Went for a Hike and Nobody Bled This Time

My son and I went for a hike earlier this week. The trailhead is at the end of a long, bumpy, rutted dirt road that dead-ends at the American River. It wasn’t our first time there, though. We’d been one summer years ago, when my daughter was still living at home. Those were days when I was desperately trying to find wholesome, fun, inexpensive things to do as a family that didn’t involve electronics. My good friend gave me a wonderful book that she helped edit that featured dozens of hikes along the American River. So many trails in our area! How come we never explored any of them?

So we packed a picnic lunch, braved a few miles of narrow, bumpy switchbacks, paid the $10 state park fee, and ventured down a path that would eventually lead us to Codfish Falls. Since it was a hot day, we didn’t get far before we stopped to sit on a rock and put our feet in the river. My son started throwing in rocks, as 11-year-old boys do. First one rock, then another. All of us were enjoying the splashing. Until he threw a big one a little too high, and misjudged its trajectory. It landed on his forehead.

Heads bleed a lot.

That was when I started regretting my decision to plan an activity that included driving miles down a narrow dirt road into an area without cell phone service. It would have been a grand moment to utilize some of those electronics that I was so worried about. What if he couldn’t make it back to the car?

Somehow, he did. Thankfully, we didn’t need a helicopter to fly him out (although I worried about that for a few minutes. Except how would we have contacted the helicopter anyway?). But so much for our hiking plan. So much for our picnic lunch. We stopped at the new Dollar General store when we made it back to civilization, bought Bactine and bandages, made a detour to Taco Bell for happy hour slushy treats, and all was well (eventually. After a few days of healing).

This week, it was just my son and me on the hike. I warned him (several times) to be careful of rocks, and he was mostly amused. We survived the rough road to the river again, grabbed our picnic lunch, and this time made it to Codfish Falls. It was a three mile round trip hike.

It was nice. But I don’t know if I would do it again.

The trail was narrow, and although there were wildflowers, there was also lots of poison oak, the notorious evil Velcro burr weeds (that got caught on our socks, shoelaces  and Biscuit’s fur), and foxtails.  But those things didn’t really discourage me; pretty much any hiking trail around here will be riddled with those weedy nuisances in the summer. You learn to overlook them.

What alarmed me were the warning signs posted at the trailhead. They were big and serious.

“WARNING!” they said. “TOXIC ALGAE BLOOMS IN AREA” with pictures of what the algae looked like. The signs advised against swimming in the river. They had detailed instructions for how to clean any fish you caught to make sure they were safe to eat. They explicitly said that animals should NOT drink the water, and told you what to do if your pet appeared sick after returning from your outing. Basically, call the vet right away and get there as fast as you can, because they could be in mortal danger.

I did not know that there could be toxic algae in our beautiful river. Everything started to look very green to me after that (but possibly that was my imagination.)

There were a few teenagers jumping off the bridge, so maybe it was fine (although I’m not sure that teenagers always have the best judgment. Or 11-year-olds who throw rocks into the air). But the truth is that those signs took the joy out of the river walk for me. We made it to Codfish Falls, but I kept Biscuit on a tight leash the whole time and made sure he stayed far away from the water, since an emergency vet visit would be most unwelcome and a terrible way to end a joyful hiking day.

It made me wistful for that day a few years ago, a time before commonplace toxic algae blooms, when you could put your feet in the river and let your dog romp, and the only thing you had to worry about was a sweet 11-year-old who might throw a rock and hit himself on the head.