If you want to experience living, live on the edge. Push your limits and get out of your comfort zone. Some adventures are not for everyone and some days you wake up and decide you refuse to live in the box of I can’t. You must wake up and choose to try for yourself and your future.
It was quite the year that led me on this wild adventure—a year of heartache and drastic decisions. My environment kept pushing me to my limits until I snapped. I needed to fight back and take what was mine—my independence and my ability to choose how I wanted to live the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that was.
This is the story of how my dog, and I went out in nature and then ended up risking it all to get back home safely.
My dog and I are avid hikers and often hike 10-plus miles a trek. On this adventure, we were planning on doing a normal 10-mile hike in the overrun enchantments of the redwoods. Looking for answers and a place to escape. Nature has always been where I run to.
However, I thought it would be a simple hike with the possibility of hiking in cold knee-high river water. I only went with a liter of water, a single apple, some nuts, water shoes, a thin jacket, and a sandwich. My dog is always prepped and ready. On this particular trek, he had, extra food, water, shoes, a neoprene swimming suit, a jacket, a bear bell, and his GPS tracker.
Our day started like no other. We were camping and having a great time! Hiking every day and watching the sunset at the beach every evening. The hike had a range of elevation but rated a mild to moderate for beginners. We were physically, and mentally prepared for this hike. We did them all the time back home! With out any issues we knew this would be a breeze in the trees.
Little did we know our 10-mile leisure hike would turn into a 20-mile trek to safety.
When we arrived at the park we had planned that a 10-mile hike would be roughly four hours. Due to it being in a new area and medicine breaks, we went knowing we would need to add an extra 2 to 3 hours. Knowing our new time frame, we wanted to eat dinner facing the field of the park at sunset and we started our hike at 1 pm. This would get us back in time to cook dinner and set up to watch the sunset glisten through the trees, enveloping the elk resting in the meadow in front of our car.
The start of our trip was somewhat comical as we took the wrong trail and had to backtrack to the correct trail, costing us 30 minutes of light.
The views were breathtaking and the air was so pure, for the first time in my life, my lungs could breathe without the aid of my inhaler. The entire drive up I was concerned my breathing skills would be tested surrounded by vast amounts of nature. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to smell with ease, what a luxury. The greens were so vibrant, the reds so crimson, no photograph could match this intensity. The trees were grand, in my life, I had never seen trees veil the sky. The way the stars poked holes in the darkest corners of the globe, the nights were breathtaking.
We hiked for hours passing people, in constant awe of the changing scenery. Seeing plants flourish so vividly, undisturbed while I struggled to keep the same plants alive at home.
Stitch was as happy as he could be. This trip truly unleashed his soul. He was a new dog in the wilderness happy to work, happy to lead, happy to follow. He had a pep in his step, and a sparkle in his eye, working in nature brought him to life as well.
We found banana slugs, and tried to guess the different bird sounds bouncing along the tree canopy. We took lots of pictures of fallen trees. Trees so large my car could fit in its trunk! Stitch enjoyed all the new smells and showing off his parkour skills for pictures. We met lots of photographers and other avid hikers coming and going with fancy cameras.
Little by little the passersby became fewer and far between. Fewer people passing us and more people walking back. People who had taken breaks with us. We all chuckled and laughed, then never saw them again as they hurried on back.
It wasn’t until hour four that we realized we were not near the finish line, not even the halfway point! Living in denial we took another break. Stairs are my enemy; I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. I needed to prepare because we may have gone too late. Sunset was a few hours away and we hadn’t reached the river. I had to keep stopping after every staircase, I was unaware of in my research prior. Luckily Stitch was a champion, keeping me afloat, constantly checking, making sure I wasn’t going to croak. Step by step we slid down together. He was so patient and proud waiting and bracing. With each step I took I knew he did it for me, walking as slow as can be. When I knew he could fly down these stairs effortlessly.
After several stair cases down, I knew this was it. I wouldn’t be able to handle another single step. My medicine lasted all but 1 hour, the strength of 8 hours crammed into my body. I could feel the tingle, the gears had tightened, and I knew this would soon become an emergency if we didn’t try something new.
I decided to ditch our plans of going back the way we came. The map showed what looked like a road with low elevation and what was hopefully no stairs. I just needed to get through the river then hike down to the beach to take that road to the highway and track on back to a one-mile stretch of forest to get to the car. Without much knowledge of the area outside my map I said let’s do it, there was no going back!
I slowly slipped down the mountain into the river’s edge with the help of some large sticks I found. Not wanting to rely on Stitch for any more help, I needed him to conserve his energy. This was going to be the longest trek we ever did together. I did not doubt in my mind that he could do it, he’s conditioned for long backpacking trips, but he already did so much for me that I needed him to not push himself.
