One Man's Beach
by Matt Love
[Read Matt's Jan. 4, 2013 piece, 'The Kelp Fountain.']
The next challenge to the great birthright
[Posted May 21, 2013]
During the past century, Oregon enacted two monumental laws protecting the ocean beaches from privatization and commercial encroachment. They are perhaps the greatest pieces of legislation in Oregon history and enshrine the state’s identity.
But they aren’t enough. We need another monumental law for the next century to address a new threat to our beaches. That threat will emerge when sea levels rise with concomitant erosion and beachfront property owners demand permission to safeguard their holdings by extending their footprint seaward, into public recreational space. What safeguarding really means in this inevitable scenario is installing more and more unsightly, dangerous, and ecologically absurd riprap (boulders) to protect ill-conceived structures that local planners should have never approved in the first place. If the state allows these owners to take public beach to shore up already dubious structures, it will undermine historical and legal precedents and imperil the very soul of the Oregon Coast.
In 1913, Oregon Governor Oswald West signed a bill into law (that he wrote) that declared the wet sands areas of the beaches, “a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.” West later said, “No selfish interest, through politics or otherwise, shall be permitted to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
Oregon’s great birthright is its ocean beaches — 363 miles of publicly-owned shore — and this ideal remained unassailable until a half century later when an unprecedented challenge arose to threaten the legacy.
In 1966, a Cannon Beach man claimed that part of the beach fronting his motel was his private property and that anyone recreating there was trespassing. This affront touched off an epic legislative battle over the control of the dry sands areas of the beaches not covered by Oswald’s West 1913 law nor detailed with any precision in deeds.
Responding instantly to this unprecedented attempt to privatize parts of the beach, State Parks drafted a bill to protect public use. After nearly dying in committee, the law eventually passed and it basically placed all the dry sands areas up to the native vegetation line (roughly 16 feet above median high tide) in the public trust and zoned it as a recreational space. Governor Tom McCall signed the landmark and bipartisan Beach Bill in 1967 and reaffirmed the state’s sacrosanct notion of publicly-owned beaches. The statute empowered Oregon, “to forever preserve … ocean beaches of the state … so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
More and more riprap on our beaches certainly doesn’t sound like honoring the ideals of “forever” and “free and uninterrupted use thereof.” Indeed, it is overturning them. Ever tried recreating on riprap? It can kill you.
I want to make something clear: I do not suggest the state disallow beachfront private property owners from maintaining riprap on current structures and buildable lots. What’s done is poorly done science there. What I adamantly oppose is allowing the owner to advance riprap farther out onto the beach to protect or upgrade an ill-conceived holding. That advancement constitutes an unacceptable confiscation of public recreational space and a myopic policy to confront rising sea levels.
Let me provide an example of the threat that became a reality and symbolizes what could transpire all along the Oregon Coast in the coming years. Not far from where I live in South Beach stands a dilapidated, abandoned home built in 1948 whose owners received a permit from State Parks last fall to install new and larger riprap approximately 65 feet westward of the existing footprint. So now, instead of beach where a cool driftwood fort stood last summer that sheltered families, couples and poets, there is a 150-foot long wall of riprap some 15 feet high. Sometime soon, the homeowner will likely raze the dwelling and replace it with a mansion that literally rests at sea level. State Parks approved this project because, as one of their officials told me on the phone, “This is the bargain the Beach Bill struck with beachfront landowners to guarantee access to the beach.”
As someone who has researched, written and documented more about the Beach Bill than anyone in Oregon history, I can categorically state that no such contemporary bargain existed in law or by insinuation. Some indifferent employees at State Parks have just convinced themselves of this, a classic groupthink, quite possibly to assuage their subconscious guilt at helping to destroy and impair the great birthright of Oregon.
Instead of more bargaining and loss of beach, what we need is a new ironclad law, not a series of loophole-infested county ordinances, that disallows any westward advance of riprap on any existing beachfront structure or lot. To quote the Stamper Family motto from Ken Kesey’s classic novel “Sometimes a Great Notion,” “Never give a inch.” Of sand that is.
Matt Love lives in South Beach. His latest book, “Of Walking in Rain,” is available at nestuccaspitpress.com He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
During the past century, Oregon enacted two monumental laws protecting the ocean beaches from privatization and commercial encroachment. They are perhaps the greatest pieces of legislation in Oregon history and enshrine the state’s identity.
But they aren’t enough. We need another monumental law for the next century to address a new threat to our beaches. That threat will emerge when sea levels rise with concomitant erosion and beachfront property owners demand permission to safeguard their holdings by extending their footprint seaward, into public recreational space. What safeguarding really means in this inevitable scenario is installing more and more unsightly, dangerous, and ecologically absurd riprap (boulders) to protect ill-conceived structures that local planners should have never approved in the first place. If the state allows these owners to take public beach to shore up already dubious structures, it will undermine historical and legal precedents and imperil the very soul of the Oregon Coast.
In 1913, Oregon Governor Oswald West signed a bill into law (that he wrote) that declared the wet sands areas of the beaches, “a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.” West later said, “No selfish interest, through politics or otherwise, shall be permitted to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
Oregon’s great birthright is its ocean beaches — 363 miles of publicly-owned shore — and this ideal remained unassailable until a half century later when an unprecedented challenge arose to threaten the legacy.
In 1966, a Cannon Beach man claimed that part of the beach fronting his motel was his private property and that anyone recreating there was trespassing. This affront touched off an epic legislative battle over the control of the dry sands areas of the beaches not covered by Oswald’s West 1913 law nor detailed with any precision in deeds.
Responding instantly to this unprecedented attempt to privatize parts of the beach, State Parks drafted a bill to protect public use. After nearly dying in committee, the law eventually passed and it basically placed all the dry sands areas up to the native vegetation line (roughly 16 feet above median high tide) in the public trust and zoned it as a recreational space. Governor Tom McCall signed the landmark and bipartisan Beach Bill in 1967 and reaffirmed the state’s sacrosanct notion of publicly-owned beaches. The statute empowered Oregon, “to forever preserve … ocean beaches of the state … so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
More and more riprap on our beaches certainly doesn’t sound like honoring the ideals of “forever” and “free and uninterrupted use thereof.” Indeed, it is overturning them. Ever tried recreating on riprap? It can kill you.
I want to make something clear: I do not suggest the state disallow beachfront private property owners from maintaining riprap on current structures and buildable lots. What’s done is poorly done science there. What I adamantly oppose is allowing the owner to advance riprap farther out onto the beach to protect or upgrade an ill-conceived holding. That advancement constitutes an unacceptable confiscation of public recreational space and a myopic policy to confront rising sea levels.
Let me provide an example of the threat that became a reality and symbolizes what could transpire all along the Oregon Coast in the coming years. Not far from where I live in South Beach stands a dilapidated, abandoned home built in 1948 whose owners received a permit from State Parks last fall to install new and larger riprap approximately 65 feet westward of the existing footprint. So now, instead of beach where a cool driftwood fort stood last summer that sheltered families, couples and poets, there is a 150-foot long wall of riprap some 15 feet high. Sometime soon, the homeowner will likely raze the dwelling and replace it with a mansion that literally rests at sea level. State Parks approved this project because, as one of their officials told me on the phone, “This is the bargain the Beach Bill struck with beachfront landowners to guarantee access to the beach.”
As someone who has researched, written and documented more about the Beach Bill than anyone in Oregon history, I can categorically state that no such contemporary bargain existed in law or by insinuation. Some indifferent employees at State Parks have just convinced themselves of this, a classic groupthink, quite possibly to assuage their subconscious guilt at helping to destroy and impair the great birthright of Oregon.
Instead of more bargaining and loss of beach, what we need is a new ironclad law, not a series of loophole-infested county ordinances, that disallows any westward advance of riprap on any existing beachfront structure or lot. To quote the Stamper Family motto from Ken Kesey’s classic novel “Sometimes a Great Notion,” “Never give a inch.” Of sand that is.
Matt Love lives in South Beach. His latest book, “Of Walking in Rain,” is available at nestuccaspitpress.com He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Dan and Sally
[posted May 14, 2013]
How far would someone go to save a dog traumatized by enslavement in a dog-fighting operation? How much would someone give to save a dog on the brink of annihilation? Recently, I found out.
Sonny the husky and I were cruising down our local beach when, in the distance, I saw a man and his small dog playing with one another at the ocean’s edge in the most curious way. Sonny saw them, too, and stopped. Something in the man and dog’s joyful abandon transfixed us. Something special was going on there, we both just knew.
It was only the four of us and a few boats at sea. Sonny started trotting toward the man and his dog. I followed. We all met up, but not before the man’s dog showed an astonishing submissiveness to Sonny. She seemed wracked with fear, which normally you don’t find in a pit bull, even an undersized one like the dog that cowered before Sonny.
I went up to the dog and petted her. She looked at me with resignation and sadness. Then I saw her look at her owner and it was nothing like I have ever seen. I have no words to describe it.
He introduced himself as Dan. Sally is his dog. I started asking questions and couldn’t stop because as Sally danced around Dan as he answered, I knew I was about to experience one the most inspiring random encounters of my life. Here’s their story:
How far would someone go to save a dog traumatized by enslavement in a dog-fighting operation? How much would someone give to save a dog on the brink of annihilation? Recently, I found out.
Sonny the husky and I were cruising down our local beach when, in the distance, I saw a man and his small dog playing with one another at the ocean’s edge in the most curious way. Sonny saw them, too, and stopped. Something in the man and dog’s joyful abandon transfixed us. Something special was going on there, we both just knew.
It was only the four of us and a few boats at sea. Sonny started trotting toward the man and his dog. I followed. We all met up, but not before the man’s dog showed an astonishing submissiveness to Sonny. She seemed wracked with fear, which normally you don’t find in a pit bull, even an undersized one like the dog that cowered before Sonny.
I went up to the dog and petted her. She looked at me with resignation and sadness. Then I saw her look at her owner and it was nothing like I have ever seen. I have no words to describe it.
He introduced himself as Dan. Sally is his dog. I started asking questions and couldn’t stop because as Sally danced around Dan as he answered, I knew I was about to experience one the most inspiring random encounters of my life. Here’s their story:
A month ago Dan relocated to South Beach from Portland because he needed a big life change and Sally, well, Sally needed everything.
Several years earlier, someone had found a badly mauled Sally covered in blood on a Hillsboro street after she was thrown from a moving vehicle. She was probably used as a bait dog in a fighting operation.
Dan learned of Sally’s plight while searching the Internet for a dog that could accompany him on his runs. A Beaverton-based animal rescue organization called Indigo Rescue had patched up Sally’s physical wounds but informed Dan that Sally suffered from grievous psychic trauma that required a level of care from an owner that most working adults can’t provide. He adopted her anyway and basically remodeled his life to heal the dog. That meant spending as much time as possible with Sally, who quickly developed severe separation anxiety when Dan left her alone. She nearly strangled herself chewing through a metal crate and once destroyed his living room. Dan’s father urged him to euthanize Sally but he wouldn’t give up. Dan started taking her to his office at a mortgage company and pretty much everywhere else, but at some point, he knew Sally needed something else. And perhaps Dan did, too.
He heard the old sound of the ocean calling him. I think a lot of people hear that call in the city, but fail to heed it. Dan did not. He found a cabin for rent in South Beach and arranged with his employer to work out of his home, a block from the beach. He started taking Sally to the beach multiple times a day and a new kind of healing for her has commenced. Sally still has a long way to go, but she has an extraordinary owner with infinite love and patience. As I listened to Dan talk about Sally, I heard him articulate an axiom I had learned long ago: save one dog and it saves you. After that, all things are possible.
“I get so much out of her, that it’s hard to explain,” Dan told me as we parted that fine April afternoon on a publicly-owned Oregon beach. I thought: You don’t have to explain anything Dan. Look where you are. Look what you’ve become. I’m looking at everything Sally did give you.
Matt Love is the author/editor of ten books about Oregon, available at independent bookstores or nestuccaspitpress.com He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com. If you want to learn more about Indigo Rescue or make a donation, go to indigorescue.org.
Several years earlier, someone had found a badly mauled Sally covered in blood on a Hillsboro street after she was thrown from a moving vehicle. She was probably used as a bait dog in a fighting operation.
Dan learned of Sally’s plight while searching the Internet for a dog that could accompany him on his runs. A Beaverton-based animal rescue organization called Indigo Rescue had patched up Sally’s physical wounds but informed Dan that Sally suffered from grievous psychic trauma that required a level of care from an owner that most working adults can’t provide. He adopted her anyway and basically remodeled his life to heal the dog. That meant spending as much time as possible with Sally, who quickly developed severe separation anxiety when Dan left her alone. She nearly strangled herself chewing through a metal crate and once destroyed his living room. Dan’s father urged him to euthanize Sally but he wouldn’t give up. Dan started taking her to his office at a mortgage company and pretty much everywhere else, but at some point, he knew Sally needed something else. And perhaps Dan did, too.
He heard the old sound of the ocean calling him. I think a lot of people hear that call in the city, but fail to heed it. Dan did not. He found a cabin for rent in South Beach and arranged with his employer to work out of his home, a block from the beach. He started taking Sally to the beach multiple times a day and a new kind of healing for her has commenced. Sally still has a long way to go, but she has an extraordinary owner with infinite love and patience. As I listened to Dan talk about Sally, I heard him articulate an axiom I had learned long ago: save one dog and it saves you. After that, all things are possible.
“I get so much out of her, that it’s hard to explain,” Dan told me as we parted that fine April afternoon on a publicly-owned Oregon beach. I thought: You don’t have to explain anything Dan. Look where you are. Look what you’ve become. I’m looking at everything Sally did give you.
Matt Love is the author/editor of ten books about Oregon, available at independent bookstores or nestuccaspitpress.com He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com. If you want to learn more about Indigo Rescue or make a donation, go to indigorescue.org.
More waves of consciousness
[posted April 24, 2013]
I walk down the beach with my dog on a Saturday in April. My mind rides a wave of consciousness in the present tense and that means anything entering my psychic space ends up in a story without linearity. I expect to meet a freak, madman or mermaid this morning and I relish the thought. I haven’t shaved in three weeks and have considered not shaving until whales inherit the earth. Yes, there was a mistranslation of ancient Hebrew in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Time to compose a poem on the littoral move:
The tide is high,
waves a sallow green.
My husky limps
through flotsam and jetsam
at the wrack line,
where all my great notions foment.
Revenge fantasies, too.
A Zen koan materializes out
of wet air:
Rain falls everywhere but here.
Why?
What occupies my mind today? Pete Townshend answers the question: “Nothing is planned but the sea and sand.” That lyric is from “Sea and Sand” off The Who’s “Quadrophenia,” inarguably the greatest rock opera of all time on the subject of beaches, oceans and rain. If you doubt my opinion, listen to this album for yourself, but not through a pathetic ear bud. Pete sacrificed his hearing so others might rock. So turn the stereo up to 11, assuming you still own a real stereo with speakers capable of attracting the police. God, I long for the days where Hi-fi mattered instead of Wi-fi! We now live in a knobless world yet unknowingly crave knobs to make subtle yet precise adjustments. Give me knobs to adjust my world or give me death!
Limpets speak my name and I pick one up here and there. I recently conducted a writing workshop with the staff of Waldport’s elementary school. In one creative thinking exercise, I had the teachers look through the keyhole and tell me what they saw. They all got it, eventually. Try that with high school teachers and most of them wouldn’t get it, forever. There’s something to be said for counter revolutionizing American public education by teaching all secondary students via the elementary model. Recess, art, drumming and naps. A little inquiry, too.
I see my first cool driftwood fort of the season! I intuit something flirtatious went on in here last night and I relish the thought. A fantastic line written by a new Oregon poet comes to mind: “The wind bangs against the tantric fort.” This fort, clearly tantric, is festooned with a Styrofoam decoration, almost a mobile, that sways gently with the breeze. What an exquisite touch from such an insidious product.
Here comes a couple and their two black labs going totally insane in the surf. We converge and strike up a conversation. The dogs tell me they hail from Portland and love the socialist beaches where they can run amok rather than dodge steaming piles of irony in an enclosed park where every human uses a cell phone.
I encounter a man. He asks, “Are you Matt Love?”
“Yes.” The man reminds me of something Henry Miller wrote: “I like men with weather in their blood.”
“I’ve read your books. I’ve enjoyed them,” he says.
“Thank you. It’s not often I run into readers on the beach.”
He gives me his name and I inform him that my forthcoming book is about rain. We begin a discourse on the nature of rain on the Oregon Coast. He then segues into a story about how he frequently walks to Nana’s Irish Pub in Newport from his home in South Beach. He traverses the beach, parallels the jetty, walks over the Yaquina Bay Bridge, past the Fishermen’s Memorial and then into Nye Beach. It could be raining during his walks. So what? He probably prefers it that way. After a few pints at Nana’s, his wife picks him up.
At Newport High School where I teach whales, limpets, rock and English, the students and I call this kind of story “sheer, lustrous gold.”
Speaking of gold, I recently read “The Outsiders” by S.E Hinton for the first time. At long last, I finally understand the classic “nothing gold can stay” line from the Robert Frost poem that Hinton threaded ingeniously through the novel. It now makes perfect sense to me after the 16-year old author of the book had Johnny, one of the characters, explain it. Yes, S.E. Hinton was 16 when she wrote the novel.
I’m picking up the pace; the old husky, Sonny, falls behind. I give her six months to live. She is poetry in awkward motion. How do you say goodbye to the dog that’s hit the beach with you 10,000 times?
Formerly black and white,
Sonny now looks gray.
Will she turn fifteen this fall?
I’ve always told myself
that when she dies,
this column ends.
Nothing gray can stay.
Matt Love is the author/editor of ten books about Oregon, available at coastal bookstores or nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
I walk down the beach with my dog on a Saturday in April. My mind rides a wave of consciousness in the present tense and that means anything entering my psychic space ends up in a story without linearity. I expect to meet a freak, madman or mermaid this morning and I relish the thought. I haven’t shaved in three weeks and have considered not shaving until whales inherit the earth. Yes, there was a mistranslation of ancient Hebrew in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Time to compose a poem on the littoral move:
The tide is high,
waves a sallow green.
My husky limps
through flotsam and jetsam
at the wrack line,
where all my great notions foment.
Revenge fantasies, too.
A Zen koan materializes out
of wet air:
Rain falls everywhere but here.
Why?
What occupies my mind today? Pete Townshend answers the question: “Nothing is planned but the sea and sand.” That lyric is from “Sea and Sand” off The Who’s “Quadrophenia,” inarguably the greatest rock opera of all time on the subject of beaches, oceans and rain. If you doubt my opinion, listen to this album for yourself, but not through a pathetic ear bud. Pete sacrificed his hearing so others might rock. So turn the stereo up to 11, assuming you still own a real stereo with speakers capable of attracting the police. God, I long for the days where Hi-fi mattered instead of Wi-fi! We now live in a knobless world yet unknowingly crave knobs to make subtle yet precise adjustments. Give me knobs to adjust my world or give me death!
Limpets speak my name and I pick one up here and there. I recently conducted a writing workshop with the staff of Waldport’s elementary school. In one creative thinking exercise, I had the teachers look through the keyhole and tell me what they saw. They all got it, eventually. Try that with high school teachers and most of them wouldn’t get it, forever. There’s something to be said for counter revolutionizing American public education by teaching all secondary students via the elementary model. Recess, art, drumming and naps. A little inquiry, too.
I see my first cool driftwood fort of the season! I intuit something flirtatious went on in here last night and I relish the thought. A fantastic line written by a new Oregon poet comes to mind: “The wind bangs against the tantric fort.” This fort, clearly tantric, is festooned with a Styrofoam decoration, almost a mobile, that sways gently with the breeze. What an exquisite touch from such an insidious product.
Here comes a couple and their two black labs going totally insane in the surf. We converge and strike up a conversation. The dogs tell me they hail from Portland and love the socialist beaches where they can run amok rather than dodge steaming piles of irony in an enclosed park where every human uses a cell phone.
I encounter a man. He asks, “Are you Matt Love?”
“Yes.” The man reminds me of something Henry Miller wrote: “I like men with weather in their blood.”
“I’ve read your books. I’ve enjoyed them,” he says.
“Thank you. It’s not often I run into readers on the beach.”
He gives me his name and I inform him that my forthcoming book is about rain. We begin a discourse on the nature of rain on the Oregon Coast. He then segues into a story about how he frequently walks to Nana’s Irish Pub in Newport from his home in South Beach. He traverses the beach, parallels the jetty, walks over the Yaquina Bay Bridge, past the Fishermen’s Memorial and then into Nye Beach. It could be raining during his walks. So what? He probably prefers it that way. After a few pints at Nana’s, his wife picks him up.
At Newport High School where I teach whales, limpets, rock and English, the students and I call this kind of story “sheer, lustrous gold.”
Speaking of gold, I recently read “The Outsiders” by S.E Hinton for the first time. At long last, I finally understand the classic “nothing gold can stay” line from the Robert Frost poem that Hinton threaded ingeniously through the novel. It now makes perfect sense to me after the 16-year old author of the book had Johnny, one of the characters, explain it. Yes, S.E. Hinton was 16 when she wrote the novel.
I’m picking up the pace; the old husky, Sonny, falls behind. I give her six months to live. She is poetry in awkward motion. How do you say goodbye to the dog that’s hit the beach with you 10,000 times?
Formerly black and white,
Sonny now looks gray.
Will she turn fifteen this fall?
I’ve always told myself
that when she dies,
this column ends.
Nothing gray can stay.
Matt Love is the author/editor of ten books about Oregon, available at coastal bookstores or nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Finding myself at the ocean
[posted April 9, 2013]
In the spring of 1997, not long after my 33rd birthday, I awakened in my Portland loft to the reality that I craved a total revolution of my mind, body and spirit. Truly, I was lost as a human being and unable to envision a path to fulfilling any of my dreams. On a whim, I accepted a teaching job at a small rural school on the Oregon Coast, needing to believe something transformative might happen to me. I honestly felt this was my last shot at doing something important with my life.
Something did happen after heading west. I met the beach, we fell in love, and it has since become the greatest creative, spiritual and sensual force in my life. But my transformation only manifested because I live in Oregon and long ago the state decided to forge an exceptional path by protecting its ocean beaches, its “great birthright” as former Oregon Governor Oswald West defined it, from prudery and privatization. That exceptional path also guaranteed public access to the beach — by law.
A couple years after relocating to the coast, I started going to the beach with my three big dogs, in relentless fashion, at all hours, in all weather, using all senses, usually clothed. Strange, wonderful, things unfolded at the beach, and I heard the “old sound of the ocean” as the poet Robinson Jeffers called it. In hearing the “old” I began hearing something new: a passion for living, caring and creating that I never knew existed within me. I also began writing about these very things.
By the way, I’ve never paid a cent to use the great birthright, a tradition I hope never changes. If it does, Oregon is surely doomed and we already know the culprits — plutocrats who never visit the beach; they only want to own it.
I intended to stay one year on the Oregon Coast. Now, I’m enjoying my 16th year in residence and estimate that I’ve rambled the great birthright close to 10,000 times and written a million words about my experiences. I’ve run into coyotes, sea lions, deer, sages, prophets, madmen, magic forts, marijuana dealers, eagles, herons, pelicans, whales, Ken Kesey’s ghost, 50 shades of stratus gray, holy fires, mermaids and a Sea God’s sculptures. I’ve inhaled salty fog and hurdled over rotting kelp. I let a millions gallons of rain erode the procrastinator I was in Portland. I saw everything through the keyhole of a limpet. I learned the definition of beauty and art and met the hardest of hardcore Oregonians walking in slanted sleet. I found myself and a literary voice.
Oregon’s beaches can help you find yourself too. It all depends on what you seek: privacy, creativity, recreation, rain, solace, escape, confession, unpretentious family time, God, god, gods, contemplation, inspiration, transfiguration, transmogrification, an agenda-free zone, forgiveness, redemption, simplicity, passion, connection, maybe even a little fun hardly ever in the sun. Or perhaps you seek the unknown and want something unexpected to unfold in real time. Oregon’s beaches offer that as well, especially in the winter. Really, anything is possible because guaranteed access makes it possible and access guarantees something tactile can happen.
Something wonderful always results when something tactile happens at the beach. But for anything to happen, you must walk upon the beach. Looking at it from a moving vehicle or the comfort of a living room pales in comparison. In fact, it’s not even worth comparing.
In the spring of 1997, not long after my 33rd birthday, I awakened in my Portland loft to the reality that I craved a total revolution of my mind, body and spirit. Truly, I was lost as a human being and unable to envision a path to fulfilling any of my dreams. On a whim, I accepted a teaching job at a small rural school on the Oregon Coast, needing to believe something transformative might happen to me. I honestly felt this was my last shot at doing something important with my life.
Something did happen after heading west. I met the beach, we fell in love, and it has since become the greatest creative, spiritual and sensual force in my life. But my transformation only manifested because I live in Oregon and long ago the state decided to forge an exceptional path by protecting its ocean beaches, its “great birthright” as former Oregon Governor Oswald West defined it, from prudery and privatization. That exceptional path also guaranteed public access to the beach — by law.
A couple years after relocating to the coast, I started going to the beach with my three big dogs, in relentless fashion, at all hours, in all weather, using all senses, usually clothed. Strange, wonderful, things unfolded at the beach, and I heard the “old sound of the ocean” as the poet Robinson Jeffers called it. In hearing the “old” I began hearing something new: a passion for living, caring and creating that I never knew existed within me. I also began writing about these very things.
By the way, I’ve never paid a cent to use the great birthright, a tradition I hope never changes. If it does, Oregon is surely doomed and we already know the culprits — plutocrats who never visit the beach; they only want to own it.
I intended to stay one year on the Oregon Coast. Now, I’m enjoying my 16th year in residence and estimate that I’ve rambled the great birthright close to 10,000 times and written a million words about my experiences. I’ve run into coyotes, sea lions, deer, sages, prophets, madmen, magic forts, marijuana dealers, eagles, herons, pelicans, whales, Ken Kesey’s ghost, 50 shades of stratus gray, holy fires, mermaids and a Sea God’s sculptures. I’ve inhaled salty fog and hurdled over rotting kelp. I let a millions gallons of rain erode the procrastinator I was in Portland. I saw everything through the keyhole of a limpet. I learned the definition of beauty and art and met the hardest of hardcore Oregonians walking in slanted sleet. I found myself and a literary voice.
Oregon’s beaches can help you find yourself too. It all depends on what you seek: privacy, creativity, recreation, rain, solace, escape, confession, unpretentious family time, God, god, gods, contemplation, inspiration, transfiguration, transmogrification, an agenda-free zone, forgiveness, redemption, simplicity, passion, connection, maybe even a little fun hardly ever in the sun. Or perhaps you seek the unknown and want something unexpected to unfold in real time. Oregon’s beaches offer that as well, especially in the winter. Really, anything is possible because guaranteed access makes it possible and access guarantees something tactile can happen.
Something wonderful always results when something tactile happens at the beach. But for anything to happen, you must walk upon the beach. Looking at it from a moving vehicle or the comfort of a living room pales in comparison. In fact, it’s not even worth comparing.
Stories of Driftlogs
[Posted March 26, 2013]
I emerged from the Necarney Creek Trail at Oswald West State Park and beheld on the beach the largest driftlog I have ever seen in my life. It was gargantuan, antediluvian, a creature, a kraken that I dearly wanted to tame, toss a saddle across and ride the snake to the lake in Atlantis.
Where did this wonder of the watershed come from? Where is it going? Will it outlast my immature country and its paranoid citizenry that can’t see the writing on the wall because they’re too busy watching television or idolizing the Second Amendment?
I could not believe the size of this behemoth and it instantly triggered a little creative game of Sherlock Holmes. This game is afoot whenever Sonny the husky and I ramble down Oregon’s socialist beaches and encounter a mysterious driftlog that cries out for inspection and introspection.
Deduction leads to imagination. Imagination foments story. Story veers to journalism or fiction. The result is a parlor game on the beach that leads to entertainment of the best kind — free of charge, entirely self-invented, ecological and non-competitive.
Try it yourself. I developed an inquiry/storytelling exercise involving driftlogs that I frequently employ with my creative writing students whenever we happen to find ourselves on the beach, which isn’t nearly enough in a teaching world gone mad with testing. The exercise can go fiction or non-fiction, linear or tangential. Prose or poetry. Whatever direction the students take it, invariably the outcome is exciting and utterly cliché-free.
When you discover a mysterious piece of driftwood, start asking questions of it:
• Is it cut? Sawed?
• What kind of saw?
• Was it cut well or poorly?
• Who cut it down?
• Was part of it milled?
• Is there graffiti or etchings?
• Did these markings originate with love or hate?
• Barnacles?
• How smooth is the wood?
• Any bark left?
• Is the rootwad intact?
• What was this driftlog’s journey to this beach?
• Are their burn marks?
• Who were the people who used it for fire?
• Was it part of a fort?
• Is the wood indigenous?
• Is the wood valuable?
• Could this driftlog kill? Has it killed?
• What’s its name?
Once you answer these questions, with fact or fiction, some kind of interesting story will emerge. You can tell it around a campfire or write it up later. Or just keep it to yourself and ward off Alzheimer’s.
Should you choose to compose a poem or story, send it along to me with a photograph of your driftlog.
I emerged from the Necarney Creek Trail at Oswald West State Park and beheld on the beach the largest driftlog I have ever seen in my life. It was gargantuan, antediluvian, a creature, a kraken that I dearly wanted to tame, toss a saddle across and ride the snake to the lake in Atlantis.
Where did this wonder of the watershed come from? Where is it going? Will it outlast my immature country and its paranoid citizenry that can’t see the writing on the wall because they’re too busy watching television or idolizing the Second Amendment?
I could not believe the size of this behemoth and it instantly triggered a little creative game of Sherlock Holmes. This game is afoot whenever Sonny the husky and I ramble down Oregon’s socialist beaches and encounter a mysterious driftlog that cries out for inspection and introspection.
Deduction leads to imagination. Imagination foments story. Story veers to journalism or fiction. The result is a parlor game on the beach that leads to entertainment of the best kind — free of charge, entirely self-invented, ecological and non-competitive.
Try it yourself. I developed an inquiry/storytelling exercise involving driftlogs that I frequently employ with my creative writing students whenever we happen to find ourselves on the beach, which isn’t nearly enough in a teaching world gone mad with testing. The exercise can go fiction or non-fiction, linear or tangential. Prose or poetry. Whatever direction the students take it, invariably the outcome is exciting and utterly cliché-free.
When you discover a mysterious piece of driftwood, start asking questions of it:
• Is it cut? Sawed?
• What kind of saw?
• Was it cut well or poorly?
• Who cut it down?
• Was part of it milled?
• Is there graffiti or etchings?
• Did these markings originate with love or hate?
• Barnacles?
• How smooth is the wood?
• Any bark left?
• Is the rootwad intact?
• What was this driftlog’s journey to this beach?
• Are their burn marks?
• Who were the people who used it for fire?
• Was it part of a fort?
• Is the wood indigenous?
• Is the wood valuable?
• Could this driftlog kill? Has it killed?
• What’s its name?
Once you answer these questions, with fact or fiction, some kind of interesting story will emerge. You can tell it around a campfire or write it up later. Or just keep it to yourself and ward off Alzheimer’s.
Should you choose to compose a poem or story, send it along to me with a photograph of your driftlog.
Happy 100th birthday Tom McCall
[Posted March 12, 2013]
Photos by Gerry Lewin
Were he alive, former Oregon Governor Tom McCall would turn 100 on March 22. This is a birthday worth celebrating and many of us are doing exactly that because we want to honor an Oregon politician who immeasurably improved our lives and had the temerity to say something like, “Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get. And I think you’ll be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.”
Skeptical of such an outrageous claim that McCall improved our lives? Just amble down Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches at no cost and you must surely agree. Back in 1967, McCall helped protect them from exploitation by his impassioned support of the Beach Bill, eventually signing it into law after a hard-fought legislative victory where he bucked his own party’s leadership.
During his two terms as a maverick Republican (1967-1975), McCall and a largely bipartisan legislature collaborated to implement a series of progressive governing initiatives that McCall collectively called “The Oregon Story.” McCall described “The Oregon Story” to one national reporter as one of, “innovation and regeneration that can actually be used anywhere. We’re trying to export the hope and the formula.”
In this era, Oregon could boast of many political innovations, most of them nationwide firsts: protection of beaches from privatization and development, a law dedicating one-percent of highway funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths, a mandatory five-cent deposit on returnable cans and bottles, an effort to clean up the polluted Willamette River, visionary land use planning to preserve farm and forestland, a forest practices act, an open public meetings law, penal reform, decriminalization of marijuana, a state-sponsored rock festival to forestall violence (Vortex 1) and an astonishing level of voluntary energy conservation promoted by the state government that inspired many citizens to do the same.
Everyone who has ever spent any time in Oregon has benefitted from the bold bipartisan accomplishments achieved during the McCall era. In effect, they led Oregon to become one of the most desirable places to live in the country within a single generation.
Photos by Gerry Lewin
Were he alive, former Oregon Governor Tom McCall would turn 100 on March 22. This is a birthday worth celebrating and many of us are doing exactly that because we want to honor an Oregon politician who immeasurably improved our lives and had the temerity to say something like, “Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get. And I think you’ll be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.”
Skeptical of such an outrageous claim that McCall improved our lives? Just amble down Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches at no cost and you must surely agree. Back in 1967, McCall helped protect them from exploitation by his impassioned support of the Beach Bill, eventually signing it into law after a hard-fought legislative victory where he bucked his own party’s leadership.
During his two terms as a maverick Republican (1967-1975), McCall and a largely bipartisan legislature collaborated to implement a series of progressive governing initiatives that McCall collectively called “The Oregon Story.” McCall described “The Oregon Story” to one national reporter as one of, “innovation and regeneration that can actually be used anywhere. We’re trying to export the hope and the formula.”
In this era, Oregon could boast of many political innovations, most of them nationwide firsts: protection of beaches from privatization and development, a law dedicating one-percent of highway funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths, a mandatory five-cent deposit on returnable cans and bottles, an effort to clean up the polluted Willamette River, visionary land use planning to preserve farm and forestland, a forest practices act, an open public meetings law, penal reform, decriminalization of marijuana, a state-sponsored rock festival to forestall violence (Vortex 1) and an astonishing level of voluntary energy conservation promoted by the state government that inspired many citizens to do the same.
Everyone who has ever spent any time in Oregon has benefitted from the bold bipartisan accomplishments achieved during the McCall era. In effect, they led Oregon to become one of the most desirable places to live in the country within a single generation.
When I hear the name “Tom McCall,” I like to imagine an alternate (better) American history where he was the Western Republican Governor who became president, not Ronald Reagan. “President McCall.” It has such a wonderful ring to it. Just think where this country would be today after two of his terms in the White House as opposed to Reagan’s. I do all the time. In fact, I’m going to write a historical science fiction novel with that exact premise. I plan on calling it “McCallandia.”
In my decade-long unearthing of numerous McCall anecdotes, one humorously stands above all others as exemplifying the great spirit of the man. It came to me courtesy of Depoe Bay resident Jay Nicholls, who was a high school friend of McCall’s son Sam in the mid to late 1960s and later became friends with McCall. I’ll let Jay tell the tale:
“In 1977-78, I was a young greenskeeper at Devil’s Lake Golf Course in Lincoln City and Tom used to come out and play golf. It was just after he finished his second term. I lived in Roads End and Tom had a second home there. He was kind of a hack but had a lot of fun and always played with the salt of the earth type guys, no politicos. Audrey (his wife) would drop him off and I would often take him home in my 1964 Volkswagen bus, a model notorious for not starting at times.
“During our rides, he would ask me my reflections on today’s youth and we’d talk about cheese. Tom loved cheese! He’d always invite me in and we’d drink a cold beer. He loved it ice cold, in a bottle.
“One day Tom needed a ride home, but the bus wasn’t starting. I said, “Okay, but we need to give it a push.” So we both got behind the bus and gave it a push. We got it rolling down the fairway and I got up in the front and jumpstarted the thing. I threw open the passenger door and Tom came running up, hopped in, and said, “Jay, they can never tell you I’m not a man of the people.”
Happy 100th birthday Tom McCall. I’m going to the beach now to walk the old husky. I’ll draw you a cake and decorate it with a hundred driftwood candles and relish the idea of how hard I plan on celebrating your birthday party at the Lincoln City Cultural Center at 6 pm on Friday, March 22.
In my decade-long unearthing of numerous McCall anecdotes, one humorously stands above all others as exemplifying the great spirit of the man. It came to me courtesy of Depoe Bay resident Jay Nicholls, who was a high school friend of McCall’s son Sam in the mid to late 1960s and later became friends with McCall. I’ll let Jay tell the tale:
“In 1977-78, I was a young greenskeeper at Devil’s Lake Golf Course in Lincoln City and Tom used to come out and play golf. It was just after he finished his second term. I lived in Roads End and Tom had a second home there. He was kind of a hack but had a lot of fun and always played with the salt of the earth type guys, no politicos. Audrey (his wife) would drop him off and I would often take him home in my 1964 Volkswagen bus, a model notorious for not starting at times.
“During our rides, he would ask me my reflections on today’s youth and we’d talk about cheese. Tom loved cheese! He’d always invite me in and we’d drink a cold beer. He loved it ice cold, in a bottle.
“One day Tom needed a ride home, but the bus wasn’t starting. I said, “Okay, but we need to give it a push.” So we both got behind the bus and gave it a push. We got it rolling down the fairway and I got up in the front and jumpstarted the thing. I threw open the passenger door and Tom came running up, hopped in, and said, “Jay, they can never tell you I’m not a man of the people.”
Happy 100th birthday Tom McCall. I’m going to the beach now to walk the old husky. I’ll draw you a cake and decorate it with a hundred driftwood candles and relish the idea of how hard I plan on celebrating your birthday party at the Lincoln City Cultural Center at 6 pm on Friday, March 22.
Waves of consciousness 3
[posted Feb. 26, 2013]
During the winter, I like watching anything undulating in motion with the ocean. That might be seals or surfers. That might be mermaids or driftlogs. That might be skinny dippers or coils of kelp.
My favorite day to watch is Sunday. Call it going to church. My favorite place to observe the winter undulations is sitting on a bench overlooking the roiling surf at Rocky Creek State Park, just north of Cape Foulweather. The bench, at the westernmost part of the park, is utterly alone and surely rests there because some closet poet in Oregon State Parks chose the site.
You will often find Sonny the husky and me leisurely doing our own thing near the bench. I stare at the undulations while she sniffs around a grassy kingdom of gopher holes.
Sometimes while sitting or reclining on the bench, I’ll whip out a notebook, close my eyes, listen to the symphony of the incoming cannonades, and begin to write whatever comes to mind with the intent or non-intent of purging linearity because the various movements in concert with the surging sonic ocean defies narrative convention. All I can say is that if a person sits on the bench and can’t escape a linearity of the mind, well, I feel sorry for that person.
My latest waves of consciousness:
Did you know that one of Napoleon’s first acts as dictator was banning the teaching of creative writing from French schools? Albert Einstein once wrote, “A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.” Einstein also wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Before dropping out of Reed College, the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame took a course in calligraphy. It reportedly influenced his aesthetic sensibility and inspired his elegant ideas for the Macintosh’s simple design.
As a fourth grader attending Mt. Pleasant Elementary in Oregon City during the 1970s, I took a required calligraphy course. It was the great modern era of American calligraphy, taught for no practical reason other than it was ancient, tactile and the quintessence of understated beauty in black and white. Calligraphy certainly had nothing to do with standards or testing or preparing me to serve the country’s global economic interests more efficiently. My Oregon public education had nothing to do with that — ever. Things have changed, as Bob Dylan once sang, and I see absolutely no evidence we are any better as a culture as a result.
So what if a high school boy spent half his day working in the auto or metal shop? Next year, that boy has to earn three credits in math at the Algebra 1 or higher level to graduate.
That requirement is totally insane. Who brooked that insanity?
My so-called mathless generation turned out okay. In fact, we led the way to American becoming the world’s leading producer of creative media, easily our number one commodity export. Interestingly enough, I did hear there’s a cool calligraphy app for my new iPhone. A couple of my artistic students rave about it.
Speaking of my new iPhone, after using it for two months, I have discovered that it has made no discernible positive effect on my life, which contradicts everything everyone who owns one told me. I have a mind to throw it in the ocean but don’t want to bother the whales.
On the subject of whales, in the last three months, I’ve read about a dozen books on them. Apparently, they might be the most advanced creatures in existence. According to some researchers, whales practice true democracy, have organized religions, and compose orchestras to one another. They also had the good sense to abandon the land and continue their evolution in the sea. Moreover, in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” the greatest whale movie of all time, aliens visited earth long before the advent of human beings and established first contact with humpback whales. They became friends and grooved on ecology together. The aliens returned millions of years later but discovered their cetacean friends had gone extinct. Thus…the aliens…well, see the movie for yourself, at least for the memorable scene where Spock mind melds with a whale.
One day, assuming any whales survive the Age of Man, they most likely will inherit the ocean because the meek will have nothing left to inherit of the land. Idea for bumper sticker: “Make Whales Not War.” Would they sell that at the whale watching shops?
I gave a literary presentation at the West Linn Library a month ago. After the event, an elderly woman came up and asked, “Do you recognize me?” I looked at her for exactly one second and remembered. How can you ever forget one of your best teachers? Ms. Katie Sauber, sixth grade. Here she was, some 40 years later, supporting her former student.
What an editor! She taught us art ever day! She was the queen of teaching with tactile methods. Some days, recess lasted for hours and she went back inside. She demanded utter excellence in everything and never accepted any response from students that smacked of the dreaded malaise known today as “whatever.”
I asked what she recalled of my 12-year old self.
“Very opinionated,” she said, smiling. She bought three books and I warned her of some profanity. She smiled about that too.
Tom McCall’s 100th birthday is Friday, March 22. Have you laid in enough Cutty Sark for the occasion? We’re celebrating in grand style at the Lincoln City Cultural Center with a special event. I hope to see you there for an unforgettable lesson in Oregon history. I plan on making it tactile.
Idea for bumper sticker: “Make Tom Not War.”
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of nine books about Oregon, available through his web site at nestuccaspitpress.com or independent bookstores. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
During the winter, I like watching anything undulating in motion with the ocean. That might be seals or surfers. That might be mermaids or driftlogs. That might be skinny dippers or coils of kelp.
My favorite day to watch is Sunday. Call it going to church. My favorite place to observe the winter undulations is sitting on a bench overlooking the roiling surf at Rocky Creek State Park, just north of Cape Foulweather. The bench, at the westernmost part of the park, is utterly alone and surely rests there because some closet poet in Oregon State Parks chose the site.
You will often find Sonny the husky and me leisurely doing our own thing near the bench. I stare at the undulations while she sniffs around a grassy kingdom of gopher holes.
Sometimes while sitting or reclining on the bench, I’ll whip out a notebook, close my eyes, listen to the symphony of the incoming cannonades, and begin to write whatever comes to mind with the intent or non-intent of purging linearity because the various movements in concert with the surging sonic ocean defies narrative convention. All I can say is that if a person sits on the bench and can’t escape a linearity of the mind, well, I feel sorry for that person.
My latest waves of consciousness:
Did you know that one of Napoleon’s first acts as dictator was banning the teaching of creative writing from French schools? Albert Einstein once wrote, “A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.” Einstein also wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Before dropping out of Reed College, the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame took a course in calligraphy. It reportedly influenced his aesthetic sensibility and inspired his elegant ideas for the Macintosh’s simple design.
As a fourth grader attending Mt. Pleasant Elementary in Oregon City during the 1970s, I took a required calligraphy course. It was the great modern era of American calligraphy, taught for no practical reason other than it was ancient, tactile and the quintessence of understated beauty in black and white. Calligraphy certainly had nothing to do with standards or testing or preparing me to serve the country’s global economic interests more efficiently. My Oregon public education had nothing to do with that — ever. Things have changed, as Bob Dylan once sang, and I see absolutely no evidence we are any better as a culture as a result.
So what if a high school boy spent half his day working in the auto or metal shop? Next year, that boy has to earn three credits in math at the Algebra 1 or higher level to graduate.
That requirement is totally insane. Who brooked that insanity?
My so-called mathless generation turned out okay. In fact, we led the way to American becoming the world’s leading producer of creative media, easily our number one commodity export. Interestingly enough, I did hear there’s a cool calligraphy app for my new iPhone. A couple of my artistic students rave about it.
Speaking of my new iPhone, after using it for two months, I have discovered that it has made no discernible positive effect on my life, which contradicts everything everyone who owns one told me. I have a mind to throw it in the ocean but don’t want to bother the whales.
On the subject of whales, in the last three months, I’ve read about a dozen books on them. Apparently, they might be the most advanced creatures in existence. According to some researchers, whales practice true democracy, have organized religions, and compose orchestras to one another. They also had the good sense to abandon the land and continue their evolution in the sea. Moreover, in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” the greatest whale movie of all time, aliens visited earth long before the advent of human beings and established first contact with humpback whales. They became friends and grooved on ecology together. The aliens returned millions of years later but discovered their cetacean friends had gone extinct. Thus…the aliens…well, see the movie for yourself, at least for the memorable scene where Spock mind melds with a whale.
One day, assuming any whales survive the Age of Man, they most likely will inherit the ocean because the meek will have nothing left to inherit of the land. Idea for bumper sticker: “Make Whales Not War.” Would they sell that at the whale watching shops?
I gave a literary presentation at the West Linn Library a month ago. After the event, an elderly woman came up and asked, “Do you recognize me?” I looked at her for exactly one second and remembered. How can you ever forget one of your best teachers? Ms. Katie Sauber, sixth grade. Here she was, some 40 years later, supporting her former student.
What an editor! She taught us art ever day! She was the queen of teaching with tactile methods. Some days, recess lasted for hours and she went back inside. She demanded utter excellence in everything and never accepted any response from students that smacked of the dreaded malaise known today as “whatever.”
I asked what she recalled of my 12-year old self.
“Very opinionated,” she said, smiling. She bought three books and I warned her of some profanity. She smiled about that too.
Tom McCall’s 100th birthday is Friday, March 22. Have you laid in enough Cutty Sark for the occasion? We’re celebrating in grand style at the Lincoln City Cultural Center with a special event. I hope to see you there for an unforgettable lesson in Oregon history. I plan on making it tactile.
Idea for bumper sticker: “Make Tom Not War.”
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of nine books about Oregon, available through his web site at nestuccaspitpress.com or independent bookstores. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
John Reed running
[Posted Feb. 12, 2013]
As an adolescent growing up in Portland and when on summer break from Harvard, John Reed frequently visited the North Oregon Coast and wrote about these experiences in some of his first published work. This was a few years before he rode with Pancho Villa in Mexico, consorted with Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, wrote Ten Days that Shook the World, became the country’s most famous romantic revolutionary and radical journalist, and the obsession of Warren Beatty who starred as Reed in the classic 1981 film “Reds.” Reed died in 1920 and is the only American ever buried in the Kremlin Wall.
On one trip in 1908 when he was 21, Reed, a native Oregonian, described the North Oregon Coast as a place of “wildness and desolation that cannot be imagined.” In his essay “From Clatsop to Necarney,” he sketched the story of a September hike from Seaside over Tillamook Head to the base of Mount Neahkahnie and the beach at Oswald West State Park.
In this piece, (and a few others recounting or fictionalizing outdoor adventures) Reed always described what it meant to be a young man in awe and in love with Oregon nature, totally free, away from the city, lectures, a “vagabond,” as he called himself. Of course in that era, he was unaffected by popular youth culture because capitalism hadn’t invented one yet. He decided for himself what was cool and what would engage him and at this point of his life, briefly, before class politics took over, what engaged him was taking on a wild place without gadgets and writing lyrically about everything he saw, felt and intuited.
Every now and then, I’ve had the privilege of teaching students who remind me of Reed in “From Clatsop to Necarney.” You never forget them. They change you. My most recent one was named Asher Doyle, an expert on culinary mushrooms who founded a mushroom appreciation club a few years ago at Newport High School where I teach. Asher would often bring me chanterelles he picked and sauté them in butter on a little propane stove set up in the parking lot. These were the best school lunches of my career and I might have been the only teacher in the country to enjoy such free haute cuisine served on a paper plate.
I think a young John Reed and Asher Doyle would have got along famously.
What a magical story Reed tells. Resting by Elk Creek near Cannon Beach, he wrote that his two friends, “stretched upon our backs, and dreaming under the old, old trees, while the spell of the place and the bright strong day took hold upon our hearts.” They revived and continued walking down the beach where they “ate lunch, and smoked a fragrant pipe.” Nearby in the trees, a few squatters lived, “many of them alone, silent men for the most part, filled no doubt with the hush of great spruces and the stars, and the sonorous silence of the sea.”
Later toward evening, Reed and his buddies caught eight trout, “which we devoured ravenously.” They snoozed around a campfire until dark and then, “stripped and dashed into the surf.” After a short swim, “came a long run up the beach and back, racing along naked in the dark, thrilling with the starlight and the firm white sand, pagans again and star-worshipers to the bottom of our souls.”
I believe very few men or women can go wrong with experiences in youth like John Reed’s on the Oregon Coast. I just wonder: are we doing enough as a culture to create more John or Jane Reeds? I’m not talking about procreation.
(To see where John Reed frolicked, head to Oswald West State Park and take the Necarney Creek Trail.)
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon, available through his web site at nestuccaspitpress.com or coastal bookstores. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
As an adolescent growing up in Portland and when on summer break from Harvard, John Reed frequently visited the North Oregon Coast and wrote about these experiences in some of his first published work. This was a few years before he rode with Pancho Villa in Mexico, consorted with Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, wrote Ten Days that Shook the World, became the country’s most famous romantic revolutionary and radical journalist, and the obsession of Warren Beatty who starred as Reed in the classic 1981 film “Reds.” Reed died in 1920 and is the only American ever buried in the Kremlin Wall.
On one trip in 1908 when he was 21, Reed, a native Oregonian, described the North Oregon Coast as a place of “wildness and desolation that cannot be imagined.” In his essay “From Clatsop to Necarney,” he sketched the story of a September hike from Seaside over Tillamook Head to the base of Mount Neahkahnie and the beach at Oswald West State Park.
In this piece, (and a few others recounting or fictionalizing outdoor adventures) Reed always described what it meant to be a young man in awe and in love with Oregon nature, totally free, away from the city, lectures, a “vagabond,” as he called himself. Of course in that era, he was unaffected by popular youth culture because capitalism hadn’t invented one yet. He decided for himself what was cool and what would engage him and at this point of his life, briefly, before class politics took over, what engaged him was taking on a wild place without gadgets and writing lyrically about everything he saw, felt and intuited.
Every now and then, I’ve had the privilege of teaching students who remind me of Reed in “From Clatsop to Necarney.” You never forget them. They change you. My most recent one was named Asher Doyle, an expert on culinary mushrooms who founded a mushroom appreciation club a few years ago at Newport High School where I teach. Asher would often bring me chanterelles he picked and sauté them in butter on a little propane stove set up in the parking lot. These were the best school lunches of my career and I might have been the only teacher in the country to enjoy such free haute cuisine served on a paper plate.
I think a young John Reed and Asher Doyle would have got along famously.
What a magical story Reed tells. Resting by Elk Creek near Cannon Beach, he wrote that his two friends, “stretched upon our backs, and dreaming under the old, old trees, while the spell of the place and the bright strong day took hold upon our hearts.” They revived and continued walking down the beach where they “ate lunch, and smoked a fragrant pipe.” Nearby in the trees, a few squatters lived, “many of them alone, silent men for the most part, filled no doubt with the hush of great spruces and the stars, and the sonorous silence of the sea.”
Later toward evening, Reed and his buddies caught eight trout, “which we devoured ravenously.” They snoozed around a campfire until dark and then, “stripped and dashed into the surf.” After a short swim, “came a long run up the beach and back, racing along naked in the dark, thrilling with the starlight and the firm white sand, pagans again and star-worshipers to the bottom of our souls.”
I believe very few men or women can go wrong with experiences in youth like John Reed’s on the Oregon Coast. I just wonder: are we doing enough as a culture to create more John or Jane Reeds? I’m not talking about procreation.
(To see where John Reed frolicked, head to Oswald West State Park and take the Necarney Creek Trail.)
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon, available through his web site at nestuccaspitpress.com or coastal bookstores. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The Maker of the Fountain
Geof and family at work on the fountain
[Posted Jan. 29, 2013]
I was ordering a beer at the Salty Dawg in Waldport when a man from my neighborhood came up and said, “The guy that made the Kelp Fountain is here with me.”
“What? Here? I’ve got to meet him,” I said. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to meet a living Oregonian more.
Every once and a great while, a writer is fortunate to unravel a beautiful mystery by virtue of writing about it for publication.
Such is the case with the magical Kelp Fountain, the subject of my column that appeared in Oregon Coast TODAY last month. In that column, I called the fountain, which was made entirely of kelp, “The most marvelous engineering project I’ve encountered in all my 15 years of relentless rambling down Oregon Coast’s publicly-owned beaches.”
I walked up to a table decorated with Bloody Marys and gentlemen fishermen. Outside, all things crabbing on Alsea Bay were going down in noisy, colorful splendor. My neighbor introduced me to Geof and I learned the inspiring story of this magisterial work of public art that the tide swept away 15 minutes after I viewed it. To my total astonishment, Geof wasn’t a former engineer and didn’t claim any special aesthetic sensibility.
An hour later, I opened an email at home and read:
“Hi Matt:
We read your article about the kelp fountain constructed on Thanksgiving Day by my husband, son, daughter and grandchildren. The fountain was the concept of my husband, Geof, who enjoys using whatever is available on the beach to create a project that our family can do altogether. Construction required about two to three hours and everyone contributed, even our littlest guy. We want our grandchildren to enjoy their time at the beach and their Grandpa’s imagination makes it happen. The kids wrote their last name in the sand to sign their work.
We loved your article and thanks for appreciating a project that made our Thanksgiving special.
Kathy Clayton”
When I received this email, which also included a photograph of the construction crew, Geof had not yet told his wife that he had met me in the bar. There was a synchronicity about all of this that frequently happens to me in connection to my beach adventures. I have no explanation for them whatsoever and don’t know why they keep occurring.
I do know something, though. I know that every family that find themselves celebrating Thanksgiving at the Oregon Coast should eat a hearty meal, give thanks to Oregon’s unprecedented legacy of publicly-owned beaches, and go build a kelp fountain or fort together. You can always watch highlights of the Dallas Cowboys game later — or not at all.
I was ordering a beer at the Salty Dawg in Waldport when a man from my neighborhood came up and said, “The guy that made the Kelp Fountain is here with me.”
“What? Here? I’ve got to meet him,” I said. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to meet a living Oregonian more.
Every once and a great while, a writer is fortunate to unravel a beautiful mystery by virtue of writing about it for publication.
Such is the case with the magical Kelp Fountain, the subject of my column that appeared in Oregon Coast TODAY last month. In that column, I called the fountain, which was made entirely of kelp, “The most marvelous engineering project I’ve encountered in all my 15 years of relentless rambling down Oregon Coast’s publicly-owned beaches.”
I walked up to a table decorated with Bloody Marys and gentlemen fishermen. Outside, all things crabbing on Alsea Bay were going down in noisy, colorful splendor. My neighbor introduced me to Geof and I learned the inspiring story of this magisterial work of public art that the tide swept away 15 minutes after I viewed it. To my total astonishment, Geof wasn’t a former engineer and didn’t claim any special aesthetic sensibility.
An hour later, I opened an email at home and read:
“Hi Matt:
We read your article about the kelp fountain constructed on Thanksgiving Day by my husband, son, daughter and grandchildren. The fountain was the concept of my husband, Geof, who enjoys using whatever is available on the beach to create a project that our family can do altogether. Construction required about two to three hours and everyone contributed, even our littlest guy. We want our grandchildren to enjoy their time at the beach and their Grandpa’s imagination makes it happen. The kids wrote their last name in the sand to sign their work.
We loved your article and thanks for appreciating a project that made our Thanksgiving special.
Kathy Clayton”
When I received this email, which also included a photograph of the construction crew, Geof had not yet told his wife that he had met me in the bar. There was a synchronicity about all of this that frequently happens to me in connection to my beach adventures. I have no explanation for them whatsoever and don’t know why they keep occurring.
I do know something, though. I know that every family that find themselves celebrating Thanksgiving at the Oregon Coast should eat a hearty meal, give thanks to Oregon’s unprecedented legacy of publicly-owned beaches, and go build a kelp fountain or fort together. You can always watch highlights of the Dallas Cowboys game later — or not at all.
The Promised Sand of Oswald West
[Posted Jan. 15, 2013]
To lay hands on The Rock is to feel inspired and imbued: Inspired to believe that a politician with vision can enhance the lives of all his constituents and imbued to never give up fighting for the great birthright and soul of Oregon—our publicly owned beaches — which undergo constant siege by the dark forces of prudery and privatization.
