When I was in downtown on Friday, I saw the Sound. It reminded me of how, when I worked downtown, while I was so close, I rarely walked the four blocks or so to be actually on the waterfront.
This memory and reflection then caused me to be seized with the impulse to go to the ocean. Not the Sound, the ocean, where you look out and the water blends into the horizon, and there's no land until you hit Siberia. That ocean.
My husband was sort of eeyore-ishly despondent about the idea that I'd go to the ocean. "Poor me, deprived of your company for yet another day." And it's hard for me on a Saturday morning to pop out of bed and feel like I want to drive three hours. So I didn't go to the ocean. I did go with Emma to Discovery Park, and we walked along the beach there for several hours, including visiting the lighthouse. It was very pretty, you could see Mt. Baker and the Olympics, and lots of sailboats were out - but it wasn't the ocean.
With Emma's birthday on the 16th, it was impractical for me to take off on Sunday. Instead, I worked a half day from home. Then, I left this morning. It's a long drive - three hours if you go the speed limit - and it isn't like going to Vancouver or Portland, which are also three hours away, but you can also do by train. You pretty much have to drive.
When I was a kid, we went to the ocean twice a year - for a week in the summer, and a week in the winter. We'd rent a house in Moclips, either a one-family house, or a larger house with my parents' friends, the Lowrys. After I turned 10, we went a little less frequently, but still often enough.
When I moved back to the Pacific Northwest, I went with my husband, maybe in 1990, back for the first time in many years. I was shocked - they had cut down all the trees. I saw nothing but acres of stumps. The timber industry was dead - there was lots of resentment of the spotted owl, but seriously - they had cut down every last tree it seemed, so to blame an endangered owl seemed to pretty stupid to me. The little towns from Ocean Park to the Quinault Reservation were in serious decline. We went out a couple of other times through the years, and every time, it got more and more depressing. The old seaside motels looked more and more weather-beaten; the mercantiles closed and boarded up; Moclips High School closed; no place to eat out except all the way at Ocean Shores.
When I drove out today, it was measured against both my childhood memories of a familiar road, and what I know of from more recent trips. It's been nearly twenty years since I was shocked by the acres of stumps, and many of those acres are now young forests. The towns at least are now in a holding pattern of decay, as opposed to continuing on a more precipitous slide down.
I got as far as Ocean Park, and it was good enough. I got out of the car, walked towards the surf. I walked for maybe 45 minutes just there at Ocean Park. It was as sunny as it gets on the coast - patches of blue sky, and for a bit, I could even see my shadow. The wind was blowing fiercely.
I got back in the car and drove up the road to Roosevelt Beach. It was now much cloudier. I walked from Roosevelt Beach to Joe Creek, just south of the town of Pacific Beach, and then back again. The sky darkened and it became misty. By the end of the walk, it was misting lightly - not quite a rain. From when I got out of the car, I didn't see anyone, until a couple with a dog in the distance near Joe Creek. After I turned around, I didn't see anyone but an older couple on the wooded trail that leads you to the road so you can cross Elk Creek.
So, maybe three and a half hours of solitude. The swells curling towards shore. The never-ending wind. Little skitterings of sandpipers. An osprey kettling. Sand dollars, mussels, razor clams, crab shells, and kelp washed up on the sand.
There was some trash, but not a lot - not as much as I remember there being. There was a tiny fraction of driftwood that there was in my youth. I guess this is what happens when logging ceases - logs no longer break free on rivers, are no longer carried out to sea and wash up on the shore.
A long walk with few words, except the roar of my own consciousness. From time to time I stood in the wind, felt it on my face, smelled the sea, listened to the waves break.
I got back to the car. I drove to Pacific Beach, then turned to Copalis Crossing. On the way out of that little hamlet, before the Humptulips River, there was a sign for fresh eggs. I turned into the driveway, and there was another sign: Eggs Honk. So I honked, and a grandma came out with two dozen eggs in one arm and an infant in the other. I gave her some money, put the cartons on the floor of the car.
While it was partly during rush hour, traffic home wasn't bad - just a little slow in Tacoma and again in Renton. Nearly three hours to get home.
I went to the ocean. I needed to go. I'm glad I went.
No comments:
Post a Comment