A5
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2019
Trail: ‘Projects like this take years’
Continued from Page A1
When Connie Soper, author
of “Exploring the Oregon Coast
Trail,” was hiking the route, she
just skipped the portions that
required her to walk the highways.
But she owns a second home in
Manzanita and continued to won-
der why the particular gap next
door had never been fi xed. With
the support of the city and other
groups, she has spent the p ast fi ve
years working to address it.
Now members of the North-
west Youth Corps are beginning
to cut out a trail from the south
Neahkahnie trailhead to the city —
work funded by a state recreation
grant Soper wrote for the city.
“This is pretty small, about 2
miles,” Soper said. “Some of the
other gaps are longer and more
complicated.”
The project was still complex .
It involved a maze of state agen-
cies and other organizations, the
support and sponsorship of the
city , and a transfer in land owner-
ship halfway through that delayed
the project for nearly a year but
also completely altered what was
possible.
When the connector is com-
pleted, hikers will have access to
a scenic route that begins on state
park land, crosses into land held
by the Lower Nehalem Commu-
nity Trust and takes advantage of
utility district and Oregon Depart-
ment of Transportation easements
and right of ways. Manzanita will
have a trail to offer visitors and a
new pathway to lead through-hik-
ers into town.
“Projects like this take years
and years to happen,” said Steve
Kruger, executive director of
Trailkeepers of Oregon, adding
that the actual work of building
the trail takes the least amount of
time.
Trailkeepers of Oregon plans
to organize community volun-
teer work parties on the trail this
month and throughout the sum-
mer. The nonprofi t agreed to take
on long-term maintenance of the
trail, a key agreement when it
came to moving the project for-
ward. With other Oregon Coast
Trail gaps, the question of who is
ultimately responsible for the new
sections could complicate any
solution.
Mentors: Present a shift in the
county toward a more pragmatic
approach to drug, alcohol abuse
Continued from Page A1
places to stay. Sometimes, they
just listen.
“We meet them exactly where
they’re at,” Anderson said. “We
explain to them that we’re here
to walk on this journey with you,
whatever that journey looks like
for you.”
Pragmatic approach
Katie Frankowicz/The Astorian
Hikers starting at the north end of Neahkahnie must cross the highway to
get to the trailhead. At the south trailhead, farther down, anyone hoping
to continue on the Oregon Coast Trail must walk along the highway.
Clear ownership makes the
work at Ecola State Park, and the
gap that developed there in 2016,
a bit easier to solve.
Beyond “trail closed” signs at
Indian Beach and straight up a hill
covered in downed wood and tan-
gled salal shrubs, a Department of
Corrections work crew followed a
bread crumb trail of orange fl ags.
Using small saws and rakes, they
“brushed” the path, preparing the
route for the construction of a new
trail segment.
In 2016, a large landslide
swept a portion of the original
Oregon Coast Trail — which ran
from Ecola Point to Indian Beach
— into the ocean. The new seg-
ment will be constructed up to
solid ground and over the land-
slide. State parks hopes to reopen
the entire section of trail this fall.
All of the work will take place
on state land, using state resources
and state funds — complicated,
expensive, but a relatively easy
fi x when it comes to closing a gap .
‘Conservation values’
The Lower Nehalem Commu-
nity Trust did not acquire the land
outside Manzanita — 111 acres
total — with the idea of building
a new portion of the Oregon Coast
Trail. The organization wanted the
land for wildlife and water quality
protection primarily, along with
the unique opportunity to start to
move above the estuary and pre-
serve upland habitat.
“We didn’t get it for a trail,”
said Doug Firstbrook, a board
member and one of the t rust’s
founders. “We really did get it for
its conservation values. But peo-
ple are part of the landscape, too,
and we want people to realize we
value them and their health and
well-being and their opportunity
to be out on the land.”
Some of the t rust’s proper-
ties are too small or too fragile
to allow outside visitors, so this
property represented a chance to
provide some public access.
Before the t rust took over the
property, Soper had been working
with the Department of Transpor-
tation to locate the trail section in
a state right of way, off the high-
way but more or less parallel to it,
a decidedly noisier and less sce-
nic option than what the group has
available now.
“I hope it can be an example of,
like, look, i t’s possible to do this,”
Soper said of the work at Manza-
nita. “Get the right people around
the table and start the conversa-
tion. But every situation is going
to be different.”
Recovery allies are an exam-
ple of the shift in Clatsop
County toward a more pragmatic
approach to drug and alcohol
abuse. Over the past few years,
ideas like needle exchange, med-
ication-assisted treatment and a
methadone clinic have caught on
as strategies to reduce harm.
Hiring mentors with their
own histories of addiction could
help people who have debilitat-
ing substance abuse problems,
but are resistant to hearing from
a counselor, a doctor or a judge.
The outreach is unconditional,
with no requirement that people
stay sober or follow prescribed
treatment.
“These were folks who were
really unlikely to come to our
doors — or anybody else’s doors,
for that matter — to ask for help,”
said Amy Baker, the executive
director of Clatsop Behavioral
Healthcare, the county’s men-
tal health and substance abuse
contractor.
The agency is evaluating
how to measure the impact of
the recovery allies program. But
anecdotal evidence since the out-
reach began last year suggests
a cost-effective intervention.
“Nobody is more passionate and
understands it better than some-
body who’s been through it,”
Baker said.
Coordinated care organiza-
tions that oversee the Oregon
Health Plan — the state’s version
of Medicaid — want to integrate
behavioral and physical health
care. Substance abuse is often
linked with untreated mental ill-
ness and physical ailments.
One of the hopes is to reduce
unnecessary emergency room
visits, which are costly to the
government and a strain on hos-
pitals. People on the Oregon
Health Plan who have mental ill-
ness were 2 1/2 times more likely
to use emergency rooms for
physical health reasons, the Ore-
gon Health Authority found in a
report that looked at data from
2017.
“Whatever somebody’s path
to recovery is, we support that,”
Baker said. “I just want to make
sure that we’re out there trying to
fi nd the folks who need help.”
‘Ra-Ra Team’
Known as the “Ra-Ra Team,”
Anderson and Boudon are certi-
fi ed recovery mentors, not clini-
cians or trained drug and alcohol
counselors. They speak the lan-
guage of addiction and recovery
from experience.
“It could be that one phrase. It
could be that one thing that you
say,” Anderson said. “It could be
introducing them to the right per-
son in the sober community that
is their niche.
“We just got to fi nd that rock.
We just got to fi nd that little rock
that’s theirs, and then they can
run with it.”
Some of the people they
encounter are familiar faces, an
unavoidable reality of living on
the North Coast. When someone
stumbles, they get sad or heart-
broken, but they are careful not to
take their work personally.
“It does help because we’ve
been there and we’ve got the
tools to pass to them,” said
Anderson, sober since Sept. 20,
2009. “But, at the same time, we
need to make sure that we know
that we don’t replace our personal
recovery with our job.”
Recovery is rarely a straight
line. People who have alienated
loved ones or ruined relation-
ships with their addictions often
ask why Anderson and Boudon
care enough to keep showing up.
“It’s hard for people who hav-
en’t walked through that path
before to have that understand-
ing,” Boudon said. “But, per-
sonally, if people gave up on me
when I was struggling the most, I
wouldn’t be here today.”
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