Muddy but alive we made it to our halfway point. We needed to follow the frigid waters until we hit the beach line. After that, we didn’t know what we would find.
I ate the rest of my sandwich and put on my water shoes. I took off Stitch’s Ruffwear pack so he could take a break. He needed as little weight on him as possible to traverse the fallen Redwood trees blocking our path to the ocean. Luckily the water in the river was only knee height between 2 Redwood trees and once he climbed over the second one the water was just an ankle-high stream for the remainder of the walk. This was the point of our destination we had come all this way for, and the sights were spectacular. It was an unreal moment to realize how far we came to get to these views. With the subconscious thought lingering in the back of my mind about what had I gotten us into.
My feet were frozen, but Stitch seemed to love every second of running through the cold water and jumping on and off logs, splashing the running water, and zooming in and out.
After I took countless photos and videos of reaching our destination, I realized we were completely alone. My understanding the fallen tree branches made everyone traverse back to the starting point rather than crawling over. Understandably so, each diameter was taller than I was, and the waters would have put anyone else off. When we first arrived at the river and saw the trees, I thought we were doomed if we couldn’t climb over them. Thinking this was the end and we were going to be stuck overnight, wedged into a mountainous crevasse full of crisp water, but we had to push through. Neither of us were prepared to spend the night in the middle of the woods, so push through we did.
It wasn’t long before we made it to the crossroads of the trails. We could either head back through the mountains on the trail that would take us back to our car or continue towards the beach to find the road that would take us to the freeway. The sun gave us another two hours before sunset and we weren’t taking this decision lightly, so we paused for a moment and debated. The decision wasn’t easy, but I knew as long as Stitch could make the extra 10 miles it was safer for us to walk more, than risk going back through the mountainous terrain and get stuck in bear country at night, without shelter or a bear box.
After removing our wet water shoes, putting on our jackets, and taking a small snack break, our nourishments were slowly depleting. We arrived at the beach. Which was beyond anything my wildest dreams could imagine; from the charcoal sand to the piles of driftwood, the long stems of grass blowing in the breeze, to the shimmer casted by the coming sunset through the clouds. As if I was dreaming, the iridescence was out of this world.
In my original research, there was a campground on this beach where you could pay to camp if you bought a special permit, I was trying to have this trip be a spend as little money as you can trip and buying said permits and campground fees were out of my budget. However, upon arrival and understanding the road map I learned this was not a hike-in campground this was a drive-in campground which annoyingly infuriated me.
We used the facilities and checked out the campground area. Contemplating whether we should barricade ourselves in the bathroom for the night or ask someone for a ride, I paced around the campground, digging in my heels about this new decision but the anxiety and thrill of adventure had me continue our walk. Leaving the comforts of a very clean, exquisite campground we headed off on our new adventure to find the freeway!
We knew the sun was going to be setting soon and we optimistically walked on forwards wondering what we would find down the road. I was excited to cross off one of my bucket list items, which was to walk on a highway. However, there was a layer of emotion underneath the excitement of impending doom, what the hell were we getting ourselves into?! As a few cars passed by on our walk, I thought to myself several times, maybe we should hitch a ride? However, after hiking 10 miles in the mountains and being very comfortable in mud I figured we would look as terrifying to someone that I was trying to hitch a ride with as the person potentially giving us a ride could be a murderer for all we knew.
Besides the light out and the safety of a solid ground to walk on gave me undue confidence in my ability to walk the next 10 miles with ease. Anything that didn’t have stairs was a win in my book! I had just escaped near death on our previous journey, so this felt like nothing. However, for the concern in my heart, I did create a goodbye video on my phone in case someone found Stwuabbles who would then lead them to our bodies where an explanation of this side quest mission would be video graphed as well as an apology to my bird at home, who would be very upset if I died.
Our confidence began to fade with the sunset. The further we walked down the road the more we were enveloped in tree canopy shadows. I immediately realized this was going to be a very long and dark couple of miles. The sun didn’t set fully before we were completely covered by the shadows, no longer capable of seeing the sky. What was most likely 5 to 6 miles of road felt endless with the extreme height elevation changes of the flat, dirt driveway. It felt as if we were walking on triangles. I’ll take this over stairs any day, however our feet may have disagreed. My feet were constantly shoved into the front or back of my shoes for several hundred yards at a time with very few flat strips to relax on.
As the light began leaving so did my conviction, what plummeted my certainty to the underworld was a note on the car toll booth for the campground about two miles into our walk. There was a warning to campers to be aware of a bear that was in question for immediate action on top of recent Mountain Lion sightings that I was completely unaware of!
