TRINIDAD -- Axel Lindgren has a firm grip on the torch he's carried for almost seven years now.

It's the same torch his father carried, and his father before him, the same one that's been handed down for generations.

After all, it's not easy to let go when your life, your heritage, your roots are involved.

”All we want is what is ours,” said Lindgren.

Axel Lindgren III is at the front of a growing parade of individuals seeking to restore a sacred piece of culture, specifically, a 300-foot piece of trail that winds down to an area known as Old Home Beach in Trinidad.

It's called the Axel Lindgren Memorial Trail, dedicated to the memory of Axel Lindgren II, who died in 1999 at the age of 80.

Winter storms did serious damage to several areas of the trail, washing away a lower portion, and creating a need to look at possibly repairing nine different elements.

Members of the Trinidad City Council support efforts to make the necessary repairs, to reopen portions of the trail that were damaged.

But there's more to it, and simplicity does not seem to associate itself with this and other issues in Trinidad.

Everything seems so peaceful, so pristine, so idyllic.

That's the way it had been for centuries, even before the Yurok village Tsurai was founded in 1620, a site that lies below the bluff and the area where John and Holly Frame have had their home since 1979.

It's an area Axel Lindgren III knows well, an area where he and his father, a fifth generation Yurok, used to hike, being careful not to disrupt its sacred grounds.

In published statements, Axel Lindgren II said, “These landmarks and graves ... these serve as the umbilical cord to this ancient village for me and other lineal descendent of Tsurai.”

That cord, his son says, will not be broken.

”The trail is part of the village and a village without a trail is like a city without a road,” Lindgren said in an interview with The Times-Standard. “Walking the trail is like walking back in time. I can't tell you how often I've walked the trail.”

For years, the trail has been the primary route from the historic Trinidad Lighthouse to the beach, though it is not the same trail Lindgren's father walked.

Today, the trail is temporarily closed, awaiting repairs from severe damage caused by the winter storms.

And, it's an issue, because of John Frame's persistence in protecting what he claims is his and the area below, the Tsurai Village.

Soft-spoken Axel Lindgren III shrugs his shoulders, hiding his eyes from the late-afternoon sun.

He wonders about the turmoil and, why, for example, are some people so determined to keep the trail as it is rather than what it was intended to be.

Lindgren and others believe the trail should follow its traditional path, from its start near the lighthouse, along a route leading to what is called either Home Beach or Indian Beach, depending on who's speaking.

”The storms were devastating to the trail,” Lindgren says in support of the city's attempt to repair damages.

However, he says, it's interesting to note that the so-called traditional trail areas were not damaged, that the non-traditional areas were most affected.

”There's a reason for that,” he says softly, almost reverently.

The 56-year-old Lindgren lives in McKinleyville with his wife Peggy and eight -- or is that nine? -- children. They've had as many as 16 at a time -- many foster children. His mother is close by.

Looking relaxed, Lindgren recalls his own childhood, playing catch with his dad in the background of their home, “even though he had come home from work, was tired and dirty.”

There were regular family trips to the beach and the forest, fishing on the Klamath River, gathering seaweed, night-time chats by the fire at the reconstructed Yurok village of Sumeg at Patrick's Point. One of Lindgren's canoes rests in the shade of a small tree.

To Lindgren, his three brothers and two sisters, it was a part of life, “something we just did, something we lived. We never knew there was another way.”

”My dad was a special person,” said Lindgren. “He loved people, he was always helping kids. I remember the campfire chats we had at Patrick's Point. We'd talk and talk and talk. I guess a lot of him rubbed off on me.”