Couple blazes historic trails along Yuba

The "hidden time trails of the forest" that Pocahontas sings of in the animated movie are no Hollywood cartoon creation.

In fact, they're right around the corner and Susan Lamela and Hank Meals of Nevada City have walked miles of them.

"Certainly thousands not millions and not hundreds," Meals said of just how many miles he and Susan have covered.

Countryside in Yuba County Photo courtesy "California's Gold Rush Country"

The husband and wife wrote the book "Yuba Trails' and help guide groups through the routes that American Indians and then miners traversed in the Sierra high country.

All this beauty in the back yard of Nevada and other mountain counties can come as a surprise.

"We've had people say that for the last 20 years I've been hiking Yosemite. I could have been hiking the Yuba," Lamela said.

Busy lives result in people who "generally know their neighborhoods and that's it," Meals noted.

Their 1993 book was prompted by the good response they received to short summaries they printed of trail hikes. Admirers of their rich knowledge of the Yuba trails include poet Gary Snyder, who wrote the introduction to the book.

"We are learners in this landscape and here is the first book to come along that makes sense of it," wrote Snyder.

The landscape includes the Canyon Creek Trail, Empire Creek Trail and Bed Bug Smith Trail, so named for a miner at a 1906 dance in Camptonville whose collar was home to a bed bug.

"Yuba Trails" includes that little bit of history as well as a good dose of humor. "The best snakebite kit is the keys to a car that runs,' the guide notes.

Too many guides, the couple thought, don't read as if anyone were having any fun on the trail. Lamela said it's important to include details such as the sites with southwest exposure that in the summer can be steamy. "You're going to be hot and you need a hat," she said.

Trails took American Indians along hunting routes and other sites. Miners followed routes to where the gold was. "You find trails to some god-awful places," Meals said. Without the mineral as a magnet, no one would have been interested.

Lamela initially visited the area as a youth and moved to Nevada County in the 1970s. Meals first came in 1969. "I loved the river," he recounted.

"I thought I was in paradise," Meals said of discovering the Yuba River country. At the time he was familiar with about two miles of the river. Now, Meals realizes how much more there is to the country and that he earlier had only "this tiny little window on it.'

The couple, who hiked 27 trails one year, now know the big picture. Still, some people want to be assured that Lamela and Meals are writing from experience.

"I've actually been asked more than once," Have you actually walked all those trails?' Meals recounted.

"We've walked far more than are in there," he said of the book.

Not that guides particularly those from the Gold Rush era aren't sometimes produced by armchair experts. "There were a lot of guides to the Gold Country written by people who had never been there," said Meals.

The Yuba River watershed includes the same rich gold mining region of the American River canyons in Placer County, although the American River canyons are much steeper than those in the Yuba area.

Years of hiking the trails in the Yuba River watershed haven't dimmed the the couple's interest.

"You always see something you've never seen before," said Meals.