Now back home where I come from mountain lions do murders and at this point, there was no turning back. I would look like a serial killer if I tried to hitch a ride at dusk covered in mud looking like a backpacker that just hopped the border, I had no business asking for a ride or seeking a ride, so I just had to squish down this fear and keep trekking.
To make matters worse once the sun set all we had to see inches in front of us was a single flashlight the size of my finger and the battery was weighing. We could still see in the gray of dusk but the fear of what would come when it became pitch black was something I could not let go of. Had I made a huge mistake? Should I have wrestled with a pride bruising attempt at getting help in the mountain? Rescued by people who would have to carry my vegetable-forsaken body as I lay on stairs like a dead fish. All I could think of was the news headline saying rescued hikers from the redwoods forest after vegetative state due to stairs! My autonomy and dignity would never recover. All the while Stitch looked happier than I’d ever witnessed the more we trekked on. He was still setting the pace and what seemed like trotting his way through this potentially frightening occasion. He was my hero!
As night fell, I relied solely on my Spotify downloaded playlist of my greatest cleaning hits to keep away the dark thoughts in my brain. Telling me they would never find our bodies and it would all be my fault and my poor Stwuabbles would just become one with nature or perish – unredeemable.
I began to slowly panic looking for any shine in the distance hoping I wouldn’t see eyes following us. The horrors I was not aware of once the sun had set; darkness entrenched us all. My legs began to feel like something gently hit us repeatedly. Finally feeling like this was not in fact mosquitoes eating me alive I decided to investigate the darkness and move the flashlight’s ray directly on my person when I saw cute little frogs everywhere. I was pleasantly surprised that little frogs were using my body to practice their parkour until the true horror filled my soul as the Santa Clarita Diet Ball Legs began jumping at me from every direction! These colorful beasts were small in body diameter however their legs were each several inches long and they seemed to be working in tandem with the frogs to propel themselves at our bodies from every direction!! I was beyond mortified that I couldn’t do anything about this sea of jumping creatures so I decided to point the flashlight back into the forward position and just accept my fate. I would rather go blind than witness what I was witnessing, I told myself. I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes and refused to look down again.
Amusingly so nothing tried jumping on Stitch, but he did find the little frogs fascinating! Watching him interact with them was adorable. He was so curious and gentle; he would look and sniff but never get close enough to touch and surprisingly, the frogs never jumped towards him. They all jumped away from him as he casually investigated each one that he was walking into, and the spiders seemed to avoid him like the plague and ran directly into us! Ignoring what was happening below us we trekked on in semi-chilled spirits.
Late into the night, around 10:00 PM, we made it to the clearing. We couldn’t see, but we could hear the highway. We came to a field and the night sky was lit by a full moon, overlooking the forest next to us, across the tall grass, covered in fog. Picture 1900 horror movie intro, this site was eerily beautiful, and the experience was irreplaceable.
In the midst of all the chaos and fear going on in my brain, there were moments; when I tuned out the fear, when the moonlight was all, I focused on, where everything was at peace. For all intents and purposes, we were out for an evening stroll and Stitch was having the time of his life. Even though I was terrified of something bad happening, there could never rival a more perfect existence for me than moments on that adventure.
We were elated to be out of the frog/spider-infested forest. We were also happy we didn’t have any other encounters during that time and were content to be on the highway. Even though it was pitch black and there weren’t any cars aside from truckers I hoped that animals would avoid the highway, and we were safe for at least a couple hours.
I had dreamed of walking on the highway ever since I was little, planning to backpack the world with my dog. We spent the next couple of hours taking in what we had just gone through, recovering emotionally, and bracing for the mile trek back into the forest we were not looking forward to. It was eerie walking past the places we had previously driven through. To see them quiet and almost abandoned at this hour, was haunting.
By now we had competently given up on the idea of being picked up and driven the rest of the way. We figured if anyone wanted to pick us up at this hour, they must not have good intentions or they were naive because I’ve watched too many crime shows to know you don’t pick up anyone on this side of the road after dark or even during the day!
To conserve the flashlight battery, we decided to follow the reflective tape on the highway and turn off our light. The sheer darkness that engulfed us was maddening if we were alone. I think pure darkness would have driven anyone to be paranoid and the reflective tape was not consistent, it was only on curves or parts of the road where there were cliffs and bridges. We walked a lot of the road in darkness. Somehow turning off the light made every sound louder and my alertness went up significantly, while simultaneously our surroundings went completely quiet. The length of time we were on the highway we only saw eight semi-trucks and maybe four Uhauls, the rest of the time we were alone.
Stitch hadn’t slowed down yet but we insisted on giving him some breaks, carrying him, and taking off his gear. Most of his stuff was in our packs, to begin with, he only had to carry his water and snacks. Which by now were almost gone. In all my years of owning dogs, I’ve never had or seen a dog have such a life-changing experience and I foster animals with all kinds of pasts. It was like we were both in the same dream.
