I don't know if we started a new tradition or not, but my brother Hayden and I went for a cold and rainy hike Christmas eve. We headed up the night before and stayed in the small beach town of Rockaway. We let ourselves sleep in a little bit as sunrise wasn't until 7:30 and hiking through the cloudy river valley in the dark would give us no benefit. Our goal for the day was to hike as far as we could up the abandoned rail line along the Salmonberry River.
Being Christmas eve and the fact that hiking here was technically trespassing, we had the whole river to ourselves. The rail line was abandoned in 2007 after a historically massive storm caused damage too expensive to repair. As we hiked, the destruction of this storm was still evident to see on this nearly 100-year-old line. What we were surprised continuously by though, was how quickly the wild had come back to reclaim what was its own.
There were whole areas where the ground was washed out from beneath, creating floating tracks, a sight that neither of us has seen before. There were mudslides over the railway so massive that there was no physical path to get around them but to go over. We saw evidence of massive floods that washed giant trees down the river slamming them into steel bridges bending the gigantic beams like they were plastic. One of the most impressive things we regularly came across was nature reclaiming its land and the new growth of plants and trees filling in the space where the railway once was.
After five or more miles of soaking up rain in our coats, we came across an old water tower for filling up steam trains. We decided this would be as good as place as any to stop for our lunch. Luckily for us, the tower had yet rusted through and proved to be an excellent cover to escape the rain. We found enough dry wood to start a small fire and enjoyed our lunch in warmth. At the time, we were unaware that we were having lunch under one of the few remains of the old logging town of Enright.
After filling our bellies, warming our bones, and drying out as much as we could, we turned around and started our way back home. We were a little disappointed about not coming across an old tunnel we heard about, but we later felt better when we learned it was another three miles out rather than just around the corner.
