Shane and I took a Fourth of July vacation on the North Coast this year. From home we drove north to Arcata, spent a couple of days there, then drove another 45 minutes north to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for an overnight backpacking trip. Prairie Creek is 14,000 acres of mostly old-growth redwood forest.

The visitor center sits at the edge of a grassy prairie surrounded by woods. Roosevelt elk grazed lazily nearby, unperturbed by cars or people. They're tall, long-legged animals. They remind me as much of moose as of the smaller Tule elk that you see farther south in California.

At Prairie Creek you're required to camp in one of two designated trail camps. We chose the more remote one, Ossagon, and got our permit. While I talked to the rangers in the kiosk, one told the other that she'd had trouble opening that morning because the elk had the place surrounded.

As we got our things in order a lone backpacker arrived out of the woods and headed to his car next to ours. I asked him about his trip. He sounded impressed. He told us that he'd seen a bear in camp and a male elk with a huge rack on the beach. Shane didn't like hearing about the bear.

It was pretty quiet out, just a few car campers going in and out. Before we got going several elk walked across the road. A female bringing up the rear forced a car to stop. She neither looked at the car nor changed her speed. She just loped across. I guess she knew her status here.

The trail started off with a bang. From the open prairie we plunged straight into a dark forest of enormous trees. It was about 9:30 and the trail, even this close to the beginning, was empty. We hiked along the Miner's Ridge trail through a seemingly endless forest of giant redwoods.

An interesting aspect of old-growth forests like this is their openness. The big trees so dominated that there wasn't the dense undergrowth of small trees and brambles that you see in most forests now. Instead, Shane and I saw wide spaces between the trunks of thousand-year-old trees with a lush understory of ferns. Cross-country travel here would have been pretty easy. I imagine it once was in most woods of the world.

We were about two miles in before we saw anyone - another lone backpacker on his way out. Shortly afterward we took a right on the Clintonia trail and made our way down to Home Creek and the James Irvine trail. Before we arrived at the intersection we hit a short stretch of second-growth. The difference was profound. As expected, the young growth was crowded and unruly compared to what we'd just passed through. Going off-trail here would have been nearly impossible.

At the intersection we ran into a Sierra Club group taking a break. There were about two dozen of them. They had day-hiked in from Fern Canyon below. After several "excuse me's" we made our way past them. At this point we began to cross paths with many more day-hikers. Just short of Fern Canyon we ran into the marketing director from my work and his wife. He was wearing a bunch of logoed work clothing up here hundreds of miles from the office.

Fern Canyon was crowded. There's a parking lot where Home Creek emerges from the forest on its way across the beach and into the ocean. Most visitors to Prairie Creek drive to this lot and take a short walk through the canyon. It's a steep-sided ravine covered in ferns, mostly five-finger ferns. We descended down to it and were greeted by the sight of a dozen well-fed teenagers swearing about bugs. We set our packs down and took a walk along the canyon.

It would have been nice, maybe even amazing, if it weren't for the crowds. I did get some photographs and we tanked up on water a little upstream from the end of the loop where all of the day-hikers were turning back. I heard a woman tell her friend that her brother had "moved to Redding because he likes the big city. He thinks that's where it's all at, you know."

We re-shouldered our packs and ascended out of the canyon. After turning on to the Friendship Ridge trail the crowds disappeared. Here was more unbroken, never-logged forest. Besides the giant redwoods we were sheltered by Douglas firs nearly as large. Some of the sword ferns were over my head and even though spring was past we saw some colorful rhododendrons and tiger lilies. The hush was such that I sometimes felt that I should whisper.

Shane had been working out pretty hard with the weights the past few months and was really moving up the trail. It was a great difference from a year and a half ago at Coe. On that trip I got us in too far, it rained, some of our gear froze and she had to haul 20+ lbs. up and down Coe's steep trails. I'd gotten better with the lightweight techniques. She was carrying about 10 lbs. of gear plus water. I had 13 lbs. plus the food and more water.

After she'd worn me out sufficiently we arrived at the West Ridge trail intersection and took a long lunch break before starting the last leg of the day. We descended down the end of the ridge where we caught glimpses through the trees of the Pacific crashing on the beach below.

As we approached Butler Creek the forest began to change. The redwoods gave way to Sitka spruce, old, impressive trees in their own right. We walked alongside Butler Creek until we hit the edge of the beach and then walked the coastal trail toward the trail camp. Before we found it we spent a little time wandering around the sand dunes at the back of the beach looking for the trail. We had to backtrack a way until we found the path to the camp. It sat in a grove of alder trees between the hills and the beach. There were three sites, each with a picnic table, fire pit and bear box. There was also a pit toilet.

It was a nice spot except for the fact that it was less than 2 miles from a couple of northern trailheads. A few groups of casual day-hikers passed by, the last leaving the area about half-an-hour before sunset. Shane was skittish about bears since the backpacker we'd met that morning told us that he'd seen a bear the night before. She wouldn't be left alone when I went to gather water and I had to walk her to the pit toilet. Nevertheless, she went into the tent and lay down making contented noises well before dark. I puttered around outside for a while. At one point a large, dead branch fell from a tree across the grove.

From inside the tent I heard Shane worriedly inquire, "Steve?"

I briefly considered screaming, "Oh God! Help!" but thought better of it and told her what'd happened. Later she told me she was proud of herself because her first impulse when she heard the noise was to come out and help me fight the bear.

I stacked a few critter-scaring rocks by the entrance to the tent and joined her as the dark set in. We were the only ones at the camp. After an hour of reading I was asleep. I slept well on the soft grass at our campsite and we were up and out early the next day, the fourth of July.

We had decided to try the Jardine method of packing up and walking without eating, then stopping after a couple of hours for breakfast. We both liked it a lot. Neither of us were hungry when we first woke up and it gave us a feeling of accomplishment to have put a few miles under our belts early in the morning. After about an hour and a half we were starting to feel hungry. We continued a bit more until we arrived at a bench we'd seen the day before. We had a breakfast of amaranth graham crackers and hot tea along with some dried nectarines and raw almonds.

We decided to take the West Ridge trail out of the park. We'd only covered part of it on the way in and we'd heard that it had some of the most impressive old-growth in the park. It was just as impressive as the route in. As on the first day we passed through one short stretch of dense second-growth. After having been through so much old-growth, the second-growth just looked wrong. It was a disorderly jumble still trying to sort itself out. By contrast, old-growth looks orderly and right. Everything in it just makes sense. You don't have to analyze it to know it. You can feel it.

We followed the trail 7 amazing miles out to the prairie where our car had spent the night. It was a shorter route than the 10 mile one we'd followed the day before. Along the way I thought about the fact that before the arrival of whites California had 2 million acres of forest like this. Now it has 89,000 acres. We got our things together and drove down to the Anderson Valley wine country to finish our vacation.