At the start of the highway, we had a choice of going left or right if we went left, we would be walking back to our car but if we went right a few miles we would find a motel. We were contemplating whether we wanted to walk to the motel and try to get a room for the night or if we wanted to get back to our car so it wouldn’t get towed. We were thinking how we would get back home if the car got towed but it was also a nice little reminder that if something happened to us, they would eventually find our bodies because our car would just be there for days collecting all types of tickets. Ultimately, we assumed we wouldn’t die and chose to walk back to the car.
After two hours of walking on the freeway, we made it to the exit that would take us through the forest, back to our car in the parking lot. We took a long break under the light of our exit contemplating if we wanted to stay here until sunrise. It was the first light we had seen outside of trucker’s taillights since we entered the forest canopy at sunset. How grateful we were in that moment to see our surroundings again. We threw ourselves on the floor not realizing how tired our bodies were until we had to get back up in stages. By then we had been walking for 10 hours. We finished what was left of our water and snacks and appreciated our packs lightening but we weren’t done yet.
We had a mile trek back to our car, through the forest. It wasn’t the same tree canopy, as what we just come out of but the clouds were out that night so there were no stars to see or light our way. However, we knew once we got closer to the car about 3/4 of the mile in, there would be light near the parking lot, so we looked forward to that.
We said goodbye to the safety of the light put on our packs and crossed the freeway. The coolest experience checking off one of my bucket list items! We went down the on-ramp and fell into the night. We were on guard as this was peak animal hours and we were not at the top of our game anymore to outrun anything or to fight off anyone. We looked forward to the food we were going to eat when we woke up the next day as our day consisted of a single sandwich, an apple, and a couple of trail bars. Food was the only thing keeping us motivated to go on. It was what we were most excited about. We were sad we didn’t get to watch the meadow at sunset filled with elk and their babies, but we felt like we got a more intimate look at the forest and the beach that very few people get to experience.
Once we made it into the forest entry, we noticed a set of eyes started following us in the brush. The eyes stood below our waist but that’s all we could see. We hoped the eyes would disappear, but we feared what would happen if they did so we used the last of our flashlight battery to keep on the eyes and we took turns walking backwards. It always kept about 100-foot distance from us, staying in the brush as we stayed in the middle of the road, hoping it wouldn’t come out of the forest. Stitch was completely oblivious prancing forward just happy to be with us on this long walk. Our phones were about dead, but I chose to use what was left of my battery to turn on my playlist. If I was going to die, I wanted to go down swinging, listening to the one and only, Chester Charles Bennington may he give me strength and rest in peace. We put Stitch’s bear bell back on we weren’t sure what was behind the eyes, but we wanted to take no chances.
Encountering the eyes following us completely woke us up. Whatever fatigue we felt was gone and we were briskly walking through the forest on pure adrenaline and fear. We weren’t sure if we needed to raise our voices, stay still, walk faster, or run, there was no way we could run, but we did our best to talk loudly and in our deepest voices keeping Stitch oblivious. We took it one step at a time and frequently told each other to just keep swimming.
It was the moment where the eyes would disappear for a split second and then reappear much closer to us along the route that sent waves of pain into my soul as my stomach would drop thinking what it was going to do?! Yet surprisingly I wasn’t as scared as I thought I’d be, we had the numbers, and it seemed shorter than us, so we felt confident in our plan to distract and evade if necessary.
By this point, we had entered the part of the road where the left side of the forest turned into a meadow, and we could see our lonely car diagonal to us on the other side of the field under a flickering light by the restrooms. Amid the light from the lot, we could see the fog was abundant and blanketing the ground. It was harder to track where the eyes were and it wasn’t until we came to the part of the forest that turned into a parking lot that we thought we successfully evaded whatever was stalking us as the eyes stayed in that corner and didn’t come out as we vigorously walked around the meadow to our car so grateful to see her and yelling how much we missed her. 12 hours later from our departure time we said goodbye to our stalker, the meadow and the forest, threw our bags in the car and sat for what felt like forever. We were so gleeful to be out of that experience but so ecstatic at the same time to have accomplished something like that. Stitch enjoyed eating more food and seeing his favorite toys again.
The next morning our feet were subsequently sore and our bodies consequently achy. I discovered my toes turned purple undoubtedly from walking in the cold water or being bruised walking those triangle hills. They were completely numb for roughly two days but what was hilariously annoying was by 6:00 AM the next morning, only four hours after we arrived at the car, Stitch was begging to throw the ball, rested, and eager to do it again. To be young and wild, what an adventure, possibly the greatest of my life.