Actually, The Rock is a lot more than a mere rock; it has a plaque attached to it and overlooks one of the finest views on the West Coast:
The plaque reads:
To lay hands on The Rock is to feel inspired and imbued: Inspired to believe that a politician with vision can enhance the lives of all his constituents and imbued to never give up fighting for the great birthright and soul of Oregon—our publicly owned beaches — which undergo constant siege by the dark forces of prudery and privatization.
Actually, The Rock is a lot more than a mere rock; it has a plaque attached to it and overlooks one of the finest views on the West Coast:
The plaque reads:
|
YE SIGHT OF SAND AND SKY AND SEA HAS GIVEN RESPITE FROM YOUR DAILY CARES THEN PAUSE TO THANK FORMER GOVERNOR OF OREGON OSWALD WEST (1911-1915) BY HIS FORESIGHT NEARLY 400 MILES OF THE OCEAN SHORE WAS SET ASIDE FOR PUBLIC USE FROM THE COLUMBIA RIVER ON THE NORTH TO THE CALIFORNIA BORDER ON THE SOUTH. THIS MARKER IS ERECTED AND DEDICATED BY THE CITIZENS OF OREGON TO COMMEMORATE THIS OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE CONVERSATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES. |
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In 1912 Oregon Governor Oswald West rode his horse from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain and into Nehalem. He later said the ride inspired him: “So I came up with a bright idea. And this was very much of a surprise for I have enjoyed but few such in a lifetime. I drafted a simple short bill.”
The bill was only 66 words long and masterfully read:
“The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, excepting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
West said, “I pointed out that thus we would come into miles and miles of highway ‘without cost to the taxpayer.’ The Legislature took the bait—hook line and sinker. Thus came public ownership of our beaches.”
Sixty-six words. With his law, which passed in 1913 and turns 100 years old this February, Oswald West changed Oregon forever and all of our lives. He helped create a unique and dynamic relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. What it means to be an Oregonian began here. An elected official did that…and an elected official from Oregon can do it again if they think forward like West did.
Maybe every elected official in Oregon should pay a visit to The Rock and lay hands upon it. If they don’t feel fired up to make Oregon a better state, they should do us a favor and resign on the spot.
Oswald West also said something else: “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
He defined Oregon’s “great birthright” as our publicly-owned beaches. Amen to that.
In 1913 Oswald West preserved The Promised Sand (wet portions) of our ocean beaches for all Oregon time with his ingenious bill. That same year, a child was born in Egypt, Massachusetts. One day he would become the most beloved governor in Oregon history and preserve The Promised Sand (dry portions) of our ocean beaches for all Oregon time by signing the 1967 Beach Bill into Oregon law and legend. His name was Tom McCall and he’s also celebrating a 100th birthday, on March 22. When that time comes, on March 22 at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, will you party hard with me? If you love the beach like I do, I really must insist.
I almost forgot to mention the location of The Rock. Take Highway 101 into Oswald West State Park just north of Manzanita. There’s a pullout on the west side of the road that offers an incredible view of Manzanita, the ocean and beyond. You can’t possibly miss it unless you’re glued to your phone and drive right by. Park and get out of your vehicle. Find The Rock and strike a pose. Get the phone out, take some photographs, and then send them dancing around the world with a grammatical caption of appreciation to Oswald West.
(For more on West’s important tenure as governor, check out Joe R. Blakely’s informative new book, Oswald West: Governor of Oregon 1911-1915).
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The bill was only 66 words long and masterfully read:
“The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, excepting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
West said, “I pointed out that thus we would come into miles and miles of highway ‘without cost to the taxpayer.’ The Legislature took the bait—hook line and sinker. Thus came public ownership of our beaches.”
Sixty-six words. With his law, which passed in 1913 and turns 100 years old this February, Oswald West changed Oregon forever and all of our lives. He helped create a unique and dynamic relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. What it means to be an Oregonian began here. An elected official did that…and an elected official from Oregon can do it again if they think forward like West did.
Maybe every elected official in Oregon should pay a visit to The Rock and lay hands upon it. If they don’t feel fired up to make Oregon a better state, they should do us a favor and resign on the spot.
Oswald West also said something else: “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
He defined Oregon’s “great birthright” as our publicly-owned beaches. Amen to that.
In 1913 Oswald West preserved The Promised Sand (wet portions) of our ocean beaches for all Oregon time with his ingenious bill. That same year, a child was born in Egypt, Massachusetts. One day he would become the most beloved governor in Oregon history and preserve The Promised Sand (dry portions) of our ocean beaches for all Oregon time by signing the 1967 Beach Bill into Oregon law and legend. His name was Tom McCall and he’s also celebrating a 100th birthday, on March 22. When that time comes, on March 22 at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, will you party hard with me? If you love the beach like I do, I really must insist.
I almost forgot to mention the location of The Rock. Take Highway 101 into Oswald West State Park just north of Manzanita. There’s a pullout on the west side of the road that offers an incredible view of Manzanita, the ocean and beyond. You can’t possibly miss it unless you’re glued to your phone and drive right by. Park and get out of your vehicle. Find The Rock and strike a pose. Get the phone out, take some photographs, and then send them dancing around the world with a grammatical caption of appreciation to Oswald West.
(For more on West’s important tenure as governor, check out Joe R. Blakely’s informative new book, Oswald West: Governor of Oregon 1911-1915).
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
A true Christmas tale
[Posted Dec. 18, 2012]
It had rained nearly four inches in 24 hours as Christmas approached. Portland weathermen had gone deep into their online thesauruses and blow dryers for novel and moronic adjectives (wicked) to anthropomorphize a routine coastal storm. Wind had whipped through the neighborhood, toppling trees and lawn gnomes. Everything was puddled and reflecting. Reflections generated from the rain are the most beautifully mirrored images in the world, especially when they involve Christmas lights.
Did you know that famous crime novelist Elmore Leonard once cautioned aspiring writers to never use the word “suddenly” in fiction when something dramatic instantly occurs? He said it was pure cliché. Hackneyed.
This is a romance story in the rain so….
SUDDENLY I felt a call to visit the beach.
Yes, I hear that call four times a day, but this sound was different, new, original, sort of like hearing Sgt. Pepper for the first time even though the album is nearing 50 years old.
I loaded Sonny into the truck and we drove to the beach. Rain peppered us like a spread from a shotgun blast. The waves rolled a hearty brown and blue and sea foam scurried north across the sand, piling up here and there. Bubbles shimmied for seconds and then glancing rain broke them apart in dignified silence. White gulls spun in a gray and black sky. The rain instantly stopped and a tiny porthole opened to the sun. I didn’t see another human for miles and that made me happy. I could feast alone on, “The salt air loaded with cream for our breathing,” as the poet Richard Hugo wrote. I didn’t breathe it; I swallowed.
Sonny and I cruised south and then I saw her looking out to the ocean. Even from afar she appeared gorgeous as only antediluvian things washed ashore can appear.
I moved toward her, wondering what I might say, wondering if she would deign to converse with me. That is, if she spoke English, which I desperately hoped she did not. I didn’t want to hear her speak the debased language of politicians and reality TV stars with their bogus coloring from fake sun.
Sonny didn’t follow me. My dog was more interested in canine messages deposited at the wrack line.
I greeted her, she nodded, winked, and tossed back her long hair, which was colored a dark grayish green. She wore no makeup unless you count the jagged lines of salt that marked her face. I had difficulty concentrating because of her exquisite beauty and the fact that she wasn’t wearing any clothes nor had any legs. She never said a word but we communicated nonetheless. Rain is like that. As it turns out, her least favorite word is “whatever,” she has no need for a smart phone, and loathes the oil industry for its despoiling ways. She’s also bored with overly aggrieved fishermen with their boat loads of Freudian defense mechanisms, compensation being the chief one.
Christmas, though, she totally loved it, and somehow managed to communicate to me that she had once gleefully come across Orson Welles washed up drunk on a beach, in costume, after a performance of “The Christmas Carol.” He was the perfect gentleman and just wanted another cognac.
At one point, the mermaid smiled and gestured toward my camera stuffed halfway in the pocket of my pea coat.
I caught her drift.
She was an excellent model and taught me a thing or two about the photographic uses of sea foam and the rain.
An hour later, I had a date for a picnic on the rocks at Boiler Bay. I’d bring kelp and vodka. She was bringing fresh rain, shot glasses, mussels, garland, and a flute crafted from the horn of an ancient narwhal.
Her name? I wish I could pronounce it. It sounded vaguely Nordic and little bit James Joycian.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
It had rained nearly four inches in 24 hours as Christmas approached. Portland weathermen had gone deep into their online thesauruses and blow dryers for novel and moronic adjectives (wicked) to anthropomorphize a routine coastal storm. Wind had whipped through the neighborhood, toppling trees and lawn gnomes. Everything was puddled and reflecting. Reflections generated from the rain are the most beautifully mirrored images in the world, especially when they involve Christmas lights.
Did you know that famous crime novelist Elmore Leonard once cautioned aspiring writers to never use the word “suddenly” in fiction when something dramatic instantly occurs? He said it was pure cliché. Hackneyed.
This is a romance story in the rain so….
SUDDENLY I felt a call to visit the beach.
Yes, I hear that call four times a day, but this sound was different, new, original, sort of like hearing Sgt. Pepper for the first time even though the album is nearing 50 years old.
I loaded Sonny into the truck and we drove to the beach. Rain peppered us like a spread from a shotgun blast. The waves rolled a hearty brown and blue and sea foam scurried north across the sand, piling up here and there. Bubbles shimmied for seconds and then glancing rain broke them apart in dignified silence. White gulls spun in a gray and black sky. The rain instantly stopped and a tiny porthole opened to the sun. I didn’t see another human for miles and that made me happy. I could feast alone on, “The salt air loaded with cream for our breathing,” as the poet Richard Hugo wrote. I didn’t breathe it; I swallowed.
Sonny and I cruised south and then I saw her looking out to the ocean. Even from afar she appeared gorgeous as only antediluvian things washed ashore can appear.
I moved toward her, wondering what I might say, wondering if she would deign to converse with me. That is, if she spoke English, which I desperately hoped she did not. I didn’t want to hear her speak the debased language of politicians and reality TV stars with their bogus coloring from fake sun.
Sonny didn’t follow me. My dog was more interested in canine messages deposited at the wrack line.
I greeted her, she nodded, winked, and tossed back her long hair, which was colored a dark grayish green. She wore no makeup unless you count the jagged lines of salt that marked her face. I had difficulty concentrating because of her exquisite beauty and the fact that she wasn’t wearing any clothes nor had any legs. She never said a word but we communicated nonetheless. Rain is like that. As it turns out, her least favorite word is “whatever,” she has no need for a smart phone, and loathes the oil industry for its despoiling ways. She’s also bored with overly aggrieved fishermen with their boat loads of Freudian defense mechanisms, compensation being the chief one.
Christmas, though, she totally loved it, and somehow managed to communicate to me that she had once gleefully come across Orson Welles washed up drunk on a beach, in costume, after a performance of “The Christmas Carol.” He was the perfect gentleman and just wanted another cognac.
At one point, the mermaid smiled and gestured toward my camera stuffed halfway in the pocket of my pea coat.
I caught her drift.
She was an excellent model and taught me a thing or two about the photographic uses of sea foam and the rain.
An hour later, I had a date for a picnic on the rocks at Boiler Bay. I’d bring kelp and vodka. She was bringing fresh rain, shot glasses, mussels, garland, and a flute crafted from the horn of an ancient narwhal.
Her name? I wish I could pronounce it. It sounded vaguely Nordic and little bit James Joycian.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Carson's magical encounters
[posted Dec. 4, 2012]
To begin our day, Sonny the husky and I hit the beach at dawn. We like to honor a sacred passage written by Evelyn Waugh: “In all the diurnal revolution these first fresh hours alone are untainted by man.”
Completely true. Nothing provides me greater joy than rambling the beach with my old dog in the early morning, not seeing another human being, and occasionally encountering something magical in nature.
I relish these encounters although I do not purposely seek them. But when they do occur, well, as C.G. Jung wrote, “If you said you looked deeply into the eyes of an animal, people would say you were mad. But for the individual it is an uncanny and profound experience which contains absolute truth.”
We were in luck. No hominid pollution, unless of course you count their sinister and ubiquitous plastic. I brought along a camera because every once in a great while, I luck out and document an encounter.
It was something like 6 am. Black coffee bounced in my travel mug distributed by a pharmaceutical giant to advertise a drug in the alleged interest of mental health. The weather for solitude was excellent: enveloping stratus clouds and a barely perceptible drizzle. I do love late summer on the Oregon Coast.
Sonny and I walked north for 20 minutes, crossed a stream, and then beheld an impressive array of driftwood forts, including one with a long, thin branch entrenched in the sand, pointing to the sky. Atop the branch was a large bird, an obvious raptor that I didn’t initially recognize. Curious, I walked toward the bird expecting it to fly away. As I approached, I took photographs.
It did not fly away. I came to stand directly under the pole and identified the bird as an osprey. After watching it for five minutes, the bird lifted off. I could hear the osprey’s wings flapping as it flew away.
Sonny and I returned to the beach later that morning. Again, no one around. I didn’t have a camera. This time we headed south and in the distance I saw two turkey vultures eating crabs at the wrack line. Then, they suddenly scattered. Odd, I thought, we were nowhere near them.
Something passed directly above me and I flinched. A bald eagle zoomed by, circled the crabs, circled back to me, soared some 50 feet over my head, then landed on the beach and tore into a crab. I sat down on the sand with Sonny and watched the eagle feast for ten minutes until it flew away.
First an osprey, then a bald eagle. It wasn’t even noon. How was this possible?
Her name is Rachel Carson, and in 1962 her landmark book “Silent Spring” launched the modern environmental movement by exposing the ecological disaster wrought by the indiscriminate aerial application of poisonous chemicals, namely DDT.
“Silent Spring,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is well worth reading again, was an overnight bestseller around the world and attracted an astonishing variety of readers, including a president of the United States. John Kennedy called for a special panel to investigate the disastrous effects of pesticides on the natural world, particularly birds. Later, DDT was banned and with the help of the Endangered Species Act and Richard Nixon, who signed this revolutionary piece of conservation legislation (as well as many others) into law in 1973, the great raptors and the little song birds eventually rebounded.
If this country had any wisdom, Rachel Carson would adorn a new unit of currency on blue paper. Without her writing “Silent Spring,” there probably wouldn’t be a pelican, peregrine falcon, osprey, or bald eagle in the wild in the lower 48 states, and certainly not in Oregon, on the coast, on my local beach, where I am fortunate to magically encounter them for free with wonderful irregularity.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
[posted Dec. 4, 2012]
To begin our day, Sonny the husky and I hit the beach at dawn. We like to honor a sacred passage written by Evelyn Waugh: “In all the diurnal revolution these first fresh hours alone are untainted by man.”
Completely true. Nothing provides me greater joy than rambling the beach with my old dog in the early morning, not seeing another human being, and occasionally encountering something magical in nature.
I relish these encounters although I do not purposely seek them. But when they do occur, well, as C.G. Jung wrote, “If you said you looked deeply into the eyes of an animal, people would say you were mad. But for the individual it is an uncanny and profound experience which contains absolute truth.”
We were in luck. No hominid pollution, unless of course you count their sinister and ubiquitous plastic. I brought along a camera because every once in a great while, I luck out and document an encounter.
It was something like 6 am. Black coffee bounced in my travel mug distributed by a pharmaceutical giant to advertise a drug in the alleged interest of mental health. The weather for solitude was excellent: enveloping stratus clouds and a barely perceptible drizzle. I do love late summer on the Oregon Coast.
Sonny and I walked north for 20 minutes, crossed a stream, and then beheld an impressive array of driftwood forts, including one with a long, thin branch entrenched in the sand, pointing to the sky. Atop the branch was a large bird, an obvious raptor that I didn’t initially recognize. Curious, I walked toward the bird expecting it to fly away. As I approached, I took photographs.
It did not fly away. I came to stand directly under the pole and identified the bird as an osprey. After watching it for five minutes, the bird lifted off. I could hear the osprey’s wings flapping as it flew away.
Sonny and I returned to the beach later that morning. Again, no one around. I didn’t have a camera. This time we headed south and in the distance I saw two turkey vultures eating crabs at the wrack line. Then, they suddenly scattered. Odd, I thought, we were nowhere near them.
Something passed directly above me and I flinched. A bald eagle zoomed by, circled the crabs, circled back to me, soared some 50 feet over my head, then landed on the beach and tore into a crab. I sat down on the sand with Sonny and watched the eagle feast for ten minutes until it flew away.
First an osprey, then a bald eagle. It wasn’t even noon. How was this possible?
Her name is Rachel Carson, and in 1962 her landmark book “Silent Spring” launched the modern environmental movement by exposing the ecological disaster wrought by the indiscriminate aerial application of poisonous chemicals, namely DDT.
“Silent Spring,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is well worth reading again, was an overnight bestseller around the world and attracted an astonishing variety of readers, including a president of the United States. John Kennedy called for a special panel to investigate the disastrous effects of pesticides on the natural world, particularly birds. Later, DDT was banned and with the help of the Endangered Species Act and Richard Nixon, who signed this revolutionary piece of conservation legislation (as well as many others) into law in 1973, the great raptors and the little song birds eventually rebounded.
If this country had any wisdom, Rachel Carson would adorn a new unit of currency on blue paper. Without her writing “Silent Spring,” there probably wouldn’t be a pelican, peregrine falcon, osprey, or bald eagle in the wild in the lower 48 states, and certainly not in Oregon, on the coast, on my local beach, where I am fortunate to magically encounter them for free with wonderful irregularity.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Breaking world records
[posted Nov. 20, 2012]
I had a modest goal for the October 25 field trip that involved 40 of my journalism students at Newport High School (and five from Toledo): visit five beaches in seven hours to produce a future special issue documenting our love of the ocean that would also break multiple world records in categories of our own creation that heretofore never existed because no one had ever thought to create them.
The records we shattered that glorious sunny day, practically the only day it didn’t rain that month were:
• Most visits to a beach by a high school journalism class in the course of one day
• Most haikus written in the sand by angst-free teenagers in a rural beach setting
• Largest inept hacky sack circle in Oregon history
• Most screaming of immortal lines from “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy by a high school teacher
• Most public school students wrestling over a box of Ding Dongs in an estuary
• Most important Oregon cultural standards that will never appear on a report card
• Most band names generated by a group of aspiring rockers in one day
• Most times a teacher yelled the work “rock” on a field trip
• Most intriguing use of limpets by a teacher in the history of Western education
• Most photographs of the beach/ocean taken by a high school journalism class in the course of one day
• Most students lashed by kelp in the name of fashion
• Most students participating in a dance contest on Cape Perpetua to Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean Song”
• Most students experiencing an epiphany because they went barefoot on the beach for the first time
• Most productive use of cell phones by teenagers in the history of technology
• Most teenage journalists singing The Beatles’ “Come Together” on a school bus
• Most Oregon teenagers unwittingly indoctrinated into the secret society known as the Legion of the Rock while having fun at the beach
• Most Oregon teenagers knowingly indoctrinated into the unique legacy of Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, or “great birthright” as former Governor Oswald West defined it
• Most words written by Oregon student journalists extolling the “great birthright”
• Best use of a state taxpayers’ money in the history of American secondary education
• Best outdoor technique for a teacher to recognize what’s really important in teaching
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
I had a modest goal for the October 25 field trip that involved 40 of my journalism students at Newport High School (and five from Toledo): visit five beaches in seven hours to produce a future special issue documenting our love of the ocean that would also break multiple world records in categories of our own creation that heretofore never existed because no one had ever thought to create them.
The records we shattered that glorious sunny day, practically the only day it didn’t rain that month were:
• Most visits to a beach by a high school journalism class in the course of one day
• Most haikus written in the sand by angst-free teenagers in a rural beach setting
• Largest inept hacky sack circle in Oregon history
• Most screaming of immortal lines from “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy by a high school teacher
• Most public school students wrestling over a box of Ding Dongs in an estuary
• Most important Oregon cultural standards that will never appear on a report card
• Most band names generated by a group of aspiring rockers in one day
• Most times a teacher yelled the work “rock” on a field trip
• Most intriguing use of limpets by a teacher in the history of Western education
• Most photographs of the beach/ocean taken by a high school journalism class in the course of one day
• Most students lashed by kelp in the name of fashion
• Most students participating in a dance contest on Cape Perpetua to Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean Song”
• Most students experiencing an epiphany because they went barefoot on the beach for the first time
• Most productive use of cell phones by teenagers in the history of technology
• Most teenage journalists singing The Beatles’ “Come Together” on a school bus
• Most Oregon teenagers unwittingly indoctrinated into the secret society known as the Legion of the Rock while having fun at the beach
• Most Oregon teenagers knowingly indoctrinated into the unique legacy of Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, or “great birthright” as former Governor Oswald West defined it
• Most words written by Oregon student journalists extolling the “great birthright”
• Best use of a state taxpayers’ money in the history of American secondary education
• Best outdoor technique for a teacher to recognize what’s really important in teaching
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
One Man's Beach • Commentary, by Matt Love
Riprap and rainbows
[posted Nov. 9, 2012]
I stood in a downpour on my deck and looked across the street. The sun was throwing a narrow spotlight on my neighbor’s dry roof. This meant it was raining like the battle of Stalingrad: moving block by block, house to house.
Normally, I would venture to my beach and watch the rain collide with the ocean, one of the more serene applications of nature and completely unavailable to download to any phone or computer.
But, in recent weeks, visits to my beach had enraged me and I absolutely loathed returning from my walks in such a vitriolic state. I let go at the beach, never take up. I didn’t like this unpleasant reversal.
A six-letter four-letter dirty word, the most profane word on the Oregon Coast was the culprit — riprap — or revetment as it’s officially called. A new riprap project near my home approved by the somnolent stewards of Oregon’s unique legacy of publicly-owned beaches had tainted my walks because I couldn’t stop photographing the desecration. Documenting the desecration of Oregon’s quintessence is hardly uplifting. Indeed, it makes the soul sick.
Never heard of riprap? Allow me to define it: placing large boulders on beaches to protect ill-conceived structures from collapsing into the sea where they rightfully belong. Limited editorial space prevents a full disquisition on the ecologically unsound and downright ugly practice of riprap. Find me on Facebook if you want to see some shocking photos and read my tirades.
No, today, I couldn’t bear seeing the new hideous riprap, so I loaded Sonny into the truck and we went to meet the rain at Ona Beach. Some unpredictable and soothing act of magic always occurs at Ona and I can never predict what source will generate it. Could be Russian Old Believers playing golf. Could be salmon riding a freshet up Beaver creek. Could be a teal wave breaking in Emily Dickinson fashion — slant.
We hit the beach and saw no other humans. About a hundred gulls sat in the estuary debating something. The sky hovered like a jagged black, gray cake and showers blew lightly from south to north.
Then there was light. Although it was still raining.
And then, a quarter of dim rainbow emerged from the cake and sunk into the ocean. I extracted a cheap digital camera from the pocket of my pea coat and started shooting away. More light manifested and better illuminated the rainbow. The cake dissolved and out jumped a full rainbow. Then a double rainbow faded into view and reflections of rainbows appeared everywhere on the sand. Have you ever walked on a rainbow? I have now.
Sonny and I started running to the rainbow, which arced so huge I couldn’t capture it entirely in the frame. Yes, we ran, in the rain, because we knew of the rainbow’s elusive, transient nature. At some point, when the light seemed perfect, I halted, set the camera on self-timer, anchored it in the sand, and took more photographs.
The rainbow festival lasted 20 minutes and several cars pulled off Highway 101 to witness the spectacle. As Sonny and I left the beach in the rain, I felt invigorated after documenting beauty again. On the drive home listening to Led Zeppelin, the greatest rain band of all time, I formulated an interesting new existential axiom: In the long run, rainbows disintegrate the riprap of people’s minds.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The accursed ‘whatever’
[posted Oct. 23, 2012]
At Ona Beach, I leaned against a massive drift log bearing ancient wounds inflicted by a crosscut saw. Who were the Oregon men that felled this 300-year old beauty by hand? I wish I could have met them.
A bright October sun made me close my eyes. Fifty feet away, Sonny the husky investigated smells at the edge of Beaver Creek. I started thinking.
Earlier in the week, I had read one of the best sentences ever written about the ocean and it was written by a student of mine from Newport High School where I teach English. She wrote: “The ocean is a book of 10 million words and you must read between the lines to discover the mysteries, even if takes years, decades, a lifetime.” True like gravity. Whenever I look to the horizon, the ocean makes the combined holy books of all the world religions read like a tweet.
I grasped some socialist Oregon sand and let it seep between my fingers. My mind drifted toward a recurring irritation: people in my life who give me the whatever when a situation demands personal and direct communication. I’d actually prefer an upraised middle finger to my face than mushy indifference. Why would anyone want to live their lives in the vacuum of whatever? Amorphous is not tactile.
One thing I love about dogs: they never give you the whatever.
Sleep began to overtake me when I heard Sonny’s familiar howl of greeting strangers. Rousing myself, I turned and beheld a couple in their 50s with four poodles, three large and one small, three black and one white.
Sonny was surrounded and having a good time. I walked up to the couple. The man looked like an emissary from a foreign country that issued marijuana-use permits to all its citizens in the interest of promoting social welfare. I noticed a few colors of Jamaica’s flag here and there and one of the dogs had dreadlocks. They asked me about the freakish appearance of Sonny’s front paws, the result of a tragic accident years ago. I told them the story and how I spent nearly $20,000 on her care and none of it did any good, but that Sonny had adjusted to her invalidism and had become a different, and in some ways, a better dog. “She supercropped her life,” the man said, assuming that I knew what this marijuana growing term meant. Translation: Sonny obtained a better yield in life with the same or less to work with.
“Supercrop your life” might be the most elucidating advice I’d heard in a long, long time.
I learned they hailed from Boise, although he was originally from Eugene, and that their two teenage children were asleep in the van. He told me he grew medical marijuana for a living, although I later discovered Idaho has no such law.
They had departed Idaho at 9 pm on Wednesday and driven straight through to Astoria. Two days of teacher in-service at school had inspired a plan: visit practically every major beach from Astoria to Yachats and return to Boise by Monday morning so the kids wouldn’t miss class. When I met the couple on Ona Beach, they had barely slept since leaving Idaho. Rest would come later, they said, after ordering a pizza and pitching a tent somewhere illegally in the dunes. I suggested a few secret places I knew.
We said our goodbyes and the couple held hands as they walked toward the ocean, the dogs bouncing all around them. I whipped out my film camera and took a few photographs. I wanted to document a pure moment of meeting people who had undoubtedly supercropped their lives, never lived in the whatever, and were teaching these invaluable lessons to their children.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He never uses the word 'whatever.' He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The Fishermen
[Posted Sept. 25, 2012]
I pulled the truck off Hwy. 101 and Sonny the husky howled her approval. I think she loves Ona Beach more than I do.
It was a Sunday morning in late August and unpolished silver colored the sky. A thin drizzle fell. Choosing at random, I brought along one of the five cameras (three film, two digital) stashed in the cab and Sonny led the way into the dunes.
Something caught my eye. I turned right and saw an Asian-looking man, some 20 yards away, apparently naked, stand up in the grass. He didn’t see me.
Well, why not? This is Oregon. This was sort of a summer.
The man then slipped into green waders and produced a fishing pole. He started walking toward the ocean. Sonny and I paralleled him until we reached the beach. I watched the man join a companion already casting in the surf. A couple hundred yards south of them, three other men fished.
Sonny I cruised to Beaver Creek and I read the various simple equations of sweet horny math in the sand drawn by the kids. They all = [hearts], which lacked sufficient reality, but so be it; the kids will experience the harder trigonometry of adult love soon enough.
I looked up. Another man in waders clutching a fishing pole magically transpired from a thicket of willows, walked into the creek, and out to the ocean to join his friends. They just had to all know each other and their obvious camaraderie intrigued me, so I moved toward them.
My route intersected with the first two men, one of whom veered to meet me. He was wearing neon orange boots of the most curious fancy design.
We met and Sonny approached him. He asked me if I wanted him to take a photograph of me and Sonny. I said that was generous but I preferred taking shots of him and his friends. No problem at all. He had a distinctly non-hangover appearance and was distinctly not OTA (meaning Oregon Tavern Age, anywhere from 40-70 years old), typically the type of man I encounter fishing in the surf on Oregon’s publicly owned beaches.
“Are you guys some kind of club?”
“No, we just like to fish.”
I knew they weren’t locals but I asked him anyway.
“No, we all live near Portland, in Beaverton.”
“Perch, right?”
“That’s right. We take them home and eat them.”
I’ve always wanted to try fishing for perch at the ocean’s edge but have never followed through. I need a teacher.
We chatted a while longer and I learned the men visit every week, usually at Ona, but a few other spots on the Central Coast as well. I got the impression they rose very early Sunday morning, piled into a couple of rigs, and arrived at dawn.
I said goodbye and a few seconds later, all six men stood staggered in the surf and fished away. I watched the waves batter them for a few minutes and took photographs. The idea was to capture in real time a seascape of impressionism composed primarily of one color — gray. No one caught a fish while I was observing but a couple lines did go taut. I could hear the men laughing.
It was time to go, but I didn’t really want to leave. I dearly wanted to join them, learn their names, stories, learn how to fish. Sometimes good journalism demands more than just observing, asking questions, vicariousness. You have to get into it, too, detach the detachment. Dive in. Get wet.
Waves of Consciousness
[Posted Sept. 11, 2012]
In recent weeks I’ve started a new habit of going to the beach with Sonny the husky and a spiral notebook. I’ll find a comfortable drift log, dune, or slice of riprap, sit down on the sand, stare at the ocean, perhaps snap a photograph with my film fisheye camera, peruse my notes, and write with absolutely no editorial agenda in mind. I also actively resist any notion of linear thinking. I ride a wave in my mind of the past and present tense.
Here’s what resulted:
A friend tipped me off to an opening of a classic American novel I’d never read, an opening he thought I should know about: It goes like this: “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman — he looks tough and I don’t.” Never in a million years would I have guessed “The Outsiders,” by S.E. Hinton, begins this way.
I read this in the Oregonian: “Oregon last month signed all nine assistant (football) coaches to contract amendments that boosted the value of their existing individual salaries for this season to $2,759,500, up 20 percent, or $460,333, from last year’s collective salary of $2,299,167…The raises do not include the combined $450,000 in retention bonuses six assistants are set to receive this month.
“The special teams/tight ends coach will earn (sic) $322,500 this season and $339,250 in 2013. His retention bonus was $100,000.” I would have to teach at Newport High School for five years to earn an equivalent salary. But alas, I get to teach poetry and the special teams/tight ends coach doesn’t. He also doesn’t get to stage a rock festival and take photographs of the rain with his students.
It all brings to mind something I read written by the Italian author/intellectual Umberto Eco. “Sports debate is the easiest substitute for political debate.” He wrote that before ESPN and the Internet. Let me also loosely paraphrase something else Eco wrote about big time spectator sports. “Those who watch and obsess over spectator sports are not playing sports. They have lost the ability to play.”
A while back I read a line by Robert Adams in a fantastic book called “Why People Photograph.” “Most people alive in the United States today have never had, for a variety of reasons, the full attention of a first-rate teacher, and our democracy is failing partly as a result.” I might amend the sentence to read “totally” instead of “partly.”
I finished a biography of James Cain, author of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Mildred Pierce” and came across a line that startled me. This is a paraphrase: “A writer with ambition has to become a pelagic fish,” meaning he has to swim out to open water where it’s deep. Have I stayed too close to shore by writing almost exclusively about Oregon?
The high, tubular clouds in the sky intrigue me. A while back I read “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and learned all the interesting names and salient facts for the many different types of clouds.
I have since forgotten everything I learned except that stratus clouds dominate the Oregon Coast. They give us the gray. It doesn’t bother me that I can’t remember. I much prefer impressionism to meteorology anyway, but would like to become a writer who can bring the aesthetic and the scientific together in creative fashion. Rain would be my subject.
A man and a woman rode bicycles in front of me a few seconds ago. I took a photo of them with my fisheye and they waved. They looked like a couple and brought along their kid instead of resigning him to duct tape and cough syrup. They’re playing sports, not watching them, and will probably play another sport when they get back to their tent or motel room and the kid’s sacked out.
Just look at the plastic all around me! I loathe its utter existence! Every city on the Oregon Coast should ban the plastic bag and Styrofoam containers immediately. This is a course of action as obvious as gravity. Every coastal politician should make the ocean and its creatures their chief constituency on this issue because all the truly momentous and portentous political decisions of our time will involve the health of the ocean and the impetus for change has to begin locally.
In 1941, Victor Yarsley, an English chemist and one of the pioneers of plastic, wrote: “The plastic man will come into a world of color and bright shining surfaces where childish hands find nothing to break, no sharp edges, or corners to cut or graze…all his toys, his cot…the teething ring he bites, the unbreakable bottle he feeds from…as he grows he cleans his teeth and brushes his hair with plastic brushes, clothes himself within plastic clothes, writes his first lesson with a plastic pen…”
Yarsley ultimately wanted, “a world free from moth and rust made up of synthetic materials.” To that I say: You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get more of what you don’t need and never needed. Rust never sleeps at the Oregon Coast by the way. Mold either.
Here comes Sonny loping toward me. Not bad for a 13-year old husky with ruptured front ligaments. Time for a family selfportrait. Hope I got the shot. I’ll know whenever I have the film developed. That could be years. Patience in photography is a virtue. So is guessing. Both were required before the advent of digital cameras and sometimes they produced beautiful mistakes. I always love that my celluloid blunders usually turn out better than my memory card contrivances. In recent months, I’ve made more guesses in my writing and I think this evolution came about because I began almost shooting exclusively with film.
My left hand reaches to the ground. I grab a handful of sand and let it sift through my fingers…. Oregon’s publicly owned beaches, free to use, free to frolic …. Ahh … the wonderful benefits of socialism. More please.
Love at Hart’s Cove
Posted Aug. 15, 2012
On a magnificent sunny morning in July, Rose and I hiked to the roiling foam of Hart’s Cove. When we reached the end of the trail that overlooks perhaps the best untainted (meaning development-free)) view on the Oregon Coast, we found two young women climbing a Sitka spruce.
Rose and I hadn’t seen each other for over a year, but it had taken all of 10 seconds to find our groove and start talking the good candid talk of great friends. We exchanged recent breakup stories and tales from our respective employment fronts: mine, teaching; hers, nursing. We also occasionally reminisced about our former magic times together: Fort Clatsop, Mount Hebo, Drift Creek Bridge Matt Kramer Memorial, clearcuts, the dunes of Nestucca Spit. I’ve never met anyone in my life as hard core Oregon as Rose.
We conversed with the tree climbers, who were clearly a couple. They had traveled from San Diego and one of them had grown up in Eugene. Both were blonde and they had met at the University of Oregon. They exhibited superb energy together and Rose and I got the feeling they prized sensual mischief in nature, and undoubtedly belonged to some kind of secret imp society.
Rose had brought along lunch: PBJs and fruit. I ate a candy bar for dessert. She forgot the whisky so I settled for tap water instead. We took some photos with my cheap toy cameras and discussed the benefits of living as a seal. Several of them were hauled out on a patch of sand 1,000 feet below us, sound asleep. It looked pretty damn sweet to me.
My eyes scanned the landscape and the penetrating greens and blues of the water and woods screamed out for a Romantic poem worthy of John Keats or sensual mischief worthy of D.H. Lawrence. How about combine the two? It was hard to believe that 12 hours earlier I had wasted $9 and three hours watching the “The Dark Knight Rises,” the final loud, politically infantile installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. I really don’t even know why I went. I mentioned the movie to Rose and she hadn’t seen it, nor had any intention of seeing it. She would rather hike, raft, garden, and listen to short stories and that’s why we always got along so well and still do.
What hypnotic noises Hart’s Cove orchestrates inside me. I don’t know what it is, but something about this place keeps calling me home, as in I want to return to the sea here when I finally come to the end of my sentient life. I knew that the moment I saw this place 15 years ago, and it was one of the most uplifting feelings I’ve ever experienced because I finally grasped the simple beauty and corporeal spirituality of the everlasting water cycle. No burial or cremation or service. Not much of an original story in that for me, just unnecessary energy and money expended.
It was time to go. We headed into the tall grass and encountered another lesbian couple; they were in their 60s and made a remark about the fine day. One of them hadn’t seen the cove in over 30 years. A lot has happened in America since then. Some of it even good.
In the woods, Rose and I came upon a couple striding hard to the cove. A hulking man with a crew cut led the way, followed by a woman wearing a blue t-shirt emblazoned with “I Love My Husband” in bold, and I mean BOLD, red and white lettering.
We all exchanged greetings and after they passed, I turned to Rose and she gave me a silent, “What the ____?” shrug.
A few yards later, we began speculating about the couple:
Newlyweds on a honeymoon, because no one married for five years would own such a shirt, much less wear it in public.
A fashionable scarlet letter that her church shamed her to wear.
They were having an affair and loved the irony.
ome kind of kinky role-playing game that originated online.
It didn’t matter what their story really was. They appeared happy and moved in nature with intense alacrity, which contrasts with my Walt Whitman-esque “loaf and invite your soul,” ethos, but, hey, they weren’t sitting at home updating their mood swings on Facebook.
A few minutes later, Rose and I passed another couple, an elderly man and a woman employing ski poles for balance. Then came a young man and woman and they just oozed a “first date” vibe. Back at the parking lot, we saw another couple gearing up. They looked a little surly and weren’t talking. Perhaps they’d had an argument.
No doubt, Hart’s Cove would surely smooth it over.
The Magic of 'Seal Rock'
[Posted 7.31.12]
What is the official color of the Pacific Northwest Coast? Let a poet define it: “…it happens when I begin my little ritual of naming the colors. That’s grey, I say. That is not grey, I say. But more than grey, a white grey, green grey, blue grey, rose grey — my little ritual — and then, and then it overtakes me.”
The poet’s name is John Haislip, the poem is “On the Beach Late Before Sunset” and it concludes “Seal Rock,” the finest book of poetry I’ve ever read about the Oregon Coast and the people who inhabit its landscape. “Seal Rock” nails the magical, primitive, punishing, damp, grey, reclusive nature of surviving on the soggy monochrome coast with the same vigorous accuracy as Ken Kesey did in “Sometimes a Great Notion.” And I make that claim because I’ve lived at the Oregon Coast for 15 years and have had a lot of wet, grey time to read a lot of poetry about the Pacific Northwest.
I only know of Haislip’s existence because of an offhanded remark in a Newport dive bar by my friend, Tim Sproul. We were drinking cheap Pacific Northwest lagers and talking poetry when Sproul told me I had to read Haislip’s “Seal Rock.” He also said he studied under Haislip in the University of Oregon’s MFA program in creative writing in the late 1980s and had great admiration for him as a teacher and mentor. Haislip was a professor emeritus at the university who passed away in March 2011 at the age of 85.
In 2010, Poetry Northwest and the Oregon State Library named “Seal Rock” as one of its 150 Books for 150 Years of (Oregon) Statehood. That’s a fitting tribute indeed, but meaningless if hardly anyone can read it.
In all my literary sleuthing on behalf of lost Oregon books, I have never encountered a book more tragically lost than “Seal Rock.” I found a disintegrating copy at the Driftwood Library in Lincoln City, one of only seven Oregon and two Washington public libraries that have the book listed in their collections. There were only a few for sale in the rare book digital universe and prices ran close to $100 a copy. Nothing to download on Google Books or Amazon. Barnwood Press of Indiana published the book and has it listed on their web site, but none of my inquiries to the company were answered.
After reading this slim 52-page volume that won the Oregon Book Award for poetry in 1987, I read it again, photocopied it, annotated it, then drove five miles from my home to the village of Seal Rock, at Milepost 150 on the Oregon Coast, and explored the beaches. There, I walked into John Haislip’s poetry.
“Seal Rock” overtook me in a way no book of poetry has before. It helped me transcend a great personal loss. I placed it at the forefront of a novel I just completed. I memorized line after line. I sense I have a mission to herald how incredible these poems are. Read them and learn. The lessons are tough.
My favorite poem in “Seal Rock” is “Counting the Gulls.” The last stanza reads:
As now it’s coming on
From who knows how much
Multitudinous grey
Out there all week --
Or through the next?
Or how about the next six months? Haislip writes about grey better than anyone I’ve ever read and one can sense from these poems that he regularly communed with gulls and rain. He also uses the word carcass as a verb, as in, “carcass off in the poisoned air,” and I’ll never get that image out of my head, which is what great poetry is supposed to do, not make you feel confused or unintelligent.
Postscript: After a version of this essay appeared in The Oregonian several months ago, I received an e-mail. In part, it read: “I am John Haislip’s widow who read with poignant delight your column. I believe I can speak for John in this instance: he would have been pleased to have read your kind and astute analysis of ‘Seal Rock.’ You are absolutely right to call it a ‘tragically lost’ book.”
Well, not so lost anymore. By the time you read this, I will have sat down with Haislip’s wife in Seal Rock (where else?) and discussed ways to resurrect this classic of Oregon literature. It has to happen.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon, including his most recent, “Sometimes a Great Movie: Paul Newman, Ken Kesey and the Filming of the Great Oregon Novel.” He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Batting Practice
[Posted June 5, 2012]
A metal sky hung over the ball park. The batter took his stance. The pitcher went into a wind-up and delivered the pitch: fastball down the middle. The batter swung, a mighty cut. Crack! It was a long fly ball to center, going, going, gone … in the ocean.
It was the best home run I’ve ever seen hit.
After a frenzied weekend in Portland promoting my new book, I craved the pacific of the beach more desperately than I had in recent memory. The complicated city life just wears me out and I always break the speed limit racing home. I never bother going to the house first. Instead, I immediately take Sonny the husky to the beach and reconnect with simplicity and patience.
I was thinking about patience as the literary associate and I cruised down my local beach. It was a late Sunday afternoon and the ocean barely moved as we came upon a man throwing an assortment of baseballs, tennis balls and even a softball to a young boy wielding a wooden bat.
The kid could hit. He ripped shot after shot, through the box, to left, right and center ocean. In fact, he never missed making contact, which was pretty incredible when you consider the difficult conditions.
At some point, Sonny retrieved one of the tennis balls from the water and the kid jogged over to us to reclaim it. He was 11 or 12, a little stocky, pimple free, black shaggy hair. He looked like a ballplayer, not a video gamer.
I complimented him on his batting prowess and he sort of shrugged a “thank you” and went on fetching balls from the surf. He wanted to hit, not talk.
The man came over and I told him the kid showed talent. He smiled and gestured toward the boy. “That’s my son,” he said.
I took a closer look at the dad. His face appeared worn. I had absolutely no idea how old he was. He must have lived hard to get a face like that.
The dad drifted away and father and son resumed batting practice. We watched for a few minutes and saw the father sprint toward his son after one swing. He made a few subtle adjustments to the batter’s stance and then the kid proceeded to smash one towering shot after another. They all found the sea and then washed up ashore.
The literary associate and I began clapping loudly. The father and son turned to us and waved.
Two Womens' Beach
[Posted Wednesday, May 23, 2012]
Sonny the husky and I wandered the wrack line of our local beach after a fierce storm. We were cruising south, inspecting the interesting detritus, when we encountered an immobile cormorant apparently in the final stage of life.
The bird saw us, whipped its formidable beak our way, and discharged a savage warning hiss. We got the message and gave it a wide berth to die in dignity and perfect concert with nature, say, unlike how most Americans demise.
Creatures die and beget other life, other notions. The same is true with once-entrenched, sacrosanct but now-dead beliefs held by humans. You can find these beliefs resting at the metaphorical wrack line, washed ashore, dead: slavery, segregation, the divine right of kings, a geocentric universe, and most recently, homosexuals as immoral people undeserving of legal marital status or protection from discrimination.
Many Americans still refuse to accept the death of the latter belief, but if they paid better attention, they would already know it washed ashore, in broad daylight, decomposed, and then returned to the sea where it birthed something new, something vastly more democratic, and I’m not talking about the political party.
As Sonny and I circled around the cormorant, I saw an elderly woman about 50 yards away, walking north, my way, clutching a Chuck-it with a tennis ball. Farther down the beach, across a creek, I saw another woman making her way south down the sand using a staff.
Halfway between the women, a brown poodle played alone in the surf. Why wasn’t the dog with the woman with the Chuck-it? Strange, I thought.
Sonny and I veered toward the woman with the Chuck-it. We all met.
“Hi there. Hey, there’s a dying cormorant not far away. You should keep your dog away.”
I assumed the dog was hers.
“Oh, I don’t need to worry,” she said, gesturing at the poodle, who was now heading toward the other woman. “She’s going with my partner today.” The woman went on to explain how she and her partner typically split up at the beach and one heads north and the other heads south. The dog has to decide which master to follow.
I thought this about the best story I’d heard in a long time, and wondered if I might have stumbled across the magic key to maintaining a healthy relationship.
We walked along together for a while, chatting about something I no longer recall, but the story was so alive and writing itself with the rhythm and surety of the incoming waves, that I finished it by the time I said goodbye to the woman.
The next day I watched undetected the same two women approach the beach from their car. The poodle tagged along. One headed north, using a staff to traverse slippery rocks down to the sand. The other headed south with the Chuck-it and tennis ball. The poodle went for the Chuck-it. I laughed aloud.
Freedom is such a beautiful thing to behold although fighting the battle to achieve it can be the ugliest thing in American life. People who don’t want freedom for everyone can get incredibly ugly when they know their myopic world view is slipping away. Just ask the segregationists.
The cormorant wasn’t there when Sonny and I rambled past the spot where I last saw it. It was gone.
Antediluvian answers flood forth on the beach
[Posted May 8, 2012]
The sun emerged from a sodden April hibernation and the literary associate and I traversed the watery, willowed path to Ona Beach. Sonny the husky led the way as crows and gulls flew overhead. I think I even heard a hummingbird nearby.
In the distance I saw a man, his daughter and their dog play fetch with a ball along Beaver Creek as it emptied into the Pacific.
Is there any finer place in the world than the Oregon Coast, when the sun lights up estuaries and tides move in and out, instigating the collision of fresh and salt water?
Not that I’ve visited. They are virtually love, poetry, and healing machines, revealing untold natural wonder and primitive existential magic. You can smell all of life there.
The literary associate and I walked west to the ocean, talking about our new favorite poem, “We Are Transmitters,” by D.H. Lawrence. We both concur enthusiastically with one stanza:
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
If I’d had children, the idea of transmitting life into work to ripple through the days would have ranked as one of the most important lessons taught. I would have strived to model it daily.
Another man came into view. He sat on a huge drift log and wore a green hoodie, the cowl draped over his head like some skateboarding monk or Hwy. 101 drifter. He was reading a book with his back facing the south.
We moved in closer for inspection. In all my years of Oregon Coast beach rambling I had never seen anyone read a book in such a fashion.
I espied the book and noticed its beveled gold edges — a Bible for sure. As the child of a former preacher and missionary, I know a Bible when I see one and I know a man in distress reading a Bible when I see one.
Was he reading a passage from the Old or New Testament? I dearly hoped it was the New Testament, and specifically the Sermon on the Mount, beautiful words of mercy, equality and charity that all American politicians should commit to memory, practice as habit, and then institute as policy.
On the other hand, maybe he needed the Old Testament and Jonah, and the tale of running away futilely from calling and responsibility. I love that sea story and its awesome metaphor. Sometimes I desire a whale to ingest me for three days, force me into solitude and silence, then spit me out on a beach so I can get up and do the right thing.
My zeal to approach the man intensified, and the literary associate rebuked me. “Can’t you just imagine it?” she said. No, I am a journalist first and foremost and I craved to know the truth, which in my experience always proves the richer story than fiction or contrived memoir.
The literary associate won the day, however, and we circled around the man, affording me a better view. I saw pain and vacancy in his young man’s face, a dangerous combination. He appeared to need answers.
Perhaps the Bible could help. Decades ago, it never helped me in moments of crisis. Nevertheless, I don’t dismiss that for many, many years it has provided genuine comfort and guidance for some.
Yes, I left him alone with the Bible, although I felt I had something unique to offer him, wisdom gathered from my multitudes of spiritual experiences on Oregon’s beaches.
Had I gone up to him, I would have suggested he turn his head left, bookmark the Bible and rest it on the log, stand up, walk toward the ocean. Or run. Go ask questions of the sea and yourself. Answers lie within the ocean. Look, listen, touch, perhaps wade in the water and dance. No reading required. No authority but the old annihilating sound of the ocean and its antediluvian answers.
It’s worked for me so many times I’ve lost count.
My friends the gulls
[Posted April 25, 2012]
Some six or seven years ago, I heard a story about an employee of a coastal restaurant who beat a one-legged gull to death with a stick, out back of the establishment. Apparently the gull served as the establishment’s mascot, and for whatever reason, if sociopathic behavior can be said to have logical reasons, the employee bashed the bird to death.
The man who recounted the incident to me heard about it from an eyewitness who later called the police. An investigation ensued, but the perpetrator wasn’t arrested, even though killing a gull constitutes a crime under federal migratory bird law, punishable by a maximum fine of $15,000 and a maximum prison sentence of two years, depending on the offense.
The tale of the senseless and horrific murder of a gull has never left my mind. I can also never forget driving behind a pick up truck and watching a male driver purposely swerve into the shoulder of Hwy. 20, in order to kill a gull. Who are these people? What happened to their moral development? What books do they read to their children? If I had had my cell phone with me that afternoon, I would have called the police and the local office of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, the federal agency charged with enforcing migratory bird law. Most likely nothing would have happened, but perhaps the officer might have forced the man would to explain why he committed the murder — with his kids listening.
Frankly, I prefer gulls to most human beings. They are my close friends on Oregon’s ocean beaches and have many advantages over us. For one thing, they can fly and ride the thermals with an effortless grace I envy. I prefer their clucking language to English. They also don’t talk on cell phones in restaurants. Nor do they use leaf blowers, murder one other over religion, experiment on primates, or snort methamphetamine. Yes, they do eat terrible fast food but that’s only because some human being came to his senses and threw it away.
Gulls are such a ubiquitous presence on the Oregon Coast, but really, do we know all that much about them? Should we?
I don’t know who wrote it, but somewhere I read something to the effect that, “It behooves us to know the names and interesting details of the sentient creatures we see and interact with every day.” I have at least one interaction every day with a gull, either on the beach, near my home, or at Newport High School, where I teach. Side note: The gulls don’t understand the new artificial turf field. When the birds land on the plastic grass looking for food, they seem totally bewildered. There’s a great poem or national metaphor in there somewhere.
Gulls fascinate me and I’d like to take this opportunity to educate people about them. For that I am indebted to a charming little book called “Gulls: A Social History,” written by Frank Graham Jr. with photographs by Christopher Ayers, published in 1975. In this long out-of-print book that I checked out from the Driftwood Library in Lincoln City, Graham writes: “We would be poorer without gulls than they would be without us; these beautiful and fascinating creatures add to the marvelous natural diversity that enriches our lives.”
Amen to that. Nothing enriches me more than inching up to the Western gulls at the turnaround at Nye Beach in Newport, and examining their well-worn faces. What are they thinking?
For starters, there is no such creature as a seagull. There are 44 different species of gulls and some live as long as 20 years. I learned about their interesting mating, interspecies breeding, migratory patterns, and that even the sharpest birders have difficulty telling many of the species apart.
I also learned that not all that long ago, many local populations of gulls were nearly wiped out across North America by eggers, milliners, and the government, the latter spreading poison to arrest the proliferation of certain species in favor of other birds. It’s a ghastly tale, biologists killing wildlife to save certain (politically) preferred species, that still plays out today (think hatchery salmon over euthanized sea lions on the Columbia).
Yet the gulls survived by adapting to various wasteful human trends, like landfills, and as Graham writes, “We are contemporaries in a sense, riding the runaway vehicle that is the modern industrial world.” He wrote that two years after the Arab Oil Embargo and 26 years before the debut of the iPod. It makes me think that when human beings wind down their time on Earth, which is inevitable, gulls will remain.
They’ll adapt and keep on flying.
Limpet madness redux
[Posted March 27, 2012]
A couple of months ago, I wrote a column about a woman I observed on my beach who fanatically collects treasures washed ashore.
At the time, I had just started collecting limpet shells. Limpets are the marine gastropods sporting the exquisitely beautiful, slightly conical, shells one can discover near the wrack line of littoral areas. Limpets live on rocks, scrape along them, and eat algae. When you discover their shells, it’s because, as I understand it, waves or predators dislodged them from their habitat and they die. Their shells come to rest in the sand.
At first my collection was small, decorative only. When relaxing at home, I barely paid it any attention. Then something happened (well, truth be told, I got my heart broken by a woman) and limpets became something else altogether. I began integrating them into my life in ways that heretofore would have been inconceivable.
Not long after the column appeared, the breakup occurred and limpets began revealing themselves to me in fantastic numbers. Or maybe I was finally noticing.
I collected them all. I studied them. They became a character in a novel I’m writing. I gave them away to anyone who seemed in dire need of something simple and beautiful. I found more and brought them into the classroom. I devised a Limpet Poetry Magic workshop for my creative writing students. Try it yourself. (I tweaked it a bit for readers of this column because I had students handle limpets in class for the workshop.)
Limpet Poetry Magic
• Look at the photograph of these limpets I found in the snow. Examine the limpets for 30 seconds. Now write down a description of them in a 60-second stream of consciousness blast.
• Draw a limpet on a piece of paper. Now close your eyes and draw it from memory.
• Come up with three to five words that rhyme with limpet.
• The limpet is a type of snail with a shell for protection from predators. Write a sentence about the shell you’ve constructed to protect yourself? Describe this shell. What does it look like? What’s it made of?
• Limpets eventually lose their shell. Assume one day, you will too. Who do you want to find it and what do you hope they will or will not do with it?
• Let us suppose limpets are the most advanced species on the planet. What excellent advice do limpets have for human beings?
• Complete this phrase: A limpet a day…
• If you were to tattoo of your limpet on your body, where would you put it?
• The limpet died but left behind something beautiful. After you die, what is something beautiful you hope to leave behind?
• Confess a secret to the limpet.
• Suppose the limpet is an oracle. Ask it something you have to know.
• If the limpet could talk to you, what would it say?
• Are limpets worth saving from extinction? Why or why not?
• What can you see when you look through your limpet’s keyhole?
• Peruse all your responses. Underline the best ones.
• Write a poem about limpets or anything you like.
The resulting poems were incredible and made me want to tattoo the image of a limpet on my left arm. I have to.
How do I account for this limpet madness within me that resulted from an abrupt loss of love? I can’t explain and don’t even bother trying anymore. I just roll with this magic the way I imagine a limpet rolls in the waves on the way to its death.
I hope I never stop collecting limpets. Something will be very wrong with me if I do
Brown ocean pours through gray area
[Posted March 15, 2012]
I went to Ona Beach in the aftermath of the big storm to ask a question: Can a brown ocean inspire poetry?
The rain slanted, the wind howled. Sections of a saturated Hwy. 101 threatened to liquefy. For the briefest of weak moments, I thought about turning the truck around and diving back into a history of Charles V and the Catholic genocidal subjugation of Mexico. But I wanted an immediate answer to my question and I knew Ona would deliver. It always does and I’ve gone there a lot in recent months because I have a lot of questions.
Sonny the husky and I hit the sand and made our way to the wrack line. I’d never seen more flotsam and jetsam, and found an unopened can of an antique Budweiser and a cool orange, purple and white float with odd markings.
No one else was around.
The rain let up so I whipped out the camera from the pea coat and used the float and some drift logs for an impromptu photo shoot. It worked out pretty well and I only got wet up to my ankles.
A man approached. He carried a pole, but it wasn’t for fishing. Sonny went up to him and he gave her a rub. I walked over and from my long ago days as a watershed council coordinator recognized the pole as equipment for collecting water samples.
The man told me his name was Steve Snow and he volunteered for the local chapter of Surfrider, the non-profit organization that serves as a much-needed watchdog for Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. Steve regularly braves the elements and grabs samples from multiple spots in the area. Later, the samples are tested to help ensure the public’s safety in contact water recreation activities.
It’s all part of widespread effort to throw some warning light on the dirty little fecal bacteria secret that some coastal merchants and politicians don’t want the tourists to know. Kind of like the unctuous mayor character in “Jaws” who wants to cover up the big bite. Steve and I briefly talked about this issue and then, somehow, segued into literature, of all things to talk about on a beach during a break in the storm.
We discoursed on Raymond Carver and Ed Ricketts, the Doc character from John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” Steve mentioned Robinson Jeffers, one of my favorite poets, and recommended several poems of Jeffers that I hadn’t read.
Steve also told me he even wrote a bit himself, and that his poem about a bald eagle eating a salmon in the estuary at Ona Beach was published in “Oregon Stories,” the Oregon sesquicentennial anthology.
At one point, Steve and I talked about the recent big storm that had turned all the water on the coast brown. He said, “I called a friend and told him the ocean was the color of mahogany.”
Question answered. Now someone’s got to write the poem. Send it to me if you do.
