Blanchard’s working forest and the coast road

Blanchard State Forest covers 4,500 acres in Skagit County. The Department of Natural Resources manages it as working forestland, with recreation and conservation interests represented alongside timber interests in its advisory process. The mountain behind this route point brings those overlapping uses into the story of the coast.

DNR records extensive logging from the mid-nineteenth century and a major fire in 1925, after which the land was deeded to the state. Replanting and protection followed over the ensuing decades. That history explains why the forest above the community is closely tied to both work and public use.

The planned stage from Mount Vernon is 13.6 miles. The next entry follows Chuckanut Drive, whose historic road opened to automobile traffic in 1916. Its coastal alignment follows the wooded slopes above the bays. Narrow shoulders and limited sight lines make a current pedestrian-access check essential before travel.

She was awake around five, breaking down the camp above Samish Bay, and walking by half past seven. The road went on over Chuckanut Mountain.

Just under three miles short of Larrabee State Park she came on a group training in trail first aid. She explained what she was doing, and a good number of them took the QR code there and then to join the registry. What she noticed was the speed of it — no persuading, just I want to help. All of them young, all of them healthy, which is exactly who the registry needs.

The ranger at Larrabee is called Amber. Jeana describes her as Quan Yin manifested as a park ranger: an inherent quality of awareness and compassion. She read afterwards that the local Buddhist community holds a water ceremony at Larrabee every year.

She walked the whole way down the mountain to where California Street meets Chuckanut Drive, and a woman called Deanna gave her a lift into the middle of Fairhaven to look for food and a bed. A mile and a quarter of that stretch is owed, and she intends to walk it.

The Firehouse Arts and Events Center fed her a quiche and what she calls the best ever brown sugar caramel latte, with kindness and some real enthusiasm about joining NMDP thrown in. Patrons there pointed her towards the nearest fire station.

The firefighters and the captain at Bellingham Fire Station 2 were interested and wanted to know more, but a new policy stops them putting anyone up for the night. She is sorry about that one: a fire station reaches a lot of young, healthy potential donors at once, and crews tend to carry what they learn into future training and out to others in the field.

So the firemen paid for a cab to the Lighthouse Mission, and she spent the night there, in a large room of mattresses on the floor with the unhoused of Bellingham. Men along one side of a barrier made of folded tables, a small section for women, more men beyond. She felt safe. She was careful with the backpack, because she needs that gear to keep going.

What she took away was the quiet in it. Strong currents of silence, she says, unspoken pain in the middle of all the noise, and a great many people with nowhere to call home for a great many different reasons.

She asked for one thing to be passed on from the night, and it is not about her. Do not keep up the myth that people are on the street through their own fault. The gaps are ours: mental health services, work that disappears, foster children who age out with nowhere to go, and a hundred other routes to the same place. What she is really pointing at is perception, and what colours it.

There, but for the grace of God, go I. It can happen to any one of us. So love that neighbour, and be generous of heart, especially with the most vulnerable among us.

Jeana Moore