

I suggest we check up a raging freshwater creek that emerges from the rain-forest dense brush of the bluff and crosses the beach very near where the broken canoe sits. I assume this is Martin's Creek. The creek flows heavily over large, round stones.

I say, "Survival manuals always say follow water, this kid would have known that. He'd probably have been thirsty, too, if he washed up here. Maybe he's trying to climb the creek up. It'd be just about the easiest trail up the cliff, especially if you were barefooted."

Jade agreed. The creek was raging through a channel about 4 feet wide. It was swift and powerful and deep enough to come up to your knees. On either side of the creek were thickets of pampas grass and brush too dense to even enter without a machete. The only way up the creek was straight up it, in the water. Jade entered the water of the creek and disappeared into the dense brush after about 6 feet, I couldn't see him or hear him over the rush of the water.

I found a place where I could gain access to the hillside above the creek, once again I was walking on great piles of brush and grass. I had my body spread out like a starfish, three points of contact at all times, trying to keep one hand on something solid I could find, a stone outcropping, a sturdy 5-inch tree trunk. I climbed up as far as I could, overlooking the creek, trying to keep close so I could listen for Jade if he called out, and looking for, and calling for Hunter.

Underneath a small Cypress tree about 30 yards up the cliffside, I discovered a cozy little space that had obviously been an animal den. It would have been the perfect place to curl up and get some rest. It hadn't been used by animal, or human, in a long time.

By this point, I have donned a walking stick to help me assess the depth of the brush, which I have never done before, which might give you an idea of how steep this country was.

I'm still above the creek. I'm walking on top of brush again. I go as far as I dare before a long fall gets too risky.

I head back down to the beach.

I sit down where the creek meets the beach, and I realize I'm exhausted.

Jade emerges from the creek and says he went as far up as he thought was humanly possible. After watching him traverse this country today, I believe him.

We stand at the head of Martin's Creek and decide to call it a day. He's going to head back to HQ and check in, I'm going to head home, I think.

I turn and take my first step in the direction of home. There's a 15 foot long pine log in front of me. I need to cross it. I reach across with one hand and grasp the edge of a boulder to my left. I put my right foot on top of the log and push myself up on top. It's a high one, and I'm pulling myself up by holding the rock on the other side of the log with my left hand. Some of the blue mud caked on the inside of my boot makes contact with the log and just like that my feet go out from under me. Momentarily, I'm airborne. It's weird how time slows down in these moments. For a brief moment, I can see myself perpendicular to the Earth, hanging onto everything with just the edge of my left hand. My body stretches out and I'm floating above the log. I feel my body elongate, and then, here comes gravity again, claiming me, I come down hard, on top of the log. My hand is ripped from the rock by my body weight, I feel my shoulder stretch against the tendons in my arm. At least I hit the log evenly, with my shoulder and my hip. Coming down on it sideways might have broken my ribs. I slide off the log, and my left knee crashes into the rocks in front of the log. I stay still for a moment and assess my body. I'm ok.

I'm mostly okay. I feel a stinging on my hand.

My left hand was in contact with that rock, and when I fell all my body weight was being held there. My thumb was jerked hard and fast down one of the sharp rock faces. It cut my thumb like a razor, filleting two small pieces of skin from the side, and leaving them hanging.

I assess the cuts, they aren't too deep and won't require stitches. They are shockingly smooth cuts, they will heal well. The skin and bits of flesh that have been separated are hanging and will need to be removed, but nothing I can't handle. I silently give thanks that I'm not hurt worse.

Jade asks me a few times if I'm sure I'm okay. We sit for a moment as I get my bearings again, and talk about some of the tumbles we have taken today.

I pull a glove from my pack and slide my hand inside, that will keep the cuts clean and pad them for the climb back up. I was wearing the gloves for most of the day, why did this have to happen during the few minutes I had them off? My mind starts to wonder and wander. I quiet it. It's done now, no sense in obsessing about the details.

I think about how thankful I am. For a million reasons....

I hike back up the hill in a trance, exhausted, defeated and feeling so many emotions all at once.

Inside my glove my hand is throbbing. I think about what a stupid mis-step that was on that log.

"I was being so careful, all day..." I sort of berate myself.

I think back to all the choices I've made in my life that have led to close calls.

How easy it is to disappear.

And, simply marveling at what sheer decadence, and blind luck, it really is; getting the chance to make a mistake, twice."

Photo and story by Erica Canevari, January 4th 2022 © Copyrighted