Crossing the Yaquina, and the Rubicon
[Posted Feb. 28, 2012]
Just outside of Seal Rock, I looked out the window of a yellow magic bus loaded with 30 students from Newport High School and caught a glimpse of the ocean. A pacific feeling swept over me — but only for a few seconds—because we were cruising south down Hwy. 101 to Yachats to stage a spectacle that I envisioned as a cross between “The Partridge Family,” “Glee,” the Rolling Stones’ “Rock and Roll Circus,” and “School of Rock.”
The good people of Yachats had asked me to bring ace performers from my Friday Lunch Jam club and put on a show that also included stunning black and white images from my photography class. Naturally, I said “yes!” What else did I have to do on a Friday night on the Oregon Coast in the middle of winter?
The Friday Lunch Jam began three years ago in my classroom as an open mike event. It features music and spoken word performances by students (and some staff) and has become a campus sensation that provides a supportive and democratic atmosphere for teenagers to exhibit their talents.
So there we were, on a sonic field trip. The kids were all right, pumped up, navigating ineptly or deftly the social watercourses that define that age, and I was trying to fathom my role as a teacher in this Brave New (corporate) World of Standards in Education. The word “complicit” keeps coming up a lot and I don’t like it.
I did know one thing: I needed rock and roll! I needed it more than the beach! Some six hours earlier I had sat through one of the most frustrating faculty meetings of my 18-year career. I’ll spare you the play-by-play. It will all come out in the novel. Just let me declaim: the idea of a public secondary school system that nurtures creativity and reflection, and encourages young people to discover animating passions that enable excellent adulthoods, is on the brink of annihilation by a machine that wants every child to become an automaton for the perpetuation of an unsustainable American economy built on nothing less than a house of marked cards.
And all I wanted to do was kick out the jams with the kids. On the bus, I recalled something Lou Reed sang about a wayward character: “She started listening to the fine, fine music, you know, her life was saved by rock n’ roll.” That line perfectly describes about a dozen students who rode the bus with me to Yachats.
Not all students are saved by extra math and reading classes, more testing and less recess.
We set up the equipment and ran through a sound check. In the green room moments before the show, we gathered tightly together, put our hands together, and all screamed together on my count, “Let’s rock Yachats!”
And we did.
An hour later, after performances ranging from blues to pop to poetry to opera to classic rock to a song in Italian, all the students stood on the stage and raised their hands in the air. The audience gave them a standing ovation.
Back on the bus, I paraphrased something Julius Caesar wrote after vanquishing some barbarian tribe: “We came. We saw. We conquered. We rocked.”
On the way home after the crew pizza, I pulled the truck near the ocean to hear its Pacific feeling. I thought about celebrating perhaps the greatest experience of my teaching career by going to the beach, but I was totally exhausted, and it was blacker than black outside, so I went home, took a bath, drank a goblet of wine, and slept better than I have in months.
I hit the beach with Sonny at sunrise the next morning and continued thinking about my role. That word “complicit” came up again, and I guess all I can keep doing to preserve my integrity and sanity while I figure things out is, to quote Neil Young, “Keep on rocking in the free world.” In this anthem, Neil intended this phrase as irony. I don’t.
Kesey’s Surrender
[Posted Feb. 14, 2012]
“The sea is surrender. Not the sea itself. No, it is a conqueror. It is giving into it that is surrender.”
Ken Kesey wrote this arresting passage and I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything truer written about the ocean. If you give yourself over to the ocean and its limitlessness, which I do three times a day, a willingness to acquiesce can arise and help you properly temper yourself and your ambitions in the world run by people who can’t see the ocean even if they stand inches away.
These lines do not originate from either of Kesey’s two classic novels set in Oregon, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Sometimes a Great Notion,” which I’ve read a combined total of 10 times and always find something new to reappraise when I do.
Last spring, I found these wonderful words in the marginalia of one of Kesey’s manuscripts in the collection of his papers at the University of Oregon. Before reading Kesey’s words on surrender, I hadn’t associated him with the ocean. In “Cuckoo’s Nest” the dominant image from nature is the dead and entombed Celilo Falls.
In “Notion,” well, that book is one sustained explosion of living Oregon Coast nature: rain, trees, rivers, birds, and a few sentences about the sea, but no memorable ones. It defined a special sense of Pacific Northwest place for all time and subsequently influenced every memoir (and most novels) written about the region.
I mention all this because this winter the folks who put together Newport Reads (full disclosure: I was on the committee) selected “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” as the novel they want the community to read and discuss together.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Cuckoo’s Nest” and I invite everyone reading this to delve into the novel for the first time, or reread it. Many of us encountered it in high school as a required rebellious text in the Age of Aquarius. The book fell out of favor with the advent of the Reagan Era and was eventually eclipsed by the movie, released in 1975. The cinematic adaptation is an undisputed classic, but it stripped away all the Native American and Celilo Falls imagery, which if, you’ve read the novel, is the true literary engine that drives the narrative and shapes the metaphors.
I just finished teaching “Cuckoo’s Nest” to my seniors at Newport High School. I thought it went well and I taught the book with an increased urgency. Not sure why. Maybe because in the days of constant testing and loss of creative arts electives, I think the educational establishment, with its concomitant link to America’s corporate agenda, is still preparing the youth to serve The Combine, as Kesey so memorably described the “capitalist conformist machine.” In fact, the system is much more efficient now than it was 50 years ago.
They don’t use the lobotomy to control the miscreants any more. They simply hand out prescription drugs like candy and make it cool to own shiny gadgets, and to pay to work and socialize on them 24 hours a day. They also expect a student to incur $100,000 in debt to afford a bachelor’s degree to better himself and his country. We talk about this in class and I openly wonder about my complicity with the Combine.
During this last read of “Cuckoo’s Nest,” I gave its crucial deep sea fishing scene more scrutiny, probably because the more I live near the ocean, the more I become obsessed with it.
Kesey writes, “Two whores on their way down from Portland to take us deep-sea fishing in a boat! It made it tough to stay in bed until the dorm lights came on at six-thirty.”
What ensues is a small group of patients from the state mental hospital led by the anti-hero Randle McMurphy experiencing a raucous deep sea fishing excursion with important implications for the men. The fishing allows the patients some much-needed freedom, a simple purpose, physical therapy, and a connection to something magical with exponentially more potential to heal them than Nurse Ratched’s diabolical machinations back on the ward.
In the novel, the scene takes place in Florence and Kesey writes of the ocean: “The swells slid by, deep emerald on one side, chrome on the other….We hit the bar and dropped into a canyon of water, the bow of the boat pointing up the hissing crest of the wave going before us, and the rear down in the trough in the shadow of the wave looming behind us…”
Kesey knew his waves. He spent a lot of time on the Oregon Coast and had a place in Yachats for many years. He died in 2001, but his books live on. I believe they still sow seeds. Pick up his first novel and join us celebrating the extraordinary and timeless accomplishment of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Kesey was 27 years old when it came out.
He was lost, 'til he found Love
Mist eroded into January dusk as I left my house to walk to the beach and see the day’s last light diffusing over the ocean. Sonny the old husky stayed behind, exhausted from an earlier ramble down the sand.
Fifty yards from the house I saw a dark mass moving in the street. I came closer and soon found myself kneeling on the asphalt and petting a rather runty and rotund black lab with a distinctive white forepaw. She was gray in the muzzle, well groomed, and without a collar.
The mist turned to rain. I know all the dogs in the neighborhood but didn’t recognize this one.
Long ago, when I dated the woman I eventually married, a stray dog crossed our path as I drove us to a movie. She told me to pull over, but I objected because arriving late to a movie used to rank as my top pet peeve (that is, until I moved to the coast and stopped seeing movies altogether).
She raised her voice, commanding me to stop. I did. She said: “There are two kinds of people in the world, people who help stray dogs when it’s not convenient, and those who don’t. I only date the former.”
We corralled the dog in the car, found a phone number on his tag and drove to a phone booth. She made a call and left a message. Later, we reunited the dog with its elderly owner and celebrated by cooking a fancy Italian meal and going bowling.
Back in my neighborhood, I took the lab home for the evening and she seemed lethargic, depressed. She fidgeted all night. In the morning I put the dog in the fenced back yard and drove to work at Newport High School.
During a break between first and second period, I went outside to the parking lot and called animal control for any news of a lost dog in the South Beach area. Sure enough, a couple from Vancouver had reported a lost dog, a black lab with a distinctive white forepaw. I got their number and called immediately. The bell rang. I was tardy to class! But hey, any student who employs the excuse, “Mr. Love, I was late to class because I was rescuing a stray dog,” earns an eternal free pass on tardies, so I excused myself.
I got a man on the phone. He spoke with a heavy Russian (or what I took for Russian) accent and was positively ecstatic. Apparently the dog was going a bit senile and had wandered away from a beachfront rental a half-mile away from my home. The couple had searched in vain and then returned to Washington. We ended our conversation by making a plan to meet after school. He was leaving Vancouver in an hour.
Bolting into Journalism, I screamed, “I just rescued a dog!” There was some scattered applause and then we went about cranking out another edition of the school news magazine. During the next break between classes, I talked to the man’s wife (with an even heaver Russian accent) and it turned out she was driving down with her daughters to reclaim the dog.
I walked back to my classroom and told my Creative Writing students the tale. I then imagined aloud to them that the woman was the wife of a rich Russian mobster, and would come bearing gifts of fine Vodka, caviar, a shiny revolver, and possibly one of her blonde, statuesque daughters. That’s the sort of thing we do every day in this class and that’s why I love teaching the subject. Call it what it is — tax-payer-subsided imagining that generates many of my best writing ideas.
After lunch, on a lark, I called a neighbor to go check on the dog. She called me a few minutes later and said there was no black dog in the yard or in the house, only Sonny. She had escaped! My teaching was done for the day so I ran to the truck and raced home to search for the dog.
On the way home I made a mental count of how many dogs I had rescued in my 15 years of living on the Oregon Coast. 1) Ray, my best friend for 12 years, found on Hwy. 101 near Neskowin; 2) the great Jo Jo, my Rottweiler/lab mix discovered at a boat ramp; 3) the crazy cattle dog I dubbed Buddy, who sprinted across Hwy. 101 in Lincoln City; 4) the miniature beagle in Pacific City; 5) the obese husky who jumped out of his master’s truck at the Surftides in Lincoln City; 6) the terrier a student found but wasn’t allowed to keep; 7) the black lab puppy dumped at a park in Lincoln City that a student brought to class.
I rescued them all and found them homes. My only failures were the boxer mix at South Beach State Park who wouldn’t come to me, and the greyhound that darted past me on the path to my local beach. I nearly separated a shoulder trying to tackle him. Seven wins and two losses. Not bad, but not good enough. I wanted an eighth victory.
Two hours later I found the lab exploring the leafy grounds of the vacation rental she had disappeared from. We returned home and I confined her in the back of the truck until her owner showed up.
At 4 p.m., a car pulled in my driveway. I walked out and met the woman and one of her daughters. Neither blonde, nor tall. I opened the truck’s tailgate and carried the dog down to the gravel. Upon seeing her owner, she went totally nuts. The woman thanked me repeatedly, gave me a hug, and presented a gift card from Starbucks. They drove away and I gathered up Sonny. To celebrate, we went to the beach, where I found limpets galore. An hour later, I ordered my first latte in 15 years and wrote up this account. At times, as I wrote, I became wistful because I occasionally miss my ex-wife and her wonderful influence on me. She taught me many important things in life.
By the way, the dog’s name is Lucky.
Sand and deliver: da beach debates
[Posted Jan. 3, 2012]
“The sea is like music; it has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over. The beauty and grandeur of the sea consists in our being forced down into the fruitful bottomlands of our psyches, where we confront and recreate ourselves in the animation of the mournful wasteland of the sea.”
So wrote C.G. Jung in 1909, aboard a steamer crossing the Atlantic, in a letter to his wife. He was undoubtedly looking upon the ocean when he wrote it.
I often write while looking upon the ocean, mostly letters, and the practice never fails to elicit interesting thoughts and rhythms. Is it really possible to think or write a banality while looking upon the ocean? The idea seems wildly implausible. I think even Justin Bieber could write a decent song staring at the sea. Or at least his handlers could.
Speaking of banality, my mind now unfortunately turns to the current Republican Party campaign for president. I don’t have cable television or a high-speed Internet connection; therefore, I haven’t watched any of the debates. But I have read the news accounts and transcripts.
(Expletive deleted) incredible is about all I can say. A very, very long way from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and I’m not talking years. This may smack of hubris, but I pretty much feel I would make a far better president than most of the Republican candidates, and I say that primarily because I look upon the ocean daily and visit the fruitful bottomland of my psyche in order to recreate myself in a better way to teach, write, think, love and make decisions. Furthermore, I also happen to believe in gravity and things like the Bill of Rights and writing love haikus in the sand.
I want to offer a modest yet novel suggestion. To improve the quality of thinking and oratory from the candidates the next time they get on stage, why not hold a future debate on a beach that affords candidates a grand view of an ocean? Surely something interesting for democracy will result. Ratings might even go up.
Continuing with this quasi-Jungian approach, I also suggest that after the debate, all candidates walk together down to the beach, to the water’s edge. They would stand there with their backs to the audience and cameras and look upon the ocean silently for one minute. Then, by some random means of selection, each candidate would turn around and tell us something, anything, not from the script written by a consultant who took his cues from polling.
Who knows what we’d hear? What we would know — instantly and assuredly — is if any of the candidates possess much of a psyche with a fruitful bottomland to visit. My gut reaction is that we’ll find pavement and strip malls, but I do want to be proved wrong. We all do.
An Oregon Coast Christmas
[Posted Dec. 20, 2011]
A good fictional tale seems like a long lost literary relic these days. To counter this depressing trend, I wrote the following tale with my creative writing students at Newport High School. Merry Christmas.
He sat at the kitchen table with his mother. They drank instant coffee and outside snow fell on the flat Nebraska fields. School started in five minutes. He had a history paper on the Zimmerman Telegram due and wondered if it should have something to do with Bob Dylan.
His mom set her mug on the table. He did too.
“Chet, I’ve found a new nursing job. We’re moving to Oregon in two weeks. They need me right away. It’s on the coast, a little town called Newport. It rains all the time but I think you’ll like it. You can learn to surf. There are big green trees everywhere and supposed to be lots of hippies too. I bet everyone walks around playing guitar and picks up litter.”
“Mom, another move? Right before Christmas? What about the rest of my senior year? “
“You barely go to class anyway. Nothing interests you at school. Neither one of us have any real friends here. We both need a change, a new start. This new job means more money and more responsibility.”
“But Oregon?”
“Sure, why not? They don’t have a sales tax either, and I’ve heard you don’t have to pump your own gas.”
A week later they had sold everything, jumped the lease, driven west in a battered Saturn wagon listening to terrible holiday music on the radio, and Chet found himself walking through the decorated halls of Newport High School clutching a plastic bottle of water. He couldn’t believe the size of the Christmas tree in the lobby; it scraped the ceiling. He also felt confused after reading a huge poster advertising a winter solstice party in a nearby forest. Apparently you couldn’t come unless you dressed up as a plant, nymph or small woodland creature.
Chet headed to second period, Mr. Love’s Honors Senior English. He had a backpack dangling off one shoulder that carried a black umbrella, a new one his mom picked up at Wal-Mart, what she called her “housewarming” present to him. He hesitated before knocking on Mr. Love’s door. A schedule written with green crayon caught his eye:
Senior English:
Monday: Yurt
Tuesday: Woods
Wednesday: Classroom
Thursday: Creek
Friday: Beach and/or Rock
Chet relaxed. It was a Wednesday. He didn’t even know what a yurt was.
He tapped gently the door with three fingers and walked into the classroom. It was packed, maybe 40 students. They all resembled members of indie rock bands or employees at farmer’s markets. Three sat on a couch and a couple others reclined in bean bag chairs. One was practicing yoga. A mobile of a driftwood Christmas tree rotated above the room.
A dog emerged from under a desk and limped toward Chet. He recognized it as a husky. She wore a black patch over her left eye and had the ragged appearance of being recently mauled. She sat down in front of Chet and raised her right paw up and down to him. He didn’t know what to do. It almost seemed like the dog wanted the umbrella.
Chet looked around the room. Record albums and maps of Oregon hung on the walls. He saw spotlights, a guitar amp, and musical instruments stashed in shelves next to crayons, markers and a dozen craft glue guns. Wrapped around the sprinkler system was old fishing gear: crab pots, ropes, floats, buoy markers, hooks, line, cable, poles. The room smelled like it was out to sea.
Everyone was writing, even the yoga kid. When they all saw Chet they stopped in unison and locked eyes upon him, then the umbrella. He waited for what seemed like an hour until a figure stood up from the couch. He held a journal in his left hand and a pen in the right. He was unshaven, longhaired, and wore brown cords and a green wool sport coat full of holes. There was dog fur all over him.
“My name is Mr. Love and my husky’s name is Mr. Figgs.” The figure shifted the pen to his left hand and reached out his right.
Chet shook his hand. “I’m a new student. Chet.” He paused for a moment. “What happened to your dog?
“He tangled with a developer who was illegally filling in a wetland but I assure you Mr. Figgs got the best of him. “Where’d you transfer from?
“Nebraska.”
Laughter exploded from every nook and cranny of the room, the floor, the ceiling. It nearly knocked Chet off his feet.
“Nebraska!” Mr. Love roared. “Oh Chet, you have been luckily delivered from the golden eared evil. Welcome to Oregon! Class, let’s welcome Chet! He no longer has to stare at cornfields!”
The class gave a hearty applause and savage tribal yells. They insulted corn. A few students bowed and made strange deferential gestures with their hands. One girl got up and danced a jig seen at the Oregon County Fair.
“So what did you think of our beaches?’ Mr. Love said.
“I haven’t been yet. I’ve actually never seen the ocean. We just got in a few days ago and found our apartment.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaat?” Mr. Love screamed. “You’ve never seen the ocean?” He spun around to face the class. “Did you hear this sacrilege Oregonians? Chet has never seen the ocean?”
A male student bolted up from his desk, spilling his goblet of tea and Lord of the Rings figurines he played with every day. He screamed: “This will not stand! To the beach! Take him now! Bring wood, oil, salmon and rock!”
The students all jumped up from their desks and enveloped Chet. A girl snatched the umbrella from his hand and snapped it in two over her knee. Then Mr. Figgs began savagely biting the umbrella, shredding it to smithereens. Another girl ran up to Chet and sunk her teeth in his bottle of water, puncturing it. She then grabbed it and flung it away.
Seconds later Chet felt himself gliding through the door, into the hall, into the parking lot, into the back seat of a generic American sedan streaked inside and outside with mold and decorated every inch with stickers advertising every city, town and kitsch tourist attraction in Oregon.
Rain started falling and some of the seniors began to dance with Mr. Figgs, scream to the sky, and smear rain into their hair and faces. Mr. Love was somewhere; Chet could hear him commanding this senior to carpool with that senior and where they should rendezvous. It sounded like they were going into battle.
Chet was sandwiched between two girls and three more girls rode in the front seat. They all wore their hair in ponytails and smelled like salt, pine cones and wood smoke. The sedan’s engine chugged to life, some weird guitar music came on, and the driver eased the sedan onto the road. Suddenly, all the windows powered down, the rains splashed in, and all the girls started singing, something about how much they hated clearcuts and shopping malls. One of them pulled out a Thermos and poured herself a mug of green tea. She offered Chet a sip but he declined.
As the sedan rumbled along, Chet turned around and saw seven vehicles, 10 bicycles and one runner in pursuit. The runner was wearing only a loin cloth. The procession passed the main entrance to the high school and the campus monitor stood on a bench pumping his right arm up and down. The principal was there too. He saluted.
A few seconds later, the convoy came to an abrupt stop and Chet saw Mr. Love race across the street, pick up two plastic bottles that littered the sidewalk, toss them in his truck, and then they were moving again.
“You have to put this blindfold on,” a girl said as she handed Chet a tie-dyed bandanna. “Mr. Love insists.”
He complied wordlessly.
Five minutes later the sedan stopped. “Wait here for a few minutes,” said a girl. He was alone.
Chet heard something he’d never heard before and it sounded huge. He also smelled something new and it filled his nose and lungs.
“You can take the blindfold off now Chet,” said Mr. Love. “Welcome to Nye Beach. C’mon, get out. Let’s go. It’s time you started living a real Oregon life.”
Chet exited the sedan. It began to rain harder. The students and Mr. Figgs had formed a gauntlet from the parking lot down to the beach. Chet entered and received pats on the back and howls and cries of encouragement as he walked through. Smoked salmon and huckleberries were forced into his mouth. Halfway down the gauntlet Chet felt himself being picked up, turned on his back, hoisted to the sky. Four boys carried him to the beach and Chet heard a surf guitar riff reverberate through an amp.
The boys stood Chet up on the sand and removed his shoes. He saw a dozen seniors holding hands and dancing around a massive bonfire of pallets. They all sang. One boy walked on coals. Three girls played hackey sack with Mr. Figgs. Mr. Love wrote in a journal. The rain began to fall even harder and the fire spit and hissed in response. Chet turned around and beheld the gray sky and the black water and the white waves and started walking toward them. They appeared as the most beautiful Christmas present Chet had ever received and there wasn’t a trace of blue anywhere.
Here comes the rain again
[Posted Dec. 7, 2011]
The hard rain has arrived on the Oregon Coast and only the weaklings let it stop them from hitting the beach. Don’t be one of them.
I remember a day last spring when I almost let the rain defeat me. It was Thursday morning, March 31, 2011, the day that would eventually conclude the second wettest March in Newport since instruments have measured depressing records of this kind. I peered out the window of my Newport High School classroom, saw rain falling for the 31st day in a row, and immediately thought of one Ken Kesey’s immortal riffs about rain from “Sometimes a Great Notion.” Set on the Oregon Coast, it is undoubtedly the greatest novel about rain in the history of world literature:
“…there is solace and certain stoical peace in blaming everything on the rain, and then blaming something as uncontrollable as the rain on something as indifferent as the Arm of the Lord.”
That morning in the classroom, my patience with the rain hung by the thinnest of cobwebs. As I stared out the window, I schemed how to motivate my listless and intellectually waterlogged students. Soon, they would start streaming in, with pale, vacant faces resembling prisoners of war and moisture visibly evaporating from their clothing.
I was particularly concerned with the photography class. They hadn’t gone outside in a month to shoot photographs and were sick of learning new Photoshop tricks. I suspected they were going insane. Stasis had them gripped tight. I thought to myself: we’ve got to move. So we did, into the deluge, which is exactly what you must do in these dark winter months, if you want to survive.
In my 14 years residing at the Oregon Coast, which means I’ve endured roughly 720 inches of rain, I’ve learned a thing or two about the rain and how to master it for my own purposes, ranging from the romantic to the creative to the curricular to the spiritual.
What you must first do is get out into the rain. Take it on! And never use an umbrella because who doesn’t want to feel rain on your face, or better yet, see it run down the face of someone you love? When a big storm hits and the hard rain slants in six different directions, go to the beach with the dog and watch the collisions in the ocean. I find it one of the most primal scenes a person can experience and typically never encounter another human who might taint the awesome privacy of the moment. Bringing a partner or date along is acceptable.
I also suggest grabbing a waterproof camera, or wrapping one in plastic, and making art. Rain has an astonishingly simple and moving beauty that truly comes alive when captured on film. I never really considered gray a beautiful color until I started photographing rain.
Fourth period rolled around and in trudged the photography students. I told them to gather around the whiteboard where I wrote the fatal statistics: 14 inches of rain during the last 30 days, double the average amount, a record for March. Four inches had fallen in the last several days. They groaned and looked not so discretely to their cell phones for deliverance.
“We are going to war against the rain,” I said. “We are hard-core Oregonians, so get me the best rain shots in the history of photography. I’ve got 20 bucks for the best image. I want spouts, gutters, puddles, drops, hair, windows, dogs, feet. I don’t care. I want to see rain like I’ve never seen before. Teach me about it!”
“Now get your cameras and hit the rain!” I yelled. The students roared in delight and geared up in seconds. I probably should have cranked up Eric Clapton’s “Let it Rain” to send us into battle, but I was the first one out the door, with two cameras slung around my neck and one stuffed in my pocket.
Thirty minutes later, we sat soaked in my darkened musty classroom, watching a slide show of stunning and wholly original black and white photographs taken around campus. Lily earned first prize with a self portrait shot of rain drops dangling off her fingers. I’ll never forget this image as long as I live.
It’s probably raining right now as you read this. Get up and get out into it! You can win.
Vicissitudes and rallying
[Posted Nov. 22, 2011]
I can’t begin to describe the ways I got my ass kicked teaching at Newport High School a while back. I honestly felt like quitting. Thank God I didn’t pick up the copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” that rests in the bookshelf near my desk at school, and read a random paragraph. Had I done so, I might have handed in my resignation and bought a van. It probably was also a good thing that I once fought back from a 0-6, 0-5, love-40 score in a high school tennis match and won. I really don’t know how to quit, although I am pretty good at recognizing when endings have arrived.
What a week. Actually, only four days. “Vicissitudes” wasn’t one of the weekly vocabulary words for my Honors Senior English class, but perhaps I should have added it to the list, because this excellent and mysterious noun perfectly captured my experience. Definition: “A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.” I surfed a monster wave of vicissitudes all week and I surfed badly. In fact, I wiped out a lot and several sharks bit chunks out of me.
Years ago my father, a master teacher of 40 years, told me: “When lessons or interactions go sour in the classroom, good teachers have to rally. They have no other choice. Otherwise, get out.”
Have you ever experienced a teacher who didn’t rally but remained in the classroom? For a long, self-entitled time? It is one of the sorriest sights in American professional life and I will never become one.
I must have walked 50 miles that week, replaying my blunders and trying to conjure corrections. One day I went to the beach three separate times after school and let the ocean annihilate all the secondguessing. Then I let it create existential momentum for a rally. The aging husky Sonny and several neighborhood dogs lost a lot of weight during this time. I dropped seven pounds.
Where to begin?
Lazy writing, meaning mediocre instruction from me. Writing done while playing video games, trolling on Facebook or texting. Deadlines missed. Phony excuses made. Outright lies. Drama factories working overtime. Sloppy journalism, meaning sloppy teaching from me. Students disappearing, when their fellow members of the news magazine class needed them to follow through. Students unable to take any initiative, meaning I didn’t properly motivate or instruct how to take initiative. High expectations from the teacher, but a poor foundation laid by the teacher to have students fulfill high expectations.
Of course I could go on, but you get the idea. I might also add that the above scenario was for only one class. I teach others.
So I drove Sonny to the beach, and talked aloud to myself. I ranted, harangued, named names, and plotted countermeasures. I’ll confess it right here: the ocean looked especially seductive one balmy evening, with layers of red, purple and orange overhead, congealing into a psychedelic sky of pure and parallel ephemeral beauty that commanded me to strip off all my clothes, and run headlong into the waves with Sonny in pursuit. I dove in, submersed, tasted salt, felt the bottom, emerged, and sprinted back to shore. Sonny howled in approval and danced the best she could.
I put on all my clothes and walked Sonny back to the truck. Rally complete.
Ocean Poetry
[Posted Nov. 8, 2011]
A month ago, Newport High School staged a half-day writing festival called Write-A-Palooza, in which students participated in all manner of workshops intended to excite their interest in writing. It almost goes without saying that student excitement for writing has taken a vicious flogging in recent years, because of the mania for state testing. It always makes me laugh (or vomit) when I hear earnest educational professionals who can’t write a lick demand better writing of today’s youth, and not for youth’s sake, but to serve an unsustainable American economy predicated on mindless consumerism.
With Write-A-Palooza, for four hours at least, one day out of the year, we eliminated the indoctrination and punishment associated with writing and let loose our creative passions.
I teach English, journalism and creative writing at the school and taught one Write-A-Poolaza workshop called “Ocean Poetry.” Nearly 40 students crammed in my room and in 40 minutes produced some of the hottest, most original verse on oceans and beaches I’ve ever read. Make no mistake about it: the kids can write, and write well, if a teacher just asks them to write something meaningful.
Below is the list of prompts I dictated to the class to help them get started. Once the students produced their individual poems, I instructed each poet to choose their best line, record it on a poster, and then recite it to the class. I typed up all the best lines and then rearranged and slightly edited them into one super-hard-core Oregon ocean poem that appears after the prompts. I like how it turned out.
Feel free to write your poem in response to the prompts and send it my way.
Pen a poem to the ocean
• Consider these writing prompts
Describe the ocean with three adjectives and one verb.
Ask a question of the ocean.
Answer this question: What can a person learn from the ocean?
Finish this sentence: The ocean sounds/smells like ___.
Finish this sentence: I like the ocean best ___.
Write a sentence of apology to the ocean.
Write a sentence how you will protect the ocean.
Write a sentence or series of fragments that describe(s) the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen at the ocean.
Write a sentence to your favorite ocean creature.
Write an equation about the ocean.
Write a sentence to someone who has never seen the ocean.
Confess a secret to the ocean.
Make up your own question or sentence about the ocean.
• Now go back and add a color, shape or texture to one of the lines.
• Title the poem.
The Ultimate Flow
You are the ultimate flow, interpreting sacrifice and satisfaction.
Green, vast, infinite, intimate.
A beautiful woman polluted yet divine.
You gleam like a mirror.
The clouds feed you and the sun is your spotlight.
The sky moulds with the water in the slate gray of the coming storm.
Colors, colors all around, in the sky, on the ground!
Pinks, purples, reds, and oranges dance across your shimmering surface.
Old friend, I apologize for taking you for granted.
I will forever remember your voice, whispering beneath the fear.
My greatest memories lie within your salty blue waves.
I like you best served cold, angry even.
Some can only imagine your smooth shift from ferocity to breath,
or how to go with the flow,
in the water swaying in and out with your indecisive ways,
not making up your mind endlessly making decisions.
In your forgiving ways, wrap me in your arms and float me along your tunnels.
The grayness of it all
[Posted Oct. 26, 2011]
Gray: Part 1
We looked out to the early evening sky and saw the September light quickly dissolving into the fog; within minutes an army of gray had invaded from the sea and conquered the area with a weapon that cloaked the area in the color of ash.
“Let’s go the beach,” I said. Something in the gray called to me and I knew I was accessing a dream.
She was up for it and downed the last of the red wine. I watched her glide down the steps and pivot in gray cowboy boots. Gray cowboy boots? Something was about to happen and somewhere, a boot maker who spent time on the Oregon Coast and understood the power of gray, dreamed of it.
Seconds later I knifed the truck through the ash and Sonny the husky howled in back.
We took the path to the beach. Sonny led the way but we lost sight of her. Gray, gray, gray everywhere, layered, enveloping, suffusing, tactile. At least a dozen shades stacked up to the horizon. No contrast anywhere. Nothing but grain, like the long lost grain captured on high speed film in the halcyon days before pixels and when America honored its red light darkrooms (mostly in high schools) and the wondrous sensuality created in there. Even a few photographs, too.
She tripped on some rocks and nearly fell into the creek. I steadied her and our feet found the sand. We heard Sonny’s tag jingle jangle and then it disappeared into the sound of the incoming surf. The ocean was 30 feet away but we couldn’t see it. For a moment I thought I should head back to the truck to retrieve the old film Canon and document the gray.
Then I thought better: forget it. Nothing could nail this grain for posterity.
She asked me what was going on. That she didn’t even like the color of gray until now. I said I had never seen anything like it in my life. This claim originated from a man who has witnessed more gray on the beach the last 14 years on the Oregon Coast than anyone alive.
It occurred to me that we had both walked into the grayest night in the history of the Earth since organisms had evolved from creatures of gray into creatures of black and white and their many dangerous human contrasts.
I looked at her, but couldn’t really discern a face, just a vague countenance I had to touch and deserved a painting, if any artist could imagine, let alone paint grays like this.
When we left the house she had blonde hair and wore blue jeans and a white top. Now all of those colors had become heretofore-unseen shades of gray. We headed south, hands on one another, and kept close to the cliff. At times, the surf died inches from our shoes. I can’t remember much of what we said, although the talk was almost exclusively of gray, and in all likelihood ranked as one of the most passionate conversations in the history of the English language on matters concerning gray.
Part 2
As we talked, a little math entered my mind, as in: Beach x gray (to the third power) + cowboy boots + salt air = Use your imagination.
Props to parents who don't helicopter
[Posted Oct. 13, 2011]
Sonny the husky and I took the path down to the beach on a late August afternoon. I looked up and saw a nine or 10-year old boy some 50 yards away. He worked diligently at building a dam on the little creek that empties into the ocean and always charms me because it never meanders the same way on consecutive days. A century ago it doubtless had a bountiful run of several species of salmonids. They’re long, long gone, as are other features of American life, like sanity in American politics, and parents who cheerfully give their children some unsupervised breathing room to socialize, acculturate, and well, be alone.
We hit the beach and I looked around for the adult I naturally assumed kept watch over the boy. No one was around. What? Incredible! I couldn’t believe it. Since moving to the Oregon Coast in 1997 and visiting the beaches thousands of times, I’d never seen a kid his age, let alone an adolescent, play alone on the beach. What’s next? Political courage and a balanced federal budget?
The boy must have walked down from a nearby vacation rental. I watched him for a few minutes and he never once went to a phone. Sure, he probably had one stashed in his gear with instruction to text in every five minutes. Nevertheless, he was alone and damming up the creek with gusto.
Sonny and I ambled away. The boy was still on the job when we returned to the path and headed for home.
A few days later Sonny and I hit the beach, again in the afternoon. I came across three kids ranging in age from five to 12, constructing sand castles in the same spot as the dam builder. I looked around and saw their presumed mother sitting on a drift log 25 yards away, fiddling with her phone.
I do not have children and don’t offer any advice here on how to raise them. I have read quite a bit of literature on parenting in recent months that documents the pronounced negative results of children raised by helicoptering parents who schedule, supervise and try to manipulate a positive outcome for every minute of their children’s existence. (An article titled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” in the July/August issue of the The Atlantic was superb, devastating.) Limited space here doesn’t allow a complete summary of the documentation, but basically the argument goes like this: excessive supervision of a child doesn’t allow for any dynamic personal growth, proper socialization or unscripted moments that make life such a joy and learning experience. It does, however, tend to build false self-esteem and a fear of initiating things for one’s self.
Reading this literature prompted me to recollect my glorious days growing up as a kid in Oregon City in the 1970s. My friends and I would spend endless summer days playing sports (no coaches around) or army out in the woods a good (unhelmeted) two or three-mile bike ride from suburbia. Our parents had exactly one rule: home at dusk … if you want to eat.
When families visited the beach, which wasn’t that often, parents would invariably send the kids down to the beach with materials to make a fire with simple instructions: don’t go in the water and never turn your back on the ocean. Oh, and not too much lighter fluid. We always survived.
I watched the kids build the castles and then I watched the mom watch me. Curiosity overtook me and crossed the creek and approached her. I identified myself as a local writer working on a piece about parenting and wondered if I could ask her a few questions. She said “yes.”
“Would you ever let your kids play alone at the beach?” I said.
What ensued was a probing 15-minute conversation where I admitted I didn’t have kids but taught at Newport High School and felt the greatest quality a student can possess is the ability to think independently and take some original initiative. It surprised me to learn that she had experienced a supervision-free childhood almost exactly like mine and cherished it.
But she hadn’t continued this tradition. Times had changed for the worse. Too many predators about, was her unstated implication.
“I might let the oldest out alone in his own neighborhood, but not here where he’s on unfamiliar ground, and the ocean too.”
A reasonable answer, I thought. I thanked her for her time and candor. Sonny and I continued down the beach. She went back to her phone and the kids played away.
Yet another obsession
Posted Sept. 28, 2011
An obsessive writer does not exclusively obsess about beaches, dogs, and mermaids. If he lets his mind roam, invites his soul, and looks around, he can easily find a new subject that will eventually seize all his literary attention.
My current obsession is bridges — Conde McCullough’s bridges. McCullough, Oregon’s master State Bridge Engineer from 1919 to 1937, built these wonderfully exquisite spans along the Oregon Coast during his career. They have come to define Oregon and received national acclaim. They are as indigenous here as the coho salmon, Sitka Spruce, and mold in the closets of cut-rate motel rooms.
It all began for me several years ago when I moved to Newport and began a daily commute across the Yaquina Bay Bridge, the undisputed crown jewel of McCullough’s legacy, the second-most photographed bridge on the West Coast (behind the Golden Gate).
In short order, I realized my interaction with it was revolutionizing my whole aesthetic and understanding of civic engineering. I dubbed the bridge “The Green Lady” and began photographing her almost every time I drove across, trying desperately to document her distinctive and eccentric art deco flourishes, such as the elegant green arch, beveled columns, obelisks, ornate railing and pedestrian plazas, all distinctive traits of McCullough’s greatest bridges. Later, I started walking across the bridge and digging up wild stories of bridge-related poems, paintings, tattoos, mischief, murder, sexual shenanigans and suicides.
I also did a little historical research and discovered that Oregon opened the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport on Labor Day 1936. Built during the New Deal as a PWA (Public Works Administration) project, the Yaquina Bay Bridge has stood magnificently for 75 years as a monument to excellence in architecture and how a partnership between state and federal government in the throes of an economic calamity can produce something practical, beautiful, and lasting. It is nothing less than an Oregon landmark and a powerful reminder of how to build a great bridge.
I practically worship the Yaquina Bay Bridge, but McCullough’s other subtle masterpieces along Hwy. 101 beguile as well: in Astoria over Young’s Bay, Tillamook, Depoe Bay (look underneath), Ten Mile Creek, Florence, Reedsport, Coos Bay, Gold Beach. The little concrete arch bridge across Big Creek in Lane County is another of my favorites.
A final thought about McCullough’s bridges: To really appreciate them, you have to stop your vehicle, get out it, stash the iPod, and inspect these bridges up close. I mean, lay hands on them, listen to the ambience, and read the plaques. Even better still, walk across one. If you do, I highly recommend you choose the Yaquina Bay Bridge. Traversing it on foot is one of the highlights of living in Oregon.
And what better time to walk across it than this Sunday, Oct. 2, 75 years to the day since Oregon officially dedicated the bridge? The police will close the northbound lane for roughly one hour, from noon to 1 p.m., and we all get to walk from the south side to the north, together, to join in the big bridge party under the north approach. The Newport High School marching band will lead the way across the bridge, followed by vintage cars, the roller derby gals, a kid on a unicycle, a girl with a snake, and who knows what else. The more flamboyant the better! For more details check out bridge75.com or the Newport Chamber of Commerce web site. What a glorious Oregon afternoon this will be.
Somewhere, the Rainbow is over
[Posted Sept. 13, “I’m from Monmouth,” said the man, in answer to my question that began our unlikely conversation. He held a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on a sunny August afternoon near his tepee, erected on my local beach.
I had discovered the tepee earlier on my dawn walk with Sonny the husky and became instantly intrigued with its plain white color and sturdy construction. Over the years I’d encountered many intriguing things at the beach and this tepee, multiple beer cans strewn around it, ranked pretty high on the list — top 20 for sure. Later that afternoon I visited the beach again and ran into the man doing a little groundskeeping around the tepee. I went up to him.
The man appeared anywhere from 40-70 years of age, or OTA, as I call it. Oregon Tavern Age. I think he told me his name was Rick, or perhaps Ed. His maniacal spotted mutt kept playing stick with itself through our entire conversation.
“I came down to Ten Mile Creek (near Cummins Creek Wilderness Area in Lane Country on the central Coast) looking for the Rainbow Family Gathering.”
“The Rainbow Family on the Oregon Coast!” I screamed. “You’re kidding? Where’d you hear that?”
“Rumors, so I came down this way. Didn’t find it.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Rainbow Family Gathering for 2011 had already occurred, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington, six weeks ago.
For those readers unacquainted with the incredible history of the Rainbow Family, which had its hazy genesis at Vortex I, the 1970 free and legendary Oregon rock festival held outside Estacada, you really have missed out on a unique American counterculture tale. (Do not consult the Wikipedia entry on the Rainbow Family — it is one lie and distortion after another.)
To sum it up: every year thousands of decidedly groovy spiritual seekers and temporary and permanent cultural dropouts somehow receive word to camp out somewhere on federal land (usually in the Western United States) and never bother obtaining a permit from the government. They practically invented the leave-no-trace-behind ethic for camping and offer a completely different (conservative?) model on how to live properly and treat the Earth with much a much more elevated principle than the current rapacious one destroying the planet.
I asked the man a few questions about the tepee and he gave me a primer on how to cure the poles and erect a tepee, inebriated, in the black of night, in such a way that it could withstand some hard Oregon rain. I also asked if he planned on staying at the beach for an extended stay. “No, I’ve got to get back to my garden,” he said with a smile. He may have even winked.
Right. Sure, the garden, and all its important “plants” growing in the fertile Willamette Valley soil to relieve pain. I got it. Every sentient Oregonian gets it except the Governor, the Oregon Legislature and most, but (thankfully) not all, members of state law enforcement agencies.
“Have a great day,” I said, and Sonny and I cruised south down the sand.
The next morning I returned at dawn with Sonny and took some photographs of the tepee. The man’s campfire smoldered and I noticed cans of Pabst and Rolling Rock neatly stashed away on some nearby rocks, waiting to be redeemed for a quintessential Oregon deposit and more cans of Pabst and Rolling Rock.
I thought: tending garden all day in the hot sun sure works up a mighty mean thirst. Kind of painful too, for an OTA man with creaky joints and a rusty existential compass. I’m sure he’ll need some relief and I’m sure he has it right at hand.
Fact or fiction?
Hark! The bark holds a sign of love
[Published Aug. 19, 2011]
Not too long ago, on one of my early morning jaunts with my husky down Ona Beach, south of Newport, I took my usual path through the dunes to inspect the eccentric driftwood shanties and sculptures often erected there. These original structures never last very long but always leave an inspiring impression, which always suggests to me a dynamic way to live. Tread lightly and swiftly with fresh distinction.
I ambled along and watched the avian comings and goings of the Beaver Creek estuary, always an intriguing show that invariably features some odd bird putting in a cameo. The husky lagged behind and sniffed at the remains of a makeshift camp site recently populated by miscreants, meaning those who drink terrible, land-locked, Midwestern lagers and leave behind their empties and other trash. (Note: I have never seen a discarded Oregon microbrew bottle littering an Oregon beach.)
Something came into view and I approached it from the rear: a 3-foot long piece of bleached bark suspended between two 5-foot driftwood poles, sunk in the sand. It was held up by twine, attached to another piece of driftwood parallel to the bark and also fastened by twine to the poles. A glass bottle dangled off one end of the installation. I gave one of the poles a little kick and it didn’t budge. Someone had built well, with resolve. That person had also, quite obviously, used materials washed ashore, at hand, free, unique — another good lesson on how to live or make art, I thought.
I walked around to the front of the installation and beheld the smooth surface of the inner bark. It was a sign, written with a black marker, possibly a lighter. It read: I Love You Kat.
Who is Kat? Who made the sign? Did Kat ever see it? Are two people still together or were they never together? What is the love story here? It’s a mystery. I want to know because ascertaining the truth of these matters occasionally animates my life in the right direction, when it comes to matters of love.
I gave the sign a closer inspection. My mind halfheartedly conjured many entertaining scenarios of its provenance. I say halfheartedly because I primarily write non-fiction, enjoy reporting and documentation, and have a difficult time inventing characters, motivations, and details, unlike, say, a lot of other prominent memoirists and tabloid sleaze merchants.
Of course, fiction has its role here. Some writers would argue the major role. We can’t know everything and imagining the “I Love You Kat” story can perhaps serve as an even richer animating experience than knowing the hard facts of the relationship. That’s why people write and read novels and watch endless romantic comedies. As Susan Sontag had one of her characters in a novel say, “What is the point of telling stories if not to stir up the longing everyone harbors for an alternate life?”
Typically, reporting the truth doesn’t allow for this. Maybe Kat’s paramour longs for an alternative ending to his story with her (or him?). I won’t ever know unless the sign’s maker miraculously reads this and contacts me with a desire to share. If that happens, I guarantee the truth of this story will turn out far better than any piece of fiction about it.
Several days later Sonny and I returned to Ona at dawn to begin our Sunday. Love was on my mind. I meandered over to the installation and found it broken up and the glass bottle gone. I quickly refastened the sign to the poles, fortified the installation against the miscreants, and then added something legible of my own to the project. I wanted to add more mystery to anyone who might encounter it.
It might still be there.
Sorry, Charley
There’s still some truth in non-fiction
[Posted Aug. 30, 2011]
[Learn more about Matt.]
In this column, I’d like to digress somewhat from my usual subject matter and discuss the most important principle underlying “One Man’s Beach.” That principle is: I never make anything up. And yes, a while back, I really did see a long-haired, bare-breasted woman (mermaid) nestled in the riprap.
In 1960, an ailing, 60-year old John Steinbeck had a specially-constructed camper built onto the back of a pickup truck (one of the first RVs of its kind), dubbed it Rocinante after Don Quixote’s nag and took to the road. His French poodle Charley rode shotgun and the literary result was “Travels with Charley,” the greatest dog book of all time and a fascinating glimpse at America, then beginning a rapid descent into cultural homogeneity brought about by the Interstate Highway System and the concomitant rise of chain stores. The book became a huge bestseller, a staple of high school English classes, a definitive model for travel writing, and Steinbeck’s final contribution to American literature.
I’ve read the book at least a half dozen times and worship it for many reasons. Chief among them is Steinbeck’s anguished description of blowing out a tire on the Oregon Coast on a rainy Sunday, and how an elderly and laconic garage owner improbably rescues him and sets him up with new tires. Steinbeck never mentions the name of the town with three or four service stations, “…we came to a damp little shut-up town whose name escapes me because I never learned it.” Initially, I thought it was Lincoln City, but after my last reading, I believe Steinbeck broke down in Tillamook.
As I said, I worship “Travels with Charley” and thus it shocked and saddened me to learn this spring that Steinbeck apparently fabricated many of the scenes in the book. According to Bill Steigerwald, a journalist who retraced much of Rocinante’s route and consulted an earlier draft of the book, and Bill Barich, author of “Long Way Home: On The Trail of Steinbeck’s America,” Steinbeck spent most nights not in the camper, but in motels, even luxury hotels! He failed to mention that his wife accompanied him for many stretches. And there was also the little matter of inventing characters and making up dialogue to impart his political views of American life. I mean, did Steinbeck even bring along Charley?
Learning the truth about “Travels with Charley” truly depressed me. I don’t like discovering I’ve been duped by something I’ve read. The experience prompted me to think about how I approach my non-fiction subjects, such as what I witness during my habitual visits to Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. I could have easily made up all kinds of untraceable fantastic stories about what I see and get even wilder columns than the ones I produce.
That’s called lying and the result is the self-aggrandizement of the writer who couldn’t get the real goods and the perpetration of intellectual and emotional fraud against the reader. I find fabrication or embellishment in non-fiction unseemly, desperate, and ultimately dispiriting and crippling to the writer. The fraud may never come out, but I like to believe it will burrow its way into a phony writer like a pathogen and inflict damage in one way or another.
What really happened to Steinbeck on the Oregon Coast? Did he get drunk with a young Ken Kesey in a Florence bar full of loggers? Did he marvel at the sinuous green steel of the Yaquina Bay Bridge? Did he check out the beach at Oswald West State Park? Did he even get a flat tire in Tillamook? I want to know and I’ll never know.
I guess I’ll forgive Steinbeck for his transgressions because I still love his fiction, especially “Cannery Row,” for the discussion of progressive ideals and working class people he gave voices to — something practically vanished from American fiction these days. And I guess I still love “Travels with Charley” because of the dog and the camper and hitting the road to discover something about one’s self. And, well, years ago, as a direct result of reading “Travels with Charley” at a critical juncture in my life, I bought a camper, rigged it up, drove the endless Alaska Highway with Ray my trusty shepherd by my side, all in an attempt to become a writer. Things didn’t work out so well, but I got one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction writing about the experience. (You can read it on one of my Facebook page notes at <http://www.facebook.com/people/Matt-Love/735838324.)
By the way, I didn’t make up a single thing, like I never do with this column.
A plea for Divine arbitration
[Posted Aug. 2, 2011]
Dear Supreme Being:
I want to thank you for successfully intervening and settling the labor dispute between the players and owners of the National Football League. To the great relief of millions, the biggest sporting enterprise in American civilization will unfold this fall and once again spectacularly conclude with that quintessential American orgy of violence, fanaticism and commercialism known as the Super Bowl.
Yes, thank you! Imagine the cultural revolution that would have ensued had the labor dispute cancelled the season. The average (overweight) American man would’ve had nothing to do on Sunday afternoon, Monday night, and the occasional Thursday and Friday evenings, and thus, they could have entertained some cultural options. They could talk to their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends. They could even have sex with them. They could play with their children or walk their dogs. They could do some home improvement. They could read literature or volunteer at the food bank.
Or, heaven forbid, they could’ve brought their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, children and dogs, and visited the Oregon Coast beaches, where I would’ve invariably suffered their presence and their umbrellas and cell phone use. You see, I have a real phobia of encountering other humans on the beach (which is why I usually go at 5:30 a.m.) because I don’t want to have to deal with all their attendant neuroses. I have my own to work through.
Supreme Being, quite naturally you recognize the true nature of my appreciation: no pro football = more humans on the beach. More people on the beach = an irritated recluse. Thus, I can’t say it enough. Thank you!
But ... although I hate to seem ungracious, I need a bit more from you. More intervention.
The NBA season looks imperiled so please help out there. Moreover, I keep waiting for Oregonians to suddenly wake up and confront the academic-free zone lucrative sham that is big-time college football, which, should that happen, might compel Oregonians not to follow the fortunes of UO and OSU football. If that happens, humans might decide to turn off the TV and come to the beach.
I can’t have that.
The more the bread, circuses and concussions in American culture, the less chance humans will appear on Oregon’s ocean beaches and pollute the moment for me. Supreme Being, please continue to assist me on this account and I will forever serve you.
Thoughts on the writing life
[Posted July 19, 2011]
Over the last decade, I’ve given nearly 350 presentations about my books and various other Oregon literary/historical topics. Traveling all over the state, I’ve gigged at bars, barns, bookstores, galleries, coffee shops, theaters, utility closets, fairs, fields, parties, prisons, libraries, parks and historical museums. I’ve met thousands of fantastic Oregonians who have responded enthusiastically to my personal, somewhat eccentric approach to telling Oregon stories. At the conclusion of these events, certain audience members, aspiring writers I presume, invariably ask some or all of the following questions:
1. Where do you get your writing ideas?
2. Who or what is your muse?
3. What’s your writing process?
4. How do you cope with literary rejection?
5. What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?
6. What’s the secret to your success?
7. What type of writing workshop or group do you recommend?
8. Do you think you would have become a writer without the beach?
Generally, I believe no formula exists for becoming a writer although bookstores and the Internet are crammed with how-to guides that preach otherwise. Nevertheless, the audience wants answers so here’s generally what I say:
1) Beach (Best place to think. No distractions. I never use the phone or listen to music there.)
2) Beach (She calls to me two or three times a day. We meet on the sand. There is no cigarette afterward, and then I get to work.)
3) Beach (Go to beach and write the openings of pieces in my head. Walk until they are perfect. Then sit down to the computer and type away. I never stare at a screen without knowing what I’m going to write first.)
4) Beach (I would have quit writing along time ago if I didn’t have the ocean to annihilate my angst and ego after receiving rejection after rejection from mainstream publications and publishers. The old sound of the ocean helps me start anew every time I hear it.)
5) Beach (As in, go to it all the time and think about what you want to write instead of wasting time inhaling popular culture.)
6) Beach (Making the time to write, which means going to the beach all the time, which is my preparation to write. Weather doesn’t matter.)
7) Beach (It’s totally free, in Oregon at least, and you won’t ever have to endure the one narcissistic lunatic who typically ruins a writing workshop or group.)
8) No. One man’s desert? One man’s mountain? It would have never happened for me without the beach, Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, preserved in the manner they have been for all those years, until I came along to discover them in my 30s, when I moved to the Oregon Coast some 15 years ago.
A McCall to arms
Teaching Oregon’s more recent history
[Posted July 5, 2011]
In 1974, The New Yorker magazine published a 6,000-word article about Oregon’s unprecedented governing initiatives under the leadership of departing Republican Gov. Tom McCall, then near the end of his second and final four-year term in office.
McCall called the initiatives, collectively, The Oregon Story. In the article, McCall described The Oregon Story as one of “innovation and regeneration that can actually be used anywhere. We’re trying to export the hope and the formula.”
By 1974, Oregon could boast of many recent political innovations, most of them nationwide firsts: protection of ocean beaches from privatization and development, a law dedicating one-percent of highway funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths, a mandatory 5-cent deposit on returnable cans and bottles, an effort to clean up the polluted Willamette River, visionary land use planning to preserve farm and forestland, a forest practices act, and an astonishing level of voluntary energy conservation promoted by state government.
Everyone who has ever spent any time in Oregon and walked on an ocean beach has benefited from the bold bipartisan political initiatives achieved during the McCall era. In effect, these initiatives led Oregon to become, within a generation, one of the most desirable places to live in the country.
Older generations of Oregonians certainly remember the importance of Tom McCall and The Oregon Story. But what about Oregon’s schoolchildren? Do they know the story of Tom McCall and why they get to play on the beaches for free? Or ride their bikes on dedicated bike paths? A curriculum that teaches about Tom McCall’s leadership and The Oregon Story is long overdue for Oregon schoolchildren.
That day has finally arrived and it behooves all Oregon elementary and secondary teachers to investigate how to integrate an exciting new (and free!) online multi-media curriculum called “Tom McCall: A Better Oregon,” into their classrooms. I’ve taught social studies and language arts for 14 years in Oregon public schools and declare it by far the best teaching resource on modern Oregon history and politics that I’ve ever encountered.
Compiled by Marilyn Walster and hosted by the Oregon Historical Society, “Tom McCall: A Better Oregon” (www.ohs.org/education/tom-mccall-better-oregon/) has study units, lesson plans tied to state standards, audio, slide shows and video.
My favorite section of the curriculum is the compilation of fantastic McCall quotes, including my favorite: “Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get. And I think you’ll be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.”
Does any Oregon politician feel that way anymore, let alone say it publicly?
The goal of the curriculum is to educate students about their personal connection to Tom McCall and The Oregon Story and inspire them to design and implement community service projects that protect its legacy. I was so motivated that I had my journalism and photography students at Newport High School produce a 32-page magazine called “Sandtuary” that extols the virtues of Oregon’s unique heritage of publicly-owned beaches. We distributed 3,000 copies of it and received marvelous feedback from readers, many of whom had never heard of Tom McCall or the 1967 Beach Bill he signed into law.
I urge all Oregon teachers to spend some time on the site and think about how to teach about McCall next year. At the very least you will educate yourself about a special politician who unequivocally made your life better. He might also be the very reason you moved to Oregon.
Time to take the dog for a walk
[Posted May 25, 2011]
Dogs. Dogs. Dogs. I love them all. They seem to have accompanied me during most of the sublimely perfect private moments of my life. I can’t imagine not having one with me at the beach. I wouldn’t know how to walk.
In my 14 years living on the Oregon Coast, I have successfully rescued seven out of 11 stray dogs. I adopted two and would need a book to describe the ways I benefitted from the experience of walking approximately 10,000 miles (mostly on Oregon’s beaches) with my canine friends. Wait! I did write a book on the subject! I hope it comes out one day, but really, one has to wonder if the literary world needs the publication of yet another dog book.
Perhaps what the world needs is a book about terrible dog owners.
I love dogs, but loathe the very existence of some of their owners and lately these people seem right in my face. They neglect, they abuse, they scream, they chain, they forget that puppies grow up. They prefer watching television or trolling the internet instead of interacting with their pets. And some of their kids are even worse. It just dumbfounds me to see a family with grade school children and a dog, yet the kids never bother to walk the dog, or even play with it. My childhood dog, a beagle named Tex, was my best friend and we walked everywhere together. I am talking miles and miles around Oregon City in the 70s.
Just think what these dog owners miss by not daily venturing out into their local communities and natural places. They might talk to a neighbor or see a bald eagle. They might discover the meaning of life. They might even fall in love. The stuff I’ve witnessed walking Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches at all hours in all weather with my dogs transformed me spiritually and aesthetically. That wouldn’t have happened without my dogs because I never really walked anywhere until I got them.
If you are one of the terrible dog owners, then I am calling you out — meaning outside. Grab the leash and hit the streets, fields, or woods or beach. A mere 30 minutes a day will measurably improve your dog’s disposition not to mention your mental and physical health.
An hour a day might revolutionize your whole soul. It happens. I’ll never forget how, when I first rescued Ray (my dearly departed shepherd), he would come to the bed or couch whenever I felt waylaid by depression or existential uncertainty, and keep grunting until I got up and took him to the beach. He would not take “no” for an answer. By the way, he despised television when I had it a decade ago, and would actually leave the room when it came on.
