Driving to the Coast. June 21.

Dear Trail Friends,

Chris and I started for the ferry at 5:35am this morning, luxuriating in the early morning slant sunlight shining between trees, and sparkling on Crescent Beach. Three great blue herons stood ankle deep in the Sound, seemingly meditating on the beautiful morning and their reflections in the water (though more likely waiting for fish). 

On this day after the solstice, when the sunlight is already starting to wane, Chris and I spoke of how we love the long hours of daylight. We were keenly aware that most of the year it would be dark at this hour. 

After days of anxiety about my imperfect plans and preparations, I began to feel excited about my walk.  I anticipated day after day of walking, walking through  sunrises and sunsets and changing light, walking along the changing tides of the Pacific. 

Chris and I are on the ferry now, immersed in the exuberant noise and bustle of what seems like several busloads of Orcas school kids. I reflect on my ambivalence about the young and their liveliness - not unlike my ambivalence about the uncertainties and excitement of my hiking adventures. In what my friend Peter McCorison refers to as "our advanced stage of youth," we are tempted sometimes to withdraw from all the commotion of change and the unknown. I am with Freud in his notion of two powerfully opposed drives in human nature: the "death drive" (for control, predictability, certainty) and the "love drive" (to engage with the unknown "other"). 

So I'm off again, as smitten and foolish as any young lover, head over heels and tripping over my own dreams and reflections, off to explore the Oregon coast. 

Once again I discover how writing this blog helps me turn toward hope and desire, to let go of fear and my reflex clinging to the familiar. Your presence helps kindle the "love drive" in me, while my solitude - and all the lovely solitary pleasures of my own routines and rituals - placate that equal-and-opposite twin, the "death drive."

Chris made me a beautiful farewell dinner last night - curried chicken over brown rice, slow roasted tomatoes, fresh broccoli (photo 1). 

 

 

Photo 2 is the view from the ferry of morning sun on the water. Morning, summer, water - all beckoning me toward the unknown. 

 

 

Of course I have to admit the photo was taken in the ferry's wake, so it is also in some sense a nostalgic gaze backwards. How often the death instinct disguises itself as love instinct to sneak into the driver's seat.  We humans are such masters of self-deception. 

***

Now, much later, I am sitting in bed at our Motel 6 room in Astoria, Oregon. Chris is asleep beside me.  We arrived early this afternoon and hiked a portion of the hike from Fort Clatsop to the beach (and back). 

Photo 3 shows a river we crossed with water lilies and lily pads - I'd never seen lily pads in a river before. I have always associated them with the still, peaceful waters of lakes. I like this as setting one of the themes for my walk. Lily pads at rest on the restless waters of a river. 

 

We were enchanted by the pale lavender-pink of the tops of the grasses (photos 4 and 5). There were huge meadows of them, waves of grass rolling in the wind like a lavender sea. 

 

 

The trail seemed endless, we began to think we would never reach the sea. Every time we'd turn a corner to reach a crest, expecting to see the ocean at last, it would only seem further away. As we walked toward the infinitely receding horizon "We're never going to get there," we both agreed. (photo 6). 

 

Then of course we crested the next hill, and we were there (photo 7). 

 

Welcome to Sunset Beach, part of the longest widest stretch of beach in Oregon. This spot, where the trail from Fort Clatsop meets the shore, is about 8 miles south of where I will begin my hike tomorrow (at the tip of the south jetty of the Columbia River.). Tomorrow I will sleep somewhere on this beach (the guidebook had told me camping was permitted south of Sunset Beach and I planned accordingly - now after making my plan I have learned camping is not permitted - so that anyone who camps there is "stealth camping.")

Chris and I went out to dinner at Bridgewater Bistro, a wonderful restaurant right on the river with a sublime view of the bridge and the river, and gentle live piano music in the background - and just a short walk - 3 or 4 minutes - from our motel. It is in a restored historic building that once housed boats and a machine shop for the united fisherman's cooperative packing company (a coop of salmon fishermen.)

We drank wine and had a wonderful meal - relaxed so completely that I forgot to take photos. Which makes me think of lily pads on a river. 

I can't exactly say "thanks for walking with me, " since our walk doesn't officially start til tomorrow. 

But, hey, you did join our little pre-walk hike to the beach, didn't you? And we thought we would never get there, but we did. 

See you on the beach.