Terri Hazeleur is a longtime resident of Trinity County. Her first 17 years were spent in Hayfork, a small, isolated town 32 miles from Weaverville with a population of about 2,350. She says that her youth was as nostalgic as living in the classic burg of Mayberry: drinking 10-cent cokes at Tony Jeagel’s Drug Store, having tomato fights on Halloween, playing basketball, hiking the local countryside, and fishing Hayfork Creek. She and a friend once walked to Weaverville to see a movie (ticket price, 20 cents).
After Terri graduated from high school, she moved to Redding to attend Shasta College. There she met her future husband, Rich. Their dates often involved fishing outings on Cow Creek, Shasta Lake, the Sacramento River, and Battle Creek.
After Rich joined the air force during the Vietnam War, the two got married in 1968 and moved to Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento. Four years later, they moved back to Redding with a new child in tow. Rich studied fish biology at Shasta Community College. In 1972, this landed him a job at the Trinity River Fish Hatchery in Lewiston as a fish culturist.
In this forested and water-rich region, Terri and Rich hunted and fished, giving them both sport and food. They loved the Trinity Wilderness for hiking and Trinity Lake and the Trinity River for angling.
While Rich worked at the hatchery, with duties that included milking salmon and incubating eggs — he would go to the hatchery at night to release salmon so the otters wouldn’t eat them — Terri began photographing sunsets, mountain streams, and scenes from nature. She started taking oil painting classes and pursued this hobby with fellow artists.
When child number two arrived, Hazeleur shelved her artistic interests to raise her children.
Among their activities, Rich and Terri restored antique furniture. This hobby turned into a business when they bought a historic building across from the old Lewiston Bridge in 1983. They made it into an antique shop they called The Country Peddler. Among the items at the store are many related to fishing, such as old fly rods and reels, creels, and other throwbacks to an earlier time.
In conjunction with the business, which they kept open six days a week for many years, Terri renewed her passion for art. She again took classes and began painting images of people, animals, old trucks, and other rustic scenes. But she was primarily drawn to streams, rivers, and waterfalls.
She says, “I liked the water because of the movement and translucent character. Water lends itself to the medium. I love the fluidness, the brilliance, and the unpredictability of watercolors.” Her favorite subjects are the Trinity River and other waterways and waterfalls.
Rich passed away in 2014, and after 45 years of living in Trinity County and 35 years of owning The Country Peddler, Terri Hazeleur has no plans to ever leave the area. She says she intends to continue selling antiques and art at the store, which is now open only from Friday to Sunday during the months of May to December, and painting, whether it’s an old truck, a childhood memory, or water cascading down a hillside.