And because for some reason I could not refuse Ray’s entreaty to take him for a walk, my whole life changed. For one thing, at that point in my life, at 35 years of age, I hadn’t written a word for publication and didn’t know who I really was.
Walking my dog changed all that. It might help you too. And if you don’t have a dog and can’t assume that responsibility, walk the neighbor’s dog even if the neighbor regularly walks the dog. I do that all the time.
Don't be a number
[Posted May 11, 2011]
A couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting on the beach, leaning against a driftwood log, and admiring the sun-soaked scenery: families fishing from a jetty, dogs romping to and fro, a couple of paddle surfers trying to catch a wave, an elderly woman hunting for treasures, and an unsupervised kid digging a hole to China.
I whipped out my trusty spiral notebook and pulled a pen from my pocket. I pledged I would write the first thing that came to mind — Bob Seger.
Yes, that Bob Seger, the meat-and-potatoes heartland rocker with a string of classic 70s/80s hits about the agonies and ecstasies of living in a small town and not succumbing to its provincialism. I hadn’t thought of Seger in decades, but recently a teaching colleague burned a greatest hits CD for me, and after listening to nothing but Seger for a couple of days of driving around Newport, I think I really heard him for the first time. And it tasted good.
One song in particular, “Feel Like a Number,” seized me and I can’t get one stanza out of my head:
I’m just another statistic on a sheet
To teachers I’m just another child
To IRS I’m just another file
I’m just another consensus on the street
…and I feel like a number
Feel like a number. My students are numbers, to realtors, talk show hosts, business tycoons, the state and federal government, and a lot of administrators (although not mine). Feel like a number also concisely summarizes the way many students view themselves as the result of our diabolical educational testing culture that I find myself enmeshed in at Newport High School where I teach English, journalism, and rock ’n’ roll.
So what can a teacher who loathes standardized testing do? In my nearly 20 years of teaching some 25 different subjects at eight different schools, I have formulated a personal teaching philosophy (not a paradigm) that keeps me sane, lively in the trade, and that I like to believe undermines the insidious regurgitation demanded by the testing establishment. It all comes down to this: provide students with multiple creative opportunities to not feel like a number in service to the state: poetry slams, rock festivals, open mics, photography, memoirs, literary reviews, reporting, saving animals, and plenty of hard core Oregon field trips, including the beach as much as possible.
In “Feel Like a Number” Seger sings another stanza that also connected to me:
Gonna cruise out of this city
Head down to the sea
Gonna shout out at the ocean
Hey it’s me!
Hey, who said meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll didn’t tell the truth? My daily visits to the ocean fire me up to have my voice heard. I recommend this sort of daily “shout out” to my students and I tell them it doesn’t really matter if their voices emanate from a chorus, quartet, duet, or solo performance. It only needs to sound honest, never a false noise manufactured by the media or spiritual charlatans, and announce as affirmation: “I’m not a number!”
Then I suggest to them, go out and do something about it.
Cruller muller: To confront donut-shop adversaries?
[Posted April 27, 2011]
My Monday morning began at the ocean and I listened in the darkness. What I heard — what I always hear — sounded infinitely more interesting that any sound generated by the National Entertainment State, as Gore Vidal memorably described it many years ago when there were basically five channels on TV and you rented a rotary phone from Ma Bell.
But to hear the ocean, you have to go to the ocean and you have to listen, and also remember that the old sound of the ocean does not emanate from an echo chamber, and neither for that matter, does knowledge, experience, or truth. All these things come from listening and never listening to the National Entertainment State.
On a furlough day from my job at Newport High School because of budget cuts, I cruised north up Hwy. 101. It was 5:30 in the morning and rain slanted against the truck. Destination: the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem to teach another workshop to Penned Thoughts, an inmate writing group. They invited me back and I was honored to return and discuss their essays generated from my earlier visit in October.
Traffic was nonexistent except for a plodding late-model sedan half wrapped in plastic and duct tape. I rolled into a coastal town and made my way to an establishment for drip coffee and a table to edit the last of the essays.
I walked in and saw four senior citizens, sitting around drinking coffee. I placed my order and I took a seat near the quartet. Out came the essays and a pen, but within seconds I stopped editing, started eavesdropping and taking down comments issued from the quartet’s apparent ringleader.
“Same sex marriage is a perversion. The kids today don’t know anything. They know nothing of art. When I was in school, two percent had sex. Now it’s 90. All teachers are mostly twits. I have no use for them.”
And so on until I stopped writing.
Two hours later I sat with the eight men of Penned Thoughts assembled around folding tables in the Oregon State Penitentiary’s chapel library. I told the group of my encounter in the establishment and asked them what they might have done in my shoes. Not every inmate spoke up, but the ones who did felt I was right to say nothing and walk away. It wasn’t the right time or place to confront an adversary.
That word “adversary” stuck in my mind. How do you engage your adversaries in thoughtful action? The great Oregon poet William Stafford once wrote, “Justice will take a million little moves.” I needed to make a move in that direction. But so often, the purveyor of these critical moves must act swiftly, spontaneously, on instinct. I was dead that morning.
I taught the rest of the workshop and the group wrote well. I didn’t want to leave, quite possibly because I was assisting the men engaging their inner adversaries in thoughtful action through a quiet and echoless process that only writing the plain truth provides.
As I gathered up my papers to leave the chapel, one of the inmates slipped a piece of paper in my front pocket. He told me it was his suggestion on how to engage the men in the donut shop. I read it when I got back to the truck.
“Next time maybe you could briefly say something, then go to the waitress and buy their coffee or breakfast and not let them know it. That might make an impact.”
I drove home in silence — no music. The rain never let up. I wanted only to get to the beach, empty my mind, ramble with the husky, and listen to the ocean. As E. B. White once wrote, “The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way.”
Several hours later, I was on the beach, and listening. It took all of five minutes for me to learn what I would do next time if I encountered an adversary of the type I overheard in the establishment.
Matt Love lives in South Beach. “Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker,” his memoir of caretaking the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, is available in coastal bookstores or through www.nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
He'll leave you wanting Gilmore
[Posted April 13, 2011]
I first met Newport resident and man of letters Ed Cameron about a decade ago on one of my visits to the Nye Beach Writers’ Series events. I can’t remember the name of the poet who topped the billing that night, probably because he or she was predictably precious and thus easily forgettable. But I’ll never forget when Ed Cameron took his turn at the open mic that followed the main presentation.
Ed read a riveting and humorous short prose piece about two Cannery Row-type characters who lived in a Newport flophouse called the Gilmore Hotel during the hazy loose days of the 1970s. Apparently, each year, an election for the office of Mayor of Nye Beach was held in the Sandbar, an exquisitely gritty Nye Beach bar, and one time a dog received the most votes! Who said democracy doesn’t work?
Did I say something about the Oregon Coast being hazy and loose in the 1970s? I only wish I could have seen it for myself. The stories I have heard are simply incredible, especially the cheap counterculture scene connected to Cannon Beach, which is as impossible to imagine today as Sting writing another “Roxanne” or a resurrected Tom McCall winning the Republican primary for governor.
After the reading I made the acquaintance of Ed and we repaired to the Sandbar. There, with oceans of peanut shells littering the floor and plenty of updated Steinbeck characters doing their thing, Ed gave me the lowdown on the Gilmore Hotel in its seedy heyday and how it operates now as the famous Sylvia Beach Hotel, doubtless one the coolest literary establishments in North America.
Ed also informed me that he had a major hand in running a little newspaper called the Gilmore Gazette, which ran from 1981 to 1993, 30 issues total. Ed wrote articles, contributed many of the cartoons and distributed the Gazette to the local bars. I asked Ed a lot of questions that evening in the Sandbar and thought how I would love to read a book about Nye Beach that shed some light on that funky era.
That book is here, and I declare “Gilmore by the Sea: A Graphic Novel,” by Ed Cameron, the most entertaining historical work I’ve read about the Oregon Coast, or Oregon for that matter, in a very long time. And not only entertaining, but also original in its arresting combination of cartoons and prose. The man can write and draw!
Although Ed calls the book fiction, he said his “cartoons and text derive largely from his residency in the Gilmore” so really, we’re talking about what Jack Kerouac used to call his books: “true life novels.” It probably all happened and I hope it did.
Ed plans a publication party for Gilmore by the Sea on Sunday, April 17, at Newport’s Cafe Mundo. The party runs from 5 to 8 p.m. and features music and something intriguing called The Nye Beach Literary Festival, which I gather will mean readings from various poets and writers.
Sounds kind of hazy and loose. I’ll be there.
Waiting for 'the big one'
[Posted March 30, 2011]
Texts started blasting in after 2 a.m. on March 11. Then a call. Then another call.
I heard them from the bedroom while the phone rested on the kitchen counter. What the hell was going on? No one communicates with me at this hour. In all seriousness, I thought either my elderly father had taken gravely ill or Keith Richards was dead and family or friends had to inform me.
I got up and read the texts. One after another warned me about going to the beach for my routine predawn ramble. Something about a tsunami. I went online and learned the awful truth. An earthquake had sent up a tsunami that had ripped through part of Japan and caused unspeakable damage.
There was more. Experts predicted a wave of unknown size and force would reach Oregon’s coastline at around 7 a.m. Low-lying coastal residents had to evacuate, but I wasn’t among them because of my home’s safe elevation.
I went back to bed and wondered where I would have the best and safest vantage point to watch the historic big wave come ashore. It all brought to mind the March 27, 1964, Good Friday Earthquake in Alaska. That earthquake measured 8.4 on the Richter Scale — the most powerful one recorded in North American history — and the resulting tsunami that smashed into the West Coast claimed several lives all along the West Coast. After it hit the central Oregon Coast, the Newport News ran the following story:
Tidal Wave (sic) Leaves Debris Along Coast
The earthquake which struck Alaska last Friday was felt here with a series of four tidal waves which caused the death of four members of a family on an outing to the beach. Dead are four children of Mr. and Mrs. Monty McKenzie of Tacoma.
The family was spending the night on the beach near Gleneden Beach north of Depoe Bay. The family was asleep when the waves hit about midnight, carrying the four children out to sea. One body was recovered, but the others have not been found. The children were ages 6, 7, 8 and 9. The family lost one child last year in a fire.
Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie were washed onto the upper beach. The parents were taken to the Pacific Communities Hospital and treated for shock.
These four children were the only known Oregon fatalities of the 1964 tsunami. (Editor’s note: This first news item turned out to be incorrect. The family was actually camping at Beverly Beach, not Gleneden Beach).
An hour later I got a call from Newport High School — no school because of the imminent tsunami. I tried going back to bed again, but it was useless. I made coffee, followed the terrible story online, and wrote e-mails to various parties telling them I wasn’t insane enough to hit the beach with a tsunami in the forecast.
Another call came in. The Newport Starbucks was closing. Gas lines were forming. Then a text arrived from a journalist for the school’s news magazine I advise. She was already on the story and taking photographs of the evacuation. I texted her to get the story “gold.”
At 6:45 I walked to the cliff overlooking the beach with coffee and camera in hand. I’d read about tsunamis for years and now I was finally going to see one. I felt nervous and giddy. I waited and waited. I walked back to the house for more coffee and learned the experts had pushed back the time.
The big wave never arrived where I live, although a series of smaller ones did elsewhere along the West Coast and a few people died as a result. We all know a much bigger one is coming. I wonder if the Oregon Coast is truly prepared, and if the state and federal governments have provided us with adequate resources to alert and evacuate. We’ve never faced a Hurricane Katrina-like scenario here. Could we pass a test like that?
Take 'Sandtuary,' at Café Mundo
On March 18, 2011 at Café Mundo in Newport, my journalism class will launch Sandtuary, a special edition of Newport High School’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s legacy of publicly-owned beaches. We hope you can join us for a special evening of music and spoken word jams that begins at 7 p.m. After the student performances, Lincoln City surf rock band the Retroactive Gamma Rays will tear into action and keep the party going.
This 32-page publication coincides with the release of a new curriculum about Tom McCall, the legendary two-term Oregon governor who in 1967 signed the famous Beach Bill into law protecting the dry sand areas of the ocean beaches from privatization. This revolutionary piece of legislation reaffirmed the state’s sacrosanct notion of publicly owned beaches first initiated by Gov. Oswald West.
West was governor in 1912 when he rode his horse from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain and into Nehalem. He later said the ride inspired him to write a masterfully brief 66-word bill that declared the wet sand areas along the ocean beaches a public highway.
The Oregon Legislature passed the bill in 1913, and with his law, West changed Oregon and all of our lives forever. He helped create a special relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. He created a special place that you probably enjoyed today.
West’s law protected the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches, but the state had no such safeguard for the dry sand areas, the space where virtually everyone recreates. In the summer of 1966, an elderly couple and their nephew were kicked off this dry sand area, in front of a Cannon Beach motel, by the owner of the business.
The event touched off the epic 1967 legislative battle that eventually culminated with passage of the landmark law known as the Beach Bill. This law, which nearly died in committee due to a cabal of coastal legislators, empowered Oregon “to forever preserve…ocean beaches of the state…so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
I love that phrase, “the free and uninterrupted use thereof.” Sounds like pretty much what’s going to go down at our launch party. This year, I have some incredibly talented writers, poets and musicians who regularly produce some of the best student work in my nearly 20 years as a teacher. I like to think we report, write, design, shoot photographs and rock out better than any high school in Oregon and keep the spirit of Tom McCall alive in our words and deeds. Just read part of the beach manifesto the students wrote:
We the students of NHS…
Have grown up on these beaches.
We understand the sanctity of each grain of sand.
We use our sandy playground to swim, surf, and frolic by day,
Bonfire and stargaze by night.
We fall in love by the tide pools.
We embrace our tubular waves with passion.
We know every inch from Agate to Ona.
The salty waves run through our veins.
We the students of NHS…
Traded the metal shackles of privatization for sandy socks long ago.
We insist on our right to unharnessed nature, to free beaches.
We grapple at the thought of Californication.
The beaches are in us and of us.
Who dares to privatize?
Who dares to put a price tag on our catharsis?
Wow! If you want to hear more of that kind of youthful passion, come check out the Harbor Light staff on March 18. If you do, you’ll also get to hear the only pop song ever written that has the names of Tom McCall, Oswald West, Ken Kesey and Steve Prefontaine in the lyrics. You can’t miss that!
See you at Café Mundo, located in Newport’s historic Nye Beach area at the corner of NW Coast and 2nd Court.
Public beaches, sans the public
[Posted March 4, 2011]
The sun came out on the last Sunday in January and I went to my church — I mean the beach — to ponder a question that has confounded me ever since I moved to the Oregon Coast 14 years ago.
Sonny and I once again took our secret forested path to the ocean. I virtually never encounter another human being on this path and for that I thank those Americans who never walk more than a few yards to experience anything.
We hit the beach and I looked north and south — no one around. We romped to the ancient drift log that’s stuck around for a couple of years. I sat down on it while Sonny sniffed the air and sought to make sense of her world. If only it was that easy for human beings.
The question is: Why do some coastal residents rarely or never go to the beach? Recently, my quest for some kind of satisfactory explanation took on a renewed urgency after I heard the incredible story of a man who worked in Lincoln City for a decade and never once visited the beach.
I heard of similar stories when I lived in South Tillamook County. It wasn’t all that uncommon to hear of folks from the Cloverdale/Hebo/Beaver areas who hadn’t stood near (even seen!) the ocean for years.
It’s not like tourists overrun Oregon’s beaches like they do attractions such as Yosemite or the Eiffel Tower. Nine times out of 10 when I walk on the beach I never see anyone, although I admit it’s usually either raining, 6 a.m., or something spectacularly banal on television has sucked in the masses.
What is the reason? Are any of you reading this one of these people?
In response to my question, friends have suggested that because the beach is such a short distance for locals, this is satisfying enough for some. In other words: “I don’t actually go but I live close by and could if I wanted to. That’s sufficient.” The Oregon Coast TODAY is a quality, family run publication so I’ll omit my profane response to that lame excuse. You can guess at it though.
Why? Did these non-beachgoers actually exist before 500 channels on TV, Netflix, the Internet and video poker? Are we all working too hard in this country? Are Oregonians losing their minds? Perhaps a sociologist could provide some answers. I really don’t know what to think of these people, but I always react with astonishment when I hear these stories. Then I get a little sad.
If you haven’t gone to the beach, and I mean on the sand near the ocean, not looking at it from a vehicle or living room window, I really must insist you stop everything and visit immediately. Remember, this is Oregon — it won’t cost a cent. Just a little time.
The World's Greatest Therapist
[Posted Feb. 16, 2011]
“I just need to see the ocean. You know what I mean,” Megan wrote me.
Yes, I knew what Megan Dodds meant in her email. My former star writing student at Newport High School was dealing with a crisis and needed a break. She wanted to come home and perhaps talk to someone or some thing about the ordeal.
Her father, Officer Steven Dodds of the Lincoln City Police Department, had survived a near-fatal shooting on Jan. 23. Upon hearing the news, Megan rushed to Portland, interrupting her freshman year at OSU. She had spent two emotionally charged weeks at her father’s side and had been dealing with peripheral issues related to the shooting that she couldn’t have possibly foreseen.
I responded to Megan’s email and we arranged to have lunch in Newport and catch up on life. On an overcast Saturday afternoon we met at Café Mundo in Nye Beach. When she arrived, I noticed she carried a journal, the same classic black and white composition book that I require of all my English students to keep. They have to write 10 pages a week and have it with them at all times. Some students complain about the requirement but I pay them no mind. Years later, they always thank me.
“Are you writing about what’s going on?” I said, pointing to her journal, which was ornately decorated and looked like a writer’s best friend.
Yes, she was writing about the crisis. In fact, she had just visited Don Davis Park, sat on a concrete block that overlooked the ocean, and written a piece.
“Do you want to see it? I’m having a little trouble with the ending,” Megan said.
Yes, I did want to read the piece. I have always loved Megan’s writing, and can still recall virtually every word of her ocean essay and a memoir that opened with an astonishing use of her image in a mirror.
After reading her journal, and taking a moment to compose myself, we discussed the piece’s ending and I suggested one minor edit, which she accepted. As a senior, Megan always received my editorial suggestions with enthusiasm, but also had a gift for intuiting when some passage of an essay wasn’t working.
As Megan ate her grilled cheese sandwich, I read the piece again and then asked her if she would allow me to share it with other readers.
She consented. Here it is:
World’s Greatest Therapist
I step out of the car onto Second Street. Immediately I taste the familiar salt in the air. No roar of traffic, just the low hum of the ocean a few hundred feet away. Serene. Tranquil. It’s so good to be home.
I now sit atop the hill overlooking the short waves winding their way out from underneath the ominous wall of fog. It has waited for my return. Through all the crashing, it seems to welcome me, reaching out to embrace me with its lethargic, foamy arms. The harder it tries to feel my touch, the higher the tide rises over the dampened sand. It chases away a young boy and a dog, and crashes over rocks to get to me. It wants to help me wash away everything that has passed over these two weeks. Fear, sadness, stress, anger. All gone now. They have become part of the ocean.
– Megan Dodds
The Lincoln City Police Employees Association has created a fund for Officer Steven Dodds. Donations may be made under the name LCPEA to STEVE DODDS at West Coast Bank, 4157 N. Hwy. 101, Lincoln City, OR 97367.
The journey of Vivian Vickers
[Posted Feb. 4, 2011]
From a press release:
On Jan. 22, 2009, the Lincoln County 911 Dispatch Center received a call about a missing person in the Surfland area of South Beach, Ore. Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to the area and obtained a description of the missing person. The missing female, 90-year-old Vivian Gertrude Vickers of South Beach, had left her home sometime between 5 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. that morning, according to family members who were staying with her. Deputies were unsuccessful in locating her during a search of the immediate area around her residence. Search and Rescue K-9’s were also deployed and several indications from the dogs led searchers to the beach area, however, no sign of Vickers was found.
I walked the beach in the Surfland area that Thursday morning two years ago at the same time Vivian Vickers disappeared. Later that afternoon, after teaching a half day at Newport High School, I relaxed on the front deck of my home in the Pacific Shores neighborhood, just south of Surfland, when about a dozen uniformed men and women appeared on the street.
The day was clear and dry and I walked over to greet them. They introduced themselves as a search and rescue team looking for Vickers, who was described as, “5 feet, 2 inches tall, weighing 100 pounds, blonde or tan colored curly hair, and (having) a glass left eye…wearing a blue flannel or fleece pajama top and pants bottom and light colored shoes…suffering from dementia.” I told the team I had visited the beach that morning and hadn’t seen anyone.
The official search ended on Jan. 24, having found no trace of Vickers.
The next week at school I told my creative writing students about Vickers. We read about her in the local newspaper, discussed the incident, and then wrote short non-fiction or fictional pieces exploring her disappearance.
I chose the non-fiction route and propounded the theory that Vivian Vickers disappeared into the ocean after a brief but overpowering fit of sanity blasted through her dementia. Look at the facts! Look where her trail went cold! She wanted a return journey to her place of origin and did exactly that. “Nature assisted suicide” I called it, and I expressed my desire to die in precisely the same way when the proper time came.
The literary exercise went well and I thought little of the mystery until almost a year later. While preparing my senior English students to write essays about their connection to the ocean, Vickers popped into my mind, and I told the story again. One girl said her family knew Vickers and that she had told people — in her lucid moments — that if anyone tried to remove her from her home, she would walk right into the ocean.
The moment I heard this incredible hearsay I became obsessed with Vivian Vickers’ final journey. I talked to the police and emergency response personnel. I talked to Vickers’ neighbors. I interviewed Vickers’ nephew and his wife, the family members staying with her that fateful morning. He told me Vickers had lived in Surfland for nearly 30 years and that because of her worsening dementia, he felt it necessary to move her to Nevada where he lived. She had no children of her own.
This Jan. 22, at approximately 6 a.m., for the second year in a row, I followed the trail Vickers may have taken from Surfland to the ocean. What I hoped to find or feel I didn’t really know. I ended up finding and feeling nothing except for confirming my desire to go out the same way I think Vickers did.
I can’t get something one of the searchers said to me out of my mind. I asked why Vickers’ body never washed ashore, if she indeed had walked into the ocean. He provided a litany of technical reasons, but then added, almost as an afterthought, “The ocean only keeps who it wants.”
My non-fiction investigation of Vivian Vickers has concluded. Writers of fiction, it’s your turn now.
Reflections on a first beach date,
and keeping a journal
[Jan. 21, 2011]
“I’ve never really been an ardent fan of the beach, especially in Oregon. But this time I wanted to go. The weather was incredible: 70 degrees, hot, no wind, and not a storm cloud in the sky. Somehow it seemed it was planned. We had the best time imaginable, just doing nothing — walking and talking and getting to know one another. I guess I know now why the beach means so much to some people. It just puts you in awe.”
So I wrote in my journal on Oct. 19, 1981, during my senior year at Oregon City High School, about my first date with a junior girl who would quickly become my girlfriend.
Her name was Tricia and she had driven us to Cannon Beach in her brown Pinto hatchback and its tinny AM radio. Yes, Tricia drove because I absolutely hated to drive. When I look back on those days, it’s quite possible I existed as the only high school senior boy in America who loathed driving and preferred his dates take the wheel. I had a license, a VW Dasher, and a generous mother who paid for my insurance and gas, yet for some unknown reason, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for driving.
On occasion, I pull out my old high school journals and read entries to my Newport High seniors to offer a glimpse into the state of my life 29 years ago. The goal is that by sharing my experiences, I can provide a little historical context, perspective, and levity to my students’ turbulent senior year. Another aim in reading from the journals is to show how a person can change (hopefully for the better) over the intervening three decades. And perhaps most importantly, I want them to see the value of keeping a journal (on paper!).
When I read, “I’ve never really been an ardent fan of the beach, especially in Oregon,” I accomplished all three with one sentence, because if my seniors learn anything from me, it’s about the unprecedented nature of Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches and what it means to all of us.
When I came across this arresting passage in my journal not too long ago, I reflected about that first perfect date at the beach. As I recall, Tricia and I took a long walk down Tolovana Beach, ate a picnic lunch my mother may have packed, and then carved our names in one of the ancient wooden picnic benches decorated with a million other teenage names and their simple equations of love. (I looked for the exact table years ago but Oregon State Parks had replaced it with a practical and unromantic composite version made from recycled materials.)
After Tolovana Beach, Tricia and I explored the tide pools around Haystack Rock and held hands as we skipped in the surf. I don’t remember what we talked about and neither does my journal. I do remember I was pretty much in awe of this girl.
Tricia later made me a stained glass mirror of this scene and gave it to me on my 18th birthday. It still hangs in my mother’s house.
Civil War: Trading downs for dunes
[Posted Jan. 4, 2011]
Oregon’s kicker booted the pigskin deep into Oregon State territory to begin the biggest football game in the state’s history. Or did the Beavers kickoff to the Ducks to open the Civil War?
I didn’t have a clue and couldn’t have cared less. That story bored me to death. The media had already published a billion words and broadcast a million images about the Civil War before the game even started. There was nothing interesting left to say but people kept talking about it anyway. If I saw another large man with a goatee wearing a yellow/green or orange/black muumuu, talking incessantly about “zone coverage” or “no huddle offense,” I wasn’t responsible for my actions.
What did Popeye always say before eating the spinach? “I can only stands so much and I can’t stands it no more!” As a writer, I couldn’t stand further hype so I ate my spinach and went in search of a Jimmy Breslin Moment, a unique editorial angle that I named for the legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Breslin didn’t try to get Lee Harvey Oswald’s story. Instead, he visited Arlington National Cemetery and found the man assigned the duty of digging JFK’s grave. Breslin got his story and turned in one of the best pieces in the history of American journalism. (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm)
While the game Ducks and Beavers battled in Reser Stadium, (or was it Autzen?) Sonny and I ambled down our secret path at South Beach State Park to see the ocean. I brought along a camera to document the Breslin Moment sure to unfold right before my very eyes. I knew it would because on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, they always do.
We emerged from a stand of stunted shore pines and ascended a dune. I surveyed the beach north to south on a fine dry afternoon, a perfect day for football. No one was there except for a couple sitting on a massive and ancient 20-foot drift log polished smooth by a century at sea.
The woman sat to his left. He had his arm around her. I went prone to the sand and crawled nearer for a better look. Sonny started walking on my back and then kept blocking my view. The camera came out and I clicked away. The couple stared at the ocean and then they kissed. I watched the couple for a good 15 minutes and briefly considered asking for an interview. It didn’t feel right though, so Sonny and I left for home. I never saw the couple’s faces.
The game was probably in the second quarter, or more likely, barely two minutes into the first because of all the commercials for beer and gadgets. Later, I learned Oregon won and will play Auburn in the biggest football game in the state’s history and compete for the national title.
You’ll know where I’ll be.
Operation Oregon Beach Legacy, Part 2
[Posted Dec. 22, 2010]
A thrashing November rain pelted 35 of my students from Newport High School as they walked down the forested path to Short Sands Beach in Oswald West State Park. Our mission: to produce a special edition of the school’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s unique history of publicly-owned beaches.
We had approximately two hours to take photographs, interview people, write poems, eat lunch, visit a sacred site, and let our creative animals run wild on the beaches. We brought along food, fire, soda, surf boards, tea, rock and roll, hula hoops, hacky sacks, a football, teen angst, middle-aged angst, and a couple of love birds. We would dance like fools in the rain and flood our senses with thoughts, images, desires, and later produce the special issue and distribute it up and down the Coast during Spring Break. If this wasn’t hard core gonzo Oregon journalism at its finest, then the genre didn’t exist!
We would not bring bottled water or umbrellas. The path ended and the staff beheld the untainted and raw beauty of Short Sands Beach. “Bring wood and oil!” I screamed, quoting my favorite line from “The Lord of the Rings.” Within seconds, a mountain man in training had a blazing fire going.
Some kid told me his cell phone worked, which I had assured the staff on the bus was a total impossibility in the park. The word got around fast and many students went to their pockets like Wyatt Earp went to his holster at the O.K Corral.
Damn! I felt the earth move under my feet and figured Oswald West and Tom McCall were spinning in their graves (Memo to self: contact officials about installing a secret electronic dampening field in the park). For a moment, I considered confiscation but then watched drops from heaven splash down as a girl scrolled her fancy phone. I prayed: “Let it rain and let it ruin.”
There wasn’t a soul around! No one to interview except our inner angels and demons! We ate our lunch, chewed the fat, and listened to a couple of positively dank (teenage for cool) mix CDs specially prepared by students for the field trip. How my 20-year old CD/cassette player withstood the rain is beyond me.
Maybe it was waiting its whole machine life to play Led Zeppelin at Oswald West State Park as 35 kids rocked and rained out.
After a soggy lunch, I led them up the rooted path to the Matt Kramer Memorial, the most sacred spot of Oregon journalism, dedicated in 1972 to the veteran reporter who, well, let me quote the plaque:
“The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill. This landmark legislation guarantees forever the public’s right to the free and uninterrupted use of one of Oregon’s most popular recreation attractions, its ocean beaches.”
We laid hands on the memorial and swore an oath to uphold the truth with our journalism, and to the power of reporting with objectivity and a religiosity for facts. I told the staff, “Look where great journalism can lead.” And I wasn’t talking about the memorial. I meant the free and publicly-owned beaches the memorial overlooks.
I wonder if Oregon will ever erect a memorial like this to a blogger?
Time to play! We returned to base camp and collected our toys and went to the beach. The lovebirds snuck off and I sent a runner after them. I winged a football to a couple of foreign exchange students who made some tough catches. One girl grabbed some kelp and we jump roped as the surf filled our shoes. The hacky sack came out. I found myself screaming every sentence.
I was losing my mind. At some point, a kid took the 10,000th photograph of the mission. I yelled out I had 20 bucks for the money shot. A hard rain never stopped falling.
A thrashing rain fell as the bus rolled to a stop in front of Newport High at 3:15. Hell yes! Three minutes ahead of schedule!
Teach the beach: Legacy trip, part 1
A thrashing November rain rattled the bus as it rolled away from Newport High at 8:03 a.m. Damn! Three minutes behind schedule!
I received a text from a super slacker running late: “would I wait?” Hell no! We couldn’t waste one second if 35 of my journalism and photography students wanted to begin Operation Oregon Beach Legacy, our mission to produce a special edition of the school’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s history of publicly-owned beaches.
We planned to release the publication during Spring Break, when so many tourists enjoy free use of our beaches and have no idea of the heroic historical efforts to protect them from privatization. The edition would coincide with the release of a new curriculum about Tom McCall, the legendary two-term Oregon Governor who in 1967 signed the famous Beach Bill into law.
As for the curriculum, I say — it’s about damn time! Oregon kids have stomached enough Lewis and Clark and Oregon Trail mythology to last 10 lifetimes and need to learn why the state became such an acclaimed model for conservation and progressive governing in the McCall Era. Oregon teachers, find this curriculum online, shape it to your needs, and then implement it with passion — not as a requirement. Might I suggest going to the beach and playing with your students as the unit’s outcome?
And on the subject of legendary Oregon governors, a thrashing rain rocked the bus as we headed north on Hwy. 101 to our destination, Oswald West State Park north of Manzanita. West was governor in 1912 when he rode his horse from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain and into Nehalem. He later said the ride inspired him: “So I came up with a bright idea…I drafted a simple short bill.”
The bill was 66 words long and masterfully read: “The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, excepting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
The Oregon Legislature passed the bill in 1913, and with his law, Oswald West changed Oregon and all of our lives, forever. He helped create a unique relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. He created a special place that my students enjoy practically every day of their lives.
West later wrote in his 1949 memoir, “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.” This “great birthright” is our publicly-owned beaches and I make my seniors memorize the quote if they want to pass my class. The state department of education doesn’t recognize it as a curriculum standard. Nor do they mandate a field trip to celebrate Oregon’s sheer awesomeness.
A thrashing rain battered the bus as it stopped at the park at 10:43. Time to unlock, unload, rock, report and roll!
Coming on Dec. 24: Part Two — Led Zeppelin, cell phones and Matt Kramer.
A rave for 'Waves'
Can you remember the last time you discovered a book by chance, and it totally reoriented your thinking about a subject?
I can. This summer I stayed in a cabin overlooking Falcon Cove and inspected the owner’s small, excellent library. One title intrigued me and I pulled the book from the shelf. Four hours later I finished it and knew I would never look at the ocean and beaches the same way again. I also knew I would have to totally rewrite a 50,000-word manuscript about Oregon’s ocean beaches that I thought for sure was ready for prime time.
“Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface” by Willard Bascom is a classic of natural science. I own the 1980s revised and updated edition but the book first came out in 1964.
It begins: “Is there anyone who can watch without fascination the struggle for supremacy between sea and land?” Well, no, not if a person is even remotely sentient and actually manages to hit the beach every now and then and notice, I mean really look hard at what is all around you.
Until reading this book, I thought I was noticing everything at the ocean’s edge. As it turns out, there is a lot more to understand about the sand I walk upon and the waves that hypnotize me. For starters, I had no idea mathematics played such an interesting and elementary role in the motion of waves or the slope of beaches.
Limited editorial space here prevents me from a complete summary of Bascom’s 365-page book, but he basically examines everything related to waves and beaches and explains them right down to their tiniest tumble or, literally, a grain of sand.
One of the utterly fascinating benefits of reading this book is learning the names of features I’ve seen a million times but didn’t even know had names. Take for example, the various marks on the beach made by retreating tides: swash, backwash, rills, cusps, domes, pinholes, ripples. I can’t say I’m now obsessed with identifying everything I see at the beach, but a bit more knowledge of the natural world isn’t such a bad thing in life. In fact, a lot more might save the planet.
In “Waves and Beaches,” Bascom writes simple, yet beautiful and informative sentences, like: “Waves are undulating forms that move along the surface of the sea.” Or try this one: “A beach is an accumulation of rock fragments subject to movement by ordinary wave action.” And my favorite: “Beaches are ever-changing, restless armies of sand particles, always on the move.” Bascom might have considered himself more of a scientist than a writer, but he knew how to construct metaphors in nature and slyly present them to readers:
“A wonderful time to observe … is early in the morning, especially after a high tide. Often the air is still and pleasant light fills the sky. The beach is clean and virginal, the night’s waves erased the human marks of the previous day.”
Bascom was obviously a gifted man of science who saw a beauty and assurance in the formulas and equations of the waves. Without reading his book, I would have never known such precise things do exist. When I ramble the beach, which is roughly two to three times a day, I think of love, loss, rebirth, a little evolution. I also smell and touch. In other words, poetry. Not math! But math is good too, at least the way Bascom presents and explains it in his masterpiece that every serious beachcomber has got to read.
Taking pen to penitentiary
[Posted Nov. 10, 2010]
The professor gave the group the writing prompt: “What object, person, place, or picture could you look at for an hour? Use all your senses to describe it.” She put a mixed CD into an ancient boom box from the break dancing era. The first couple tracks skipped and she replaced the CD with another one. The Replacements’ obscure alternative rock classic “Achin’ To Be” came on and the group’s seven members, all men, all clad in blue jeans and blue shirts, began to write immediately.
I watched for a couple of minutes and was astonished when no one strayed off task. No one dug into their pockets for a phone, either. They weren’t allowed.
The sound of geese broke my concentration and I turned to look out the window. Through metal bars (or was it a wire screen?) I saw several small formations fly by in an atypical formation.
Even though I wasn’t an official member of the group, which goes by the name of Penned Thoughts, I joined in on the prompt and opened my piece with a familiar image from the singular obsession of my life: “When I walk along the beach with Sonny, I usually keep my head turned toward the ocean. I like watching the breakers to see how gray mixes with white…”
Gray mixing with white. I had watched this curious Oregon color for an hour that very morning before the drive to Salem to join the writing group.
Ten or so minutes later, the professor, Michele, asked if anyone wanted to share. No one volunteered. She waited. A small man to my right, with two cannons for arms, two cannons covered in tattoos, said, “I’ll go.”
He began to read his thoughts about the ocean, the surf, and the Zen moment of riding a wave. He wrote crisply and beautifully from a distant memory because he hadn’t surfed in 20 years — or more. He might never surf again. Men incarcerated for long sentences, including life, at the Oregon State Penitentiary, don’t get to surf.
The man concluded his piece. The sound of geese again entered the room, only it seemed much louder than before. I looked out the window again and could not believe the numbers flying past. The word “surreal” is by far the most hackneyed, misunderstood and overused adjective in English today (it is not a synonym for bizarre). I’ll save you a trip to a dictionary by providing the best visual definition of the word that I’ve ever seen: men who have committed violent crimes self-reflecting on paper (in longhand!) while the Replacements rocked out in all their ragged glory, sharing the stage with a cacophony originating from a flock of geese. All from a maximum security prison.
Another man volunteered to read. He looked all of 21. He launched into a narrative of hanging out with a buddy, carrying his surfboard down to an isolated cove near Coos Bay. The piece took a fascinating twist when the writer introduced the character of a surly owner of a private campground who always yelled at the local surfers for their alleged trespassing on his property. The reader and his friend ignored the man. The ocean beckoned.
The inmate kept reading. He paddled out to meet the waves. He described a multi-colored sky, I think. At that point, I drifted away, lost in his Oregon story. He was gone too…at least for a moment.
Visit from an owl
[Posted Oct. 27, 2010]
Sonny danced on the sand of South Beach State Park, tangoed toward me with outstretched paws. She bit down hard and splintered the stick in my hand. Man does she ever love playing our new game of capturing paranoia! We call it Tea Party!
Time to go. We ambled down our secret path through ripe huckleberries and Scotch broom. Suddenly, a bird glided into view, but I didn’t see its head, only a large wingspan colored brown and white. I followed its flight as it banked left into a stand of scrawny shore pines. The bird landed on a branch 10 yards away, swiveled his head right, left, then straight ahead. A barn owl stared at me.
I recognized it as a barn owl because they used to regularly cross my path during my 10 years as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I once even held an owlet in my hands after he failed to fledge from a nest.
Two hours earlier, I had received a letter from a literary agent working in one of those distant towers of glass and steel that makes or breaks writers across the land. At the behest of an influential Northwest author, the agent had read my self-published memoir of caretaking the refuge and began her letter by writing, “It’s awesome!” She then detailed the multiple changes the book needed to attract a national publisher.
A solid 95 percent of her editorial suggestions made sense although I wondered if I possessed the desire to revisit an already intense personal story and further probe what happened during the most defining experience of my life. I had left out a lot for a reason and it wasn’t because of an overloaded word count. Moreover, as I wound down my recent tour to promote the memoir, I had grown tired of talking about the refuge. It felt time to move on.
Still, a letter from New York! Should I pass up an opportunity every serious writer dreams of? What is my ultimate goal as an Oregon writer? Do I want a national audience? What price would I pay to achieve that?
Naturally I took to the beach with the dog for answers. “The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way,” wrote E.B. White. I can’t think of a more suitable sentence written for those of us obsessed with the ocean. How some landlocked people make decisions without consulting the ocean escapes me. Is that why the White House always seems to make such terrible decisions when it comes to safeguarding the Republic? Should we move the capital to the Oregon Coast?
I listened to the sea: look out to me, empty everything, and search your heart and mind. Make the search honest. When the search ends, the answers will emerge.
The owl’s unlikely appearance near the beach coincided with the exact moment I faced a crucial decision about my literary future. When I saw the owl, I instantly identified him as an emissary from the refuge. Yet his message defied interpretation. An admonition? A demand? A plea? A “Hello Matt, we miss your spirit. Don’t you think you should finally come visit your old friends?”
I stared at the owl for five minutes.
“Why are you here?” I said aloud. The trees beckoned me toward the owl. He hesitated for a few seconds, then lifted off, on course to the sea. I followed and Sonny followed me.
On the road
[Posted Oct. 13, 2010]
Not long after I read an article that mentioned a line Jack Kerouac underlined in his copy of Henry David Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” (“The traveler must be born again on the road”), I pulled my bike into the day-use area of South Beach State Park. A drizzle fell and the temperature hovered near 50 degrees but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. Hey, this the Oregon Coast in the summer and if you don’t like it, you can go straight to … Malibu!
What a scene around me: A dozen canines shook off sand and water; kites danced in the clouds; families roasted hot dogs; a tattooed beauty with her two children emerged from the dunes. I didn’t see a single cell phone or electronic gadget in use.
I noticed a 1970s Mystery Machine/Scooby Doo van to my left with its cargo door wide open. Inside, carpenter tools hung orderly on the wall, a mattress rested on the carpeted floor, and the roof rack was piled high with lumber and camping gear. A black mutt leashed to the van’s wheel drank water while his 40-something master, bearded and disheveled, drank coffee and checked out the hot mom.
He opened with the oldest conversation starter since humans walked upright and gained the power of language: “So did you hear anything about the weather?”
“I read it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, but nothing’s ever for sure in Newport.”
“Cool. It doesn’t matter. I just love being here.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Idaho.”
“Taking a little vacation?”
“No, I’m on the road.”
We both knew the difference between the two. Or I used to know.
I never got his name but I got his story: he had lived in Seattle for 13 years, moved to Idaho, recently abandoned it, and headed to Oregon looking for handyman work along the way. He had wanted to relocate in the Willamette Valley, tried Eugene, but didn’t take a shine to the hippies. He then found the central Oregon Coast, made some friends, and thought he might settle near the ocean, temporarily, around Newport. He asked me about local construction work and I told him it was grim.
Next, he launched into some of the most enthusiastic praise for Oregon’s publicly owned beaches I’ve heard in a long time, outside of my voice. It wasn’t even prompted.
“You never have to pay anything and can go anywhere you want,” he said. “Sometimes I just sleep in the van and hear the ocean all night.”
We said our goodbyes, his dog waved a paw to me, and I rode away feeling as if I’d taken a direct lightning strike of existential energy. A man, his van, a dog, unemployed, the road. Their entire collective image made a large noise. It sounded like hearing God or God calling me out.
If you think you’ve heard this call from your higher power, you immediately answer — or end up shriveled in every way that verb connotes about the modern American man. And sexual impotency has nothing to do with it.
I used to travel a lot in my 20s and early 30s, around the country and the world. I saw a great many fascinating things and met incredible people. At some point, though, it was time to end the journeys, settle, mature, and get some solid teaching and literary work done. The Oregon Coast has held me for 14 years now, and will for the near future. It won’t forever, though, and I already have my rig picked out and a mix tape ready to rock.
That’s a cassette tape.
Watching the weathered men
[Posted Sept. 29, 2010]
In the course of promoting my new book, I’ve driven up and down the Oregon Coast a dozen times this summer and consistently encountered the same troubling image: weathered, middle-aged men walking Hwy. 101 with all their worldly possessions.
I’ve lived on the coast for 13 years and have never seen so many homeless men on the road. I started keeping count in June but finally gave up.
Some sit in the shoulders holding cardboard signs reading “Hungry” or “Need Food.” Sometimes they have a backpack, wagon, suitcase, even a ragged bicycle. A few have dogs. Infrequently, a woman accompanies a man. Life looks damn hard for these men.
The only thing I haven’t seen is a bindle. There is no Jack Kerouac romance of the road for them. There is no John Steinbeck around to chronicle their stories, only a couple of radio and television charlatans who claim to speak politically and spiritually for them. These weathered men have no irony about them whatsoever. You can’t have irony when you’re invisible to the unwashed commentators.
I can spot the difference between a sojourner and a homeless man. A few younger, sturdier men obviously tramp the Oregon Coast on some existential errand or walkabout, most likely returning to something solid, dry. Where the weathered men end up I can’t even imagine.
Please don’t think I’ll sound flippant with what I’m about to write next: At least near the beach these men and their dogs can find some scrap of solace from the ocean, a free bed in the sand, and some of the amenities provided by the Oregon Coast’s vast system of federal, state, local and county parks and recreation areas, which have become de facto social service agencies for all kinds of men, women and children dispossessed by the recent economic calamity.
Don’t tell me I exaggerate. I hit the various beaches near my home at dawn every morning and have seen plenty of weathered men sleeping in the dunes and willows. Although I could easily take their photographs and perhaps better document their plight, I will not do so; it feels wrong to me. To walk past these men and do nothing is a profoundly distressing experience with which to begin my day, but generally, that’s what I do. Walk on by.
In recent weeks, I’ve given a $20 bill here and there to a few weathered men (I also donate to various social service agencies). I’ve stashed cans of dog food in the truck and dole them out when I see a homeless man on the road with a dog. He gets the $20 if he promises to take care of the dog.
Sure, I know some of the money goes for booze. But not all of it.
When the hard rains come, I suspect the beach will provide little psychic and absolutely no physical comfort for the weathered men. At that point, they’ll mostly disappear from my sight as I cruise Hwy. 101. I don’t have a poignant or prescriptive ending for this column. It just ends.
The 4th annual
Project Homeless Connect
What: A free, one-stop shop for the homeless in Lincoln County, with food, services and assistance from 40 federal, state and local agencies, and non-profit groups
When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7
Where: The Church of the Nazarene, 227 NW 12th St., Newport
Details: Dental and medical care and advice, paperwork help, food stamps, haircuts, immunizations, bike repair, pet care, packaged food and a hot meal.
Contact: To volunteer, call 541-336-7772, or head to homelessinlincolncounty.org.
Blown away by 'Washed Ashore'
[Posted Sept. 13, 2010]
This summer, after attending yet another Lincoln County School District meeting where bottled water was offered to teachers a few feet away from drinking fountains that provide a quality of water that 99.9 percent of the world’s population would love to enjoy, I took the verb “seethe” to a whole new level of intensity.
I might also add that about half the bottles at the meetings ended up in the trash.
Later, I went to the beach: more water bottles. May I update Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? Plastic, plastic, everywhere, despite drops of clean, free water to drink.
All this plastic was polluting my mind (and quite likely my body) when I found myself exploring Nye Beach and wandered inside the Newport Visual Arts Center, near the turnaround. There, I had my mind completely blown in that special way only compelling visual art can accomplish.
From now until Oct. 31, the center’s Runyan Gallery will host “Washed Ashore: Plastics, Sea Life and Art,” a traveling exhibit to, “raise awareness about the use of plastics and the dangers those plastics pose to our environment, and all life on the planet.”
Lead artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi, who hails from Bandon, has put together an, “exhibit made from plastic pollution that washed ashore on remote beaches throughout southern Oregon.” Volunteers collected all the plastic in 2010 and this detritus became the material to fashion giant sculptures on display in the gallery. These sculptures will astonish you with their weird beauty and subtle, yet jackhammer message of the tragic throwaway society America has become and how this propensity is killing marine life.
I’ve seen a lot of great art in my time, at some of the most famous museums in the world, but I have never seen anything that moved me like this show did. I’ve already gone back three times. I’ve pretty much told everyone I know in Newport that they must see these sculptures.
All I can say is, if you care anything for Oregon’s oceans and beaches, visit the gallery now and bring along those sinners who buy bottled water. If they don’t repent right then and there, check for the existence of a soul. You may have to look hard.
My favorite sculpture was, naturally, a huge jellyfish hanging made from water bottles that hung from the ceiling. I wish I had the money to buy it and display it where teachers gather to discuss improving education and drink bottled water.
The Washed Ashore exhibit is free, but I bought some t-shirts to help the effort. The Newport Visual Arts Center’s hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in September and Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in October. For more on the exhibit, visit www.washedashore.org.
Max Plank:
The physics of forts, then and now
[Posted Aug. 31, 2010]
Whenever I ramble the beach and encounter a good supply of driftwood, I immediately size up the potential for a good fort. Not that I build one, but I like to imagine what my friends and I would have constructed in our youth.
Forts excited our passion. We built them anywhere and everywhere. I remember the summer days of riding our bicycles (without a helmet) to the woods near the edge of Oregon City (without bottled water, a cell phone or music). There we played war. It was always World War II, never Vietnam, an epic catastrophe then about to crawl into the light at the end of the tunnel.
We fought the Nazis and Japanese and dug trenches and bunkers. We built forts so tight they could’ve withstood a bazooka round. We executed basic squad tactics and stole butter knives from home to affix as bayonets on our toy M-1s and lied to our mothers about inexplicably missing tableware. Somehow, we all owned entrenching tools and canteens.
There was never an adult around to supervise. We came home at dusk, starving, exhausted. Then we’d get up in the morning, throw down some sugary cereal, improvise a sack lunch, ride out and do it all over again.
Those summer days came rushing back to me recently after discovering a fort on one of my regular beach rambles. It’s truly a rare thing to see one these days. I could count on one hand the forts I’ve come across on Oregon’s ocean beaches since I moved here in 1997. It’s not like there’s a lack of driftwood and kids either. What’s going on with that?
I cruised the sandy berm of my local beach and saw in the distance what looked like some kind of structure. I walked toward it and soon recognized the bleached façade of a somewhat circular fort. From the outside I could tell it was solidly built, logs sunk deep into the sand. Built smartly too, because the creators situated it well above the wrack line so conceivably it could last well into the late fall.
Next I went inside and made my inspection: a fire ring, benches, seaweed, shell, rope and feather decorations, alternating planks, pallets and logs, a rectangular window, more like a slat, with an ocean view. It then hit me like a blow from a skillet — an advanced aesthetic was at work, or should I say tease, here.
The window beckoned me. I noticed an etched sign resting at an angle on some ancient logs. It read: “Fort Sex.”
Ohhhh, the kids these days. Make Love Not War it is.
Beauty and the beach
[Posted Aug. 15, 2010]
One overcast day in the spring or summer of 1971, it’s not exactly clear what month it was, a white van came to a stop in the remote north Oregon Coast village of Falcon Cove, where residents enjoy the near exclusive use of one of the most secret and gorgeous beaches in the state.
Back then, maybe a dozen folks lived in Falcon Cove year round, quite likely the same number as today.
A man emerged from the van. He probably carried all manner of camera gear: bodies, lenses, tripod.
A woman, a blonde named Javon Monahan, an artist and former Portland State University student, also emerged from the van. She probably wore some kind of loose-fitting long coat. She wore nothing else on underneath.
They went to the beach. At some point, she flung away the coat and the unknown photographer clicked away.
A color photograph of a naked and smiling Monahan running through light foam down the wet sand of a beach appeared in the September issue of Playboy, part of a pictorial essay titled, “Girls of the Golden West: A tantalizing blend of simplicity and sophistication, these natural beauties glory in their free-spirited way of life.”
The photo’s caption located the beach as somewhere “near Seaside” and the sandy beach does not resemble the cobbled one at Falcon Cove. I can’t place it myself. What I surmise is that Monahan made several stealth streaks at various unpopulated north Oregon Coast beaches and the best photograph made it into the magazine.
As for the photograph, if contrasted with contemporary depictions of beautiful American women in the mass media, which are almost all vulgar, Monahan looks organic. Her unadorned image seems to me almost totally benign as far as exploitation of women goes (OK, I admit it was in Playboy). The photograph moves in hazy slow-motion, in washed out greens and grays, and exudes a pronounced hippie vibe. In other words, for many of us, daily life on the Oregon Coast.
I gleaned this tale from a fantastic little memoir called “Falcon Cove Stories: A Look At Its Beginnings” written by Jacquie Quint (published in 2010) that I picked up during a recent stay in the area.
Upon my return home, I immediately went online and purchased the September issue for $10. A few days later, the magazine arrived and thumbing through its pages was an instant time machine trip to a pre-Watergate America of flared corduroy trousers, rum and Coke, and really big afros.
Naturally I would love for readers to see the photograph, but the Oregon Coast TODAY is a family publication so you’ll just have to imagine Monahan’s beach run. Or better yet, recreate one for yourself.
According to Quint’s book, a prudish neighbor who saw the photo shoot unfolding called the sheriff’s office. Fortunately, Monahan and the photographer worked fast. They climbed back in the van and drove away before the law arrived. Where they went next is anyone’s guess, but somewhere in this world, there are lost or forgotten negatives of all of Monahan’s glorious runs, and I would dearly love to see them developed. For only the strict sake of historical preservation, I assure you.
Taking the Pen to paper
[Posted July 21, 2010]
A year ago, I struck up a correspondence with an inmate at the Oregon State Penitentiary serving a life sentence for murder in a robbery that went horribly awry. He’s 46 years old and spent his last 16 years in prison.
He’d read a column of mine in the Oregonian about a book on a famous penitentiary and wrote asking for help publishing his fiction. We became friends — of a sort — and have since exchanged nearly 50 letters (he has no e-mail access). I sent him a few of my essays and purchased his leatherwork, including a handsome wallet and camera case. He’s also a fine visual artist and is working on a painting of Ray, my recently departed dog. This summer, at behest of the inmate, I plan on visiting OSP and conducting a writing/publishing workshop.
I mention all this because in one of my letters I asked him about his experiences on Oregon’s beaches (He’s a native Oregonian). He responded with a terrible story of how the events that spiraled out of control and culminated with the murder actually began at the beach. He told me that because of this, he felt like he had disgraced Oregon’s “great birthright,” as Oswald West so memorably described Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches. If he ever got out of prison, which seemed like a long shot, he wanted to make amends. He wrote:
“I would go to the beach and walk barefoot on the sand reconnecting to the earth and my loved ones (he has children and grandchildren), holding hands, running, our feet splashing in the surf, our giggles and laughter caught up in the salty wind, blowing off the sea … collecting shells, building castles, a small fire of driftwood to roast hot dogs and marshmallows…”
Since his incarceration, the inmate has turned his life completely around, found Jesus, conquered various addictions, begun counseling others on addiction, became an artist and leather crafter, raised funds for Salem-area athletic teams, and performs countless other acts of private and public social service.
Recently, the inmate asked Governor Kulongoski for clemency, a commutation of the life sentence so he can at least have some hope of release in his late 50s. No Oregon governor since Tom McCall’s has granted clemency. I offered to write a letter on behalf of the inmate’s appeal and he accepted.
Yes, I know he murdered someone. No, a loved one of mine has never been murdered. Yes, I know the story of Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbot. No, I don’t consider myself a naïve bleeding heart. A larger debate on capital punishment and the American penal system is well outside the scope of this column but worth talking about nonetheless. And not the sort of talk that regularly appears on cable television or online forums.
My intuition guides me here. I believe in all my heart what Portia said in “The Merchant of Venice”:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath.
It is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
It is mightiest in the mightiest,
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.
I want the inmate’s bare feet to walk on the beach again. After that, I sense he will help desperate people in need, and work incredibly hard to pay his great debt, which he knows is eternal and never fully repaid.
Raised by the Power of Ten
[Posted July 6, 2010]
On June 7, I awakened at 4 a.m. to walk the dog, write, answer email, drink coffee, and plan the day’s lessons. Soon, the dawn made its way through the skylight and it was time to rock and roll.
At 5:15 I pulled into the parking lot in front of the Fishermen’s Memorial, the traditional starting point of my annual Newport High School Senior Beach Walk. A soft rain fell as I listened on cassette tape to Getz and Gilberto’s samba treatment of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring”: I’m as busy as spider spinning daydreams/ spinning spinning daydreams/I’m as giddy as a baby on a swing.
“Giddy as a baby on a swing” is about as precise a simile there is to describe my mood every time I hit the beach with young Oregonians.
But where was the spring? We seemed to be on the 45th of 40 days and nights of rain.
By 5:30, 10 students had gathered by my truck and we headed out on the final Monday morning of their high school careers. Naturally I gave them my speech about Oswald West, Tom McCall and Oregon’s Great Birthright: its free, publicly owned beaches. I wanted to believe I was the only teacher in Oregon doing this sort of thing, especially in the rain, especially at dawn.
Last June I inaugurated the event and close to 40 kids showed up. Of course, a year ago, I taught twice as many seniors, it wasn’t raining, and this year’s group clearly played more video games. Nevertheless, 10 hearty Cubs got up early to walk with me, their teacher, and the rain made us all the more hard core.
I admit it here: just seconds before the walk began my recent consternation about my teaching job threatened to pollute this sacred moment. I couldn’t get the gig out of my mind and no one should ever have employment on the mind when visiting the beach.
After we descended the stairs and struck sand, the rain fell a bit harder, I instantly exorcised all the demons of state testing and failing students and began to walk in the moment.
How and why? Easy. It’s the old sound of the ocean and its annihilating power.
We cruised to the jetty, or the Great Wall of Newport as one student described it, and climbed atop the slick and jagged riprap. Out west, the bar looked calm and a speedboat (or was that an ark?) ripped through the gap. We talked of this and that, rock and the death of rock, love and the lack thereof, laughed, rubbed the rain into our faces, shot beady photographs, and at one point, I had the Power of Ten face seaward, clasp hands and raise their arms to the sky. It might be the greatest photograph I have ever taken.
We headed north down the beach and the rain subsided. As we began to veer into the dunes and back to the parking lot, I noticed a large bird perched on a branch of an ancient log resting at the wrack line. I directed the group’s attention to the bird and we converged upon it. Seconds later, amid various speculations about the bird’s identity, a bald eagle lifted off, flattened out, and flew north. I shouted something about this being a good omen, that these seniors could employ this image as a metaphor for their impending graduation. Perhaps that was too preachy. I tend to get that way on the beach when I walk there with other humans, which virtually never happens.
Fifteen minutes later we sat around tables at Pig N’ Pancake where we wrung out the rain and ordered from the pleasant waitress. I bought them all breakfast and we ate together as friends, Oregonians, countrymen. In two more days our remarkable journey together that was the 2009-2010 would conclude and I would never have the privilege of teaching these fine young people again.
Making Angels
[Posted June 21, 2010]
In mid-May yellow buses from distant lands began appearing in Newport. I saw one from Idaho, another from Montana, and several hailing from the Willamette Valley and Southern Oregon. All the buses had one destination and one sacred mission in mind: South Beach State Park, where children can play on the beach.
Have you ever witnessed a child visit the ocean and walk on the beach for the first time? I have, years ago, in my capacity as caretaker of Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I will never forget that moment and access it every now and then as one of my most powerfully-motivating editorial and pedagogical images.
After planting trees with several sixth grade classes from Hillsboro, I accompanied the students to Neskowin. On the way there, with rain pelting the bus as only Oregon coastal rain can, his teacher told me that he had never seen the ocean despite living most of his life an hour away. I’m not sure how or why this tragedy came to be, but I know it amounts to a crime against a child.
The boy walked the path from the wayside, hit the beach and started running madly to the water. He then stopped, flung himself to the sand, rolled on his back, writhed, and started making angels. He looked like a complete idiot and it was one the most beautiful and hard core Oregon things I’ve ever seen in my life.
In my 10 years on the refuge, I led close to 50 groups in tree-planting and blackberry-hacking activities. Most of the children came from Willamette Valley public schools and crossed all demographic lines. Before we went to work, I always arranged the kids in a circle and asked for a show of hands from those who had never visited an Oregon beach. Invariably, multiple hands went up and the numbers shocked me every time.
More recently, as I led my Newport High School seniors on our annual history walk around town, I spotted a bus from Oakridge parked on the Bayfront. I bet my students that at least one of the children on the bus had never seen the ocean. A few minutes later, I asked an Oakridge chaperone the question.
Make it two kids.
If I had the money, I would launch the Oswald West Foundation and call our only program Operation Great Birthright. No curriculum. No tests! Transport every kid in Oregon to the ocean at least once and let them play on the beach for one afternoon. Okay, maybe I’d force them to recite West’s famous quote about Oregon’s ocean beaches, “No local selfish interest, should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people,” before feeding them lunch, but that’s the extent of the teaching.
What kind of money would it take to establish such a foundation? We’re talking funds for buses and lunches, a couple of staffers paid bohemian (surfer) wages to coordinate logistics with the schools, some beach toys, and some shelter dogs to run with the kids. Really not that much at all. Probably the cost of one artillery shell.
The beach, of course, doesn’t cost a cent.
Somehow, I need a quick way to rake in the cash to fund the Oswald West Foundation. I really don’t have many scruples where the money comes from and I’ll gladly sell out my literary soul to give every Oregon kid a chance to see the ocean.
I know what needs doing — write the big vampire-on-the-Oregon Trail novel. Make my lead bloodsucker sexy, smart, brooding, celibate, and possessed with a weird passion for building sand castles that recall the grand citadels from Transylvania. It would sell millions!
Oil and the Oregon coast
[Posted June 9, 2010]
In 1978, something called the Governor’s Task Force on Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Development published an 8 1/2” by 9” 54-page pamphlet titled “Oregon and Offshore Oil.” Five years ago, I excavated a $3 copy from an Oregon coast thrift store and read it. I unearthed it a week ago because sometimes I perversely enjoy reading official insanity produced by a government agency.
Who knows what the “Oregon and Offshore Oil” press run was or how it was distributed. Its initial release came 117 years after the first commercial oil well, five years after the Arab oil embargo and shocking gas lines, and 25 years before the American invasion of Iraq, which instantly dropped the price of a barrel of oil.
The top half of the pamphlet’s cover is Texas tea black. The bottom half is Douglas fir green. A lowercase, cream-colored “Oregon” in a fat, round 70s style font separates the black from the green. The black at the top appears ready to spill over the green at the bottom. The word “oregon” dams the black away from the green. There is a black line drawing of an offshore oil platform inside the second “o” of “Oregon.” Below the “g” and surrounded by green sits the black-colored phrase, “and Offshore Oil.”
Connie Morehouse designed the cover and I count it a masterpiece on every subconscious, subversive propaganda and graphic design level. How it passed muster from her pro-oil superiors is a miracle. Maybe she was one of those Americans who actually listened to President Jimmy Carter when he asked Americans to turn down their thermostats and wear sweaters. Carter also created the Department of Energy and pushed for the research and development of alternative fuels. He lasted one term.
“…Oregon’s role in the unfolding energy drama may soon change,” reads “Oregon and Offshore Oil,” on page three. The next 51 pages describe how this might happen the unique Oregon way since federal law ceded control of submerged lands up to three miles from shore to individual states. The pamphlet addresses potential environmental problems and reassures they won’t happen — can’t happen. It includes an economic multiplier model. It has a photograph of Gov. Bob Straub in a pinstripe suit visiting what appears to be an offshore oil platform. It also contains a glossary of oil production terms. Had the plan unfolded, it would have mutated the Oregon coast into an industrial landscape of almost inconceivable soulless proportions. Well, perhaps not so inconceivable. Visit Louisiana’s share of the Gulf of Mexico for reference.
According to the pamphlet, exploratory drilling off Oregon occurred at seven sites in 1964-65. Initial results were not promising but also not dissuading. Thus, 14 years later the state published “Oregon and Offshore Oil” with encouraging sentences like, “The thick sediments located off the Columbia River’s mouth and near Newport and Coos Bay may be likely sites.” Presumably Oregon officials released it to soften potential resistance, which figured to be stiff since it was the tail end of Oregon’s great run as the national model for implementing aggressive conservation measures. The pamphlet’s timing, however, was odd.
In 1977, a year before the publication of “Oregon and Offshore Oil,” the Bureau of Land Management ranked the Oregon and Washington continental shelf as lowest “among all the areas in terms of its resource potential and desirability for leasing. Consequently, the region was dropped from a schedule prioritizing offshore drilling sites.
Gov. Straub asked the BLM to reconsider. He was the same Bob Straub, who 10 years earlier as State Treasurer, had led the successful fight to stop the relocation of a section of Hwy. 101 down Nestucca Spit. When the pamphlet came out, BLM had apparently not reversed the ranking and the prospect of several drilling platforms in the Columbia River estuary seemed remote. Yet you wouldn’t gather that from reading“Oregon and Offshore Oil.” It made oil production feel like a done deal, complete with backing by the state’s top elected leader who had unassailable credentials when it came to protecting the environment.
As we all know, drilling for oil off the Oregon coast didn’t happen. I don’t really know why. Today I can’t seem to find anyone who remembers anything about the issue. Whatever the reason, it was a victory for the Oregon coast. Oregon’s drilling scheme died in 1981 and seemed buried for all time when Congress banned drilling for oil and gas in offshore waters.
Then came a series of calamitous events — 9-11, two Middle East wars, $4 a gallon for gas — and Presidents George W. Bush and Obama pushed for renewed exploration off Alaska, both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico.
Then came the recent BP spill, the largest one in American history. You’ve seen the horrible images. More are coming. Recently, I’ve thought about them when I walk Oregon’s relatively pristine beaches. I also think this: Do we ever learn anything from our history in this country?
[View live feed of oil spill under the Gulf of Mexico.]
Lesson plan, torn asunder, yields ‘madness’
Oregon Coast TODAY contributor Matt Love became a writer on the refuge — the 600-acre Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, near Pacific City. In his 10 years as caretaker there, Love restored more than just acres of native trees and grassland. In between writing three books and running his own press, he rediscovered a passion for teaching. His latest work, “Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker,” is a 177-page account of this decade of awakening — including this adventure at Neskowin Valley School.
April 1999. National Poetry Month. I begin my three-week unit with seventh and eighth graders attending Neskowin Valley School. I’ve waited all year to teach my favorite subject.
We read poems, write poems, memorize poems, randomly construct poems like the surrealists did, study different forms, techniques, and listen to Jack Kerouac perform his crazy cool American haikus. After reading an Emily Dickinson biography and learning she called her poetry “snow,” I suggest the students name their poetry. Hearing this, they look at me like I’m stupid, and when I suggest they “loaf and invite their soul” on a weekend, one of the girls asks if she can do that watching a video.
My material bombs; explosions resound throughout the room but only I can hear them. Students insist on rhyming every poem. They’re bored listening to Kerouac. They have trouble grasping the concept of metaphor. When I ask each student to choose a poem from a collection of nearly 50 books in the library that best captures a mood they’ve recently experienced, and read it aloud, some of the girls recite Mother Hubbard. Some girls write poems on a single subject – pets. One boy projectile vomits in the classroom during one of my dramatic readings. He claims he has the flu and I have to clean it up. Rapidly, I sense nothing of educational or personal value is happening with this unit, assuredly the opposite whenever I taught poetry at the high school level. My sophomores, juniors, and seniors poured it out and poured it on: love, fear, loss, death, angst, hate, pain, lust, losering, and very bad sex.
One afternoon during a lesson investigating the poetic value of popular music, I play David Bowie’s “Heroes” and ask, “What do you think he’s after when he sings, ‘We can be heroes, for just one day’?” Nobody says a word and I wait, and wait, staked out naked on an anthill splashed with honey and Drambuie. What happens next is a first in my teaching career: I abruptly suspend a lesson in progress because it’s tanking so badly and I’m a teacher in the throes of professional disintegration. I cannot continue even though I have 30 minutes to fill and many more carefully selected pop songs to play, including some of the girls’ wimpy boy band favorites. It doesn’t matter. I’m whipped here. The ship of poetic state hath sunk and this captain honors maritime tradition. “You know,” I say, “I’m going to stop now and we’re going to move on to something else.” No explanation. No excuses. No tirades. Lucky for me, seventh and eighth graders are totally oblivious to a visceral teaching shipwreck in their midst, and they transition smoothly into our next activity, recess, while I collapse into the easy chair. It’s now fourth and 35 from my own 10-yard line in the second quarter of a zero to zero football game for the World Championship of Teaching Poetry but I won’t punt. I don’t know how to punt when it comes to poetry, but I have 20 minutes until the students return from recess to invent a new gadget curriculum play.
They take their seats and I announce “Poetry Madness,” a hike, tomorrow, rain or shine or gale force winds. We shall hike a five-mile round journey of Keatsian proportions down nearby Nestucca Spit to the jaws of the river, to the roiling bar of Nestucca Bay, where bald eagles soar, to become poets ourselves, bards of yore, the unacknowledged legislators of the world! Raw nature will seize us by the throats and strangle the verse forth. We’ll be “mad to be in contact with it” as Whitman wrote, and I’ll quote that line before we begin our march down the sand. If these kids aren’t inspired to embrace poetry after this experience, then literate American civilization is doomed. The students seem mildly interested in my idea, and, well, if it means missing class, then…hell!...we love poetry, Matt! That night I spend an hour on the phone pleading with parents to help with carpool. I don’t tell them about the sinking ship.
We hit Bob Straub State Park and Nestucca Spit in the morning on a splendid sunny morning I might as well have ordered from Wordsworth. Before Poetry Madness officially begins, I quote Whitman “…urge and urge and urge…” and then 20 students, six parents, one teacher and three dogs, including Ray, embark on a field trip with no predictable outcome, a teaching first for me. An hour later the students and I sit in a circle at the bar’s edge, where the Pacific Ocean slams into Nestucca Bay. We pull out our journals and list stream-of-consciousness images flooding our minds. We edit them to a favorite five, then to the ultimate crystallized 15-syllable image. After that, we read the poems aloud and I keep interrupting the students to recite louder so we can hear them over the sound of the crashing surf. I read last and thank the students for their serious poetic effort.
No more seriousness for one middle school field trip! We must play and play hard. I choose teams and announce each one has 45 minutes to construct a poetry fort out of driftwood worthy of Walt Whitman’s presence. When finished, invite me over for a poem and a cup of tea. “Ready, go!” I scream. As the students dash around building forts, sometimes three or four working together to drag a piece of large driftwood, I get a bonfire raging to roast up hotdogs.
On the hike back up the Spit, a girl discovers a beached seal pup and wants to carry it home and call the authorities. The students plead with her to leave it alone, the mother will return to feed it. If you touch the pup, the students tell her, voices rising, the mother might abandon it. I stand back and say nothing, wishing some mounting peer pressure will win the day. The girl refuses to listen. She’s been like this all year long with students and adults alike. She strides toward the pup, a few kids start screaming at her, and the class turns to me. “Disrupt the disruptor,” the Old Man, a master teacher of 40 years taught me about handling a recalcitrant student in situations like this. I unsheathe the verb.
“If you pick up that seal, you will kill it. You will as good as put a bullet in its head and watch it die. And all because you never listen to anyone. Because you think you know everything and you know nothing about this. Nothing. Less than nothing. Everyone here knows more about the seal than you do. I respect you care about the animal but your feelings are going to murder this baby. (Pause) Now go ahead and pick it up and we’ll all watch you kill this seal, right now, right on this beach. It’s all any of us will ever remember about you. I’ll even write a poem about it.”
She retreats from the pup and all the kids’ eyes follow her. She walks alone on the way back, occasionally turning around for a brief look. I don’t say a word to her for the rest of the day.
Art is not dead
[Posted May 12, 2010]
The manifesto read:
We, the artists of Newport High School, convey our visions to inspire others to experiment with innovation. We materialize imagination amidst rampant uniformity. Our creativity transcends the idle threats of censorship and financial disadvantages. The impulses to paint, sculpt, draw, photograph, compose, design, write, dance and act eclipse all distraction. The nature of creation that courses through our veins and seeps through our pores promotes purity over corruption. We make a statement: art is not dead.
Hayley Trivett, editor of Newport High School’s newspaper The Harbor Light, wrote the manifesto for a special edition that featured nothing but art and the students who made it.
In recent years, all the state, local and federal philistines have entered into a sinister alliance and conspired in plain view to deny students like Hayley opportunities to make art in their schools and explore the wonder of what it means to become an artist. These same philistines also require children to take more math, science and tests, tests, tests, all in the name of improving the national economy.
At times, I have observed young people with artistic sensibilities feel powerless to fight back against the philistines and catch a social disease known as malaise. Its chief symptom is the use of the word “whatever.” I sometimes liken my role as a teacher to that of a doctor who specializes in curing young patients of malaise. Making art is one of my remedies. Urging the afflicted to visit the beach is another.
Hayley had written a savage literary manifesto for the special edition, but we also needed an equally savage visual statement to go along with it. I serve as the newspaper’s advisor and suggested the staff build a monumental sculpture on sacred Oregon ground — a publicly-owned beach. They agreed enthusiastically.
We rendezvoused at South Beach State Park on a sunny Thursday after school. I brought a shovel and a dog. They brought muscle, a knife, and cans of spray paint. The beach provided everything else, as it always does if a person is attune to receive its literal and metaphorical gifts.
We worked like beavers on energy drinks and it took us only an hour to build a masterpiece of driftwood and other flotsam and jetsam. Our angst and joy simultaneously streamed forth as we let imagination guide our hands and vision. I yelled a lot. I urged the students to yell too. They did. One girl spray-painted the word “ART” in gold and green on a smooth plank and we wedged the plank into place so it shot straight to the sky. The artists climbed on the sculpture, posed, and leapt off. Then they ran wild into the surf and danced. My dog chased them.
Two weeks later nothing remained of the sculpture. But its making would last forever.
Spreading Ray’s ashes
[Posted April 28, 2010]
I pulled the truck into the parking lot of Bob Straub State Park. Ray’s ashes rode shotgun and Sonny the husky jumped for joy in back. She knew where we were — Nestucca Spit.
My great dog was gone three months now, a victim of a swift and vicious cancer. I always knew when Ray died I would return him to Earth at Nestucca Spit, the place where we rambled together over a thousand times and I launched my writing and spiritual life.
Today was the day. The grieving needed to end and my edges needed sharpening. For the occasion, I wanted relentless rain, a deserted beach, and this being Spring Break on the Oregon Coast, I normally would have found the Spit in exactly that condition.
But the sun shone extra bright that morning and to me augured well for my damaged country at ridiculous war over a question as simple and humane as whether one of my terribly sick students receives the decent healthcare she can’t possibly afford. My mom always taught me: help people. What’s wrong with that?
The wind whipped hard as I walked Sonny around the dunes for a few minutes. I put her back in the truck, shouldered a backpack, and headed out with Ray for one last ramble.
I’d never seen the Spit so crowded, even in the summer! Close to 30 people and a half dozen dogs frolicked to and fro. It was practically Paris on Bastille Day. I desperately wanted privacy but hardly begrudged these vacationers. Better here than Disneyland.
Spreading the ashes to the wind would never work. Too many humans, too stiff a breeze and the tide too far out. I needed a new plan.
I hit the beach, began walking north and then turned back to see a motorcycle a half mile down the Spit, motoring north. As it approached I noticed a portly man driving it with a portly boy seated behind him. Strapped to the boy’s back was a quiver holding two fishing poles. They stopped 50 yards away and I snapped a few photographs of them for my ongoing documentation of the decline of American fitness, which pretty much means I take photographs all the time.
A white pickup with the words “Beach Ranger” emblazoned on the door cruised into the scene and halted near the motorcycle. Driving a vehicle is legal on Nestucca Spit, but I wasn’t sure if motorcycles were allowed. I also didn’t know if spreading your pet’s ashes was legal. Doubtless, Oswald West would have approved of my plan, so that settled that.
I walked north away from the law, a green ocean to my left, until I came upon an ancient, gigantic and snaking root wad 20 yards above the wrack line. It was charred black in some places from a million campfires and bleached white everywhere else from floating forever.
My dog will rest here, I thought. I dug a burial chamber in the sand under the root wad, emptied Ray’s remains, and then propped up the first picture I ever took of him. I shot a couple of photographs, covered the ashes with sand, said goodbye aloud to my greatest friend, and left Nestucca Spit. All around me life went on, including two thin boys tossing a football.
I turned to look back once. It might take a few days or weeks for the tide to roll in high enough to reach the root wad. But it would, and when it did, Ray would return to the sea. I can’t think of better ending for him — or me — when the proper time comes.
Coyote delivers a message (again)
[Posted April 14, 2010]
I took to the beach at dawn on the Saturday of the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival. An English teacher’s work is never done, so I had my students’ poems stashed in my pocket and thought I might edit if the weather allowed.
Sonny my invalid husky led the way, with her bumblebee lope. As I sipped black coffee from a mug advertising a new anti-psychotic drug, we forged our way through the stunted shore pines and blooming Scotch broom of South Beach State Park.
Ray entered my mind. My great writing dog was dead going on two months now and I still hadn’t decided how to proceed without him — existential, literary, or canine wise. At times I felt I’d received a message from my intuition or the natural world, but in the end they all proved opaque.
Sonny and I ascended a dune and beheld the ocean. I saw a layer cake sky on the horizon: white, gray, white. The middle layer shined a spotlight at the water’s edge. I looked north to the jetty and south as far as I could see — not another human being on the beach. I sat down on the dune and stared out to sea. Sonny probed the grass for a minute and then came to rest by my side.
At some point I looked south and saw a medium-sized dog, about a quarter mile away, coming toward me, running through the incoming tide with astonishing speed. The spotlight lit him up and he had the most unusual taut and fluffy body. He then stopped for a second to sniff or eat something at the wrack line. Suddenly, I noticed the dog had no master. Then I realized this was no dog.
Coyote ran and ran and a few seconds later passed in front of me, but not before turning his head my direction for a good 20 yards, and sending me a message only a fool would deny. Sonny saw him too and seemed poised to bolt, but I grabbed her collar and she settled down to watch the show. I listened to Coyote.
His message? Lighten up. Run like me. Ray would love that. Use me as the metaphor you need to heal.
Coyote kept on sprinting north, framed against the jetty and the lighthouse, and I watched him for another half mile. Then he took an abrupt eastward turn, flew up a 10-foot wall of sand, and vanished into the beach grass.
I hadn’t brought my camera. I never seem to have it around when Coyote appears. No big deal. He probably wouldn’t show up on film anyway.
Eighteen months ago, in this column, I wrote about an extraordinary encounter Ray and I had with Coyote on the beach. His appearance coincided during a moment of great personal distress, as I struggled with the crushing defeat of my campaign to limit human access to the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, a place I served as caretaker for a decade and put my whole heart into restoring.
In that encounter, which I remember as vividly if it happened 30 seconds ago, Coyote imparted a message to me, to release my shame and anger connected to the defeat. It struck me as absurd to write that back then because I was no animist. And so I sort of listened to him. Well, not really.
It strikes me as just as absurd to write about Coyote’s new message because I’m still no animist.
This time around, though, I hope I’ve listened better.
Stray thoughts
[Posted March 31, 2010]
In February, as dusk ended a clear and dry day, I pulled my truck into South Beach State Park. Sonny, my husky, needed a short walk on the beach before I attended a fiction workshop at the Newport Public Library.
My great writing dog and best friend Ray had died in January and I hadn’t slept or written much since. I thought an evening of writing fiction might get my mind off sorrowful things and start me creating again.
Suddenly, approximately 50 yards away, a dog appeared in my headlights. He wore no collar. He was vaguely brown, somewhat large, ears pointed upward, an über mutt, and stood stationary in the grass just off the road. In other words, he looked a lot like Ray, a stray found near Neskowin back in 1998, who came into my life and helped me become a writer.
I stopped the truck but kept the engine idling and the headlights on the dog. I opened the door and stepped onto the road. A few seconds later the dog bolted into a thicket of shore pine and Scotch broom. I got back in the truck and circled the day use area parking lot a couple of time, searching. Nothing.
After walking Sonny on the beach, I went to the fiction workshop where, interestingly enough, the writer didn’t have us do any writing. I suppose it didn’t matter; the stray dominated my thoughts.
The workshop ended and I headed home. The sign for South Beach State Park came into view. Why not? I veered into the day use area parking lot, powered down the windows, slowed to five miles per hour, and began looking. No other vehicles were around.
The dog rested on the pavement in front of the restrooms. “There you are,” I said aloud, quietly. I switched on the high beams, and angled the truck for maximum illumination on the restroom. The dog didn’t move. He was 15 yards away. I could now see clearly the dog resembled an American boxer in the face and tail, but shaggy in coat like Ray. He also looked old.
This dog is going home with me. I am sure this is a message of some kind about Ray — or from Ray.
I reached behind my seat and opened the “Stray Canine Rescue Kit,” a necessary item for any dog lover that includes: treats, a leash, thick gloves, heavy jacket.
With treats in hand, I walked toward the dog, saying nice things. Behind me, Sonny howled her husky howl from the back of the truck.
I came within five yards, extended the treats, sat down on the grass, and then the dog sprinted into the beach grass and dunes. He stopped some 20 yards away and watched me. I placed the treats on the sidewalk and returned to the truck. As soon as I shut the door, the dog raced over and gobbled up the treats.
We basically repeated this routine for the next 30 minutes until I ran out of treats. The dog never let me near enough to snap on the leash.
I raced home and whipped up a hearty meal of fresh hamburger and dog food and placed it on a tin plate. Five minutes later I circled the deserted day use parking lot four times looking for the dog. He wasn’t there. I set out the food and water near the restroom and waited for an hour, grading papers. He never showed. I didn’t sleep one minute that night.
In the morning, well before dawn, I stopped by the park on the way school. Something had eaten the food. I searched the dunes for 10 minutes, calling out for the dog. Nothing.
How to become an Oregon beach fanatic
[Posted March 16, 2010]
First, you must visit the beach at least every day — every day! Twice is better, three times quintessential. Weather is irrelevant. In fact, you prefer the wind and the rain because they deter weaklings who might otherwise pollute your moment.
If your job conflicts with visiting the beach every day, quit the job. If your partner protests your fanaticism, quit the partner, and imagine meeting the perfect mate on the beach, during a storm, when driftwood, kelp and foam tumble together at the wrack line.
Naturally, you won’t meet this person, but sometimes, to paraphrase a classic song by The Temptations, just your imagination can help you run away.
Bring a dog or two or three when you visit the beach. A dog romping on a beach is one of the happiest sights in the world. This image so utterly obliterates all your depression and narcissism, that when you leave the beach, you feel fired up to enact one of those “millions of little moves” we need for justice, as William Stafford described them in one of his poems. If you don’t have dog, go adopt one from a shelter, and congratulate yourself when you do, because you just made one of the moves.
Second, you must become eternally vigilant to any person, place or thing that dares to overthrow or undermine the sanctity of Oregon’ publicly-owned beach legacy. They are legion and they are relentless. You must fight to protect the state’s “great birthright,” as former Governor Oswald West defined our beaches. Others Oregonians have, which is why you are walking the beach for free.
You must honor this heroism for your children, grandchildren and their dogs. You can do this by writing haikus about Oregon’s beaches in the sand. Traditionally, haikus lack political references but these haikus are intended to instruct so it’s OK.
Finally, if you happen to see a wedding in progress on the beach, join the assembly, blend in, look happy. When the reverend comes to that part asking someone to speak up if he knows any reason why the couple shouldn’t marry, raise your hand and launch into a speech on how special this nuptial is because it took place on sacred sand. You will also point out that no one paid a cent to rent the beach nor was required to obtain a permit. You will end the speech by saying what a nice name “Oswald” is for a boy and “West” is for a girl.
Stuck in the past
[Posted March 3, 2010]
Six years ago, my good friend Rose and I, joined by our four dogs, rambled down Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park on a glorious fall morning.
Suddenly, a pickup truck with two male passengers blew past us from behind at close to 50 miles an hour. The roar of the ocean was so loud we never heard it coming. The driver never once slowed down and nearly ran over Sonny, my husky.
I cursed the driver and his companion, and turned to Rose and wished aloud for something specific, just and cosmic to happen — immediately! Approximately 15 seconds later, the driver made an abrupt eastward turn to avoid a wave. He left the wet sands, found the dry, and his truck instantly ground to a halt. He was stuck and the tide was coming in.
Rose and I simultaneously let out exclamations of joy, sprinkled with a few preferred epithets for emphasis. The gods heard us for sure.
We stood about a quarter mile from the men and stopped walking toward them. The dogs stopped too, and lined up to watch. The driver emerged, surveyed the situation, looked west, and began searching for driftwood to jam under the submerged wheels in hope of improving traction.
A minute later, the passenger exited the cab to assist. On their knees, both men dug in the sand with their hands around the front wheels. They stuffed driftwood in behind the tires. The driver got in the truck and the passenger went behind to push. The engine revved, the sand flew, tires spun, and the truck briefly moved sideways, and then didn’t move at all. The front wheels were now buried deeper than before. The men came together, talked, pointed to the ground, and went back to work. Five minutes after that, and more revving and flying sand, there hung in the ocean air a mounting sense of futility that ratcheted up by the second. Then a wave grazed the truck’s back tires and the ratcheting up was over.
Rose and I watched all of this and didn’t say a word. The truck rested about a mile and a half from the parking lot. From a distance, the men appeared typically American, meaning obese and therefore physically unfit. I doubted their stamina to walk to a phone and call for help. I saw no cell phone in use. Neither Rose nor I had a cell phone with us.
“Should we help them?” I asked.
“No way!” said R. “They deserve it.”
I wanted to mull my next move over. I wondered: What could be taught here by doing something? Or nothing?
“Let’s go,” I said.
Rose and I turned around, called the dogs, and headed to the parking lot. She skipped a bit on the sand while the dogs darted around her. I lagged behind, but never looked back.
My decision went against my mother, a retired elementary school teacher, who taught me to help others in obvious distress, without question or judgment. The story of the Good Samaritan is very big with her. Instead, I followed the advice of my father, a retired secondary school teacher. In some obvious teaching situations, he often counseled doing nothing was the best way to educate. Allow the student to learn the lesson himself.
The next morning I went to the Spit alone with the dogs. No truck. All signs of its capture had been erased by the high tide.
Six years ago I thought I made the right decision by not helping the men. Since the incident I have used the story as a prompt with my students in writing about ethics. Their articulate and concise reasons for reaching out to the men have totally changed my mind. I can recall many of the best pieces, but two stand out. One girl wrote, “By not helping the men, Mr. Love became just like them, someone he doesn’t even like.” Another girl wrote: “I thought you were a writer. Aren’t writers curious?”
Yes, they are. Or should be. I realize now the better story would have been to go right up to the men, without judgment, and offer to help. Then see what happened.
Sandy sacrilege
[Posted Feb. 17, 2010]
The sun rose brightly on our national holy day and by noon most of the flock had taken to drink and barbecued flesh. It was Super Bowl Sunday on the Oregon Coast and across the country, and the flock was ready to get it on in, worshipping their secular gridiron gods (and their advertisers) on shiny flatscreen altars.
I don’t subscribe to cable television but wanted to worship a little bit myself, so I hit Newport’s Bayfront and found a seat at the end of a bar overlooking the sea lions. I wrote my Old Man a letter while the pregame festivities went on and on and on.
The game finally started and I felt zombified after three possessions and all the loud commercials. About the only thing even remotely interesting wasn’t even happening on the field. Rather, it occurred when a grizzled fisherman brushed past me on the way to the jukebox, talking to himself or his other personality — I wasn’t sure.
I expected slicked-up country crap or something by .38 Special. Instead he played English Beat and when “Save It For Later” came on, he exclaimed, “I love this band!” That a Newport fisherman loved a semi-obscure late 70s/early 80s ska band was almost enough to keep me around into the second quarter. But he left, so I did too.
Sonny, my husky, rode in the back of the truck and howled as we crossed the Yaquina Bay Bridge. I knew what she wanted and she always gets her way with me. We’d already visited the beach twice that morning, but the weather ranked as one of the finest days in February I’ve seen in 13 years on the coast, so we headed to South Beach State Park for another romp.
Close to 50 vehicles filled the parking lot and the large number surprised me — this was Super Sunday and the game was on! Who were these infidels? I checked the license plate of every vehicle. All Oregon.
But of course.
I rolled down my window to ask a couple their reason for visiting the beach at such a sacrilegious time. “A game? Who’s ahead?” the man asked. “The Sox?”
Sonny and I took our usual forested path to the beach and then ascended a dune that provided a matchless view that stirred the souls of St. Tom McCall, St. Oswald West, St. Bob Straub and St. Matt Kramer: about 50 or so men, women, children and dogs recreating on their publicly-owned beaches and not paying a cent for the privilege.
They ran, they walked, they waded, they built forts in the driftwood. I think I even saw a football tossed around.
One elderly couple captured my attention. They hustled to and fro on the beach in preparation to launch a kite. I sat down on the sand with Sonny and watched them. I pulled my camera out.
The kite made it aloft on the first try and floated this way and that. I would say it danced more than floated. A few minutes later the kite returned to earth and the couple launched it again. This routine lasted for 20 minutes and I marveled at the couple’s precise teamwork. In all that time, it didn’t appear as if they said one word to one another.
I heard later the game went down to the wire and the Saints won. I also heard that the Nielsen ratings service estimated that 106.5 million people watched the Super Bowl, a new record for American television. The previous mark was 105.97 million in 1983 for the last episode of M*A*S*H.
Saying goodbye to my best friend, Ray
[Posted Feb. 3, 2010]
The waitress brings over dark ale. I sit in a lounge overlooking the beach and outside the rain drifts left, rips right, up, down, folds over, then unfolds. The sky is saturated and weighs down the gulls bouncing along southward. How many shades of gray can you count during a winter storm on the Oregon Coast? Would some artist please paint a gigantic oil that captures them all?
My mind goes to the best friend I’ve ever had. He died on January 8 and I held him close at the end, telling him how much I loved him and would miss our times together. His name was Ray, my old shepherd mutt, my sidekick in this column, and I euthanized him after a short, terrible bout with cancer.
Twelve years ago he came into my life as an emaciated stray found on Highway 101 by a teaching colleague. I hadn’t written a word about Oregon until I met Ray; now I’m close to a million. When I reflect upon on all that I’ve written since 1998, Ray appears in print about 70 percent of the time, including serving as an important character in my last three non-fiction books.
Ray and I roamed all over the Pacific Northwest, but the beach was our special place. I like to think we set some kind of record by visiting every city, county, state and federal beach park on the Oregon Coast.
It’s obvious to me now that his presence constituted one of the main reasons I became a writer and write almost exclusively about Oregon. He made me get up in the mornings with his staccato grunts and stoic stares, take him to the beach, and as a result, something creative happened inside me and I began to write.
I picked up his ashes a while back and at some point will drive to Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park where Ray and I rambled a thousand times when I lived in the area and served as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. What adventures we had on the Spit! But this is our last one. Goodbye old friend. I owe you so much.
Add to the chorus of ocean voices
Over the years, in the course of my reading, teaching and inveterate beach rambling, I’ve recorded my favorite quotations about the ocean and often write columns with some of these lines in my head.
I also begin every school year with my senior English students by having them write a 150-200 word, non-fiction response to one of these quotes. The only requirement is integrating the quote into the essay.
This assignment typically produces the best writing of the year and I suspect it’s because my students have such an intimate, Oregon-centric connection to the ocean and beach. We talk in class — or I should say, I sermonize — about Oregon’s legacy of publicly-owned beaches. They know the inspiring history of how it came to be and how they directly benefit from the work of others.
Funny how that sort of thing never appears on a state test.
Their pieces range far and wide but my favorite subjects are: the skipping-class-on-a-sunny-day or sneaking-out-at-night-to-go-to-the-beach narratives.
Perhaps some of you ocean/beach fanatics might like to try this assignment too. It seems like half the people I meet on the Oregon coast are working on a book anyway, so consider this a warm-up exercise. Send me your responses and if something seizes my attention, I’ll run it in this space in a future issue. Have fun!
Walt Whitman
You sea! I resign myself to you also — I guess what you mean / I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers…
Henry David Thoreau
Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.
Lord Byron
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!
John Keats
Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired / feast them upon the wideness of the sea.
Richard Hugo
The Ocean has the last word on
possession.
William Stafford
That instant, that clear space, that bright room inside a wave
Led Zeppelin
Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar. Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
That I am weary of words and people / sick of the city, wanting the sea.
Rachel Carson
There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.
D.H. Lawrence
I am the sea, I am the sea
E.B. White
The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way.
Richard Hugo
On this dishonored, this perverted globe / we go back to the sea and the sea opens for us.
Neil Young
The ocean, the drug that makes you dream.
Jim Harrison
I sat on numerous beaches and stared at the ocean until it was an ocean inside my head. The experience was a world away from the American idea of God as someone who drove around in a dump truck full of figurative candy to toss to deserving people if you beckoned him properly. The ocean was a god unknown, galactic, and in her own quiet way maybe enjoyed the moon as much as we did, what with the way the ocean gets pushed around by the moon and her tidal energies.
Steve Miller
Jungle love in the surf and the pouring rain, everything’s better when wet.
A heart that is 'barefoot always'
[Posted Jan. 6, 2010]
Not too long ago, while grading papers in a Newport bistro within view of the ocean, I overheard a conversation between a father and daughter.
From what I gathered, they weren’t locals and had met in Newport, at the beach, because it lay conveniently between their respective cities.
She neared completion her bachelor’s degree in a social science field. He looked the very picture of a businessman in a fast paced sector of the service economy. He was in his late 40s.
They discussed her plans after graduation. She broached the idea of living at the beach for a year and working at some retail job, then going back to school and teaching. She wasn’t sure. Who really knows anything at 21? She just wanted away from an academic routine and a college town. She also felt the call of the sea, the old sound of the ocean. I heard it my early 30s and have never left. I sort of wish I had heard it when I was her age.
Her father wasn’t really opposed because he didn’t hear a word she said and launched into an agenda – his agenda.
“Take the GRA (sic) and get into a professional school. Then I’ll help you with a house and you can cover the mortgage once you get a job.”
Next, he suggested she think about acquiring a new, more reliable car. He would help her with the down payment and then she could handle the payments.
She didn’t object but she didn’t assent either. She held her water glass aloft in the most curious way. To me, she appeared almost in a daze. The idea of assuming a large amount of debt for material objects tends to daze me too, which is probably why I drive a truck with 250,000 miles on it.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the contrasting metaphors between the daughter’s desires for her near future and the father’s desires for her far flung one.
She wanted to hear Neil Young’s “Harvest”; he stopped listening to rock ‘n roll years ago. She wanted to surf; he wanted her to drive. She wanted to saunter down the beach; he wanted her to jaywalk on asphalt. She wanted a heart that was “barefoot always” as Emily Dickinson put it; he wanted her heart to wear heels.
Could the father and daughter ever seize upon a metaphor they could both get behind?
I’ll never know. I do know that I feel incredibly lucky to have had parents who accepted the metaphor I constructed for myself in my 20s. They actually helped me construct it, even though they didn’t understand what I was doing. I like to think that if I’d ever had children, I would have done the same, that I would have suggested to my daughter that having a heart that is “barefoot always” is just fine.
What's the deal with George Diel?
The 12 days of Christmas approached and the weather turned frigid. I drove north on Hwy. 101 to a literary gig in Cannon Beach and the holiday spirit eluded me. The very idea of tiny little tots with their cell phones all aglow induced nausea. I saw a Salvation Army Santa washing down a hot dog with a Rockstar and overheard Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album. Seeing fresh clearcuts in the Coast Range didn’t help either.
I needed something, anything, a divine or pagan intervention, an unexpected gesture or gift, a miracle or existential mind bomb, something to pulverize the incipient Scrooge within me.
The dogs bounced along in the back of the truck as we coasted through Rockaway. They needed a romp on the beach, and Sonny the husky howled her demand. I call it her beach voice and it rules my life.
I pulled off Hwy. 101 into the Manhattan Beach Wayside, just north of Rockaway. The park’s host displayed a little Christmas tree on the dash of a 40-foot RV. It was really festive but did absolutely nothing for me.
A plaque affixed to a large rock at the entrance to the parking lot caught my eye. I’ve visited Manhattan Beach Wayside many times over the years, but never noticed it. I’ll check it out after the beach, I thought. The sun was fading and I wanted to see its demise out over the Pacific.
I let the tailgate down and lifted my two old invalid furry friends to the ground. We walked to the beach, although “gimped” probably is a better verb for the dogs when we ramble the sand these days. They’re not much longer for this world and when they’ve departed, this column ends.
After the walk, I loaded the dogs and drove to the plaque. I left the truck idling and went over for a quick inspection, thinking I’d probably learn something about a long dead local timber baron or civic booster. I didn’t bring anything to take notes.
An image of an elderly-looking and bespectacled man was etched into the plaque. It read, in part:
“Commemorating Dr. George Diel
1912-1986
Advocate of the belief that Oregon’s beaches belong to the people and should remain in perpetuity the unspoiled legacy of all.
A prime initiator of Oregon’s historic beach preservation law. Cofounder of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, an organization for the protection of Oregon’s coastline...”
As regular readers of this column know, I worship the “unspoiled legacy” of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. It is no exaggeration when I say that I have written (and read) more words on this subject that anyone in the history of Oregon.
Who was Dr. George Diel? I had never heard of him. I had thought the Matt Kramer Memorial in Oswald West State Park was the only monument to the Beach Bill, the famous 1967 state law that helped preserve the dry sand areas of our ocean beaches from privatization. I knew all the heroes and villains from that epic story. Or so I thought. Was there another unsung hero?
I ran back to the truck and snapped a couple of bad photos with a cheap point and shoot film camera I carry for journalism emergencies.
Some six hours later I was back home consulting the bible on state park history, “Oregon’s Highway Park System, 1921-1989, an Administrative History.” The Manhattan Beach Wayside was established in the early 1970s after the state acquired the property from Publisher’s Paper Company following litigation. There is no mention of Dr. George Diel or the plaque.
I entered the doctor’s name in a few internet search engines and learned he received the Feinstone Environmental Award in 1976. He lived in either Twin Rocks or Rockaway. He was active in the lobbying to pass Oregon’s historic land use law in 1973.
And that was all. But it won’t be after I start digging.
I received the best Christmas gift at the Manhattan Beach Wayside — a story, an Oregon beach story. I could now deck the halls and dive into the figgy pudding!
If you know anything about Dr. George Diel, please contact me.
The Wading Man
[Posted Dec. 9, 2009]
Where is the line of intervention a caring human being should — must — cross when another human being is on the verge of annihilation and apparently needs help? Maybe no such line exists. Maybe all of us have our own existential journeys to complete and no one should deign to intervene.
The first day we saw him he stood almost waist deep in the Pacific Ocean and dodged here and there to avoid incoming waves. He neither advanced nor retreated.
My associate and I sat on some accursed riprap and watched him from 150 yards away. He wore surfer shorts and a blue t-shirt, appeared heavy set, and left a neatly folded towel at the wrack line. The temperature hovered near an unseasonably warm 60 degrees on the last Saturday in October.
The man just stood there for five, 10, 20 minutes. He never once turned to look at the shore; he never once let the water rise above his waist. I’ve rambled Oregon coast beaches close to 2,000 times since moving here in 1997 and I’ve never seen anything like this. It was not normal beach behavior.
My associate and I talked about the man, wondering if he was in some sort of personal distress. We made up stories about him. We guessed: how long would he stand out there?
Finally, we had to leave. We passed within 75 yards of the man and then took the path back to the house. Neither one of us remotely considered going up to him and asking about his welfare.
The next day my associate and I rambled a long way down the beach under overcast skies at 3 p.m. As we made our way up the path, I noticed the same red sedan in the parking lot from yesterday come to a stop. The same man from the beach emerged and he wore a generic Sunday church suit. I pegged him at 55 years of age. From 50 yards away, we saw him change into his surfer shorts and blue t-shirt. He shut the car door and started walking west, to the sea. No towel. The waves looked hairy to me, much rougher than the previous afternoon.
We tracked the man’s slow, slightly angled walk to the ocean. His fists were clenched the entire way, a detail I noticed when I began taking photographs of him. He walked right into the water until it reached his waist. He then dodged here and there to avoid incoming waves. He neither advanced nor retreated. We watched him for 15 minutes.
Where is that line?
I told my associate I had to inspect his car: Chevy Impala. No dents and no rust. Fairly clean inside except for a few CD cases littered on the floor of the back seat. I couldn’t see one title! I wanted to know what music he listened to before he walked into the ocean. Who was he? What was he doing out there?
Three women came up the path and surprised us. They mentioned the man’s odd behavior. “Should we call it in?” one of them asked. I told them we saw the man at exactly the same time yesterday and he did exactly the same thing. We all discussed the situation for several minutes and then reached a consensus. No one called. We watched for another five minutes and then walked away.
At 3 p.m. the next day I visited the beach alone. The man wasn’t there, but neither was the Impala.
I know I want to end my sentient journey on earth by throwing myself into Hart’s Cove on Cascade Head and returning to the beginning of all life — the ocean. When that time comes, please don’t try to stop me. I won’t need an intervention although it could look like it from afar. But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with someone coming up to me and asking how I am. I’ll say, quoting The Beatles, “I Feel Fine.”
Can't find a better (beach) man
You vex me sir. You haunt me. You assault me. With your legendary rambling you challenge my self-anointed title as “Oregon’s Most Hard Core Beach Walker.”
I don’t know your name. I don’t know who you are. I do know we share an obsession — to ramble down Oregon’s publicly owned ocean beaches at all hours, at all costs. I also know we’d both break up with a partner who would dare carry an umbrella on the beach or listen to anything but the old sound of the ocean.
A few bits and pieces of information about you have come my way. According to acquaintances, you work in marine science and walk 10-15 miles a night, every night, regardless of the weather. I also hear you suck others into your vortex with e-mail and text message blasts to rendezvous at this or that Newport-area beach and share a towering bonfire of your own making. For all I know, at the bonfire, you strum Metallica covers on guitar, roast animal flesh, slake your thirst with cheap beer, and dance like the unhinged lads in “Lord of the Flies”!
Everyone who knows of you and me says we have to meet; that we are brothers forged of Oswald West’s sand and salt; that we worship Tom McCall and Bob Straub; that our entire physical and mental well being depends on daily visits to the beach.
We might have met once. In my latest book, “Super Sunday in Newport,” I describe an encounter last year on the beach with a man who was walking at dawn in torrential rainstorm. I wrote: “He wears a hooded sweatshirt without using the hood and the rain has turned his faded Levis a dark blue. He also wears Jimmy Connors-era white tennis shoes without socks. He has no hiking accoutrements whatsoever, not even a canteen…he tells me he’s walking from the south jetty in Newport to Lost Creek and back. I add up the miles. Close to twelve…”
Was that you? It had to be!
Name the time and beach sir. We’ll walk and walk and walk. We’ll outdo Charles Dickens and his daily 20-mile walk through London. We’ll outdo the Romantic poets and their epic walking tours through the Lake District. We’ll cruise Oregon’s “great birthright.” We’ll suck the marrow out of it and won’t pay a cent for the privilege. We’ll swap hard core beach stories of the type that only men like us could possibly understand.
Are you game? And if you are a better beach man than me, I will admit it.
The One and only Ona Beach
[Posted Nov. 11, 2009]
During the wonderfully crisp October days and nights on the Oregon Coast, I’ve loaded up the dogs and taken them to Ona Beach, seven or so miles south of Newport.
Normally I never recommend hanging out at a beach that abuts Hwy. 101, but Ona is a glaring exception. Something gloriously subtle or gloriously spectacular always unfolds there and I suspect Beaver Creek is the reason. It empties into the Pacific at Ona Beach and creates a meandering little estuary that attracts an astonishing variety of wildlife and eccentric human beings. Which is exactly why living near a bigger estuary, say Yaquina, Nehalem or Nestucca Bays makes for such interesting times. I’m sorry, but living near a lake can’t possibly compare.
Here’s just a partial list of what I’ve observed at Ona Beach during the last year:
Sea lions, seals, Old Believers, star gazers, a man practicing his sand wedge, hundreds of pelicans, a troubadour, poems for Bob Marley, peace signs in the sand, forts, pillboxes, altars, cairns, salmon, beavers, otters, blue herons, bald eagles, bonfires, Texans, bottle scavengers, landscape painters, a bicyclist riding on the beach, a woman walking to the Oregon Country Fair, dreadlocked campers, homeless ramblers, gulls, a romantic breakup (not mine), tai chi, post modern sand castles, and what appeared to be a group of people on a silent retreat.
I might also add that I didn’t pay a cent to observe any of this, which makes it all the better.
Ona has always struck me as a curious word. I consulted the Bible on such matters, “Oregon Geographic Names,” and it suggests the name originates from the Chinook lingua franca. If true, that adds even more mystery to this beach.
As I said, Hwy. 101 runs right next to Ona Beach but I hardly sense its baleful presence once I hike away from the parking area and down to the creek. The cell phone reception is pretty bad there too, meaning that St. Tom McCall or St. Bob Straub must have blessed this beach from beyond the grave. Not that I’ve tried to call anyone from there myself, but I’ve watched people from a distance gesture in frustration when trying to talk on the phone. I will never understand this type of human being, especially if they grew up in Oregon.
6:20 a.m. and my dog Sonny the husky just ruffled the blinds on the glass front door. That’s her signal—time for Ona, Matt, so quit working on the book and let’s roll! I poured some black coffee in my Big Pharma travel mug and we were off to watch the sun rise.
Matt Love is the publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and was recently awarded the Stewart Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his contributions to Oregon literature. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com. His new book, “Super Sunday in Newport: Notes From My First Year in Town,” is available in bookstores along the coast or through his web site.
Halloween on the Nestucca Spit
[Posted Oct. 30, 2009]
It was two years ago, when I still served as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge in South Tillamook County and visited my favorite place in the world…
About an hour of multi-colored light left before Halloween night comes to Nestucca Spit. I want a quick run with the dogs before retiring for the evening with a novel.
What a grand fall football day it was! Cold. Dry. Sunny. Alder leaves dropping. No wind. Perfect weather for young men to knock the hell out of each other and suicide beautifully on a freshly limed field. It even smells like football season in Pacific City, with all the smoke from the nearby slash fires drifting through the air.
All the world’s a campout tonight, if you are of the right mind to recognize it.
I pull into the parking lot of Bob Straub State Park and see a young thin man walking in the dunes with his eyes pointed to the ground. Odd. But stranger things have been seen on the Spit so … whatever.
The dogs and I ramble down the beach for a few minutes and then encounter a shiny and red truck stuck fast in the sand. Two large men kneel at the truck’s back tires. The tide’s receding so the waves pose no immediate danger.
I walk up to the men, who sport red faces, W.C Fields’ noses, who most assuredly exude a Brokeback Beach sort of vibe, which is cool by me and The Spit. It never discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation; it just wants you on the beach doing your thing.
“Hello,” I say, “what’s the problem?”
“We thought we’d drive to the end. We’ve never seen it. We’re not sure about how to drive this so we thought we’d stop and let some air out. Is the tide coming in?”
“No. You should be able to make it to the end. No problem. It’s really incredible there. I live around here and it’s worth the trip.”
I offer to push the truck in attempt to set it free. Much to my surprise, the scheme works! The men say thanks, and as the truck lumbers past on its way down The Spit, I entertain serious doubts it will ever return.
The dogs and I continue for a half mile or so and then head east into the dunes for the route back to the parking lot. In the dunes, I see the young man again. He holds a paper grocery bag. The dogs sniff him out and then fan out to hunt coyotes.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I ask.
“Great. What a day huh?”
“Fantastic. Do you mind me asking what’s in the bag?”
“Mushrooms. I sell them to a local restaurant. I get $5 a pound.”
Sure you do, dude.
“Happy Halloween,” I say.
“Same to you.”
We make it back to the parking lot at dusk. I load the dogs in the truck and am about to enter the cab when I notice a middle-aged man reading a magazine in the truck. Odd at any time at the Spit, but with the sun going down in pulsing oranges and yellows over the beach, a hundred yards away? On Halloween? Double plus odd.
I have to see what he’s reading — the writer in me, you know? I pretend to go pick up a shred of paper near his truck. He pays me no mind. I get close enough to see the magazine’s cover — Playboy.
As I drive home, I notice a few kid trick or treaters in Pacific City starting their rounds. They skip along in flimsy costumes, with parents in the background, excited about the dry weather and potential for a lavish candy haul. At that moment, I envy their youth and can only hope many years will pass before these children will think of big trucks, psychedelics and pornography.
Bridge crossing was a riveted experience
A man can’t always walk on the beach. I like to think walking the beach can take me anywhere I want to go, and while that’s true of my mind, it’s not true of other destinations.
I stood before the south approach to the Yaquina Bay Bridge, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works Project No. 932, and most of it wasn’t there. Fog nearly swallowed all the soaring green steel.
What an imperfect morning to try and conquer one of my greatest fears! I’ve always had a fear of heights. It’s why I fell off the roof and broke my arm in third grade. I couldn’t walk 50 feet on the Golden Gate Bridge. I never went to the top of the Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building.
I began to walk the plank and noticed a smashed gull in the road. A cormorant flew over me; a cormorant flew under me. A man holding a Dutch Bros coffee in his right hand and a maple bar in his left strolled south on the opposite sidewalk. I think he was whistling.
RVs blew by and shook the deck. Please Mother Earth! Don’t let a log truck come along! One did.
How many people have jumped off the bridge? Fallen off? Blown off? How many survived?
Damn you, Conde McCullough! I curse you for designing something so beautiful, so alluring, so bewitching, with such gorgeous curves … sort of like my last girlfriend. She dumped me.
I began to run. I stopped after 20 yards, ducked inside one of the ornate turrets to compose myself, read some ungrammatical graffiti, and heard sea lions bark and grunt in the direction of the Bayfront.
Then I examined the girders, rivets, nuts and bolts the Depression-era boys put into exquisite place in 1936. Socialism, it was called, and it built this beautiful bridge and it built it well. That was about the most comforting thought I could muster from the middle of the bridge, 133 feet above the bay.
The walk resumed, faster now, and I saw a man driving an 18-wheeler, texting. A moment later, an obese state worker inspecting something with a hand-held meter approached me and we exchanged “hellos.” I rushed through the other turret and didn’t stop to read, although I did notice a peace sign drawn in chalk.
I never once looked down, which would have been fine since there was nothing to see.
Fifteen minutes later I crossed the Yaquina Bay Bridge on foot for the first time. I turned around: son of a b — I had to walk back in two hours.
Cells vs. Novels: Distinct Distractions
[Posted Oct. 1, 2009]
As August came to a close, I walked the dogs to the beach on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
The beach was uncomfortably packed, meaning several adults, six children and two dogs enjoyed themselves, but I paid them no mind. I planned on heading south, far from the madding crowd, and look for fresh equations of sweet horny math written in the sand by love-struck teenagers. Or better yet, senior citizens.
Before I vacated the area, I took notice of the children; two six-year old girls building a sandcastle, two seven-year old boys building a dam in the creek, and two 11-year old girls reclining on a beach towel, text messaging with dizzying speed.
OK, no big deal on the text messaging, I think. The girls wanted to inform their friends what a great time they were having on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches and their parents wanted the ability to reach them at all times. Yes, all perfectly understandable but still, I’m glad I didn’t grow up in an era when my parents could find me all the time. If they could have, I doubt I’d have many memorable stories from my youth.
A half hour later I returned from my ramble and the girls were still at it. I sat down with the dogs and watched the children play for another 15 minutes. The girls kept texting.
Before I judged the girls too harshly with easy condemnation that comes from getting older (remember what adults used to say about the insidious effects of comic books and rock and roll?), I wondered: was their use of cell phones any different than if both were reading novels? Both activities are inherently unrelated to the beach and transport you away from the immediacy of the ocean. You are not really there. Or are you?
Later that evening, I e-mailed a friend about what I’d witnessed and my confusion over what it meant. Her excellent response is worth quoting in full here:
“The difference between cell phones and novels on the beach is basically threefold: 1) One is aesthetically romantic and pleasing, the other is not. How much more likely would you be to approach a woman who was reading versus one who was ferociously typing away at her mobile keyboard? What would catch an artist’s eye? Sand caught between pages is sentimental; sand caught between buttons is detrimental.
“2) Novel reading is collaborative, an active and dynamic immersion in human culture and experience. It enhances (if engaged in properly, with enough ready breaks and distractions) a beach experience ... whereas a cell phone detracts from it, cutting kids off from the surrounding world and any edifying or memorable engagement, and
“3) One activity is monitored and encouraged by the government and society at large. One is (dependent on your muse) in almost direct opposition. Rebellious revolution or indulgent transparency?”
And what about other electronic devices on the beach, such as handheld video games, movie players and iPods, all three of which I’ve seen in use in recent months?
Isn’t the beach enough? If you don’t want a relationship to the ocean, which is truly about a reflective relationship to yourself, why bother going?
Here’s my rule. No electronic devices of any kind. (You can carry a phone for emergencies but turn off the ringer and vibrator.) I suppose GPS units are okay, but remember “Let’s Get Lost,” that great song by Chet Baker? How about living it every now and then?
I will grant one exception to my rule: you can text or call someone from the beach, imploring them to drop whatever they are doing and join you immediately.
Catch a starry night, before they Gogh
[Posted Sept. 16, 2009]
Amateur astronomers sometimes classify nighttime darkness on the (nine-point) Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, which is based on a number of criteria, among them ‘limited magnitude,’ or the faintest celestial objects that are visible without magnification…
“The Dark Side,” The New Yorker,
by David Owen [Read the article here.]
4:40 a.m. A Wednesday in late August. I wake up and know immediately I must race to the beach and watch the stars before going to work. I don’t know why I know this. A feeling just overtakes me. It’s not like we get to see stars all that much here on the Oregon coast anyway. And if they are out, you have to get up early or stay up late. I much prefer the former. It’s a special time when so much good seems possible from a day.
It takes me five minutes to put my clothes on and load the dogs in the truck.
We reach the sand after taking the path to the beach. The dogs disappear into the void but I can hear their tags jingle here and there. I think they’re fired up too.
I look up. Overhead, a sky so full of stars it staggers me. Black barely manages to twinkle through the white.
“In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today the sky above New York City is Class 9, and at the other extreme of the scale, American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened…”
In “The Dark Side,” Owen describes the situation where air and light pollution have diminished or extinguished most urban and suburban peoples’ (meaning the vast majority of humanity) ability to see celestial objects in the nighttime sky where they live. It was one of the saddest articles I have ever read and portends something, I sense, truly dire for humanity, although I am not sure what shape or direction the calamity will take. It is utterly unfathomable for me to imagine how children will turn out as adults if they never see the stars. And what of those adults who forget what stars look like? What will we have lost? What will it mean to us when our ancient connection to the heavens has been irretrievably ruptured? What of star crossed lovers and all that? What of those splayed in the gutters who need to see the stars? How will we steer ourselves on the uncharted sea? What will become of us? Has science fiction at least weighed in on this looming human and planetary catastrophe?
This morning has to be a Class 3 dark-sky! This must be a one-in-a-million nighttime sky at the Oregon coast. I jog down the beach inhaling the heavens, if a sight can be said to be inhaled. The dippers. Milky Way. Moon. That’s all I can identify and I took a college astronomy course. I wish I could point out all the constellations, galaxies, major stars, planets, satellites and the Hubble Telescope shining before my eyes. That I can’t recognize any of them also portends something dire. I should know their names! I should teach them to my students and assign stargazing for unwritten poetry homework, before it’s too late, even here in rural Oregon, before the stars are taught exclusively as dead history and no one writes poems about seeing them anymore. How come the state requires students to solve algebraic equations to graduate instead of recognizing constellations? I bet we’d turn out better Americans if we did.
“…civilization’s assault on the stars…deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky.”
The dogs and I walk south down the beach and then turn around. I look up again but the stars don’t seem quite as brilliant because flood lights from perpetually vacant beachfront obscure them.
These accursed and unnecessary lights deprive me of a direct and privileged relationship to all the stars out over my local beach at that dark moment in time. I was cheated of seeing a full magical sky of undiluted celestial contrast. And I deserve this view because I got up!
This sky may never come again, for me or anyone else in the ever-polluted future who still cares about such far away scintillating overhead things, if there are any such people left a century from now. Left at the Oregon coast or anywhere for that matter.
‘Sexy’ is in the eye of the beachcomber
[Posted Sept. 2, 2009]
“North America’s Sexiest Beaches” read the provocative June headline on Forbestraveler.com. Naturally, being the obsessed man of the beach that I am, I clicked on the link and perused the list compiled by Thomas Kohnstamm.
Here are a few of the highest ranking beaches and what Kohnstamm said about their alleged sexy quotient:
“South Beach, Miami — What is South Beach? Is it Versace or Daisy Dukes? Is it Winter Music Conference, Art Basel or Spring Break? South Beach is all of the above and more: from highbrow chic to kitsch hedonism. Either way it is one of a kind.
Main Beach, East Hampton, N.Y. — Hop the train or a chartered plane from North America’s sexiest city to its closest (and poshest) summer getaway. On the South Fork of Long Island, shingled mansions rise out of the dunes and play host to the summer party circuit for New York’s high rollers and beautiful people.
Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, B.C. — British Columbia is known as Lotusland and Vancouver, North America’s third largest center of film production, is known as Hollywood North. Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach is where sexy locals and Hollywood interlopers relish the opportunity to peel down to their swimsuits and flaunt what they’ve got among the sand, beachwood and mountain vistas.
La Jolla Cove, San Diego — This beach is less about crowds of gawkers and tourists and more about fit surfers, locals, snorkelers, and international visitors who are true beach aficionados. La Jolla is a San Diego gem and one of the top beaches in all of California.”
The Oregon Coast didn’t rate one mention.
Not long after reading Forbes Traveler’s hopelessly unimaginative list of what a sexy beach is, I looked at a psychedelic sky from my deck and knew a spectacular summer sunset was about to unfold. That’s a rare event around here and I wanted to see it from the beach, so I hurried along and within minutes found myself on the sand staring west. The temperature hovered around 55 degrees and a slight breeze blew south to north.
At first I noticed the extreme low tide, but then something else came into view and I suddenly lost all interest in the sunset.
I saw a woman of indeterminate age walk toward the ocean with her dog chasing to and fro. No one else was around. Approximately 50 feet from the water, the woman stopped and stripped down to a dark-colored two-piece ensemble that I assumed was her bathing suit. Perhaps not. To me, her body language suggested a total and sexy spontaneity, you know, of the type that would get you kicked off most of “North American’s Sexiest Beaches” by security guards. She didn’t have a towel.
The woman sprinted to the ocean and kept running until the water reached her waist. Her dog followed. They danced together in the waves for a couple of minutes as orange, red, blue and purple layered the sky and then ran back to where her clothes rested. She dressed slowly and went on her way down the beach.
She didn’t pay a cent for her swim and I didn’t pay a cent to watch, which really is what Oregon Coast beaches are all about.
The sun set and I returned home, feeling grateful for not witnessing highbrow chic to kitsch hedonism and the high rollers and beautiful people. I felt grateful to live in Oregon where we have a very different definition than Forbes Traveler of what constitutes a sexy beach, and a better one, I think.
An Evening with 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
[Posted Aug. 5, 2009]
In the course of ongoing research into Oregon history, I’ve often asked myself: what is the coolest thing to have ever happened on an Oregon Coast beach?
Was it when distance running god Steve Prefontaine trained in the dunes around Coos Bay as a teenager?
Was it when former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall, in the battle to pass the Beach Bill, stood in front of the Cannon Beach motel that dared fence off part of the dry sands area for the exclusive use of its guests?
Was it when a young John Reed, the famous leftist revolutionary, ran naked on a beach near Arch Cape?
Was it when the rock band Kiss rented an entire floor of a Cannon Beach motel and rock’n rolled all night and partied every day?
No, it was none of these things.
The coolest thing to ever happen on an Oregon Coast beach is when Paul Newman rode (and crashed) a motorcycle on Fogarty Beach. In fact, this image, which is part of the larger story of when Newman spent the summer of 1970 filming Ken Kesey’s epic Oregon novel “Sometimes A Great Notion,” is so cool, it’s one of the principal reasons I want to write a book on the making of the movie.
Just in my initial research, I have quickly discovered that what went down that summer is one great fun Oregon story, which was completely undocumented. Frankly, the stories that have reached me so far border on the incredible, including a sensational yet unconfirmed report that Newman walked into a Toledo bar and cut the legs off a pool table! (Which is totally believable if you’ve read up on Newman’s passion for drinking and practical jokes.) It seems almost everyone who was around Lincoln County in 1970 had some brush with Newman, Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, Richard Jaeckel, Michael Sarrazin or a member of the crew.
But I need your help in pulling this book off.
On Saturday Aug. 8, at the Toledo AWPPW Union Hall, Writers on the Edge and Nestucca Spit Press will co-sponsor an “Evening with Sometimes a Great Notion (the movie).” The event features a slide show on the history of the film, discussion, photography exhibit, and a rare public screening.
Most importantly, however, the event offers an opportunity for anyone connected to the making of the movie to share personal stories that will help me write the book. I also encourage anyone owning photographs or other memorabilia pertaining to the movie to bring them along.
What is your movie story? Did you serve Newman chowder at Mo’s? Did you clean Michael Sarrazin’s room? Did you polish rocks with Henry Fonda? Did you work as an extra? Did you shoot some home movies of the stars?
I want all the stories, all the pictures! If you can’t make the event, please e-mail or call and we’ll set something up.
The evening begins at 6 p.m. with the screening of the movie at around 7:15. The union hall is located at 138 NW 1st St in Toledo. Admission is free. I can be reached at 503-812-1524. I hope to see you there.
Matt Love is the publisher of Nestucca Spit Press. He lives in South Beach and can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The Briefcase
[Posted July 8, 2009]
Not too long ago, I saw a homeless man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing a loose gray suit from the Ford Administration. I came upon him from behind, driving south over the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, through the green steel and light fog. The dogs bounced excitedly around in the back of the truck, perhaps sensing we were on our way to South Beach State Park for a romp, which we were.
Below us, the sea was calm and a few fishing boats looked ready to shoot the jetties. Some 70 years ago, the government might have hired this man to build a magnificent bridge for a decent wage like it used to with the CCC boys. But we don’t seem do that sort of thing in this country anymore when times are tough. We also don’t seem to know how to build an elegant bridge like the Yaquina Bay. For proof, just check out the uninspired new slab near Beverly Beach. I can just feel Conde McCullough turning over in his grave every time I drive across it.
As the man walked, he clutched a black briefcase in his left hand. In his right hand he held a crab pot with orange ropes. It was empty. I thought: if he catches a crab, how is the man going to carry it — in his briefcase? If he does, which seems probable because a person can’t very well walk along Hwy. 101 carrying a live crab, might he be the first man in the history of the world to transport a live crab via briefcase? Yes, I think, he might.
Where would he take the crab? How would he cook it? Will he share the meal with friends? Will he light a fire on the beach? These are wonderful questions for the imagination and excellent writing prompts for my creative writing students.
I passed the man and noticed what a long stride he had. He was really eating up the sidewalk. It seemed as if he was almost in a hurry to cast his pot into the bay. I checked the passenger’s side mirror. I saw his face and it wasn’t vacant.
Time to fit "Dr. Beach" with a malpractice wetsuit?
[Posted June 23, 2009]
This May, a man who calls himself Dr. Beach announced his choices for “America’s Best Beaches 2009,” including number one. The announcement made headlines on the Web and no doubt the good doctor toured the morning chit chat shows and giggled with the hosts.
Here is Dr. Beach’s list (and you can read it for yourself at www.drbeach.org):
Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii
Siesta Beach, Sarasota, Florida
Coopers Beach, Southampton, New York
Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
Hamoa Beach, Maui, Hawaii
Main Beach, East Hampton, New York
Cape Hatteras,Outer Banks, North Carolina
Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne, Florida
Coast Guard Beach,Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, South Carolina
Notice anything missing?
Doctor Beach, whose real name is Dr. Stephen Leatherman, is the author of America’s Best Beaches. He is also professor and Director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University, and since 1991, has issued his list.
Below are his picks for the number one American beach going back to 1991:
2008 Caladesi Island State Park, Dunedin/Clearwater, Florida
2007 Ocracoke Lifeguard Beach- Outer Banks, North Carolina
2006 Fleming Beach Park- Maui, Hawaii
2005 Fort DeSoto Park - North Beach, St Petersburg, Florida
2004 Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
2003 Kaanapali, Hawaii
2002 St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Florida
2001 Poipu Beach Park, Hawaii
2000 Mauna Kea Beach, Hawaii
1999 Wailea Beach, Hawaii
1998 Kailua Beach Park, Hawaii
1997 Hulopoe, Hawaii
1996 Lanikai Beach, Hawaii
1995 St. Andrews SRA, Florida
1994 Grayton Beach SRA, Florida
1993 Hapuna, Hawaii
1992 Bahia Honda SRA, Florida
1991 Kapalua Bay Beach, Hawaii
Notice anything missing?
From what I can tell from his inadequate web site, Dr. Beach makes his choices based on whether or not the water is warm enough (for humans without wetsuits) to recreate in and if there are nearby amenities for beachgoers.
Wrong Dr. Beach. Very wrong. May I share Dr. Love’s second opinion for what constitutes a “Best American Beach?”
It’s really quite simple: The beach must be publicly owned, free to use, access guaranteed by law, and remote and rainy enough so that if a person desired, he could walk, run or light a fire in total solitude (meaning no other humans around) at any time of the day or night.
I just pretty much described all of Oregon’s ocean beaches.
I can’t tell from Dr. Beach’s web site if he has in fact ever visited Oregon and experienced this state’s “great birthright,” as former Oregon Governor Oswald West called our publicly-owned beaches.
Really, Doctor, you should come west. I’ll be happy to tour you around and tell you the heroic stories of Oswald West, Samuel Boardman, Tom McCall, Matt Kramer, Bob Straub and the other Oregon immortals who saved our ocean beaches from privatization, cabanas, espresso stands, fast food carts, and arrogant security guards patrolling for trespassers.
I might even take you to my favorite Oregon beach, Nestucca Spit. It truly is sacred Oregon ground.
But Doctor you will have to rise very early if you want to ramble with me and the dogs. And by the way, bad weather never deters us; the harder the rain falls, the more we dig it. Oh, and I should warn you: should you pop open an umbrella or don an iPod, there’s going to be big trouble. The sight of either one of these on the beach triggers something savage in the dogs.
Of graduation rites, and rights
Newport High School seniors celebrate ‘Oregon’s great birthright’
[Posted June 10, 2009]
I parked in front of my favorite place in Newport — the Fishermen’s Memorial — in Yaquina Bay State Park. It was 5:17 in the morning and drizzle fell. The sun seemed as hidden in the closet as the shag carpet in a coastal motel room, which was just about right on the first day of June. I turned off the headlights, exited the cab, and drank black coffee while I waited.
Minutes later, Ross and India drove up in his Honda and emerged with a dozen donuts baked fresh from JC Market. Then Brittany skidded her Plymouth Roadster to a stop across from me. More cars raced into the parking lot, coming from the north, south, virtually all of them nicer than my truck. Shouldn’t a teacher own a better vehicle than his students? And doesn’t anyone take driver’s training anymore?
We gathered near my truck, 40 seniors, my English students, on the last Monday of their high school careers. The first annual Newport High School Senior Walk was about to begin. We would take to the holy sand and freely recreate on what former Oregon Governor Oswald West called “our great birthright”— Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. These students might have paid $3.50 for latte on their way here, but they didn’t have to pay a cent to walk on an ocean beach.
They knew the story. They knew how decades ago West and other politicians steered Oregon on a different course, a better course, to protect beaches from privatization. And here these Oregonians were, most of them half asleep, primed to exercise their great birthright.
Yes, they knew the story well because I had beaten it into them like a propaganda minister from a fascist state. They had asked me to shut up about the sanctity of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches but I never would. How many words had we written about it? Not enough!
It was time: 5:30. Let the walk begin! Onward to the sea! To quote Marvin Gaye, “Let’s get it on!” If I saw an iPod or a cell phone in use, someone wasn’t going to graduate.
But before we began, I asked someone to repeat West’s famous quote: “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to impair this great birthright of our people.” Jessica tried and butchered it, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that my students were here at dawn!
We descended the stairs and passed a homeless man asleep in the sand. India and Brittany ran ahead and carried something in a bag. Out came a cylindrical object I couldn’t make out that Brittany staked into the sand. She kneeled down to it and her hand went to a pocket. Seconds later, a bottle rocket lifted off, screamed, exploded, and sparks lit up the sky and scattered to the ground. Great! We had just broken the law!
When the cops arrived, we’d quote Oswald West as our only defense. We would need no other and no Oregon jury would ever convict us.
We walked to the North Jetty in no discernible formation. Serena ran to the water’s edge and stared west. Alex’s dog went nuts. Light began to defeat the darkness and the lighthouse almost looked sexy as she came into full view. We talked and laughed. A few girls skipped. Anna made a goofy face. Five species of birds flew around us and I wanted to run wild so I did. Others joined me. We ran with no particular place to go, the finest way to run.
It was time to leave. First period, you know? We rallied at Pig N’ Pancake and ate together as friends, Oregonians, and countrymen. I bought them all breakfast because they were seniors graduating in five days, because they had worked so hard and so well for me this year, and because they had woken up very early and met me on the beach.
Peace on Alsea Spit
[Posted May 27, 2009]
[Check this week's story about the Newport High School literary review. Matt Love serves as NHS English and creative writing teacher.]
One of my favorite Oregon coast stories unfolded near Waldport come 70 years ago and most people have never heard about it.
But they should.
It is a little-known fact rarely, if ever, presented in high school history textbooks: during World War II, 43,000 men declared themselves conscientious objectors (COs) and refused combatant military service. Almost half of this total came from the historically pacifist Quaker, Mennonite and Church of the Brethren denominations located primarily in the Midwest.
This astonishing 43,000 figure included 25,000 non-combatants (many who served as medics), 6,000 prisoners (men refusing service officially denied CO status), and 12,000 official COs who ended up in the Civilian Public Service. The CPS was established to put COs to work in a variety of public works projects for the duration of the war. In the West, this work entailed planting trees, fighting fires and building roads. Several COs died performing these dangerous labors.
The National Service Board of Religious Objectors, authorized by the government to administer the CPS, established 143 camps across the United States to incarcerate the COs. CPS Camp 56, known as Camp Angel, was situated south of Waldport on the central Oregon coast, near Alsea Spit. Camp Angel earned a unique designation in that it was chartered as the only Fine Arts Program camp in the entire CPS system.
During its three years of operation, Camp Angel’s 25-30 active members of the Fine Arts Program oversaw the production of many original plays, crafts made from a loom and wood lathe, and publication of mainly small press runs of handsome poetry books from the inmates, but also anthologies and literary reviews that included contributions from pacifists incarcerated in other camps. In essence these temporarily stateless men pledged allegiance to an ideal, not a country, and made their own culture, a culture almost entirely distinct from the United States, and consumed it themselves. One of the Camp Angel men, William Everson, wrote a collection of poems titled “War Elegies.” In 1944 it was the first volume published the camp’s Untide Press and contains some of the finest anti-war poems ever written by an American.
The CO camps officially closed in 1945, although some men were held over until 1946 so they wouldn’t compete for jobs with returning veterans. Several of the Camp Angel Fine Arts Program participants, most prominently Everson, writer Kermit Sheets and dramatist Martin Ponch, relocated to the Bay Area, and there ushered in what’s now known as the San Francisco Renaissance, seeding much of the Beat Generation and all the counterculture rest that followed. Just think about that: the Beat Generation born at the wet and sandy Oregon coast.
In recent years, I’ve visited the old Camp Angel site out of sheer curiosity. It’s a Job Corps training center now, and the last remaining building of the World War II-era Camp Angel was moved to Waldport in 1988 and now serves as the Waldport Heritage Museum, which does hold some CO-related material, and is a great little place to learn about history.
As I leafed through this material, the word ‘counterculture’ sprang instantly to mind, as in an authentic American counterculture undertaken at great personal cost to its practitioners. They had no notion of irony or that their stand would turn out for the best in the end. In one of the more stunning photographs from Camp Angel, a tall thin man named Glen Coffield appears with his hair in dreadlocks. Other prisoners wore their hair long tied back in a ponytail. In 1944! Who were these men?
It moves me to the extreme to imagine Everson, Coffield and other men earning some release time from Camp Angel and exploring the beaches and woods around Waldport. I imagine them hiking down Alsea Spit, then nothing but a long stretch of sand without European beach grass, paved streets, houses and satellite dishes. I imagine them carrying books, paints and musical instruments and wine to end of Alsea Spit. They probably would’ve ignited a bonfire clearly visible to anyone from downtown Waldport looking to the ocean. Everyone seeing the fire would’ve known the men who sat around it and wondered what they talked about. They must have considered these unarmed men very dangerous.
Back to the Beach
Sonny returns to the sand
[Posted May 14, 2009]
On March 10, I was driving to the Lincoln City Goodwill with Sonny my husky and Ray the old shepherd in the back of truck. As I neared Siletz Bay I took a peek in the side mirror and saw Sonny’s black and white head poking out the canopy window. She sniffed aggressively at the sea.
Now’s the time.
I cranked the steering wheel hard to the left, crossed Highway 101 in front of a honking UPS truck, and pulled into the parking lot of The Bay House restaurant. I looked out to the bay, saw the tide rolling out and noticed a short stretch of soft mudflat and wet beach not more than 20 yards away.
This is it. Sonny and I are going to the beach.
Six months ago, as regular readers of One Man’s Beach know, her freak injury and subsequent loss of mobility ripped apart my relationship with the beach. Serious reading and writing had stopped, I was barely sleeping, my teaching suffered, my fitness vanished, and I found it impossible to carry on a romantic relationship or travel anywhere. Almost my entire life was devoted to caring for Sonny, and the effort, mental more than anything, had exhausted me to the point where I nearly fainted in class and had to seek medical treatment.
After trying various rehabilitation strategies that all failed, and deciding against the surgical insertion of metal plates, I ordered custom braces from an animal orthopedist in Colorado who constructed the devices using moulds of Sonny’s legs.
Sonny wore the braces when I killed the truck’s engine in the parking lot. They’d arrived that morning and it took 20 minutes of her howling and squirming to attach them. When I fastened the last strap in place and coaxed Sonny to stand up, I looked at her teeter like an amateur wino and thought “there was no way in hell this was going to work.”
I opened the tailgate and told Ray to back up. Sonny came forward, leapt into my arms, licked my face, and I kicked the tailgate shut. I carried her down a steep and rocky path to the beach and recited all my goofy names I’d invented for her over the years. Back at the truck I heard Ray barking.
Driftwood littered the sand and I hopped over a couple of big bleached logs and kept walking until I found a nice spot with plenty of room for Sonny to maneuver. I set her down gently, checked the braces, stifled my expectations, and then backed away. Sonny stood there awkwardly for a minute and then walked toward me like a bumble bee flies. I turned and started striding away and Sonny followed. Seconds later, I began to jog and she broke into a weird lope to catch up.
It was on. I fell to the sand and let her jump on my chest. She began to talk her sacred husky talk and I reached out, grabbed a stick, and tossed it a few feet. She bumbled over, grabbed it with her mouth, and brought it back.
I started crying and couldn’t stop. Sonny and I played on the beach 10 minutes and then I carried her to the truck. I called my ex wife, who had chosen Sonny as a runt puppy to herald the new Millennium, and sobbed her the good news.
March 10th was my birthday, my forty-fifth, and I hadn’t felt that happy in a long, long time. The next day, after school, Ray, Sonny and I went to the beach. We were a team again.
(I want to thank all the readers who responded to my first column about Sonny. Your kinds words of encouragement and advice helped me cope.)
The most important Oregon story, on film
[Posted April 30, 2009]
In November 2005 I gave a presentation on the history of Oregon’s famous 1967 Beach Bill to the Cannon Beach Historical Society. At the time, I thought I was the expert on the subject because my research had debunked the popular myth that Governor Tom McCall almost single-handedly steered the bill into law and saved our ocean beaches from the sinister forces of privatization.
In the audience that afternoon was a man in his thirties named Tom Olsen Jr. He came up to me after the presentation and introduced himself as someone from Portland who owned a cabin in Cannon Beach. His family had a long and distinguished history in the community and he shared my passion for the Oregon Coast. Tom told me he was a filmmaker with a documentary to his credit, “Killingsworth,” which chronicled the rise of Portland’s African-American gangs in the 1980s.
As I recall, he said my presentation intrigued him and that he might have an interest in making a documentary on the hard fought legacy of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. Might I be interested in helping him out? I was intrigued and gave him my card and never expected to hear another word.
But I did hear from Tom, and three years later, he not only made the film, called “Politics of Sand,” but he went so far beyond my original research that I must now give up my self-appointed title. He now reigns as the official expert on the incredible history of Oregon’s Beach Bill.
Tom Olsen can also claim another title: he has made the best film about an Oregon historical subject in the state’s history. It’s simply a must see for everyone who has ever recreated (for free!) on a publicly owned Oregon ocean beach. Isn’t that everyone reading this column? If you love this glorious tradition, you owe it to yourself to see how it all came about, and more importantly, how close it came to not happening. And it was close, harrowingly close, as the film shows.
You might also want to see the film if you need a little inspiration to help protect Oregon’s beaches and oceans today. Forty years ago, Oregon citizens and politicians looked to the future to protect a natural resource for their children’s enjoyment. Can we honestly say that’s happening today? Watch this film and consider that question.
Yes, I’ll say it again. “Politics of Sand” is the greatest film about Oregon history ever made. And you can judge for yourself this Sunday, May 3, at 2 p.m. when the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport hosts a free screening of “Politics of Sand.” Tom will attend the event, discuss his documentary and sell copies of the film. If you have other plans, change them.
This is Oregon and a native Oregonian who loves the Oregon Coast made a film about Oregon’s beaches. Learn how and why we did it different back in 1967. Then after you seeing it, go up and thank Tom Olsen for his role in keeping this important, maybe the most important Oregon story of all, alive, and in play.
Springtime: season of budgets, cycles
The other day, I saw one and he was alone. The next day I saw three grouped tightly together. Two days later, I saw two more, strung out by 50 yards.
They are here, the first of many to arrive, the bicyclists pumping down Hwy. 101 in rain or fog or sun, on the world famous Oregon Coast Bike Route, to connect to our beaches in a way utterly inconceivable to someone driving a vehicle listening to angry talk radio or Kenny G.
And to think it all started because a lawmaker nearly got run over by a car.
Once upon a time in 1971, a Republican state representative and avid bicyclist from Southern Oregon named Don Stathos was riding tandem with his daughter on a highway to Medford with no shoulder. As vehicles zoomed by, forcing Stathos dangerously off the road, he thought to himself: “Here we are, the richest nation in the world, and we have constructed our environment so we can’t keep in physical condition.”
Stathos then asked, his daughter Jenny Hill of Wilsonville remembers, the simple and eternal question in a democracy: “Why can’t there be a better way?” He answered his own question by introducing House Bill 1700, which required the state to set aside at least 1 percent of the highway fund to build bicycle and pedestrian facilities.
In the beginning, there wasn’t much support from either party for a bill that was, and still is, a radical piece of legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, and quite possibly the world.
Stathos prevailed, barely. It might have helped that he was seen riding his bicycle around Salem. Or that he had a mini bicycle in his briefcase that he would take out and assemble when he lobbied other lawmakers. At each step of the legislative process, the bill passed by one vote. Initially, Gov. Tom McCall didn’t favor it, but he changed his mind because he came to believe it was good for Oregon and all Oregonians, now and in the future. And he came to believe this because he listened to Don Stathos.
On the steps of the Capitol, McCall signed the Bicycle Bill on the seat of a bicycle. Soon thereafter, taxpayer funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths began trickling in. Construction began. Less than a generation later, the bill had put a permanent dent in the automobile’s hegemony, transformed transportation planning, helped citizens stay fit, became a national legislative model, and made Oregon the most bike friendly place in the country. Furthermore, it created unique, multiple and safe recreational and commuting opportunities that led many of Oregon’s citizens, including this writer, to practice a healthy cultural life.
One of the crowning achievements of Stathos’ vision is the Oregon Coast Bike Route, considered one of the premier touring rides in the world. I’ve bicycled it three times, most recently in 2001. It was during my first ride, back in the fall of 1991, that I really “saw” the Oregon Coast, stopped at nearly 50 beaches, and experienced the danger of riding Hwy. 101, with all its RVs, log trucks and teenage drivers.
Soon, bicyclists from all over the world will regularly appear. Motorists, give them some room, slow down, and never, ever, pass on the right into a shoulder. A cyclist could be right there.
Author remains hinged -- thanks to being 'Henged -- on a Newport beach
[Posted March 31, 2009]
A couple of weeks ago, the mail brought two more literary rejections. It seems I have no luck (or talent) attracting a national publisher for either one of my two non-fiction manuscripts about Oregon.
In combination, the rejections plunged me into total defeat. I felt licked and needed to see my therapist immediately.
Naturally, I went to beach. The doctor was in — she always is. And she never charges me a fee or demands I fill out paperwork.
I can honestly say that the availability of Oregon’s publicly owned ocean beaches means more to my mental and physical well-being than the health insurance I virtually never use. I think I’d go insane without this special Oregon outdoor custom.
After reading the second letter, Ray, the old shepherd, and I walked to my beach at dawn.
Art was on my mind, as in: what does an artist do when he submits his art to the national artistic establishment in hope of reaching a wider audience and the establishment consistently rejects his art? Does he quit? Does he retrench and keep trying? Does he take his art in a new direction hoping to please the establishment? Does he embrace the role of maverick and put out his art his own way?
Ray and I took our familiar path to the beach. I looked out to the ocean and noticed the tide was coming in fast, churning brown with lots of foam for extra measure. We jogged out to the sand and I pivoted north to the lighthouse.
But the lighthouse never came into view. Instead, I beheld a series of some 50 sculptures and altars of varying size and shape, all made from driftwood, burnt or barnacled or slimy smooth, all constructed with elaborate care and artistic intent, and spaced within a 40-yard stretch of sand at the base of the cliff. As I approached this marvel, I also noticed large words etched in the sand.
Sea God
Beware!!!
Dance!
In all my years of rambling Oregon Coast beaches, I’d never seen anything like this and I pretty much thought I’d seen (or done) it all. Less than 18 hours earlier, I’d visited the same spot with Ray and nothing like this existed. Most likely, the marvel had been constructed overnight.
I moved closer to inspect. I gave a gentle kick to one of the driftwood pillars, expecting it to budge easily. It did not. It was buried 3 feet deep, as were most of the other sculptures. We are talking about nearly 100 pieces of wood all firmly anchored in the sand.
Suddenly a wave swept into the area and soaked my shoes. I didn’t hear it coming. In a half hour, the incoming tide would batter the installation and, in time, collapse it. It was then I realized I might be the only person lucky enough to see this treasure of pure and undoubtedly spontaneous art. Someone didn’t care if they reached a wider audience. Someone didn’t care if another person saw his art. He made it because he felt like it. Or had to. Who had the time to do this? Who had this great notion?
I called for Ray and we started for home, but not before I took a couple of photographs to capture the moment for myself, as a reminder of why I write.
To the person or persons who made this: thank you.
Tidal character earns praise
Novelist Jim Lynch comes to Newport March 21
[Posted March 18, 2009]
In “The Highest Tide,” published to phenomenal reviews in 2005, author Jim Lynch achieved a literary Triple Crown: 1) best coming-of-age novel set in the Pacific Northwest; 2) best novel to resurrect the writing of the visionary Rachel Carson; 3) best novel to educate people about that awesome place where freshwater meets the sea under tidal influence — estuaries.
And I am pleased to report that Jim Lynch is coming to Newport on Saturday, March 21, to read from “The Highest Tide” (and his new novel, “Border Songs”) as part of the Nye Beach Writers’ Series at the Visual Arts Center at 7 p.m.
But even better than that (at least for me), Lynch has agreed to visit my Newport High School Creative Writing class and talk about the book, the writing craft, his interesting personal story of becoming a successful novelist in middle age, and his obsession with estuaries.
Estuaries. Those of us who live at the Oregon Coast interact with them on a daily basis and understand their magic, their pull. What I like about them is having learned that no two views of any estuary are ever the same. I don’t really feel that way about the ocean or sky.
“The Highest Tide” is set specifically in Olympia, on Puget Sound, vaguely in an era when alternative rock begins to matter to young people and television news reporters start acting like fools, meaning probably the early 90s.
In “The Sea Around Us,” Rachel Carson wrote, “There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.” It is a line, indeed a book, that Lynch’s protagonist Miles O’Malley, has read aloud, practically memorized, and treats as scripture.
Miles is a 13-year old boy, barely five feet tall, who exhibits an almost supernatural connection to the estuary he lives on with his parents. He also seems utterly indifferent to teenage popular culture and would rather spend time alone in his kayak, frequently in the dead of night, exploring the tidal flats and collecting species for an aquarium and restaurant.
Told through his voice some time after the story unfolds, the novel opens as Miles sums up his unusual summer: “I was ambushed by science, fame and suggestions of the divine.”
The plot begins when Miles begins finding sea creatures that have no business being found in Pacific Northwest estuaries. Lynch, an award-winning journalist in his previous literary life, dazzles the reader with exquisite detail about the creatures that Miles comes across. It’s not a stretch to say that once you’ve read “The Highest Tide,” you’ll never look at a tidal mudflat in the same way again, if you are one of those people who notices such things at all. And most of us who live at the Oregon Coast are such people.
By virtue of his freakish discoveries, Miles becomes a local celebrity, a scientific wunderkind, and when asked what it all means by a reporter, he says, “Maybe the earth is trying to tell us something.”
This ambiguously ominous statement attracts the attention of a nearby cult, whose members look to Miles as an oracle. As the media scrutiny of Miles’ findings intensifies, he struggles to understand the separation of his parents, the physical decline of an elderly woman who is his best friend, and his crush on a neighbor, a depressed and volatile punk rocker chick. Then he makes a prediction that the highest tide in 50 years will hit the area, which is of course impossible according to the tide tables. This prediction drives the last third of the novel and hints at one of Lynch’s most powerful themes: we don’t really understand our natural world and this ignorance is fraught with perilous consequences.
Lynch has written a compact, lively, timely, ecologically insightful, and spiritual story. In Miles, Lynch has created an unforgettable adolescent character strongly rooted to nature, a personality trait that study after study concludes is becoming a rarity in American teenagers.
Miles prefers to be outdoors, noticing, investigating, getting dirty, rather than be entertained by something electronic and remote. Once again, that sounds like a lot of us here at the coast. Homework assignment for March 21: read “The Highest Tide” and come out and hear Jim Lynch read from his minor masterpiece.
A Sapphire in the rough: Dr. Bob Bacon
[Posted March 5, 2009]
A true Oregon hero died in January at the age of 90. His name was Dr. Bob Bacon and back in 1967 he helped fight for passage of the Beach Bill, one of the most important laws ever passed in Oregon. Everyone reading this essay benefitted from this law but I doubt very many of you have heard the story of Dr. Bacon’s heroism.
The Beach Bill forever preserved the dry sands areas of our ocean beaches for exclusive public use and is why Oregon is Oregon. It’s also why we all love the coast and get to do all the crazy things we want at the beach and some prudish trophy home owner or fat security guard wearing a headset can’t tell us to knock it off.
The law was nearly tabled in the House of Representatives by a cabal of coastal Republican lawmakers, but through sheer, hard, unpaid labor, an uncompromising attitude, and a stroke of luck, Bacon, who worked full time as an anatomy professor at OHSU at the time, fought successfully to keep it alive. Without him, our beaches might very well look like Malibu’s minus all the bikinis and palm trees.
Exactly what kind of labor? He helped start a grass roots organization known as the Citizens to Save Oregon’s Beaches (the SOB’s as the developers called them!) that became the public face of opposition to those who wanted to privatize our public beaches. He hit the rubber chicken circuit and gave speeches to any civic group that would have him. He testified in Salem. He went on the radio, made phone calls and met sinister legislators in dive bars who told him to compromise or he could forget about the Beach Bill passing (he refused). He was told by his employer to lay low and not get involved in politics. Bacon refused and nearly sacrificed his medical career. He did all of this and much more and wasn’t paid a cent.
Eventually the Beach Bill passed and created one of the unique relationships in the world between a state’s citizenry and a natural resource. Had the Beach Bill not passed, I doubt I would have become the Oregon writer I did. I also know I would most likely be spiritually dead.
It was my great honor to interview Dr. Bacon in Gearhart back in 2003 for my first book, “Grasping Wastrels vs. Beaches Forever Inc.” Below is a brief excerpt:
Love: Did you guys celebrate when you found out the Beach Bill got signed?
Bacon: I don’t know. There was such a sense of relief and the reduction of pressure. I think everybody sort of collapsed. I strongly suspect that there were a few martinis. I was known amongst some of my students as martini maker back then too.
Love: Was that your drink of choice back then?
Bacon: Yes.
Love: Gin or vodka?
Bacon: Gin, the only true martini.
Love: And what brand was your favorite?
Bacon: Oh gosh, I don’t remember.
Love: Were you a Tanqueray fan?
Bacon: I don’t recall that in those days there was Tanqueray. I am a wine person largely today, but the only real cocktail is a martini. True martini. It’s called a Sapphire. Bombay Sapphire. A Bombay Sapphire martini is really something wonderful.
After the interview I took Dr. Bacon to the Sandtrap Inn in Gearhart for a drink. I bought an Oregon hero a Bombay Sapphire martini and I insisted it be a double. I had one too. When they came, I raised my glass and toasted this excellent Oregon man for all his effort on preserving Oregon’s ocean beaches. As should you.
But a toast is only one way to honor Dr. Bacon. In the last years of his life, he fought hard for the establishment of marine reserve areas in Oregon’s offshore territorial waters (0-3 miles out). The fate of these reserves is currently unknown and in the hands of the Oregon Legislature. The story of the battle to pass the Beach Bill and the story of the battle to establish marine reserves have fascinating similarities and some of the same stock characters. Should the reserves program gain legislative approval, one of the areas should be named after Dr. Bob Bacon. People should read his name on an Oregon map for the rest of the time Oregon is a state.
A first kiss sparks a lasting love affair
The author digs into the history
of his love of
Oregon’s beaches
[Posted Feb. 18, 2009]
Over the years, many people have asked me when and where my love affair with Oregon’s publicly owned beaches began.
Let me offer the probable genesis moment: It was 1977 and “Saturday Night Fever” had swept the country. That summer, a girl named Shelley and I held clammy hands as we broke away to find a makeout fort in the driftwood maze of Short Sand Beach in Oswald West State Park, named after Oswald West, the former Oregon governor who helped save the state’s ocean beaches from privatization back in 1913.
West had ridden a horse through this area in 1912 and later claimed the ride inspired him to write his ingenious 66-word bill that declared the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway, and thus in the public trust forever. It was quite possibly the most important law in Oregon history.
I didn’t learn anything about West in school. We got a steady dose of Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail but nothing about the real Oregon heroes who preserved nature so all of us could enjoy it today.
Shelley and I disappeared from view. No one noticed. The other Christians in our youth group from Oregon City Church of Christ roasted hotdogs or played Frisbee. No one read the Bible. I probably should have brought one along. I was a preacher’s kid and supposed to set an example.
It was my first adolescent outing to a beach on the Oregon Coast unaccompanied by my parents. Shelley was in ninth grade, blonde, and often wore yellow. She also wore a shell necklace that I could not get out of my mind, the way it dangled over her cleavage when I saw her pass me in the halls and smile. I was in seventh grade in Oregon City and thought Shelley the most beautiful unobtainable girl in the world. Thus, it utterly astonished me to learn on the bus ride over to the beach that she liked me. By the time I smelled the ocean, I sailed rapturously on unchartered seas.
We found the fort and took cover. I went to kiss her. What lips and eyes she had! After the kiss, I peered through a slat in the fort’s crooked walls, past the smoke, up the cliff to the Sitka spruces and hemlocks swaying in the background.
Sixty-four years earlier, Oswald West rode right through here. Without his ride, I would have never kissed Shelley the way I did, on a beach, for free.
And that’s where I think it all began.
One citizen's mark on the beach
The Letter of the Law
[Posted Jan. 23, 2009]
When I ramble an Oregon coast beach, I always thank former Oregon Governor Oswald West because he was the “First Lawgiver.” His 1913 law declaring the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway led to the creation of a unique cultural relationship between a state’s citizenry and its beaches not found in other coastal states. It established an utterly distinct tradition that absolutely astonishes then delights visitors from other places where beaches are privatized.
A question: Is there anything culturally more sacred to Oregonians than their right to freely recreate on their ocean beaches? No, nothing comes close. Forget skiing on Mt. Hood. It costs too much money and has precluded an entire class of Oregonians for generations. Every Oregonian has a beach story. Not every Oregonian has a mountain story. I don’t.
Having grown up in Oregon in the 1970s and 1980s, and conducted various rites of youth passage at the beach, I might have answered “no” to the aforementioned question back then. Now that I’ve lived at the Oregon coast for the past 11 years and observed what regularly goes down on our publicly-owned ocean beaches, I know the answer to my question is even a more solid “no!”
I also know, back in 1967, the special cultural relationship at the core of my answer was nearly destroyed. Frankly, Oregon was lucky it didn’t go the other way. It had everywhere else.
Oswald West’s law protected the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches, but there was no such safeguard of the dry sand areas, the space where virtually everyone recreated. In the summer of 1966, an elderly couple and their nephew were kicked off the beach by a motel owner as they picnicked in front of the owner’s Cannon Beach motel. They might have been the first Oregonians in the state’s history to experience such a shock. And the nephew, a graduate student in biochemistry at OHSU named Lawrence Bitte, didn’t like it at all. Bitte wrote a letter, excerpted below, to then Secretary of State Tom McCall.
Dear. Mr. McCall:
Tuesday morning, August 16, while visiting the Oregon coast near Haystack Rock (South Cannon Beach) I came upon an area of beach outlined with driftlogs and posted with signs claiming this particular section of beach was reserved for guests of the Surfsands Motel. Upon venturing into this “restricted” area on the assumption that the Oregon beaches were public property (under supervision of the state highway department), we were confronted by an employee of the motel who told us that the beach was owned by a Mr. Bill Hay and that we would have to leave. This brings several questions to mind:
Does ownership of the beach property extend seaward to a point of mean high tide?
Does the owner of beach frontage have, with his title, the right to build earth fills out over previously sandy beaches?
Who issues building permits which allow a private structure to be built on a previously sandy beach beyond a point of natural terrain?
What legally constitutes a beach and can this term be widely interpreted?
I am greatly disturbed by the situation at the Surfsands Motel, because I feel it establishes a precedence which will lead to the eventual defacing of all Oregon beaches and the take-over by commercial enterprises which profit from public use of the sandy areas of the beach. Since tempers are presently running high among those who are aware of the situation, at the Surfsands Motel, would you please answer my questions at your earliest convenience?
As incredible as it may sound, this letter by an Oregon citizen touched off the epic 1967 legislative battle that culminated with passage of the landmark law known as the Beach Bill. This law, which nearly died in committee due to a group of coastal legislators, reaffirmed the public’s domain over publicly owned beaches. The statute empowered Oregon “to forever preserve…ocean beaches of the state… so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
I’ve written extensively about this legislative battle in previous One Man’s Beach columns, and all the unsung political and journalism heroes who helped win perhaps the greatest political victory in the state’s history.
But I think it’s worth noting that it all began with one citizen speaking up, going on the offensive when a narrow interest threatened to privatize Oregon’s “great birthright,” the memorable phrase Oswald West used to describe our ocean beaches. Think about that citizen the next time you ramble the beach for free.
Listen to the coyote
[Posted 1.7.09]
A month ago, I seethed in anger over the U.S. government’s desecration of a special natural place on the Oregon coast that I had spent a majority of my adult life restoring to ecology. To voice my opposition to this desecration, I planned a very public act of civil disobedience that would quite probably lead to my arrest.
On a 38-degree morning, I walked my dog to the beach to plot my mission. In 18 hours, in the dead of night, just hours before the desecration officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony, I would execute my mission. The perpetrators of the desecration would never see my statement coming. But they would know its maker.
After a half-mile walk from the house, I approached the beach from a winding and descending path that cut through salmonberry and willow. Soon the path leveled, led into an opening, and I looked west, across a creek, out to a Pacific of perfect surfing waves and perfect blue sky.
Suddenly, a large brown, orange and white-colored coyote entered the foreground. He was running north down the sand not more than 50 yards away from me. At almost the exact moment I noticed him, he stopped and turned to me. I’m certainly no animist but I instantly identified the coyote’s presence as some kind of urgent personal message, although I was at a loss to fathom its meaning.
A few seconds later, the coyote resumed his northward course and disappeared from my sight. I felt compelled to follow. I unleashed my dog, crossed a bridge, and jogged down the path to the beach. The dog lagged behind to sniff around and mark his territory.
A high tide had swept the beach clean of all markings except the coyote’s footprints. I followed them for a few seconds and then looked up and saw 75 yards down the beach the coyote sprinting closely parallel to the rock and sandy cliffs that rose 60 feet high in some places.
Then the coyote abruptly halted and turned around. He looked right at me and I was transfixed until my dog zoomed by me in pursuit, if a 14-year old partially epileptic canine with two bad hips can be said to zoom. I marveled at my old dog’s burst of energy and watched the spectacle for a couple of minutes until I realized the coyote hadn’t moved and seemed to be waiting for the dog.
I took off running and when the dog closed within 10 yards of the coyote, I saw the coyote scamper up a nearly vertical 20-foot rock wall, and then, surprisingly, sit up instead of disappearing into the Scotch broom and shore pine thicket. The dog went to the base of the wall and started barking and making short aborted attempts to scale the wall.
By now I had closed within 30 yards and was calling to the dog. He turned his head and then I saw the coyote slide down the wall to within several feet of him. The dog made no move toward him, nor did the coyote advance on the dog.
As I came within 15 yards, the coyote scampered back up the wall and sat up. I went to the base and looked directly up at him, into his white and orange face. We stared at each other for 10 seconds and then I disengaged, leashed up the dog, and headed home. A few seconds later I turned around and the coyote had slid down the wall again and appeared to be following us. I stopped, he stopped, and I began to listen.
Here’s what the coyote told me: let go. The coyote told me to have the courage to not do something out of anger or disgust or vainglory.
And that’s exactly what I did, with my dog by my side, this morning, on the beach, at dawn, a few hours before the ribbon was cut. I listened to the coyote. Others, the desecrators, never heard him.
Sonny's Tragedy
[Posted Dec. 23, 2008]
On Sept. 17, 2008, at approximately 5:30 a.m., fate intervened with my cherished relationship to Oregon’s publicly-owned ocean beaches, the most sacred place in the world to me, and shattered it.
Starting out that clear morning, I expected a routine ramble down the sand with Ray, my shepherd, and Sonny, my husky. I say “routine” because I’d rambled this way nearly 1,500 times over the last decade and it is no exaggeration to claim that these moments with my dogs evolved into my entire spiritual and physical fitness life and helped me compose first drafts of virtually everything I’d eventually see published. In other words, my time with my dogs was my church, my gym, my office, and I might add – my therapist.
We began in typical fashion. Ray lagged behind sniffing and urinating, while Sonny, a fantastic and manic runner, bolted ahead out of sight as she always did, but to no alarm, because she always returned.
But this morning she didn’t return. At some point I stopped rambling and began searching for Sonny. Ray jogged behind me as I called out to her, wondering where the hell she was.
I called for ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. Desperation mounted in me like never before. Had Sonny been swept away by a sneaker wave? I’d heard of this happening.
Half an hour later, I headed for home and prayed, screamed, aloud that Sonny might await me on the path leading back to the road. Approaching the path, I heard, over the incoming waves, a strange yelp, then, seconds later, an even more bizarre, agonizing cry. I sprinted up the path in almost total darkness and saw something moving awkwardly in front of me. There, I beheld Sonny splayed on the asphalt, drooling, convulsing, and unable to walk. I quickly felt her body all over and she seemed paralyzed in the legs. I picked her up and began running the half mile home. At some point, crying, exhausted, I set Sonny down on a lawn and sprinted with Ray back to the house to get the truck and bring her home. As all of this unfolded, I sensed that my wonderful routine with my dogs, something I’d worked very hard to maintain, was coming to an end. And I was scared.
Thirty minutes later I dropped Sonny off at the vet. She still couldn’t walk, but was lucid, so a stroke seemed unlikely. I couldn’t conceive of what was wrong with her. She had no bruises, cuts, or punctures of any kind. How does a dog simply become paralyzed in the legs?
In a daze, I taught four periods at Newport High School and then rushed over to the vet’s. He informed me that Sonny had contracted coonhound paralysis syndrome, a rare virus originating from raccoons that is apparently passed through saliva. I was told her condition could last four days or eight months or forever.
For the next few days, Sonny barely moved. Then her paralysis ebbed, and she was somewhat able to walk, offering me some hope she might recover.
But one afternoon as I worked in the yard, Sonny jumped off the deck and landed awkwardly on her front legs, which, because of their weakened condition due to the paralysis, could not safely bear her weight. Imagine a man jumping off a roof and landing on his hands and you get the picture. Sonny severely strained, but didn’t rupture, her ligaments, and since that day in September, I’ve immobilized her to allow the ligaments to heal. This has meant no walking at all and carrying her in and out of the house.
In the subsequent three months, I’ve tried various traditional and non-tradition rehabilitation strategies and nothing has worked. Sonny still cannot walk properly, let alone run. One vet has recommended a splint for six months to allow the ligaments to heal. Another vet has recommended Sonny have surgery, which entails inserting metal plates in her legs for support. Other people whose pets have suffered similar ligament damage have suggested something else. Contradictions abound and I’m not sure what to do about her condition.
Since Sonny went down, my whole routine and attitude have changed. I was on such a superb high with a new teaching job, a new book coming out, and my new life here in Newport. Then, the horrible setback occurred and I can’t seem to shake off this feeling of utter dread. This last month, I’ve experienced the worst depression of my life and my physical fitness has nearly disappeared. I don’t write all that much anymore either.
And I barely go to the beach. And never in the morning. And when I do, I often start crying.
Finish the party
[Posted 12.10.08]
Orange and red streaked the sky as the dogs and I made our way to the beach on a recent frosty morning. It was Sunday and I doubted I’d encounter another human being — half the state was on their way to church and the other half was hung over from celebrating OSU’s last second football victory to keep their Rose Bowl hopes alive.
We hit the sand — no one there! We headed north and as a few gulls fed at the wrack line, I came across the remains of a party: a single log still burning, a liter bottle of Coke, and 1.75 liter bottle of Evan Williams (green label) bourbon.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with drinking either Coke or bourbon at the beach, especially around a fire with friends or family in celebration of something wonderful. And especially if you walked home after the party to wherever you are sleeping for the night, which I suspected was the case here because of the proximity of many vacation homes in the area.
But here’s what struck me as wrong with the scene:
Obviously, the revelers inexcusably and criminally left garbage on the beach, about the uncoolest Oregon thing you can do — and that includes using an umbrella or drinking bottled water. Undoubtedly worse, however, these miscreants drank Evan Williams green label, a terrible tasting spirit better used for cooking than drinking. At least go with the 86-proof black label, a decent meat and potatoes spirit and a bargain to boot in these recession-wrought hard times.
Another problem: I don’t like to judge, but the fact that garbage was left behind suggests the presence of vastly inferior human beings and thus, they probably did drink their bourbon with Coke — a desecration on the order of using an umbrella and drinking bottled water while walking down an Oregon Coast beach.
Finally, and most outrageously: the partiers didn’t finish the Evan Williams! At least six or seven shots remained.
C’mon! Finish the party! This is Oregon, home of Oswald West’s and Tom McCall’s publicly owned beaches, where we demand the right to freely recreate and raise hell with the same zeal the 49ers raced to California to strike gold.
Naturally, I gathered up the garbage and brought it home. The Coke bottle would be redeemed for a dime and, as for the bourbon … I couldn’t bear to pour it out, even if was Evan Williams green label.
Plenty of recipes call for whiskey.
Giving Thanks
[Posted Nov. 25, 2008]
This week at Thanksgiving, most families will participate in some kind of ritual before eating the big meal. Well, at least I hope they do. It might be a blessing, a verse, a statement from the patriarch or matriarch, or even a moment of silence. The ritual may or may not follow a religious tradition.
At my family’s Thanksgiving, my mother always says a short ecumenical prayer of thanks. Afterward, during the meal, the men try to catch glimpses of the Dallas Cowboys game silently unfolding on television a room away. My family hails from Texas and once lived or died by the Cowboys’ fortunes on Thanksgiving.
I say “once” because a couple of decades ago, the game’s sound was turned up during the meal. Thankfully, we’ve matured as a family since then.
My mother says excellent prayers, but I prefer invocations above all else to precede the meal. An invocation is a short speech appealing to a higher power. The phrase “higher power” invokes different meanings to different people. Define it anyway you like – this is America, you know, and we enjoy that privilege. In my invocations, I like to count my blessings and give thanks.
This year, I’ll read an invocation after my mom’s prayer. It will go something like this:
I give thanks because I ran down my beach this morning with my dog and not another human was around.
I give thanks that Oregon’s ocean beaches are free, publicly owned, and that I have the fitness to run down them as far as I want to run.
I give thanks to Oswald West, Samuel Boardman, Matt Kramer, Sidney Bazett, Tom McCall and Bob Straub for fighting successfully so many years ago to keep Oregon’s ocean beaches free and in the public trust forever.
I give thanks to my parents, who always supported me when I struck out to see the world and came back broke. Their patience and generosity helped me become a writer.
I give thanks the 18th Amendment was repealed so I can enjoy an excellent Oregon wine with this meal.
I give thanks to my Newport High School students for their passion, creativity and hearty coast sensibilities – no umbrellas!
I give thanks to Newport High School Principal Jon Zagel for letting me run with my ideas.
I give thanks I can hear sea lions barking from my classroom window.
I give thanks to Café Mundo in Newport for its rocking Thursday night open mic sessions and liberal editorial policy.
I give thanks to my great dogs who keep me sane.
I give thanks I live at the Oregon Coast and not Southern California. On business there recently, I saw Santa Monica’s beaches: $13 to park, fences, no dogs.
And of course, I thank Oregon Coast Today for running my columns. It’s the best writing gig in the state.
Amen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re thankful to Matt Love. Thanks for writing!
Forgo the straight line
[Posted Nov. 12, 2008]
“Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Several years ago I saw a man on Nestucca Spit, in Bob Straub State Park, who I cannot get out of my mind.
I was cruising south down the spit with one of the dogs when I noticed someone a hundred yards away coming toward me, riding a bicycle in the wet sand with his right hand on the handlebars and his left hand clutching a bag. Attached to the banana-styled seat was a white fiberglass rod decorated on top with an orange flag swaying limply in the breeze.
I said audibly, “What is this?” At the time, I’d never seen anyone ride a bike down a beach. As of this writing, I’ve seen only one other person. (When she passed me at dawn near Ona Beach, she told me she was riding from Newport to the Oregon Country Fair! Apparently the route was: bike to Florence, turn left.)
The man rode closer toward us, pedaling his one-speed, paint-peeling, contraption of a bike, nonchalantly zigzagging his way down the sand. As he came into complete view, I could see his plastic bag held bottles and cans. I noticed something else too: his face and dress bore the unmistakable hard look of a person who might sleep under a highway on-ramp or camp out year-round in the forest. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.
He passed me and I waved. He gave me a nod and raised the bag in my direction. For a few minutes, I watched him ride down the spit carrying his loot and particularly marveled that, when a wave rushed in, threatening to swamp his bicycle’s chains, he never once altered his course to evade the water; he never once rode in a straight line and the water never grazed him.
Back in the parking lot, the dogs and I encountered a young couple in wet suits unloading two wooden kayaks. I went over to them as they struggled to lift the shiny vessels off a gargantuan blue SUV.
“Can I help you guys?” I asked.
“No, I think we’ve almost got it,” said the man.
“Just out of curiosity do you mind me asking how much the kayaks cost? They look spectacular.”
“They’re four grand each.”
“Wow.”
The next day, I brought my old mountain bike to the spit. The dog chased and barked after me all the way to the mouth of Nestucca Bay. There, we spooked 30 or so harbor seals hauled out on the sand. They splashed hurriedly into the water and sent up a charming chorus of snorts and grunts. I apologized to them profusely, turned the bike around, and we made our way north, zigzagging with no particular place to go in mind and a lot of time on my side. I never once rode in a straight line.
Wings generate impressive lift
[Posted Oct. 29, 2008]
Recently, after receiving a literary rejection from a New York editor, I headed to the beach with the dogs to determine a possible course of action. I needed to see the ocean and wanted answers to wash ashore.
Quitting was on my mind. I mean, at what point do you pack it in?
As I walked out on the beach, Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park to be exact, the dogs split off in different directions and the wind nudged me to the water’s edge, where an extreme low tide revealed odd undulations in the sand. To my left, 20 yards away, I noticed an elderly couple standing wordlessly together, vacantly staring at the ocean. A large white box roughly the size of a golf bag rested near them between pieces of driftwood.
Curiosity got the better of me, so I veered toward the couple. As I drew nearer I saw a picture of an airplane with a propeller on the box. A few steps closer and I could read the box’s bold energetic lettering. An explanation of this mystery began to coalesce in my mind when I asked the man, “What happened?”
“I forgot to raise the antenna,” he said in monotone without looking at me. “The antenna on the airplane. I don’t understand how I could have forgotten.” The woman said nothing. She was still searching the horizon.
“Well, you seem to be taking it well,” I said. He didn’t respond.
I asked him more questions and he freely answered them all without a shred of emotion or ever taking his eyes off the water.
It was the airplane’s inaugural flight, brand new out of the box. The plane had lifted off flawlessly from the wet sand runway on a perfect low tide. It had barely cleared a wave and then flown a straight line out over the ocean until a gust of wind rose up and banked it toward Haystack Rock.
“I went to move the stick on the remote controller,” he said, “and…nothing. A few seconds later, the plane somersaulted, then stalled, and then plunged nose first into ocean.”
The man’s wife chipped in a few details and she was equally dispassionate. She never once looked at me either. His stoicism in the face of a comic fiasco entirely of his own doing struck me as nothing short of incredible. The average American man, in a similar situation, would rage and curse until an embolism threatened to form and travel upward. Yes, how refreshing. How unlike me, when I received a letter from a New York editor.
It was time to leave them alone and head down the spit with the dogs. Ten minutes later I turned around. The couple still looked west. Five minutes later I turned around again and saw the woman sprint toward the surf while the man hesitated. She waded into the water and he ran toward her. I made her out picking up a part of the plane, a wing, it appeared. He joined her in the water, and for the next few minutes, they carried out a joint salvage operation. I watched all of this from a half mile away. I could not take my eyes off them. Finally, nothing else washed ashore and they started to leave the beach, each holding parts of the plane.
I had more questions. I called out to the dogs and we hustled to the parking lot. As the man loaded up the wreckage into his camper van, I walked up to him. His wife was inside straightening things up.
“You found it!”
“Yes, but it’s shot. The motor is ruined.”
“I admire your patience in waiting.”
“Well, I was ready to leave but my wife said she would wait a while longer. Then she saw it wash up.”
The wife emerged from the van, petted the dogs, and we all chatted for 10 minutes or so. They had both just retired and had bought the van, a tricked-out beauty I coveted for a literary road adventure some far flung editor would never understand. I also learned the couple planned on spending Christmas at the beach in a campground; they had expected to fly the plane every day at low tide, weather permitting.
I drove away feeling I wasn’t ready to quit the literary dream—not quite yet.
The Tillamookian Id rules supreme
[Posted Oct. 15, 2008]
Sometimes, a man needs more than nature, more than just rambling the beach with the dogs at dawn to keep his mind active. Sometimes, in the course of human events, it is necessary for a man to experience a mind-blowing human event to maintain a healthy psychological balance.
I know of one such event in South Tillamook County.
On Saturday, Oct. 18, the annual bacchanal known as the Hooker’s Ball unfolds in all its outrageous glory at the Sportsman’s Pub and Grub Tavern in Pacific City [Map It!]. Over the years, I’ve witnessed several balls and afterwards always felt at a loss to describe or analyze what occurred there.
Now I don’t even try.
At a certain seasoned point in life, many people claim to “have seen it all,” and thus no longer cultivate the possibility of being surprised or enlightened.
I say for the record here that if you haven’t attended the Hooker’s Ball, then, in fact, you have not “seen it all.”
Exactly what is the Hooker’s Ball? Let me offer a clinical definition: for over two decades, one night a year, local men have dressed themselves as stereotyped female prostitutes, assumed the characters of those prostitutes, and then partied in plain view of their friends and partners in a tavern decorated with erotic female undergarments, including some hanging from the ceiling. Might I add that photographs are taken and that patrons have been known to dance on the tables?
No doubt Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey would feel quite professionally pleased by these developments, since the Hooker’s Ball represents almost irrefutable confirmation of their various controversial theses.
And speaking of Dr. Freud, if you plan on attending the Hooker’s Ball, you might do well to bone up on his famous psychological concepts of the Id, Ego and Superego. You can forget about seeing the latter two in action at the Sportsman’s on the 18th. They get checked at the door. A collective supercharged Tillamookian Id will rule supreme instead.
You might want to take a calming walk on the beach after experiencing this kind of intensity, and thankfully, Bob Straub State Park is a quarter mile from the Sportsman’s front door.
The cross-dressing party hour begins at 9 p.m. A DJ provides the music and first-time visitors should expect the unexpected and be prepared to draw upon Jesus’ wisdom: “Those without sin can cast the first stone.”
The Throw
[Posted Oct. 1, 2008]
I saw something on the beach a while back that I can’t get out of my mind, although I’d like to. It was yet another reminder to me that not everyone goes to the beach for blissful reasons.
The salt and brine smelled especially stiff that afternoon. For five minutes I walked south with my dogs down the sand and gazed upon the incoming tide’s multiple white layers. The sun came and went but that hardly mattered. I had skipped work and had the place to myself.
I turned around to take in vistas from the north. A hundred yards down the beach I saw a smallish barefooted woman saunter at angles toward the waves. She almost appeared to be dancing.
Then I clearly saw her remove a ring from her left hand and clasp it with her right. She stopped at the water’s edge, let the tide wash over her feet, hesitated for a moment, then cocked her right arm back and threw the ring west with all her might. I know the throw didn’t come from a jilted fiancé. Only married people throw like this. Or soon to be unmarried people.
This was no reality show. No one else was around to egg her on or get her to say something contrived or clichéd to the camera. For all know, she could have driven from Pendleton to make her throw. I doubt, from wherever she originated, that it was planned.
She retreated from the water, no longer sauntering. I thought about a line from a Richard Hugo poem, “On this dishonored, this perverted globe / we go back to the sea and the sea opens for us.”
[Posted Sept. 17, 2008]
You can’t Beat dining like Kerouac
“I was guts and juice and ready to go.”
– Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
Fall on the Oregon coast is the perfect time to visit a favorite beach in combination with enjoying the special pleasure of consuming good food and drink there. This year, in what may be a radical change for you, I suggest eating at the beach the way the famous Beat writer Jack Kerouac once ate when he went on an outdoor adventure. Aren’t you game for something new in your life? You just might like it.
OK, I admit some of Kerouac’s writing hasn’t held up well. Frequently, his sentences plod along and much of his work feels dated and unimportant. But when Kerouac is on and riffing, like in many of his letters (“Her face is all moonlight and Keats, man. To live like Jesus and Thoreau, except for women.”) And in “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums,” his words are scripture for how to be “gone,” how not to conform, how to live right with very little want or need, how to interact right with the American outdoors, and how to cross the country subsisting on bologna sandwiches, apple pie and ice cream.
So, for your next beach adventure, I offer a certain Kerouac-styled recipe with the hope you’ll give it a try.
Jack Kerouac’s Recipe for an
Oregon Coast Beach Experience
Serves: As many who are worthy
Notes: In “The Dharma Bums,” which he defined as one of his “true-story novels,” Kerouac recounts a few scenes where he (sometimes with a buddy) experiences a physically and emotionally demanding situation, like a hobo ride in a box car or a grueling mountain climb, that pushes him to a point of total exhaustion and hunger. Immediately afterwards, he restores his energy and celebrates his achievement by preparing simple but hearty food and eating it with gusto – in the field. The food must be cheap and you must revel in it. Thus, it obviously can’t be a vacuum-packed meal from REI.
For example: in the beginning of the novel, Kerouac rides a freight train on a cold night along the coast near Santa Barbara, jumps off, and decides to camp out on the beach. He goes for a swim and then: “I cooked hotdogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the red hot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life.”
Later, after almost summiting a 9,000-foot mountain in Yosemite in tennis shoes, and camped on a rock outcropping at the snow line, Kerouac eats a bulghur and vegetable stew with chopsticks and real chocolate pudding (cooked on a fire then cooled in a snow bank) for dessert. The meal over, he declares, “It was the most delicious supper of all time.”
So the idea is to plan a brutally tough, inexpensive beach adventure, say hiking the length of the Bay Ocean, Nestucca, or Nehalem sand spits, take yourself past your physical and psychological limits, pack along food, and cook up a simple and grand supper in the field immediately after concluding the adventure.
Ingredients:
• 1 cup outdoor adventure that pushes you to total exhaustion.
• 1 cup solitude. Bringing a friend is OK, but he can’t whine, bring shiny, trendy gear or a phone. He should not want to talk much, especially about his job or college football.
• 1 cup of self-righteousness. You are copying Kerouac and that sets a person apart.
• 1 cup of perseverance. You can’t quit.
• 1 cup of unpretentious food that can be cooked or prepared in the field: I like two fried egg, onion and tomato sandwiches with a cold beer, or canned vegetarian chili with fresh garlic and white wine in a plastic bottle that can chill quickly in a stream. All meals have to be cooked in the field or it isn’t properly Kerouacian. Don’t cut corners and bring something from a deli!
• 1 cup of being absolutely in the moment when you are exerting and eating. Think about nothing but the experience, your fatigue, the landscape, and the taste of the food you chose, hauled to a spot, prepared, and savored.
Directions
Mix this all together on a fine summer day and you will be compelled to say, and in fact you must declare, as Kerouac always did: “This is the best meal I’ve ever had.”
And always for dessert, if you can’t cook up chocolate pudding, try Kerouac’s favorite treat: a chocolate bar washed down with port wine.
'It isn't everyone that has an ocean.'
Remembering Samuel L. Boardman
[Posted Sept. 3, 2008]
Every now and then, when life becomes blue or bilious, it helps to hear a good hero story to get one’s self through the day … or week … or month. I prefer hearing the great stories of Oregon heroes where the hero did something courageous that ended up making my life better. I especially like the stories where the heroes later wrote about the experience with the intention of inspiring me to care about Oregon and the preservation of its natural resources.
Samuel H. Boardman is one such Oregon hero and Samuel Boardman was an excellent and passionate writer with the power to inspire.
From 1929 to 1950, Boardman served as Oregon’s first park superintendent. He once took a pay cut to keep his office going during the Depression, when the idea of the state government buying private land for parks was inconceivable, practically dangerous. He is rightly considered the “father” of the Oregon state parks system and almost single-handedly preserved more natural spaces in Oregon — 50,000 acres — than anyone else. Fifty-thousand acres!
If the U.S. Constitution didn’t prohibit the states from issuing their own currencies, Boardman’s face and one of the great places he saved from concrete would be on both sides of our $10 bill. I rank him as one of the greatest Oregonians because of his zealotry for establishing a system of coastal state parks that ended up as a showcase for the rest of country, if not the world.
The state honored Boardman in 1951 by naming a park after him on the Southern Oregon Coast. Samuel H. Boardman State Park, a narrow, 12-mile strip in Curry County, is a priceless gem of a park and a fitting tribute. In the 1940s, Boardman had wanted this land to become part of a larger national park that would have been Oregon’s second, after Crater Lake. Boardman toured federal officials around the area and the deal nearly went through, but a few local stockmen objected and helped kill the necessary Congressional appropriation.
Shortly after he retired, Boardman wrote a fascinating unpublished memoir of his experiences acquiring private land for state parks. It’s more of an extended sermon rather than a memoir. I came across the manuscript in old issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and read it one memorable sitting.
Boardman wrote about Oregon:
Keep it immaculate for the whisper in the treetops tells you what men can’t tell you at Lake Success. Keep things immaculate that there may be a few places open for communion. The quiet of a wooded lake takes you from the hum of Main Street, and the spiritual side of your being is atoned. Never sacrifice His works that the commercial hot dog and its odors may take over.
Boardman on parks:
The value of a park cannot be based on a monetary value. Its scenic spiritual assets are beyond computation. Might not the answers of a distressed world be found in the God-given sermonettes of a park system?
And my favorite lines from Boardman’s memoir? Naturally, they are about the Oregon Coast.
Too much time of a life is spent in the valleys.
The beach is noted for its singing sands. May it ever be a melody of pleasure for its visitors.
It isn’t everyone that has an ocean.
Are you spending too much time in the valleys? Do you need to hear the beach’s music? Oregon has an ocean. You should visit as much as possible and remember the important work performed by an indefatigable Oregon civil servant named Samuel Boardman. Without him, you might not have enjoyed Oregon’s world famous access to hear that music.
The Coolest Literary Place in Oregon
'One Man's Beach' - by Matt Love
[Posted Aug. 21, 2008]
Every time I am in the vicinity of Mt. Neahkahnie, I am compelled to stop at Oswald West State Park. How can I not, knowing it’s named for the governor who wrote and steered to passage an ingenious 66-word bill in 1913 that declared the beaches a public highway, and thus in the public trust forever?
I also dig the existential vibe evaporating off the surfers who dominate the scene, the towering hemlocks and cedars, and that people have to hike a considerable distance to reach the beach.
Together, these qualities push Oswald West State Park into the top 10 list of Coolest Oregon Places.
But what makes this park number one for me is a certain obscure writing attraction that, I declare here, should be visited by every citizen of Oregon, especially any writer.
The attraction is called the Matt Kramer Memorial and it amounts to a plaque tucked away on the route to Cape Falcon. It is so utterly remote and unpretentious that it took me two hours to locate it after I learned of its existence several years ago from a footnote in a book purchased at garage sale.
The plaque, which overlooks Short Sand Beach, reads:
“The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill.”
Just who was Matt Kramer?
He was veteran reporter covering the Capitol beat and the 1967 session of the Oregon Legislature. His dispatches on the early, near-fatal legislative fate of the “Beach Bill” that appeared in newspapers around the state helped keep the bill in the public eye and secure its eventual passage. Indeed, my research indicates that one story in particular, one that Kramer wrote during the May 1967 death rattle of the bill, may be the main reason Oregon has open beaches without fences and security guards wearing headsets.
One journalist. Meager pay. God-awful boring hearings in a legislative subcommittee. No environmental pros from Portland feeding Kramer canned goods. No received wisdom from television or talk radio. Kramer just wrote some straight news of the clarifying inverted pyramid type extinct in contemporary American newspapers. The man simply wrote 40,000-50,000 words in five months (I’ve read them all) and his sentences awakened a sleeping giant—the people of Oregon—to the shocking news that their publicly-owned beaches in the dry sands areas were imperiled by privatization.
My favorite Kramer sentence is:
“There has been a public outcry to preserve the beaches since some private owners began claiming the beach down to the high tide line and began barring the public.”
Clear and incisive. Just like the plaque says. And with his sentences and stories, Matt Kramer made Oregon history.
Looking down to the surfers below the memorial, taking in the Pacific Ocean, looking north to Cape Falcon, I always feel ethereal when I realize the state erected a plaque to a journalist for his work on behalf of protecting Oregon’s beaches. It would be all I could ever dream of achieving from the writing life.
Every journalism school student from an Oregon university should visit the Matt Kramer Memorial as a requirement to graduate. Next fall, I plan on taking my Newport High School journalism students there to lay hands on the plaque and pledge fealty to the power of reporting the news without bias and agenda. We’ll bring some tools and trim back the foliage around the plaque. It’s the least we can do. Then we’ll jog down the path and hit Short Sand beach and play with wild abandon — for free.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Tides, and luck, can change on the beach
[Posted Aug. 6, 2008]
Not too long ago, I pulled into the parking lot of coastal state park at dawn on a week day. I saw a large and shiny red truck parked there, which surprised me, because it’s rare to see another vehicle at this hour, but occasionally one appears.
After I let my truck’s tailgate down, the dogs flew out and headed toward the beach. I took a quick detour toward the other truck to investigate what I already knew I’d find. Sure enough, some dude was asleep in the cab.
Back in the days of my purposeless twenties living in Portland, when rock hadn’t died and you didn’t need a credit card to buy a pitcher of Oregon beer, I lived in a large house with several other purposeless men, including my cousin Darin, who, to that point, was the unluckiest person I’d ever met in my life. He also handled defeat and setback harder than anyone else I’d ever seen.
Darin had always been cursed with bad luck and misfortune. As a teenager he’d lost a coin flip to his younger brother for a ticket to see Game 6 of the 1977 NBA Finals, when the Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Philadelphia 76ers for their only championship. He would let a friend borrow his truck and the friend would fill it with the wrong gasoline and ruin the engine. He would seemingly always get beat on the long touchdown pass in the family’s Thanksgiving football games. A severe reading disability eliminated any chance of academic success. And when the bad luck and misfortune rained down on Darin, he would invariably handle it by brooding with extreme intensity and keeping all to himself, which was bracing to witness because Darin had one of the biggest hearts and kindest dispositions manifest in a young man I’d ever encountered.
During the short time I lived with him in Portland, I remember two, possibly three instances, where he suffered some bad luck or misfortune, and reacted by immediately driving to the ocean. It didn’t matter if it was 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., raining or dry. He would drive to the nearest beach, two hours away, and sleep in his truck until he felt prepared to return home and deal with the problem, typically girlfriend-related. When he arrived at the beach, I’m not sure he ever left his vehicle. I don’t know because I never asked him why he made these impulsive westward dashes. I do know I thought them ridiculous.
Now that I live at the beach, I understand Darin’s impulse. I frequently see people sleeping in their vehicles at coastal state parks in the early mornings the same crumpled way I imagine Darin sleeping 20 years ago. I also occasionally run across someone in the dunes, positioned fetally in a sleeping bag. These people, these Oregonians, had to get to the ocean. During the last decade living near the sea, I’ve felt lucky I didn’t have to drive as far as they do. It now takes me seven minutes to see the marine therapist.
At some point, Darin’s luck changed and now he’s living a full life with a great family in Washington. I like to think an Oregon ocean beach had something settling and pivotal to offer him when he needed it. I know the beach offers the same to me every morning. And of course, in Oregon, it doesn’t cost a cent.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Seal, its fate, occupy one man's thoughts
At 6:10 a.m. Sunday, on my regular beach walk with my two dogs, I discovered a harbor seal pup resting above the rack line, some 70 yards from the ocean. He or she was alive and writhing, apparently waiting for its mother to return. I was the only human being around, which normally I prefer, insist upon, but not this time.
The dogs approached the pup but I herded them away and watched it for 10 minutes from 30 feet away. At one point it looked directly at me, blinked twice, and raised a flipper to me.
I began to feel a mounting distress. I know you are never supposed to touch pups in situations like these, but it seemed a long, long way from the water. I was sure the next high tide would never reach it, although, despite walking the beach every morning, I knew practically nothing of the tides.
Finally I left and ran home with the dogs. I grabbed a camera and drove back down to the beach. I went over to the pup and took some photographs.
I saw a woman and her dog down the beach and jogged over. I told her about the pup and we discussed its possible fate.
“Let’s see,” she said, “high tide was at 4:40 a.m. and then next one is at around 11:30 a.m. What time is it?”
“7 a.m.”
“Just wait and see. If no one bothers it, the mother will come back. Most of the people around here know not to touch a seal pup.”
I don’t like to wait. I feel obligations in moments like these. It is hard to let go sometimes and let nature run the show, as it always has in the past, and always will until the end.
A few minutes later, I said goodbye to the woman and went home. I decided to drive to a café in Newport a couple of miles away and wait with coffee and distractions. The plan was to return to the beach at 11:30 and see if the pup was still there. If it was, the mother probably wasn’t coming back and the pup would die. And it would suffer too, and I felt sure I would be compelled to alleviate the suffering, although I had no idea what that might entail.
In the café, I read the Oregonian and New York Times, wrote in my journal, and read an old copy of a Paris Review collection of interviews with writers. In the book, I came across a line by William Faulkner: “A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination.”
I underlined the sentence and thought I might later quote it to my creative writing students.
Time passed and the three-hour wait plunged me into the second most intense sense of dread I have ever felt in my life. Number one was walking into the Tillamook County Courthouse seven years ago to file for divorce.
The vigil concluded, I drove slowly home to learn the pup’s fate. As I waited at an intersection for the light to change, it suddenly occurred to me: “What a fool! I could have sat on the cliff above the beach, watched in real time how this story ended, and documented the drama with photographs!”
But I let my sense of dread defeat my curiosity about the world, which amounts to nothing less than literary suicide for any writer. Or a kind of suicide for all people too, I think.
The dogs were leashed as we took the trail to the beach. I noticed the wet sand, freshly swept by the recent tide. Had it been high enough? I looked north at the rack line where I last saw the pup.
Gone. And I missed it all.
Matt Love lives in South Beach, and is the author/editor of The Beaver State Trilogy. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Learn more about seal pups on the beach
Thanking Rachel for a noisy spring
[Posted June 25, 2008]
Six thirty. The mist falls on one of the last spring mornings before summer begins. I hit the beach with the dogs needing the shot of salvation the beach routinely injects whenever the disease of depression infects me.
We cruise north to the south jetty. In the distance, a ship waits for calm seas before making the narrow run between the rocks toward the safety of Yaquina Bay. The dogs break off east to sniff at the wrack line and I turn my head and look the other way, to the water, where all life began.
Ahead, less than a football field away, I see two large raptor-like birds standing on the sand, unmoving, staring straight west, as the last inch of a wave trickles over their talons. What the hell? Hawks don’t surf.
Tacking at northwest angles, I move closer to investigate, employing all my senses as Henry David Thoreau once commanded me — all of us — to do.
Suddenly, it dawns on me: for the first time, I am watching bald eagles in Oregon not in flight. They now exist less than 50 yards away, on my beach, and not another human is around to pollute the moment.
Immediately, I don’t feel the disease of depression anymore because I know that without one woman, a scientist, a writer, a warrior in defense of nature, a hero, a goddess who should adorn our currency, I know that without her monumental effort, bald eagles would not exist in South Beach or anywhere else in America.
Her name is Rachel Carson, and in 1962 her landmark book “Silent Spring” launched the modern environmental movement by exposing the ecological disaster wrought by the indiscriminate aerial application of poisonous chemicals, namely DDT. It was an overnight bestseller around the world and attracted an astonishing variety of readers, including a President of the United States, John Kennedy, who convened a special panel to investigate the disastrous effects of pesticides on the natural world. Later, DDT was banned, and with the help of the Endangered Species Act and Richard Nixon, who signed it into law, the birds came back. The spring wasn’t so silent anymore.
Without Rachel Carson and “Silent Spring,” there wouldn’t be a pelican, peregrine falcon or bald eagle left in this county, even Alaska. DDT was wiping them out as the government and farmers sprayed oceans of this poison across the land and water. It was a modern-day industrial plague encouraged by chemical corporations and their hired men in white coats who apparently never listened to birds.
I feel better after seeing the eagles, but I want more. I want to see the eagles launch from Earth. I want to see something I’ve never seen before. Yes, it amounts to a rude hominid interruption but I’ll beg forgiveness later.
I sprint toward the eagles and they lift off the sand on course for Asia. They quickly bank east and fly toward the cliffs. From nowhere, a third eagle joins the formation and I watch all of this, annihilated yet saved, restored, ready to keep at it and get good work done, part of which is pulling all the weeds from my lawn by hand and not spraying herbicide.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast.
He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Haystack Rock and roll will never die
(posted June 11, 2008)
Is there anything more sacred in nature to Oregonians than recreating on our publicly-owned beaches? No, nothing even remotely comes close. A few confused people might say skiing on Mt. Hood tops the list. To that I say: every Oregonian has a beach story. Not every Oregonian has a Mt. Hood story. I don’t.
If anyone further doubts my claim, they would have been instantly convinced last year had they attended the first annual Cape Kiwanda Music Festival in Pacific City. There, local bands such as Lunker and the Retroactive Gamma Rays ripped through savage sets in front of a laid back audience of all ages, races and sexual orientations, drinking pop, beer or milk. In the background, surfers, dory boats, dogs, a wedding party, flying kites and small camp fires filled out one of the most quintessential Oregon scenes I have ever witnessed. It was sheer Beaver State beauty.
And don’t ever tell me Oregon rawk is dead! Not after you’ve seen Lunker tear it up with a groove so poundingly awesome that even the dwindling numbers of rockfish offshore and the spirit of Oswald West came out to boogie. Or heard the Retroactive Gamma Rays’ spine tingling surf instrumentals that make you want to dance with a total stranger.
Cost of admission? Totally free! Unlike skiing.
You still don’t believe my claim about the primacy of the Oregon beach experience? Well, it’s time once again for the free Kiwanda Music Festival, so on Saturday, July 5, make the drive to Pacific City and judge for yourself. I might also add that this year’s eclectic lineup blows away last year’s stellar one. The music starts at 2 p.m. and runs until dusk. Fireworks to follow.
Just head to Pacific City and follow the signs to Cape Kiwanda. The schedule is listed below.
Cape Kiwanda Music Festival
Saturday, July 5
2 p.m. David Twigg (solo acoustic from L.C.)
2:45 p.m. The Broke String Band (bluegrass from Portland)
4 p.m. Retroactive Gamma Rays (surf rock from L.C.)
5 p.m. The Dead Trees (indie rock from Portland)
6 p.m. The Juke Joint Gamblers (rockabilly from Portland)
7 p.m. The Whiskey Robbers (rock n’ roll from Newport)
8 p.m. Lunker (heavy funk rock from Pacific City)
9 p.m. Ninth Moon Black (ambient metal from Eugene)
The Great Birthright
(posted May 30, 2008)
“In the administration of this God-given trust, a broad protective policy should be declared and maintained. No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
This great Oregon birthright is our ocean beaches. Oregon Governor Oswald West wrote these words in 1949, 36 years after signing into law a bill he drafted that declared the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway. He claimed a solo horseback ride in 1912 from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain, and into Nehalem, inspired him.
West also wrote: “So I came up with a bright idea. And this was very much of a surprise for I have enjoyed but few such in a lifetime.
“I drafted a simple short bill declaring the seashore from the Washington line to the California line a public highway. I pointed out that thus we would come into miles and miles of highway ‘without cost to the taxpayer.’ The Legislature took the bait — hook, line and sinker. Thus came public ownership of our beaches.”
West’s masterfully brief law reads: “The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, expecting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
Sixty-six words. With his law, Oswald West changed Oregon forever. He helped establish and enshrine in law a unique cultural relationship between a state’s citizenry and a natural recreational resource. Unique? It was and still is pretty much unprecedented in the world.
And to think that the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department doesn’t have one sign at any of its coastal parks honoring West, including, incredibly, Oswald West State Park! That amounts to a crime against Oregon history.
He was hardcore Oregon
[Posted May 14, 2008]
On Feb. 14, 2009, Oregon celebrates its sesquicentennial. You can expect significant media fanfare when the big birthday rolls around and all sorts of commemorative events. As Oregon approaches 150 years old, one question all of us living here might want to consider is: what qualifies as something authentic hard core Oregon? Something that can’t be found anywhere else in the country and is worth celebrating because of its utterly unique Beaver State quality. Something worth extolling, too.
May I offer a candidate for consideration? I met him a few weeks ago.
And thought I was a hard core Oregonian who dug Oregon’s ocean beaches!
Six thirty in the Wednesday morning. Rain smashes down on the skylights like a Keith Moon frenzy on the drums. Time to walk the dogs on the beach. If I don’t, a possible canine mutiny.
I don the pea coat and put on the stocking cap. We walk outside and greet slanting walls of rain. An umbrella? Are you kidding me? This is the Oregon coast. I once broke up with a woman who used an umbrella. I couldn’t be seen with her. Who doesn’t want to see rain fall on their partner’s face?
Seven minutes later we hit the beach. The pea coat has lost the battle with the rain. I can’t see beyond a quarter mile.
I let the dogs off leash and they bolt to the ocean. Suddenly, in unison, we see a man walking toward us, emerging from the clouds. It is a man? Or an apparition? The grim reaper? I’ve hit this beach with the dogs exactly 48 mornings in a row and this marks the first time I’ve seen another human being.
Interloper! Trespasser! This is my private church service. I feel violated.
The dogs trot over to the man. He pets them. I change course to meet him. There has to be a story here. Stories are worth interrupting church.
He wears a hooded sweatshirt without wearing the hood. His Levis are soaked through and he wears tennis shoes without socks. No expensive hiking accoutrements whatsoever.
He tells me he’s walking from the south jetty in Newport to Lost Creek—and back. I add up the miles. Close to 12. He must have started two hours ago.
I wish him good luck. He heads north and I head south. I never got his name.
As November nears, the writing is on the wall
[Posted April 30, 2008]
A drizzle falls as the dogs and I ramble south down Driftwood Beach, a few miles north of Waldport. I see no other vehicle in the parking lot, always the best sight at a state park beach wayside.
I am here to read the writing on the wall, or more precisely a sandy cliff, where on a previous visit to the beach, I’d noticed from a distance some letters and symbols carved into its face. At that time, I was eager to investigate, but an unrelenting downpour had swelled a creek and dissuaded my attempt at a long jump.
No downpour today. We approach the creek and I take a running jump and cross the channel by a millimeter.
Safely landed, I move toward the cliff. At the very moment I begin to read some of the words, a hummingbird bursts from a nearby willow thicket and flies inches past my face. It jolts me. I see the whites of its eyes. I’ve never seen a hummingbird at the beach and the juxtaposition of this beautifully tiny creature and the roaring vastness of the ocean presents an electric contrast.
I regain my composure and turn to the cliff. Initials, initials everywhere and not a sentence to drink: M + C = ; JR + S = forever. Sweet teenage math.
Outside of a smiley face and a nicely rendered drawing of a large smiling rodent, initials and names dominate the literature of the cliff. As I read, it suddenly occurs to me that there isn’t a single expression of a political nature. Not even one crude statement in a heated time of contested presidential election and protracted controversial war. What is one to make of that?
I don’t know. I have a theory but will refrain advancing it here and let the reader answer the question for herself. We should all answer it. And free walks on an Oregon ocean beach always makes for an opportune time to answer tough questions of love and war. Did I tell you I figured out the meaning of life there?
What do I really know about the absence of political statements on Driftwood Beach’s cliff, where, 40 years ago, I am sure they would have dominated the literature? I just found this wall and was surprised not to find a single expression of political belief. There is one now. In fact, there are two.
One night a storm will arise and hurl waves into the cliff and erode the carvings. But that might not be until after the first Tuesday in November, when things will surely change. Or remain the same.
Singing the praises of Sidney Bazett
[Published April 18, 2008]
Often when I ramble the beaches with the dogs, I often think about the people who created and protected this inalienable Oregon right that I freely exercise like a religion two to three times a day. These people deserve recognition and honor and that’s one of the reasons I started this column. In the coming months I’ll be profiling some of these people, the kind who never make it into the history books, unlike, say, generals and governors.
In the late 1960s, a Republican representative from Grants Pass offered the following explanation as to why he effectively sacrificed his political career to protect Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches: “The people of this state who can only afford a tank of gas and a picnic basket have the right to spend a day with their children on the beach without having to rent a motel room or pay a toll.”
His name was Sidney Bazett. He is one of the many unsung heroes in the successful fight to pass Oregon’s famous Beach Bill back in 1967. He died decades ago, but left behind a legacy benefitting every living person who has ever enjoyed a moment on an Oregon ocean beach. For free.
Isn’t that about everyone in the state? And everyone visiting the Oregon coast?
In the spring of 1967, HB 1601, which later became known as the Beach Bill, landed in a subcommittee of the House chaired by Bazett that oversaw beach issues. At the time, several motel owners were making unprecedented ownership claims to the dry sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches. The bill sought to protect the public’s long-standing use of these areas by declaring state control from the median high tide to native vegetation line, roughly to 16 feet in elevation.
A majority of Republicans dominated the subcommittee and they quickly moved to table the bill. Bazett was not among them. Even though he ran the subcommittee, he didn’t have the votes to push the bill forward and it appeared dead.
Had that been the end of the story, Oregon’s ocean beaches today would be desecrated with fences, boardwalks, ‘no trespassing’ signs, security guards, hot dog stands and espresso carts. In other words, it wouldn’t be Oregon. It would look like everywhere else.
But it wasn’t the end of the story.
Bucking his fellow subcommittee members and the leadership in the House, Bazett employed a series of clever stalling tactics until the public learned what was at stake if the Beach Bill went down. He leaked to the press. He met with members of the public and implored them to come testify on behalf of the bill. He postponed hearings. He bought time anyway he could.
The tactics worked and, later, the Oregon public rose up and demanded their beaches be held in public trust forever. The legislators listened and the Beach Bill has since become holy Oregon law.
For his efforts, for putting Oregon above party, Bazett was, as he later wrote a friend, “shunned,” literally, in the halls of the capitol.
Did I mention that Sidney Bazett hailed from Southern California and was a comptroller in the movie industry before migrating to Southern Oregon? When I learned this, I had to take back all those nasty things I’ve said and written about Southern Californian transplants over they years.
One of them helped save Oregon’s beaches for everyone, including those, “who can only afford a tank of gas and a picnic basket,” to enjoy.
A coast Classic
[Published April 4, 2008]
In serious training for the upcoming third annual Oregon Coast Instant Haiku Classic, I have taken to composing a haiku every morning during my walk down the beach with the dogs.
Let me tell you: composing a haiku in 35-mile per hour winds and sheets of rain is quite the hearty literary exercise.
Fortunately, this morning’s weather proved more amenable to composition. My effort:
Dogs bolt to the waves
One gull probes at the wrack line
West, a crabber floats
The haiku. The ancient, Japanese-in-origin, three-line, seventeen-syllable, five-seven-five structure form of poetry that distills the essence of a moment in nature. In a country where everyone probably talks too much and too loud and takes forever, if at all, to get to the truth, haikus offer a compact and quiet alternative. They never confuse. They always clarify.
The Classic, set for Saturday, April 12, at Café Mundo in Newport in the Nye Beach area, upholds and updates the venerable haiku tradition.
The Classic is a four-team poetry competition, scored by the audience in a format similar to a diving event where judges hold up numerical scores. All poets are randomly grouped into four-person teams. The host throws out a prompt, say “bonfires,” and then poets have 90 seconds to compose a haiku.
That’s right. On the spot, with a full house watching. Then the poet performs the haiku to the full house and judges score the effort. Winning teams advance for the right to take home the coveted Whitman Cup and special prizes.
There’s nothing like it on the Oregon coast, or for that matter, the entire state.
The competition begins at 7 p.m. Anyone interested in participating as a poet should show up at 6:45 (or earlier) to register. The event has been packed the last two years, so spectators should arrive early if you want to get choice seats.
Admission to the Classic? Free… which coincidentally and not by historical accident, is the cost required to ramble Oregon’s ocean beaches. More on that later.
A final word of advice for poets: Get to the beach and start practicing. Others are.
To muse and scavenge
Gulls and poets: much alike
Are you Newport bound?
Off and Running
[Published March 21, 2008]
Welcome to the first installment of One Man’s Beach, my new column for Oregon Coast Today. I have two modest goals for the column: 1) visit beaches from Manzanita to Yachats and share my observations, intuitions and meditations; 2) report on those matters that created and strengthened Oregon’s special relationship to its ocean beaches – a relationship utterly unique in the country, if not the world.
So what’s with the name, One Man’s Beach?
In 1938, a writer named E.B. White moved from New York City to a small farm on the Maine coast. Over the next several years, he contributed a series of essays on his new country life to the New Yorker and Harper’s that culminated in the 1943 publication of “One Man’s Meat.”
Sixty-five years later, the book is still in print and considered a classic of memoir, reportage, observation and the definitive look at the rural American home front during World War II. After the publication of “One Man’s Meat,” White went on to write, among other books, “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little.”
Eleven years ago I escaped the Pearl District in Portland to South Tillamook County on the Oregon Coast as a one-year cultural experiment to improve my mental health and try to establish myself as a writer. I succeeded on both counts and I’m still here, now recently relocated to South Beach. I’ll never leave the Oregon coast and have made its people and places one of my main literary passions.
Not long after moving to the sea, I picked up a copy of “One Man’s Meat” at a used bookstore in Lincoln City, read it that night, and was immediately struck by its compact prose style and participatory, yet restrained narrative voice.
“One Man’s Meat” exerted a tremendous literary effect on me when I first read it and the feeling has remained. The genesis for this column is a direct result of this feeling.
We are off and running, literally, since the last five mornings, in the overdue fulfillment of a New Year’s resolution, I hit my local beach at 6:15 a.m. for a reckless run down the sand. It was either raining or foggy or both. No other human was around. I saw the same western gull every morning in almost the exact same spot. Every morning I saw the dawn descend over the south jetty of Yaquina Bay. I didn’t have to pay a cent for this privilege. Perfect. Quintessentially Oregon. I ate it up…like a big piece of meat.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press. His books are available at coastal bookstores or through www.nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
[posted Nov. 9, 2012]
I stood in a downpour on my deck and looked across the street. The sun was throwing a narrow spotlight on my neighbor’s dry roof. This meant it was raining like the battle of Stalingrad: moving block by block, house to house.
Normally, I would venture to my beach and watch the rain collide with the ocean, one of the more serene applications of nature and completely unavailable to download to any phone or computer.
But, in recent weeks, visits to my beach had enraged me and I absolutely loathed returning from my walks in such a vitriolic state. I let go at the beach, never take up. I didn’t like this unpleasant reversal.
A six-letter four-letter dirty word, the most profane word on the Oregon Coast was the culprit — riprap — or revetment as it’s officially called. A new riprap project near my home approved by the somnolent stewards of Oregon’s unique legacy of publicly-owned beaches had tainted my walks because I couldn’t stop photographing the desecration. Documenting the desecration of Oregon’s quintessence is hardly uplifting. Indeed, it makes the soul sick.
Never heard of riprap? Allow me to define it: placing large boulders on beaches to protect ill-conceived structures from collapsing into the sea where they rightfully belong. Limited editorial space prevents a full disquisition on the ecologically unsound and downright ugly practice of riprap. Find me on Facebook if you want to see some shocking photos and read my tirades.
No, today, I couldn’t bear seeing the new hideous riprap, so I loaded Sonny into the truck and we went to meet the rain at Ona Beach. Some unpredictable and soothing act of magic always occurs at Ona and I can never predict what source will generate it. Could be Russian Old Believers playing golf. Could be salmon riding a freshet up Beaver creek. Could be a teal wave breaking in Emily Dickinson fashion — slant.
We hit the beach and saw no other humans. About a hundred gulls sat in the estuary debating something. The sky hovered like a jagged black, gray cake and showers blew lightly from south to north.
Then there was light. Although it was still raining.
And then, a quarter of dim rainbow emerged from the cake and sunk into the ocean. I extracted a cheap digital camera from the pocket of my pea coat and started shooting away. More light manifested and better illuminated the rainbow. The cake dissolved and out jumped a full rainbow. Then a double rainbow faded into view and reflections of rainbows appeared everywhere on the sand. Have you ever walked on a rainbow? I have now.
Sonny and I started running to the rainbow, which arced so huge I couldn’t capture it entirely in the frame. Yes, we ran, in the rain, because we knew of the rainbow’s elusive, transient nature. At some point, when the light seemed perfect, I halted, set the camera on self-timer, anchored it in the sand, and took more photographs.
The rainbow festival lasted 20 minutes and several cars pulled off Highway 101 to witness the spectacle. As Sonny and I left the beach in the rain, I felt invigorated after documenting beauty again. On the drive home listening to Led Zeppelin, the greatest rain band of all time, I formulated an interesting new existential axiom: In the long run, rainbows disintegrate the riprap of people’s minds.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He walks on the beach with his dog Sonny at least twice a day. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The accursed ‘whatever’
[posted Oct. 23, 2012]
At Ona Beach, I leaned against a massive drift log bearing ancient wounds inflicted by a crosscut saw. Who were the Oregon men that felled this 300-year old beauty by hand? I wish I could have met them.
A bright October sun made me close my eyes. Fifty feet away, Sonny the husky investigated smells at the edge of Beaver Creek. I started thinking.
Earlier in the week, I had read one of the best sentences ever written about the ocean and it was written by a student of mine from Newport High School where I teach English. She wrote: “The ocean is a book of 10 million words and you must read between the lines to discover the mysteries, even if takes years, decades, a lifetime.” True like gravity. Whenever I look to the horizon, the ocean makes the combined holy books of all the world religions read like a tweet.
I grasped some socialist Oregon sand and let it seep between my fingers. My mind drifted toward a recurring irritation: people in my life who give me the whatever when a situation demands personal and direct communication. I’d actually prefer an upraised middle finger to my face than mushy indifference. Why would anyone want to live their lives in the vacuum of whatever? Amorphous is not tactile.
One thing I love about dogs: they never give you the whatever.
Sleep began to overtake me when I heard Sonny’s familiar howl of greeting strangers. Rousing myself, I turned and beheld a couple in their 50s with four poodles, three large and one small, three black and one white.
Sonny was surrounded and having a good time. I walked up to the couple. The man looked like an emissary from a foreign country that issued marijuana-use permits to all its citizens in the interest of promoting social welfare. I noticed a few colors of Jamaica’s flag here and there and one of the dogs had dreadlocks. They asked me about the freakish appearance of Sonny’s front paws, the result of a tragic accident years ago. I told them the story and how I spent nearly $20,000 on her care and none of it did any good, but that Sonny had adjusted to her invalidism and had become a different, and in some ways, a better dog. “She supercropped her life,” the man said, assuming that I knew what this marijuana growing term meant. Translation: Sonny obtained a better yield in life with the same or less to work with.
“Supercrop your life” might be the most elucidating advice I’d heard in a long, long time.
I learned they hailed from Boise, although he was originally from Eugene, and that their two teenage children were asleep in the van. He told me he grew medical marijuana for a living, although I later discovered Idaho has no such law.
They had departed Idaho at 9 pm on Wednesday and driven straight through to Astoria. Two days of teacher in-service at school had inspired a plan: visit practically every major beach from Astoria to Yachats and return to Boise by Monday morning so the kids wouldn’t miss class. When I met the couple on Ona Beach, they had barely slept since leaving Idaho. Rest would come later, they said, after ordering a pizza and pitching a tent somewhere illegally in the dunes. I suggested a few secret places I knew.
We said our goodbyes and the couple held hands as they walked toward the ocean, the dogs bouncing all around them. I whipped out my film camera and took a few photographs. I wanted to document a pure moment of meeting people who had undoubtedly supercropped their lives, never lived in the whatever, and were teaching these invaluable lessons to their children.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon. He never uses the word 'whatever.' He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The Fishermen
[Posted Sept. 25, 2012]
I pulled the truck off Hwy. 101 and Sonny the husky howled her approval. I think she loves Ona Beach more than I do.
It was a Sunday morning in late August and unpolished silver colored the sky. A thin drizzle fell. Choosing at random, I brought along one of the five cameras (three film, two digital) stashed in the cab and Sonny led the way into the dunes.
Something caught my eye. I turned right and saw an Asian-looking man, some 20 yards away, apparently naked, stand up in the grass. He didn’t see me.
Well, why not? This is Oregon. This was sort of a summer.
The man then slipped into green waders and produced a fishing pole. He started walking toward the ocean. Sonny and I paralleled him until we reached the beach. I watched the man join a companion already casting in the surf. A couple hundred yards south of them, three other men fished.
Sonny I cruised to Beaver Creek and I read the various simple equations of sweet horny math in the sand drawn by the kids. They all = [hearts], which lacked sufficient reality, but so be it; the kids will experience the harder trigonometry of adult love soon enough.
I looked up. Another man in waders clutching a fishing pole magically transpired from a thicket of willows, walked into the creek, and out to the ocean to join his friends. They just had to all know each other and their obvious camaraderie intrigued me, so I moved toward them.
My route intersected with the first two men, one of whom veered to meet me. He was wearing neon orange boots of the most curious fancy design.
We met and Sonny approached him. He asked me if I wanted him to take a photograph of me and Sonny. I said that was generous but I preferred taking shots of him and his friends. No problem at all. He had a distinctly non-hangover appearance and was distinctly not OTA (meaning Oregon Tavern Age, anywhere from 40-70 years old), typically the type of man I encounter fishing in the surf on Oregon’s publicly owned beaches.
“Are you guys some kind of club?”
“No, we just like to fish.”
I knew they weren’t locals but I asked him anyway.
“No, we all live near Portland, in Beaverton.”
“Perch, right?”
“That’s right. We take them home and eat them.”
I’ve always wanted to try fishing for perch at the ocean’s edge but have never followed through. I need a teacher.
We chatted a while longer and I learned the men visit every week, usually at Ona, but a few other spots on the Central Coast as well. I got the impression they rose very early Sunday morning, piled into a couple of rigs, and arrived at dawn.
I said goodbye and a few seconds later, all six men stood staggered in the surf and fished away. I watched the waves batter them for a few minutes and took photographs. The idea was to capture in real time a seascape of impressionism composed primarily of one color — gray. No one caught a fish while I was observing but a couple lines did go taut. I could hear the men laughing.
It was time to go, but I didn’t really want to leave. I dearly wanted to join them, learn their names, stories, learn how to fish. Sometimes good journalism demands more than just observing, asking questions, vicariousness. You have to get into it, too, detach the detachment. Dive in. Get wet.
Waves of Consciousness
[Posted Sept. 11, 2012]
In recent weeks I’ve started a new habit of going to the beach with Sonny the husky and a spiral notebook. I’ll find a comfortable drift log, dune, or slice of riprap, sit down on the sand, stare at the ocean, perhaps snap a photograph with my film fisheye camera, peruse my notes, and write with absolutely no editorial agenda in mind. I also actively resist any notion of linear thinking. I ride a wave in my mind of the past and present tense.
Here’s what resulted:
A friend tipped me off to an opening of a classic American novel I’d never read, an opening he thought I should know about: It goes like this: “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman — he looks tough and I don’t.” Never in a million years would I have guessed “The Outsiders,” by S.E. Hinton, begins this way.
I read this in the Oregonian: “Oregon last month signed all nine assistant (football) coaches to contract amendments that boosted the value of their existing individual salaries for this season to $2,759,500, up 20 percent, or $460,333, from last year’s collective salary of $2,299,167…The raises do not include the combined $450,000 in retention bonuses six assistants are set to receive this month.
“The special teams/tight ends coach will earn (sic) $322,500 this season and $339,250 in 2013. His retention bonus was $100,000.” I would have to teach at Newport High School for five years to earn an equivalent salary. But alas, I get to teach poetry and the special teams/tight ends coach doesn’t. He also doesn’t get to stage a rock festival and take photographs of the rain with his students.
It all brings to mind something I read written by the Italian author/intellectual Umberto Eco. “Sports debate is the easiest substitute for political debate.” He wrote that before ESPN and the Internet. Let me also loosely paraphrase something else Eco wrote about big time spectator sports. “Those who watch and obsess over spectator sports are not playing sports. They have lost the ability to play.”
A while back I read a line by Robert Adams in a fantastic book called “Why People Photograph.” “Most people alive in the United States today have never had, for a variety of reasons, the full attention of a first-rate teacher, and our democracy is failing partly as a result.” I might amend the sentence to read “totally” instead of “partly.”
I finished a biography of James Cain, author of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Mildred Pierce” and came across a line that startled me. This is a paraphrase: “A writer with ambition has to become a pelagic fish,” meaning he has to swim out to open water where it’s deep. Have I stayed too close to shore by writing almost exclusively about Oregon?
The high, tubular clouds in the sky intrigue me. A while back I read “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and learned all the interesting names and salient facts for the many different types of clouds.
I have since forgotten everything I learned except that stratus clouds dominate the Oregon Coast. They give us the gray. It doesn’t bother me that I can’t remember. I much prefer impressionism to meteorology anyway, but would like to become a writer who can bring the aesthetic and the scientific together in creative fashion. Rain would be my subject.
A man and a woman rode bicycles in front of me a few seconds ago. I took a photo of them with my fisheye and they waved. They looked like a couple and brought along their kid instead of resigning him to duct tape and cough syrup. They’re playing sports, not watching them, and will probably play another sport when they get back to their tent or motel room and the kid’s sacked out.
Just look at the plastic all around me! I loathe its utter existence! Every city on the Oregon Coast should ban the plastic bag and Styrofoam containers immediately. This is a course of action as obvious as gravity. Every coastal politician should make the ocean and its creatures their chief constituency on this issue because all the truly momentous and portentous political decisions of our time will involve the health of the ocean and the impetus for change has to begin locally.
In 1941, Victor Yarsley, an English chemist and one of the pioneers of plastic, wrote: “The plastic man will come into a world of color and bright shining surfaces where childish hands find nothing to break, no sharp edges, or corners to cut or graze…all his toys, his cot…the teething ring he bites, the unbreakable bottle he feeds from…as he grows he cleans his teeth and brushes his hair with plastic brushes, clothes himself within plastic clothes, writes his first lesson with a plastic pen…”
Yarsley ultimately wanted, “a world free from moth and rust made up of synthetic materials.” To that I say: You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get more of what you don’t need and never needed. Rust never sleeps at the Oregon Coast by the way. Mold either.
Here comes Sonny loping toward me. Not bad for a 13-year old husky with ruptured front ligaments. Time for a family selfportrait. Hope I got the shot. I’ll know whenever I have the film developed. That could be years. Patience in photography is a virtue. So is guessing. Both were required before the advent of digital cameras and sometimes they produced beautiful mistakes. I always love that my celluloid blunders usually turn out better than my memory card contrivances. In recent months, I’ve made more guesses in my writing and I think this evolution came about because I began almost shooting exclusively with film.
My left hand reaches to the ground. I grab a handful of sand and let it sift through my fingers…. Oregon’s publicly owned beaches, free to use, free to frolic …. Ahh … the wonderful benefits of socialism. More please.
Love at Hart’s Cove
Posted Aug. 15, 2012
On a magnificent sunny morning in July, Rose and I hiked to the roiling foam of Hart’s Cove. When we reached the end of the trail that overlooks perhaps the best untainted (meaning development-free)) view on the Oregon Coast, we found two young women climbing a Sitka spruce.
Rose and I hadn’t seen each other for over a year, but it had taken all of 10 seconds to find our groove and start talking the good candid talk of great friends. We exchanged recent breakup stories and tales from our respective employment fronts: mine, teaching; hers, nursing. We also occasionally reminisced about our former magic times together: Fort Clatsop, Mount Hebo, Drift Creek Bridge Matt Kramer Memorial, clearcuts, the dunes of Nestucca Spit. I’ve never met anyone in my life as hard core Oregon as Rose.
We conversed with the tree climbers, who were clearly a couple. They had traveled from San Diego and one of them had grown up in Eugene. Both were blonde and they had met at the University of Oregon. They exhibited superb energy together and Rose and I got the feeling they prized sensual mischief in nature, and undoubtedly belonged to some kind of secret imp society.
Rose had brought along lunch: PBJs and fruit. I ate a candy bar for dessert. She forgot the whisky so I settled for tap water instead. We took some photos with my cheap toy cameras and discussed the benefits of living as a seal. Several of them were hauled out on a patch of sand 1,000 feet below us, sound asleep. It looked pretty damn sweet to me.
My eyes scanned the landscape and the penetrating greens and blues of the water and woods screamed out for a Romantic poem worthy of John Keats or sensual mischief worthy of D.H. Lawrence. How about combine the two? It was hard to believe that 12 hours earlier I had wasted $9 and three hours watching the “The Dark Knight Rises,” the final loud, politically infantile installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. I really don’t even know why I went. I mentioned the movie to Rose and she hadn’t seen it, nor had any intention of seeing it. She would rather hike, raft, garden, and listen to short stories and that’s why we always got along so well and still do.
What hypnotic noises Hart’s Cove orchestrates inside me. I don’t know what it is, but something about this place keeps calling me home, as in I want to return to the sea here when I finally come to the end of my sentient life. I knew that the moment I saw this place 15 years ago, and it was one of the most uplifting feelings I’ve ever experienced because I finally grasped the simple beauty and corporeal spirituality of the everlasting water cycle. No burial or cremation or service. Not much of an original story in that for me, just unnecessary energy and money expended.
It was time to go. We headed into the tall grass and encountered another lesbian couple; they were in their 60s and made a remark about the fine day. One of them hadn’t seen the cove in over 30 years. A lot has happened in America since then. Some of it even good.
In the woods, Rose and I came upon a couple striding hard to the cove. A hulking man with a crew cut led the way, followed by a woman wearing a blue t-shirt emblazoned with “I Love My Husband” in bold, and I mean BOLD, red and white lettering.
We all exchanged greetings and after they passed, I turned to Rose and she gave me a silent, “What the ____?” shrug.
A few yards later, we began speculating about the couple:
Newlyweds on a honeymoon, because no one married for five years would own such a shirt, much less wear it in public.
A fashionable scarlet letter that her church shamed her to wear.
They were having an affair and loved the irony.
ome kind of kinky role-playing game that originated online.
It didn’t matter what their story really was. They appeared happy and moved in nature with intense alacrity, which contrasts with my Walt Whitman-esque “loaf and invite your soul,” ethos, but, hey, they weren’t sitting at home updating their mood swings on Facebook.
A few minutes later, Rose and I passed another couple, an elderly man and a woman employing ski poles for balance. Then came a young man and woman and they just oozed a “first date” vibe. Back at the parking lot, we saw another couple gearing up. They looked a little surly and weren’t talking. Perhaps they’d had an argument.
No doubt, Hart’s Cove would surely smooth it over.
The Magic of 'Seal Rock'
[Posted 7.31.12]
What is the official color of the Pacific Northwest Coast? Let a poet define it: “…it happens when I begin my little ritual of naming the colors. That’s grey, I say. That is not grey, I say. But more than grey, a white grey, green grey, blue grey, rose grey — my little ritual — and then, and then it overtakes me.”
The poet’s name is John Haislip, the poem is “On the Beach Late Before Sunset” and it concludes “Seal Rock,” the finest book of poetry I’ve ever read about the Oregon Coast and the people who inhabit its landscape. “Seal Rock” nails the magical, primitive, punishing, damp, grey, reclusive nature of surviving on the soggy monochrome coast with the same vigorous accuracy as Ken Kesey did in “Sometimes a Great Notion.” And I make that claim because I’ve lived at the Oregon Coast for 15 years and have had a lot of wet, grey time to read a lot of poetry about the Pacific Northwest.
I only know of Haislip’s existence because of an offhanded remark in a Newport dive bar by my friend, Tim Sproul. We were drinking cheap Pacific Northwest lagers and talking poetry when Sproul told me I had to read Haislip’s “Seal Rock.” He also said he studied under Haislip in the University of Oregon’s MFA program in creative writing in the late 1980s and had great admiration for him as a teacher and mentor. Haislip was a professor emeritus at the university who passed away in March 2011 at the age of 85.
In 2010, Poetry Northwest and the Oregon State Library named “Seal Rock” as one of its 150 Books for 150 Years of (Oregon) Statehood. That’s a fitting tribute indeed, but meaningless if hardly anyone can read it.
In all my literary sleuthing on behalf of lost Oregon books, I have never encountered a book more tragically lost than “Seal Rock.” I found a disintegrating copy at the Driftwood Library in Lincoln City, one of only seven Oregon and two Washington public libraries that have the book listed in their collections. There were only a few for sale in the rare book digital universe and prices ran close to $100 a copy. Nothing to download on Google Books or Amazon. Barnwood Press of Indiana published the book and has it listed on their web site, but none of my inquiries to the company were answered.
After reading this slim 52-page volume that won the Oregon Book Award for poetry in 1987, I read it again, photocopied it, annotated it, then drove five miles from my home to the village of Seal Rock, at Milepost 150 on the Oregon Coast, and explored the beaches. There, I walked into John Haislip’s poetry.
“Seal Rock” overtook me in a way no book of poetry has before. It helped me transcend a great personal loss. I placed it at the forefront of a novel I just completed. I memorized line after line. I sense I have a mission to herald how incredible these poems are. Read them and learn. The lessons are tough.
My favorite poem in “Seal Rock” is “Counting the Gulls.” The last stanza reads:
As now it’s coming on
From who knows how much
Multitudinous grey
Out there all week --
Or through the next?
Or how about the next six months? Haislip writes about grey better than anyone I’ve ever read and one can sense from these poems that he regularly communed with gulls and rain. He also uses the word carcass as a verb, as in, “carcass off in the poisoned air,” and I’ll never get that image out of my head, which is what great poetry is supposed to do, not make you feel confused or unintelligent.
Postscript: After a version of this essay appeared in The Oregonian several months ago, I received an e-mail. In part, it read: “I am John Haislip’s widow who read with poignant delight your column. I believe I can speak for John in this instance: he would have been pleased to have read your kind and astute analysis of ‘Seal Rock.’ You are absolutely right to call it a ‘tragically lost’ book.”
Well, not so lost anymore. By the time you read this, I will have sat down with Haislip’s wife in Seal Rock (where else?) and discussed ways to resurrect this classic of Oregon literature. It has to happen.
Matt Love lives in South Beach and is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon, including his most recent, “Sometimes a Great Movie: Paul Newman, Ken Kesey and the Filming of the Great Oregon Novel.” He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Batting Practice
[Posted June 5, 2012]
A metal sky hung over the ball park. The batter took his stance. The pitcher went into a wind-up and delivered the pitch: fastball down the middle. The batter swung, a mighty cut. Crack! It was a long fly ball to center, going, going, gone … in the ocean.
It was the best home run I’ve ever seen hit.
After a frenzied weekend in Portland promoting my new book, I craved the pacific of the beach more desperately than I had in recent memory. The complicated city life just wears me out and I always break the speed limit racing home. I never bother going to the house first. Instead, I immediately take Sonny the husky to the beach and reconnect with simplicity and patience.
I was thinking about patience as the literary associate and I cruised down my local beach. It was a late Sunday afternoon and the ocean barely moved as we came upon a man throwing an assortment of baseballs, tennis balls and even a softball to a young boy wielding a wooden bat.
The kid could hit. He ripped shot after shot, through the box, to left, right and center ocean. In fact, he never missed making contact, which was pretty incredible when you consider the difficult conditions.
At some point, Sonny retrieved one of the tennis balls from the water and the kid jogged over to us to reclaim it. He was 11 or 12, a little stocky, pimple free, black shaggy hair. He looked like a ballplayer, not a video gamer.
I complimented him on his batting prowess and he sort of shrugged a “thank you” and went on fetching balls from the surf. He wanted to hit, not talk.
The man came over and I told him the kid showed talent. He smiled and gestured toward the boy. “That’s my son,” he said.
I took a closer look at the dad. His face appeared worn. I had absolutely no idea how old he was. He must have lived hard to get a face like that.
The dad drifted away and father and son resumed batting practice. We watched for a few minutes and saw the father sprint toward his son after one swing. He made a few subtle adjustments to the batter’s stance and then the kid proceeded to smash one towering shot after another. They all found the sea and then washed up ashore.
The literary associate and I began clapping loudly. The father and son turned to us and waved.
Two Womens' Beach
[Posted Wednesday, May 23, 2012]
Sonny the husky and I wandered the wrack line of our local beach after a fierce storm. We were cruising south, inspecting the interesting detritus, when we encountered an immobile cormorant apparently in the final stage of life.
The bird saw us, whipped its formidable beak our way, and discharged a savage warning hiss. We got the message and gave it a wide berth to die in dignity and perfect concert with nature, say, unlike how most Americans demise.
Creatures die and beget other life, other notions. The same is true with once-entrenched, sacrosanct but now-dead beliefs held by humans. You can find these beliefs resting at the metaphorical wrack line, washed ashore, dead: slavery, segregation, the divine right of kings, a geocentric universe, and most recently, homosexuals as immoral people undeserving of legal marital status or protection from discrimination.
Many Americans still refuse to accept the death of the latter belief, but if they paid better attention, they would already know it washed ashore, in broad daylight, decomposed, and then returned to the sea where it birthed something new, something vastly more democratic, and I’m not talking about the political party.
As Sonny and I circled around the cormorant, I saw an elderly woman about 50 yards away, walking north, my way, clutching a Chuck-it with a tennis ball. Farther down the beach, across a creek, I saw another woman making her way south down the sand using a staff.
Halfway between the women, a brown poodle played alone in the surf. Why wasn’t the dog with the woman with the Chuck-it? Strange, I thought.
Sonny and I veered toward the woman with the Chuck-it. We all met.
“Hi there. Hey, there’s a dying cormorant not far away. You should keep your dog away.”
I assumed the dog was hers.
“Oh, I don’t need to worry,” she said, gesturing at the poodle, who was now heading toward the other woman. “She’s going with my partner today.” The woman went on to explain how she and her partner typically split up at the beach and one heads north and the other heads south. The dog has to decide which master to follow.
I thought this about the best story I’d heard in a long time, and wondered if I might have stumbled across the magic key to maintaining a healthy relationship.
We walked along together for a while, chatting about something I no longer recall, but the story was so alive and writing itself with the rhythm and surety of the incoming waves, that I finished it by the time I said goodbye to the woman.
The next day I watched undetected the same two women approach the beach from their car. The poodle tagged along. One headed north, using a staff to traverse slippery rocks down to the sand. The other headed south with the Chuck-it and tennis ball. The poodle went for the Chuck-it. I laughed aloud.
Freedom is such a beautiful thing to behold although fighting the battle to achieve it can be the ugliest thing in American life. People who don’t want freedom for everyone can get incredibly ugly when they know their myopic world view is slipping away. Just ask the segregationists.
The cormorant wasn’t there when Sonny and I rambled past the spot where I last saw it. It was gone.
Antediluvian answers flood forth on the beach
[Posted May 8, 2012]
The sun emerged from a sodden April hibernation and the literary associate and I traversed the watery, willowed path to Ona Beach. Sonny the husky led the way as crows and gulls flew overhead. I think I even heard a hummingbird nearby.
In the distance I saw a man, his daughter and their dog play fetch with a ball along Beaver Creek as it emptied into the Pacific.
Is there any finer place in the world than the Oregon Coast, when the sun lights up estuaries and tides move in and out, instigating the collision of fresh and salt water?
Not that I’ve visited. They are virtually love, poetry, and healing machines, revealing untold natural wonder and primitive existential magic. You can smell all of life there.
The literary associate and I walked west to the ocean, talking about our new favorite poem, “We Are Transmitters,” by D.H. Lawrence. We both concur enthusiastically with one stanza:
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
If I’d had children, the idea of transmitting life into work to ripple through the days would have ranked as one of the most important lessons taught. I would have strived to model it daily.
Another man came into view. He sat on a huge drift log and wore a green hoodie, the cowl draped over his head like some skateboarding monk or Hwy. 101 drifter. He was reading a book with his back facing the south.
We moved in closer for inspection. In all my years of Oregon Coast beach rambling I had never seen anyone read a book in such a fashion.
I espied the book and noticed its beveled gold edges — a Bible for sure. As the child of a former preacher and missionary, I know a Bible when I see one and I know a man in distress reading a Bible when I see one.
Was he reading a passage from the Old or New Testament? I dearly hoped it was the New Testament, and specifically the Sermon on the Mount, beautiful words of mercy, equality and charity that all American politicians should commit to memory, practice as habit, and then institute as policy.
On the other hand, maybe he needed the Old Testament and Jonah, and the tale of running away futilely from calling and responsibility. I love that sea story and its awesome metaphor. Sometimes I desire a whale to ingest me for three days, force me into solitude and silence, then spit me out on a beach so I can get up and do the right thing.
My zeal to approach the man intensified, and the literary associate rebuked me. “Can’t you just imagine it?” she said. No, I am a journalist first and foremost and I craved to know the truth, which in my experience always proves the richer story than fiction or contrived memoir.
The literary associate won the day, however, and we circled around the man, affording me a better view. I saw pain and vacancy in his young man’s face, a dangerous combination. He appeared to need answers.
Perhaps the Bible could help. Decades ago, it never helped me in moments of crisis. Nevertheless, I don’t dismiss that for many, many years it has provided genuine comfort and guidance for some.
Yes, I left him alone with the Bible, although I felt I had something unique to offer him, wisdom gathered from my multitudes of spiritual experiences on Oregon’s beaches.
Had I gone up to him, I would have suggested he turn his head left, bookmark the Bible and rest it on the log, stand up, walk toward the ocean. Or run. Go ask questions of the sea and yourself. Answers lie within the ocean. Look, listen, touch, perhaps wade in the water and dance. No reading required. No authority but the old annihilating sound of the ocean and its antediluvian answers.
It’s worked for me so many times I’ve lost count.
My friends the gulls
[Posted April 25, 2012]
Some six or seven years ago, I heard a story about an employee of a coastal restaurant who beat a one-legged gull to death with a stick, out back of the establishment. Apparently the gull served as the establishment’s mascot, and for whatever reason, if sociopathic behavior can be said to have logical reasons, the employee bashed the bird to death.
The man who recounted the incident to me heard about it from an eyewitness who later called the police. An investigation ensued, but the perpetrator wasn’t arrested, even though killing a gull constitutes a crime under federal migratory bird law, punishable by a maximum fine of $15,000 and a maximum prison sentence of two years, depending on the offense.
The tale of the senseless and horrific murder of a gull has never left my mind. I can also never forget driving behind a pick up truck and watching a male driver purposely swerve into the shoulder of Hwy. 20, in order to kill a gull. Who are these people? What happened to their moral development? What books do they read to their children? If I had had my cell phone with me that afternoon, I would have called the police and the local office of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, the federal agency charged with enforcing migratory bird law. Most likely nothing would have happened, but perhaps the officer might have forced the man would to explain why he committed the murder — with his kids listening.
Frankly, I prefer gulls to most human beings. They are my close friends on Oregon’s ocean beaches and have many advantages over us. For one thing, they can fly and ride the thermals with an effortless grace I envy. I prefer their clucking language to English. They also don’t talk on cell phones in restaurants. Nor do they use leaf blowers, murder one other over religion, experiment on primates, or snort methamphetamine. Yes, they do eat terrible fast food but that’s only because some human being came to his senses and threw it away.
Gulls are such a ubiquitous presence on the Oregon Coast, but really, do we know all that much about them? Should we?
I don’t know who wrote it, but somewhere I read something to the effect that, “It behooves us to know the names and interesting details of the sentient creatures we see and interact with every day.” I have at least one interaction every day with a gull, either on the beach, near my home, or at Newport High School, where I teach. Side note: The gulls don’t understand the new artificial turf field. When the birds land on the plastic grass looking for food, they seem totally bewildered. There’s a great poem or national metaphor in there somewhere.
Gulls fascinate me and I’d like to take this opportunity to educate people about them. For that I am indebted to a charming little book called “Gulls: A Social History,” written by Frank Graham Jr. with photographs by Christopher Ayers, published in 1975. In this long out-of-print book that I checked out from the Driftwood Library in Lincoln City, Graham writes: “We would be poorer without gulls than they would be without us; these beautiful and fascinating creatures add to the marvelous natural diversity that enriches our lives.”
Amen to that. Nothing enriches me more than inching up to the Western gulls at the turnaround at Nye Beach in Newport, and examining their well-worn faces. What are they thinking?
For starters, there is no such creature as a seagull. There are 44 different species of gulls and some live as long as 20 years. I learned about their interesting mating, interspecies breeding, migratory patterns, and that even the sharpest birders have difficulty telling many of the species apart.
I also learned that not all that long ago, many local populations of gulls were nearly wiped out across North America by eggers, milliners, and the government, the latter spreading poison to arrest the proliferation of certain species in favor of other birds. It’s a ghastly tale, biologists killing wildlife to save certain (politically) preferred species, that still plays out today (think hatchery salmon over euthanized sea lions on the Columbia).
Yet the gulls survived by adapting to various wasteful human trends, like landfills, and as Graham writes, “We are contemporaries in a sense, riding the runaway vehicle that is the modern industrial world.” He wrote that two years after the Arab Oil Embargo and 26 years before the debut of the iPod. It makes me think that when human beings wind down their time on Earth, which is inevitable, gulls will remain.
They’ll adapt and keep on flying.
Limpet madness redux
[Posted March 27, 2012]
A couple of months ago, I wrote a column about a woman I observed on my beach who fanatically collects treasures washed ashore.
At the time, I had just started collecting limpet shells. Limpets are the marine gastropods sporting the exquisitely beautiful, slightly conical, shells one can discover near the wrack line of littoral areas. Limpets live on rocks, scrape along them, and eat algae. When you discover their shells, it’s because, as I understand it, waves or predators dislodged them from their habitat and they die. Their shells come to rest in the sand.
At first my collection was small, decorative only. When relaxing at home, I barely paid it any attention. Then something happened (well, truth be told, I got my heart broken by a woman) and limpets became something else altogether. I began integrating them into my life in ways that heretofore would have been inconceivable.
Not long after the column appeared, the breakup occurred and limpets began revealing themselves to me in fantastic numbers. Or maybe I was finally noticing.
I collected them all. I studied them. They became a character in a novel I’m writing. I gave them away to anyone who seemed in dire need of something simple and beautiful. I found more and brought them into the classroom. I devised a Limpet Poetry Magic workshop for my creative writing students. Try it yourself. (I tweaked it a bit for readers of this column because I had students handle limpets in class for the workshop.)
Limpet Poetry Magic
• Look at the photograph of these limpets I found in the snow. Examine the limpets for 30 seconds. Now write down a description of them in a 60-second stream of consciousness blast.
• Draw a limpet on a piece of paper. Now close your eyes and draw it from memory.
• Come up with three to five words that rhyme with limpet.
• The limpet is a type of snail with a shell for protection from predators. Write a sentence about the shell you’ve constructed to protect yourself? Describe this shell. What does it look like? What’s it made of?
• Limpets eventually lose their shell. Assume one day, you will too. Who do you want to find it and what do you hope they will or will not do with it?
• Let us suppose limpets are the most advanced species on the planet. What excellent advice do limpets have for human beings?
• Complete this phrase: A limpet a day…
• If you were to tattoo of your limpet on your body, where would you put it?
• The limpet died but left behind something beautiful. After you die, what is something beautiful you hope to leave behind?
• Confess a secret to the limpet.
• Suppose the limpet is an oracle. Ask it something you have to know.
• If the limpet could talk to you, what would it say?
• Are limpets worth saving from extinction? Why or why not?
• What can you see when you look through your limpet’s keyhole?
• Peruse all your responses. Underline the best ones.
• Write a poem about limpets or anything you like.
The resulting poems were incredible and made me want to tattoo the image of a limpet on my left arm. I have to.
How do I account for this limpet madness within me that resulted from an abrupt loss of love? I can’t explain and don’t even bother trying anymore. I just roll with this magic the way I imagine a limpet rolls in the waves on the way to its death.
I hope I never stop collecting limpets. Something will be very wrong with me if I do
Brown ocean pours through gray area
[Posted March 15, 2012]
I went to Ona Beach in the aftermath of the big storm to ask a question: Can a brown ocean inspire poetry?
The rain slanted, the wind howled. Sections of a saturated Hwy. 101 threatened to liquefy. For the briefest of weak moments, I thought about turning the truck around and diving back into a history of Charles V and the Catholic genocidal subjugation of Mexico. But I wanted an immediate answer to my question and I knew Ona would deliver. It always does and I’ve gone there a lot in recent months because I have a lot of questions.
Sonny the husky and I hit the sand and made our way to the wrack line. I’d never seen more flotsam and jetsam, and found an unopened can of an antique Budweiser and a cool orange, purple and white float with odd markings.
No one else was around.
The rain let up so I whipped out the camera from the pea coat and used the float and some drift logs for an impromptu photo shoot. It worked out pretty well and I only got wet up to my ankles.
A man approached. He carried a pole, but it wasn’t for fishing. Sonny went up to him and he gave her a rub. I walked over and from my long ago days as a watershed council coordinator recognized the pole as equipment for collecting water samples.
The man told me his name was Steve Snow and he volunteered for the local chapter of Surfrider, the non-profit organization that serves as a much-needed watchdog for Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. Steve regularly braves the elements and grabs samples from multiple spots in the area. Later, the samples are tested to help ensure the public’s safety in contact water recreation activities.
It’s all part of widespread effort to throw some warning light on the dirty little fecal bacteria secret that some coastal merchants and politicians don’t want the tourists to know. Kind of like the unctuous mayor character in “Jaws” who wants to cover up the big bite. Steve and I briefly talked about this issue and then, somehow, segued into literature, of all things to talk about on a beach during a break in the storm.
We discoursed on Raymond Carver and Ed Ricketts, the Doc character from John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” Steve mentioned Robinson Jeffers, one of my favorite poets, and recommended several poems of Jeffers that I hadn’t read.
Steve also told me he even wrote a bit himself, and that his poem about a bald eagle eating a salmon in the estuary at Ona Beach was published in “Oregon Stories,” the Oregon sesquicentennial anthology.
At one point, Steve and I talked about the recent big storm that had turned all the water on the coast brown. He said, “I called a friend and told him the ocean was the color of mahogany.”
Question answered. Now someone’s got to write the poem. Send it to me if you do.
Crossing the Yaquina, and the Rubicon
[Posted Feb. 28, 2012]
Just outside of Seal Rock, I looked out the window of a yellow magic bus loaded with 30 students from Newport High School and caught a glimpse of the ocean. A pacific feeling swept over me — but only for a few seconds—because we were cruising south down Hwy. 101 to Yachats to stage a spectacle that I envisioned as a cross between “The Partridge Family,” “Glee,” the Rolling Stones’ “Rock and Roll Circus,” and “School of Rock.”
The good people of Yachats had asked me to bring ace performers from my Friday Lunch Jam club and put on a show that also included stunning black and white images from my photography class. Naturally, I said “yes!” What else did I have to do on a Friday night on the Oregon Coast in the middle of winter?
The Friday Lunch Jam began three years ago in my classroom as an open mike event. It features music and spoken word performances by students (and some staff) and has become a campus sensation that provides a supportive and democratic atmosphere for teenagers to exhibit their talents.
So there we were, on a sonic field trip. The kids were all right, pumped up, navigating ineptly or deftly the social watercourses that define that age, and I was trying to fathom my role as a teacher in this Brave New (corporate) World of Standards in Education. The word “complicit” keeps coming up a lot and I don’t like it.
I did know one thing: I needed rock and roll! I needed it more than the beach! Some six hours earlier I had sat through one of the most frustrating faculty meetings of my 18-year career. I’ll spare you the play-by-play. It will all come out in the novel. Just let me declaim: the idea of a public secondary school system that nurtures creativity and reflection, and encourages young people to discover animating passions that enable excellent adulthoods, is on the brink of annihilation by a machine that wants every child to become an automaton for the perpetuation of an unsustainable American economy built on nothing less than a house of marked cards.
And all I wanted to do was kick out the jams with the kids. On the bus, I recalled something Lou Reed sang about a wayward character: “She started listening to the fine, fine music, you know, her life was saved by rock n’ roll.” That line perfectly describes about a dozen students who rode the bus with me to Yachats.
Not all students are saved by extra math and reading classes, more testing and less recess.
We set up the equipment and ran through a sound check. In the green room moments before the show, we gathered tightly together, put our hands together, and all screamed together on my count, “Let’s rock Yachats!”
And we did.
An hour later, after performances ranging from blues to pop to poetry to opera to classic rock to a song in Italian, all the students stood on the stage and raised their hands in the air. The audience gave them a standing ovation.
Back on the bus, I paraphrased something Julius Caesar wrote after vanquishing some barbarian tribe: “We came. We saw. We conquered. We rocked.”
On the way home after the crew pizza, I pulled the truck near the ocean to hear its Pacific feeling. I thought about celebrating perhaps the greatest experience of my teaching career by going to the beach, but I was totally exhausted, and it was blacker than black outside, so I went home, took a bath, drank a goblet of wine, and slept better than I have in months.
I hit the beach with Sonny at sunrise the next morning and continued thinking about my role. That word “complicit” came up again, and I guess all I can keep doing to preserve my integrity and sanity while I figure things out is, to quote Neil Young, “Keep on rocking in the free world.” In this anthem, Neil intended this phrase as irony. I don’t.
Kesey’s Surrender
[Posted Feb. 14, 2012]
“The sea is surrender. Not the sea itself. No, it is a conqueror. It is giving into it that is surrender.”
Ken Kesey wrote this arresting passage and I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything truer written about the ocean. If you give yourself over to the ocean and its limitlessness, which I do three times a day, a willingness to acquiesce can arise and help you properly temper yourself and your ambitions in the world run by people who can’t see the ocean even if they stand inches away.
These lines do not originate from either of Kesey’s two classic novels set in Oregon, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Sometimes a Great Notion,” which I’ve read a combined total of 10 times and always find something new to reappraise when I do.
Last spring, I found these wonderful words in the marginalia of one of Kesey’s manuscripts in the collection of his papers at the University of Oregon. Before reading Kesey’s words on surrender, I hadn’t associated him with the ocean. In “Cuckoo’s Nest” the dominant image from nature is the dead and entombed Celilo Falls.
In “Notion,” well, that book is one sustained explosion of living Oregon Coast nature: rain, trees, rivers, birds, and a few sentences about the sea, but no memorable ones. It defined a special sense of Pacific Northwest place for all time and subsequently influenced every memoir (and most novels) written about the region.
I mention all this because this winter the folks who put together Newport Reads (full disclosure: I was on the committee) selected “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” as the novel they want the community to read and discuss together.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Cuckoo’s Nest” and I invite everyone reading this to delve into the novel for the first time, or reread it. Many of us encountered it in high school as a required rebellious text in the Age of Aquarius. The book fell out of favor with the advent of the Reagan Era and was eventually eclipsed by the movie, released in 1975. The cinematic adaptation is an undisputed classic, but it stripped away all the Native American and Celilo Falls imagery, which if, you’ve read the novel, is the true literary engine that drives the narrative and shapes the metaphors.
I just finished teaching “Cuckoo’s Nest” to my seniors at Newport High School. I thought it went well and I taught the book with an increased urgency. Not sure why. Maybe because in the days of constant testing and loss of creative arts electives, I think the educational establishment, with its concomitant link to America’s corporate agenda, is still preparing the youth to serve The Combine, as Kesey so memorably described the “capitalist conformist machine.” In fact, the system is much more efficient now than it was 50 years ago.
They don’t use the lobotomy to control the miscreants any more. They simply hand out prescription drugs like candy and make it cool to own shiny gadgets, and to pay to work and socialize on them 24 hours a day. They also expect a student to incur $100,000 in debt to afford a bachelor’s degree to better himself and his country. We talk about this in class and I openly wonder about my complicity with the Combine.
During this last read of “Cuckoo’s Nest,” I gave its crucial deep sea fishing scene more scrutiny, probably because the more I live near the ocean, the more I become obsessed with it.
Kesey writes, “Two whores on their way down from Portland to take us deep-sea fishing in a boat! It made it tough to stay in bed until the dorm lights came on at six-thirty.”
What ensues is a small group of patients from the state mental hospital led by the anti-hero Randle McMurphy experiencing a raucous deep sea fishing excursion with important implications for the men. The fishing allows the patients some much-needed freedom, a simple purpose, physical therapy, and a connection to something magical with exponentially more potential to heal them than Nurse Ratched’s diabolical machinations back on the ward.
In the novel, the scene takes place in Florence and Kesey writes of the ocean: “The swells slid by, deep emerald on one side, chrome on the other….We hit the bar and dropped into a canyon of water, the bow of the boat pointing up the hissing crest of the wave going before us, and the rear down in the trough in the shadow of the wave looming behind us…”
Kesey knew his waves. He spent a lot of time on the Oregon Coast and had a place in Yachats for many years. He died in 2001, but his books live on. I believe they still sow seeds. Pick up his first novel and join us celebrating the extraordinary and timeless accomplishment of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Kesey was 27 years old when it came out.
He was lost, 'til he found Love
Mist eroded into January dusk as I left my house to walk to the beach and see the day’s last light diffusing over the ocean. Sonny the old husky stayed behind, exhausted from an earlier ramble down the sand.
Fifty yards from the house I saw a dark mass moving in the street. I came closer and soon found myself kneeling on the asphalt and petting a rather runty and rotund black lab with a distinctive white forepaw. She was gray in the muzzle, well groomed, and without a collar.
The mist turned to rain. I know all the dogs in the neighborhood but didn’t recognize this one.
Long ago, when I dated the woman I eventually married, a stray dog crossed our path as I drove us to a movie. She told me to pull over, but I objected because arriving late to a movie used to rank as my top pet peeve (that is, until I moved to the coast and stopped seeing movies altogether).
She raised her voice, commanding me to stop. I did. She said: “There are two kinds of people in the world, people who help stray dogs when it’s not convenient, and those who don’t. I only date the former.”
We corralled the dog in the car, found a phone number on his tag and drove to a phone booth. She made a call and left a message. Later, we reunited the dog with its elderly owner and celebrated by cooking a fancy Italian meal and going bowling.
Back in my neighborhood, I took the lab home for the evening and she seemed lethargic, depressed. She fidgeted all night. In the morning I put the dog in the fenced back yard and drove to work at Newport High School.
During a break between first and second period, I went outside to the parking lot and called animal control for any news of a lost dog in the South Beach area. Sure enough, a couple from Vancouver had reported a lost dog, a black lab with a distinctive white forepaw. I got their number and called immediately. The bell rang. I was tardy to class! But hey, any student who employs the excuse, “Mr. Love, I was late to class because I was rescuing a stray dog,” earns an eternal free pass on tardies, so I excused myself.
I got a man on the phone. He spoke with a heavy Russian (or what I took for Russian) accent and was positively ecstatic. Apparently the dog was going a bit senile and had wandered away from a beachfront rental a half-mile away from my home. The couple had searched in vain and then returned to Washington. We ended our conversation by making a plan to meet after school. He was leaving Vancouver in an hour.
Bolting into Journalism, I screamed, “I just rescued a dog!” There was some scattered applause and then we went about cranking out another edition of the school news magazine. During the next break between classes, I talked to the man’s wife (with an even heaver Russian accent) and it turned out she was driving down with her daughters to reclaim the dog.
I walked back to my classroom and told my Creative Writing students the tale. I then imagined aloud to them that the woman was the wife of a rich Russian mobster, and would come bearing gifts of fine Vodka, caviar, a shiny revolver, and possibly one of her blonde, statuesque daughters. That’s the sort of thing we do every day in this class and that’s why I love teaching the subject. Call it what it is — tax-payer-subsided imagining that generates many of my best writing ideas.
After lunch, on a lark, I called a neighbor to go check on the dog. She called me a few minutes later and said there was no black dog in the yard or in the house, only Sonny. She had escaped! My teaching was done for the day so I ran to the truck and raced home to search for the dog.
On the way home I made a mental count of how many dogs I had rescued in my 15 years of living on the Oregon Coast. 1) Ray, my best friend for 12 years, found on Hwy. 101 near Neskowin; 2) the great Jo Jo, my Rottweiler/lab mix discovered at a boat ramp; 3) the crazy cattle dog I dubbed Buddy, who sprinted across Hwy. 101 in Lincoln City; 4) the miniature beagle in Pacific City; 5) the obese husky who jumped out of his master’s truck at the Surftides in Lincoln City; 6) the terrier a student found but wasn’t allowed to keep; 7) the black lab puppy dumped at a park in Lincoln City that a student brought to class.
I rescued them all and found them homes. My only failures were the boxer mix at South Beach State Park who wouldn’t come to me, and the greyhound that darted past me on the path to my local beach. I nearly separated a shoulder trying to tackle him. Seven wins and two losses. Not bad, but not good enough. I wanted an eighth victory.
Two hours later I found the lab exploring the leafy grounds of the vacation rental she had disappeared from. We returned home and I confined her in the back of the truck until her owner showed up.
At 4 p.m., a car pulled in my driveway. I walked out and met the woman and one of her daughters. Neither blonde, nor tall. I opened the truck’s tailgate and carried the dog down to the gravel. Upon seeing her owner, she went totally nuts. The woman thanked me repeatedly, gave me a hug, and presented a gift card from Starbucks. They drove away and I gathered up Sonny. To celebrate, we went to the beach, where I found limpets galore. An hour later, I ordered my first latte in 15 years and wrote up this account. At times, as I wrote, I became wistful because I occasionally miss my ex-wife and her wonderful influence on me. She taught me many important things in life.
By the way, the dog’s name is Lucky.
Sand and deliver: da beach debates
[Posted Jan. 3, 2012]
“The sea is like music; it has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over. The beauty and grandeur of the sea consists in our being forced down into the fruitful bottomlands of our psyches, where we confront and recreate ourselves in the animation of the mournful wasteland of the sea.”
So wrote C.G. Jung in 1909, aboard a steamer crossing the Atlantic, in a letter to his wife. He was undoubtedly looking upon the ocean when he wrote it.
I often write while looking upon the ocean, mostly letters, and the practice never fails to elicit interesting thoughts and rhythms. Is it really possible to think or write a banality while looking upon the ocean? The idea seems wildly implausible. I think even Justin Bieber could write a decent song staring at the sea. Or at least his handlers could.
Speaking of banality, my mind now unfortunately turns to the current Republican Party campaign for president. I don’t have cable television or a high-speed Internet connection; therefore, I haven’t watched any of the debates. But I have read the news accounts and transcripts.
(Expletive deleted) incredible is about all I can say. A very, very long way from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and I’m not talking years. This may smack of hubris, but I pretty much feel I would make a far better president than most of the Republican candidates, and I say that primarily because I look upon the ocean daily and visit the fruitful bottomland of my psyche in order to recreate myself in a better way to teach, write, think, love and make decisions. Furthermore, I also happen to believe in gravity and things like the Bill of Rights and writing love haikus in the sand.
I want to offer a modest yet novel suggestion. To improve the quality of thinking and oratory from the candidates the next time they get on stage, why not hold a future debate on a beach that affords candidates a grand view of an ocean? Surely something interesting for democracy will result. Ratings might even go up.
Continuing with this quasi-Jungian approach, I also suggest that after the debate, all candidates walk together down to the beach, to the water’s edge. They would stand there with their backs to the audience and cameras and look upon the ocean silently for one minute. Then, by some random means of selection, each candidate would turn around and tell us something, anything, not from the script written by a consultant who took his cues from polling.
Who knows what we’d hear? What we would know — instantly and assuredly — is if any of the candidates possess much of a psyche with a fruitful bottomland to visit. My gut reaction is that we’ll find pavement and strip malls, but I do want to be proved wrong. We all do.
An Oregon Coast Christmas
[Posted Dec. 20, 2011]
A good fictional tale seems like a long lost literary relic these days. To counter this depressing trend, I wrote the following tale with my creative writing students at Newport High School. Merry Christmas.
He sat at the kitchen table with his mother. They drank instant coffee and outside snow fell on the flat Nebraska fields. School started in five minutes. He had a history paper on the Zimmerman Telegram due and wondered if it should have something to do with Bob Dylan.
His mom set her mug on the table. He did too.
“Chet, I’ve found a new nursing job. We’re moving to Oregon in two weeks. They need me right away. It’s on the coast, a little town called Newport. It rains all the time but I think you’ll like it. You can learn to surf. There are big green trees everywhere and supposed to be lots of hippies too. I bet everyone walks around playing guitar and picks up litter.”
“Mom, another move? Right before Christmas? What about the rest of my senior year? “
“You barely go to class anyway. Nothing interests you at school. Neither one of us have any real friends here. We both need a change, a new start. This new job means more money and more responsibility.”
“But Oregon?”
“Sure, why not? They don’t have a sales tax either, and I’ve heard you don’t have to pump your own gas.”
A week later they had sold everything, jumped the lease, driven west in a battered Saturn wagon listening to terrible holiday music on the radio, and Chet found himself walking through the decorated halls of Newport High School clutching a plastic bottle of water. He couldn’t believe the size of the Christmas tree in the lobby; it scraped the ceiling. He also felt confused after reading a huge poster advertising a winter solstice party in a nearby forest. Apparently you couldn’t come unless you dressed up as a plant, nymph or small woodland creature.
Chet headed to second period, Mr. Love’s Honors Senior English. He had a backpack dangling off one shoulder that carried a black umbrella, a new one his mom picked up at Wal-Mart, what she called her “housewarming” present to him. He hesitated before knocking on Mr. Love’s door. A schedule written with green crayon caught his eye:
Senior English:
Monday: Yurt
Tuesday: Woods
Wednesday: Classroom
Thursday: Creek
Friday: Beach and/or Rock
Chet relaxed. It was a Wednesday. He didn’t even know what a yurt was.
He tapped gently the door with three fingers and walked into the classroom. It was packed, maybe 40 students. They all resembled members of indie rock bands or employees at farmer’s markets. Three sat on a couch and a couple others reclined in bean bag chairs. One was practicing yoga. A mobile of a driftwood Christmas tree rotated above the room.
A dog emerged from under a desk and limped toward Chet. He recognized it as a husky. She wore a black patch over her left eye and had the ragged appearance of being recently mauled. She sat down in front of Chet and raised her right paw up and down to him. He didn’t know what to do. It almost seemed like the dog wanted the umbrella.
Chet looked around the room. Record albums and maps of Oregon hung on the walls. He saw spotlights, a guitar amp, and musical instruments stashed in shelves next to crayons, markers and a dozen craft glue guns. Wrapped around the sprinkler system was old fishing gear: crab pots, ropes, floats, buoy markers, hooks, line, cable, poles. The room smelled like it was out to sea.
Everyone was writing, even the yoga kid. When they all saw Chet they stopped in unison and locked eyes upon him, then the umbrella. He waited for what seemed like an hour until a figure stood up from the couch. He held a journal in his left hand and a pen in the right. He was unshaven, longhaired, and wore brown cords and a green wool sport coat full of holes. There was dog fur all over him.
“My name is Mr. Love and my husky’s name is Mr. Figgs.” The figure shifted the pen to his left hand and reached out his right.
Chet shook his hand. “I’m a new student. Chet.” He paused for a moment. “What happened to your dog?
“He tangled with a developer who was illegally filling in a wetland but I assure you Mr. Figgs got the best of him. “Where’d you transfer from?
“Nebraska.”
Laughter exploded from every nook and cranny of the room, the floor, the ceiling. It nearly knocked Chet off his feet.
“Nebraska!” Mr. Love roared. “Oh Chet, you have been luckily delivered from the golden eared evil. Welcome to Oregon! Class, let’s welcome Chet! He no longer has to stare at cornfields!”
The class gave a hearty applause and savage tribal yells. They insulted corn. A few students bowed and made strange deferential gestures with their hands. One girl got up and danced a jig seen at the Oregon County Fair.
“So what did you think of our beaches?’ Mr. Love said.
“I haven’t been yet. I’ve actually never seen the ocean. We just got in a few days ago and found our apartment.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaat?” Mr. Love screamed. “You’ve never seen the ocean?” He spun around to face the class. “Did you hear this sacrilege Oregonians? Chet has never seen the ocean?”
A male student bolted up from his desk, spilling his goblet of tea and Lord of the Rings figurines he played with every day. He screamed: “This will not stand! To the beach! Take him now! Bring wood, oil, salmon and rock!”
The students all jumped up from their desks and enveloped Chet. A girl snatched the umbrella from his hand and snapped it in two over her knee. Then Mr. Figgs began savagely biting the umbrella, shredding it to smithereens. Another girl ran up to Chet and sunk her teeth in his bottle of water, puncturing it. She then grabbed it and flung it away.
Seconds later Chet felt himself gliding through the door, into the hall, into the parking lot, into the back seat of a generic American sedan streaked inside and outside with mold and decorated every inch with stickers advertising every city, town and kitsch tourist attraction in Oregon.
Rain started falling and some of the seniors began to dance with Mr. Figgs, scream to the sky, and smear rain into their hair and faces. Mr. Love was somewhere; Chet could hear him commanding this senior to carpool with that senior and where they should rendezvous. It sounded like they were going into battle.
Chet was sandwiched between two girls and three more girls rode in the front seat. They all wore their hair in ponytails and smelled like salt, pine cones and wood smoke. The sedan’s engine chugged to life, some weird guitar music came on, and the driver eased the sedan onto the road. Suddenly, all the windows powered down, the rains splashed in, and all the girls started singing, something about how much they hated clearcuts and shopping malls. One of them pulled out a Thermos and poured herself a mug of green tea. She offered Chet a sip but he declined.
As the sedan rumbled along, Chet turned around and saw seven vehicles, 10 bicycles and one runner in pursuit. The runner was wearing only a loin cloth. The procession passed the main entrance to the high school and the campus monitor stood on a bench pumping his right arm up and down. The principal was there too. He saluted.
A few seconds later, the convoy came to an abrupt stop and Chet saw Mr. Love race across the street, pick up two plastic bottles that littered the sidewalk, toss them in his truck, and then they were moving again.
“You have to put this blindfold on,” a girl said as she handed Chet a tie-dyed bandanna. “Mr. Love insists.”
He complied wordlessly.
Five minutes later the sedan stopped. “Wait here for a few minutes,” said a girl. He was alone.
Chet heard something he’d never heard before and it sounded huge. He also smelled something new and it filled his nose and lungs.
“You can take the blindfold off now Chet,” said Mr. Love. “Welcome to Nye Beach. C’mon, get out. Let’s go. It’s time you started living a real Oregon life.”
Chet exited the sedan. It began to rain harder. The students and Mr. Figgs had formed a gauntlet from the parking lot down to the beach. Chet entered and received pats on the back and howls and cries of encouragement as he walked through. Smoked salmon and huckleberries were forced into his mouth. Halfway down the gauntlet Chet felt himself being picked up, turned on his back, hoisted to the sky. Four boys carried him to the beach and Chet heard a surf guitar riff reverberate through an amp.
The boys stood Chet up on the sand and removed his shoes. He saw a dozen seniors holding hands and dancing around a massive bonfire of pallets. They all sang. One boy walked on coals. Three girls played hackey sack with Mr. Figgs. Mr. Love wrote in a journal. The rain began to fall even harder and the fire spit and hissed in response. Chet turned around and beheld the gray sky and the black water and the white waves and started walking toward them. They appeared as the most beautiful Christmas present Chet had ever received and there wasn’t a trace of blue anywhere.
Here comes the rain again
[Posted Dec. 7, 2011]
The hard rain has arrived on the Oregon Coast and only the weaklings let it stop them from hitting the beach. Don’t be one of them.
I remember a day last spring when I almost let the rain defeat me. It was Thursday morning, March 31, 2011, the day that would eventually conclude the second wettest March in Newport since instruments have measured depressing records of this kind. I peered out the window of my Newport High School classroom, saw rain falling for the 31st day in a row, and immediately thought of one Ken Kesey’s immortal riffs about rain from “Sometimes a Great Notion.” Set on the Oregon Coast, it is undoubtedly the greatest novel about rain in the history of world literature:
“…there is solace and certain stoical peace in blaming everything on the rain, and then blaming something as uncontrollable as the rain on something as indifferent as the Arm of the Lord.”
That morning in the classroom, my patience with the rain hung by the thinnest of cobwebs. As I stared out the window, I schemed how to motivate my listless and intellectually waterlogged students. Soon, they would start streaming in, with pale, vacant faces resembling prisoners of war and moisture visibly evaporating from their clothing.
I was particularly concerned with the photography class. They hadn’t gone outside in a month to shoot photographs and were sick of learning new Photoshop tricks. I suspected they were going insane. Stasis had them gripped tight. I thought to myself: we’ve got to move. So we did, into the deluge, which is exactly what you must do in these dark winter months, if you want to survive.
In my 14 years residing at the Oregon Coast, which means I’ve endured roughly 720 inches of rain, I’ve learned a thing or two about the rain and how to master it for my own purposes, ranging from the romantic to the creative to the curricular to the spiritual.
What you must first do is get out into the rain. Take it on! And never use an umbrella because who doesn’t want to feel rain on your face, or better yet, see it run down the face of someone you love? When a big storm hits and the hard rain slants in six different directions, go to the beach with the dog and watch the collisions in the ocean. I find it one of the most primal scenes a person can experience and typically never encounter another human who might taint the awesome privacy of the moment. Bringing a partner or date along is acceptable.
I also suggest grabbing a waterproof camera, or wrapping one in plastic, and making art. Rain has an astonishingly simple and moving beauty that truly comes alive when captured on film. I never really considered gray a beautiful color until I started photographing rain.
Fourth period rolled around and in trudged the photography students. I told them to gather around the whiteboard where I wrote the fatal statistics: 14 inches of rain during the last 30 days, double the average amount, a record for March. Four inches had fallen in the last several days. They groaned and looked not so discretely to their cell phones for deliverance.
“We are going to war against the rain,” I said. “We are hard-core Oregonians, so get me the best rain shots in the history of photography. I’ve got 20 bucks for the best image. I want spouts, gutters, puddles, drops, hair, windows, dogs, feet. I don’t care. I want to see rain like I’ve never seen before. Teach me about it!”
“Now get your cameras and hit the rain!” I yelled. The students roared in delight and geared up in seconds. I probably should have cranked up Eric Clapton’s “Let it Rain” to send us into battle, but I was the first one out the door, with two cameras slung around my neck and one stuffed in my pocket.
Thirty minutes later, we sat soaked in my darkened musty classroom, watching a slide show of stunning and wholly original black and white photographs taken around campus. Lily earned first prize with a self portrait shot of rain drops dangling off her fingers. I’ll never forget this image as long as I live.
It’s probably raining right now as you read this. Get up and get out into it! You can win.
Vicissitudes and rallying
[Posted Nov. 22, 2011]
I can’t begin to describe the ways I got my ass kicked teaching at Newport High School a while back. I honestly felt like quitting. Thank God I didn’t pick up the copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” that rests in the bookshelf near my desk at school, and read a random paragraph. Had I done so, I might have handed in my resignation and bought a van. It probably was also a good thing that I once fought back from a 0-6, 0-5, love-40 score in a high school tennis match and won. I really don’t know how to quit, although I am pretty good at recognizing when endings have arrived.
What a week. Actually, only four days. “Vicissitudes” wasn’t one of the weekly vocabulary words for my Honors Senior English class, but perhaps I should have added it to the list, because this excellent and mysterious noun perfectly captured my experience. Definition: “A change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.” I surfed a monster wave of vicissitudes all week and I surfed badly. In fact, I wiped out a lot and several sharks bit chunks out of me.
Years ago my father, a master teacher of 40 years, told me: “When lessons or interactions go sour in the classroom, good teachers have to rally. They have no other choice. Otherwise, get out.”
Have you ever experienced a teacher who didn’t rally but remained in the classroom? For a long, self-entitled time? It is one of the sorriest sights in American professional life and I will never become one.
I must have walked 50 miles that week, replaying my blunders and trying to conjure corrections. One day I went to the beach three separate times after school and let the ocean annihilate all the secondguessing. Then I let it create existential momentum for a rally. The aging husky Sonny and several neighborhood dogs lost a lot of weight during this time. I dropped seven pounds.
Where to begin?
Lazy writing, meaning mediocre instruction from me. Writing done while playing video games, trolling on Facebook or texting. Deadlines missed. Phony excuses made. Outright lies. Drama factories working overtime. Sloppy journalism, meaning sloppy teaching from me. Students disappearing, when their fellow members of the news magazine class needed them to follow through. Students unable to take any initiative, meaning I didn’t properly motivate or instruct how to take initiative. High expectations from the teacher, but a poor foundation laid by the teacher to have students fulfill high expectations.
Of course I could go on, but you get the idea. I might also add that the above scenario was for only one class. I teach others.
So I drove Sonny to the beach, and talked aloud to myself. I ranted, harangued, named names, and plotted countermeasures. I’ll confess it right here: the ocean looked especially seductive one balmy evening, with layers of red, purple and orange overhead, congealing into a psychedelic sky of pure and parallel ephemeral beauty that commanded me to strip off all my clothes, and run headlong into the waves with Sonny in pursuit. I dove in, submersed, tasted salt, felt the bottom, emerged, and sprinted back to shore. Sonny howled in approval and danced the best she could.
I put on all my clothes and walked Sonny back to the truck. Rally complete.
Ocean Poetry
[Posted Nov. 8, 2011]
A month ago, Newport High School staged a half-day writing festival called Write-A-Palooza, in which students participated in all manner of workshops intended to excite their interest in writing. It almost goes without saying that student excitement for writing has taken a vicious flogging in recent years, because of the mania for state testing. It always makes me laugh (or vomit) when I hear earnest educational professionals who can’t write a lick demand better writing of today’s youth, and not for youth’s sake, but to serve an unsustainable American economy predicated on mindless consumerism.
With Write-A-Palooza, for four hours at least, one day out of the year, we eliminated the indoctrination and punishment associated with writing and let loose our creative passions.
I teach English, journalism and creative writing at the school and taught one Write-A-Poolaza workshop called “Ocean Poetry.” Nearly 40 students crammed in my room and in 40 minutes produced some of the hottest, most original verse on oceans and beaches I’ve ever read. Make no mistake about it: the kids can write, and write well, if a teacher just asks them to write something meaningful.
Below is the list of prompts I dictated to the class to help them get started. Once the students produced their individual poems, I instructed each poet to choose their best line, record it on a poster, and then recite it to the class. I typed up all the best lines and then rearranged and slightly edited them into one super-hard-core Oregon ocean poem that appears after the prompts. I like how it turned out.
Feel free to write your poem in response to the prompts and send it my way.
Pen a poem to the ocean
• Consider these writing prompts
Describe the ocean with three adjectives and one verb.
Ask a question of the ocean.
Answer this question: What can a person learn from the ocean?
Finish this sentence: The ocean sounds/smells like ___.
Finish this sentence: I like the ocean best ___.
Write a sentence of apology to the ocean.
Write a sentence how you will protect the ocean.
Write a sentence or series of fragments that describe(s) the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen at the ocean.
Write a sentence to your favorite ocean creature.
Write an equation about the ocean.
Write a sentence to someone who has never seen the ocean.
Confess a secret to the ocean.
Make up your own question or sentence about the ocean.
• Now go back and add a color, shape or texture to one of the lines.
• Title the poem.
The Ultimate Flow
You are the ultimate flow, interpreting sacrifice and satisfaction.
Green, vast, infinite, intimate.
A beautiful woman polluted yet divine.
You gleam like a mirror.
The clouds feed you and the sun is your spotlight.
The sky moulds with the water in the slate gray of the coming storm.
Colors, colors all around, in the sky, on the ground!
Pinks, purples, reds, and oranges dance across your shimmering surface.
Old friend, I apologize for taking you for granted.
I will forever remember your voice, whispering beneath the fear.
My greatest memories lie within your salty blue waves.
I like you best served cold, angry even.
Some can only imagine your smooth shift from ferocity to breath,
or how to go with the flow,
in the water swaying in and out with your indecisive ways,
not making up your mind endlessly making decisions.
In your forgiving ways, wrap me in your arms and float me along your tunnels.
The grayness of it all
[Posted Oct. 26, 2011]
Gray: Part 1
We looked out to the early evening sky and saw the September light quickly dissolving into the fog; within minutes an army of gray had invaded from the sea and conquered the area with a weapon that cloaked the area in the color of ash.
“Let’s go the beach,” I said. Something in the gray called to me and I knew I was accessing a dream.
She was up for it and downed the last of the red wine. I watched her glide down the steps and pivot in gray cowboy boots. Gray cowboy boots? Something was about to happen and somewhere, a boot maker who spent time on the Oregon Coast and understood the power of gray, dreamed of it.
Seconds later I knifed the truck through the ash and Sonny the husky howled in back.
We took the path to the beach. Sonny led the way but we lost sight of her. Gray, gray, gray everywhere, layered, enveloping, suffusing, tactile. At least a dozen shades stacked up to the horizon. No contrast anywhere. Nothing but grain, like the long lost grain captured on high speed film in the halcyon days before pixels and when America honored its red light darkrooms (mostly in high schools) and the wondrous sensuality created in there. Even a few photographs, too.
She tripped on some rocks and nearly fell into the creek. I steadied her and our feet found the sand. We heard Sonny’s tag jingle jangle and then it disappeared into the sound of the incoming surf. The ocean was 30 feet away but we couldn’t see it. For a moment I thought I should head back to the truck to retrieve the old film Canon and document the gray.
Then I thought better: forget it. Nothing could nail this grain for posterity.
She asked me what was going on. That she didn’t even like the color of gray until now. I said I had never seen anything like it in my life. This claim originated from a man who has witnessed more gray on the beach the last 14 years on the Oregon Coast than anyone alive.
It occurred to me that we had both walked into the grayest night in the history of the Earth since organisms had evolved from creatures of gray into creatures of black and white and their many dangerous human contrasts.
I looked at her, but couldn’t really discern a face, just a vague countenance I had to touch and deserved a painting, if any artist could imagine, let alone paint grays like this.
When we left the house she had blonde hair and wore blue jeans and a white top. Now all of those colors had become heretofore-unseen shades of gray. We headed south, hands on one another, and kept close to the cliff. At times, the surf died inches from our shoes. I can’t remember much of what we said, although the talk was almost exclusively of gray, and in all likelihood ranked as one of the most passionate conversations in the history of the English language on matters concerning gray.
Part 2
As we talked, a little math entered my mind, as in: Beach x gray (to the third power) + cowboy boots + salt air = Use your imagination.
Props to parents who don't helicopter
[Posted Oct. 13, 2011]
Sonny the husky and I took the path down to the beach on a late August afternoon. I looked up and saw a nine or 10-year old boy some 50 yards away. He worked diligently at building a dam on the little creek that empties into the ocean and always charms me because it never meanders the same way on consecutive days. A century ago it doubtless had a bountiful run of several species of salmonids. They’re long, long gone, as are other features of American life, like sanity in American politics, and parents who cheerfully give their children some unsupervised breathing room to socialize, acculturate, and well, be alone.
We hit the beach and I looked around for the adult I naturally assumed kept watch over the boy. No one was around. What? Incredible! I couldn’t believe it. Since moving to the Oregon Coast in 1997 and visiting the beaches thousands of times, I’d never seen a kid his age, let alone an adolescent, play alone on the beach. What’s next? Political courage and a balanced federal budget?
The boy must have walked down from a nearby vacation rental. I watched him for a few minutes and he never once went to a phone. Sure, he probably had one stashed in his gear with instruction to text in every five minutes. Nevertheless, he was alone and damming up the creek with gusto.
Sonny and I ambled away. The boy was still on the job when we returned to the path and headed for home.
A few days later Sonny and I hit the beach, again in the afternoon. I came across three kids ranging in age from five to 12, constructing sand castles in the same spot as the dam builder. I looked around and saw their presumed mother sitting on a drift log 25 yards away, fiddling with her phone.
I do not have children and don’t offer any advice here on how to raise them. I have read quite a bit of literature on parenting in recent months that documents the pronounced negative results of children raised by helicoptering parents who schedule, supervise and try to manipulate a positive outcome for every minute of their children’s existence. (An article titled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” in the July/August issue of the The Atlantic was superb, devastating.) Limited space here doesn’t allow a complete summary of the documentation, but basically the argument goes like this: excessive supervision of a child doesn’t allow for any dynamic personal growth, proper socialization or unscripted moments that make life such a joy and learning experience. It does, however, tend to build false self-esteem and a fear of initiating things for one’s self.
Reading this literature prompted me to recollect my glorious days growing up as a kid in Oregon City in the 1970s. My friends and I would spend endless summer days playing sports (no coaches around) or army out in the woods a good (unhelmeted) two or three-mile bike ride from suburbia. Our parents had exactly one rule: home at dusk … if you want to eat.
When families visited the beach, which wasn’t that often, parents would invariably send the kids down to the beach with materials to make a fire with simple instructions: don’t go in the water and never turn your back on the ocean. Oh, and not too much lighter fluid. We always survived.
I watched the kids build the castles and then I watched the mom watch me. Curiosity overtook me and crossed the creek and approached her. I identified myself as a local writer working on a piece about parenting and wondered if I could ask her a few questions. She said “yes.”
“Would you ever let your kids play alone at the beach?” I said.
What ensued was a probing 15-minute conversation where I admitted I didn’t have kids but taught at Newport High School and felt the greatest quality a student can possess is the ability to think independently and take some original initiative. It surprised me to learn that she had experienced a supervision-free childhood almost exactly like mine and cherished it.
But she hadn’t continued this tradition. Times had changed for the worse. Too many predators about, was her unstated implication.
“I might let the oldest out alone in his own neighborhood, but not here where he’s on unfamiliar ground, and the ocean too.”
A reasonable answer, I thought. I thanked her for her time and candor. Sonny and I continued down the beach. She went back to her phone and the kids played away.
Yet another obsession
Posted Sept. 28, 2011
An obsessive writer does not exclusively obsess about beaches, dogs, and mermaids. If he lets his mind roam, invites his soul, and looks around, he can easily find a new subject that will eventually seize all his literary attention.
My current obsession is bridges — Conde McCullough’s bridges. McCullough, Oregon’s master State Bridge Engineer from 1919 to 1937, built these wonderfully exquisite spans along the Oregon Coast during his career. They have come to define Oregon and received national acclaim. They are as indigenous here as the coho salmon, Sitka Spruce, and mold in the closets of cut-rate motel rooms.
It all began for me several years ago when I moved to Newport and began a daily commute across the Yaquina Bay Bridge, the undisputed crown jewel of McCullough’s legacy, the second-most photographed bridge on the West Coast (behind the Golden Gate).
In short order, I realized my interaction with it was revolutionizing my whole aesthetic and understanding of civic engineering. I dubbed the bridge “The Green Lady” and began photographing her almost every time I drove across, trying desperately to document her distinctive and eccentric art deco flourishes, such as the elegant green arch, beveled columns, obelisks, ornate railing and pedestrian plazas, all distinctive traits of McCullough’s greatest bridges. Later, I started walking across the bridge and digging up wild stories of bridge-related poems, paintings, tattoos, mischief, murder, sexual shenanigans and suicides.
I also did a little historical research and discovered that Oregon opened the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport on Labor Day 1936. Built during the New Deal as a PWA (Public Works Administration) project, the Yaquina Bay Bridge has stood magnificently for 75 years as a monument to excellence in architecture and how a partnership between state and federal government in the throes of an economic calamity can produce something practical, beautiful, and lasting. It is nothing less than an Oregon landmark and a powerful reminder of how to build a great bridge.
I practically worship the Yaquina Bay Bridge, but McCullough’s other subtle masterpieces along Hwy. 101 beguile as well: in Astoria over Young’s Bay, Tillamook, Depoe Bay (look underneath), Ten Mile Creek, Florence, Reedsport, Coos Bay, Gold Beach. The little concrete arch bridge across Big Creek in Lane County is another of my favorites.
A final thought about McCullough’s bridges: To really appreciate them, you have to stop your vehicle, get out it, stash the iPod, and inspect these bridges up close. I mean, lay hands on them, listen to the ambience, and read the plaques. Even better still, walk across one. If you do, I highly recommend you choose the Yaquina Bay Bridge. Traversing it on foot is one of the highlights of living in Oregon.
And what better time to walk across it than this Sunday, Oct. 2, 75 years to the day since Oregon officially dedicated the bridge? The police will close the northbound lane for roughly one hour, from noon to 1 p.m., and we all get to walk from the south side to the north, together, to join in the big bridge party under the north approach. The Newport High School marching band will lead the way across the bridge, followed by vintage cars, the roller derby gals, a kid on a unicycle, a girl with a snake, and who knows what else. The more flamboyant the better! For more details check out bridge75.com or the Newport Chamber of Commerce web site. What a glorious Oregon afternoon this will be.
Somewhere, the Rainbow is over
[Posted Sept. 13, “I’m from Monmouth,” said the man, in answer to my question that began our unlikely conversation. He held a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on a sunny August afternoon near his tepee, erected on my local beach.
I had discovered the tepee earlier on my dawn walk with Sonny the husky and became instantly intrigued with its plain white color and sturdy construction. Over the years I’d encountered many intriguing things at the beach and this tepee, multiple beer cans strewn around it, ranked pretty high on the list — top 20 for sure. Later that afternoon I visited the beach again and ran into the man doing a little groundskeeping around the tepee. I went up to him.
The man appeared anywhere from 40-70 years of age, or OTA, as I call it. Oregon Tavern Age. I think he told me his name was Rick, or perhaps Ed. His maniacal spotted mutt kept playing stick with itself through our entire conversation.
“I came down to Ten Mile Creek (near Cummins Creek Wilderness Area in Lane Country on the central Coast) looking for the Rainbow Family Gathering.”
“The Rainbow Family on the Oregon Coast!” I screamed. “You’re kidding? Where’d you hear that?”
“Rumors, so I came down this way. Didn’t find it.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Rainbow Family Gathering for 2011 had already occurred, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington, six weeks ago.
For those readers unacquainted with the incredible history of the Rainbow Family, which had its hazy genesis at Vortex I, the 1970 free and legendary Oregon rock festival held outside Estacada, you really have missed out on a unique American counterculture tale. (Do not consult the Wikipedia entry on the Rainbow Family — it is one lie and distortion after another.)
To sum it up: every year thousands of decidedly groovy spiritual seekers and temporary and permanent cultural dropouts somehow receive word to camp out somewhere on federal land (usually in the Western United States) and never bother obtaining a permit from the government. They practically invented the leave-no-trace-behind ethic for camping and offer a completely different (conservative?) model on how to live properly and treat the Earth with much a much more elevated principle than the current rapacious one destroying the planet.
I asked the man a few questions about the tepee and he gave me a primer on how to cure the poles and erect a tepee, inebriated, in the black of night, in such a way that it could withstand some hard Oregon rain. I also asked if he planned on staying at the beach for an extended stay. “No, I’ve got to get back to my garden,” he said with a smile. He may have even winked.
Right. Sure, the garden, and all its important “plants” growing in the fertile Willamette Valley soil to relieve pain. I got it. Every sentient Oregonian gets it except the Governor, the Oregon Legislature and most, but (thankfully) not all, members of state law enforcement agencies.
“Have a great day,” I said, and Sonny and I cruised south down the sand.
The next morning I returned at dawn with Sonny and took some photographs of the tepee. The man’s campfire smoldered and I noticed cans of Pabst and Rolling Rock neatly stashed away on some nearby rocks, waiting to be redeemed for a quintessential Oregon deposit and more cans of Pabst and Rolling Rock.
I thought: tending garden all day in the hot sun sure works up a mighty mean thirst. Kind of painful too, for an OTA man with creaky joints and a rusty existential compass. I’m sure he’ll need some relief and I’m sure he has it right at hand.
Fact or fiction?
Hark! The bark holds a sign of love
[Published Aug. 19, 2011]
Not too long ago, on one of my early morning jaunts with my husky down Ona Beach, south of Newport, I took my usual path through the dunes to inspect the eccentric driftwood shanties and sculptures often erected there. These original structures never last very long but always leave an inspiring impression, which always suggests to me a dynamic way to live. Tread lightly and swiftly with fresh distinction.
I ambled along and watched the avian comings and goings of the Beaver Creek estuary, always an intriguing show that invariably features some odd bird putting in a cameo. The husky lagged behind and sniffed at the remains of a makeshift camp site recently populated by miscreants, meaning those who drink terrible, land-locked, Midwestern lagers and leave behind their empties and other trash. (Note: I have never seen a discarded Oregon microbrew bottle littering an Oregon beach.)
Something came into view and I approached it from the rear: a 3-foot long piece of bleached bark suspended between two 5-foot driftwood poles, sunk in the sand. It was held up by twine, attached to another piece of driftwood parallel to the bark and also fastened by twine to the poles. A glass bottle dangled off one end of the installation. I gave one of the poles a little kick and it didn’t budge. Someone had built well, with resolve. That person had also, quite obviously, used materials washed ashore, at hand, free, unique — another good lesson on how to live or make art, I thought.
I walked around to the front of the installation and beheld the smooth surface of the inner bark. It was a sign, written with a black marker, possibly a lighter. It read: I Love You Kat.
Who is Kat? Who made the sign? Did Kat ever see it? Are two people still together or were they never together? What is the love story here? It’s a mystery. I want to know because ascertaining the truth of these matters occasionally animates my life in the right direction, when it comes to matters of love.
I gave the sign a closer inspection. My mind halfheartedly conjured many entertaining scenarios of its provenance. I say halfheartedly because I primarily write non-fiction, enjoy reporting and documentation, and have a difficult time inventing characters, motivations, and details, unlike, say, a lot of other prominent memoirists and tabloid sleaze merchants.
Of course, fiction has its role here. Some writers would argue the major role. We can’t know everything and imagining the “I Love You Kat” story can perhaps serve as an even richer animating experience than knowing the hard facts of the relationship. That’s why people write and read novels and watch endless romantic comedies. As Susan Sontag had one of her characters in a novel say, “What is the point of telling stories if not to stir up the longing everyone harbors for an alternate life?”
Typically, reporting the truth doesn’t allow for this. Maybe Kat’s paramour longs for an alternative ending to his story with her (or him?). I won’t ever know unless the sign’s maker miraculously reads this and contacts me with a desire to share. If that happens, I guarantee the truth of this story will turn out far better than any piece of fiction about it.
Several days later Sonny and I returned to Ona at dawn to begin our Sunday. Love was on my mind. I meandered over to the installation and found it broken up and the glass bottle gone. I quickly refastened the sign to the poles, fortified the installation against the miscreants, and then added something legible of my own to the project. I wanted to add more mystery to anyone who might encounter it.
It might still be there.
Sorry, Charley
There’s still some truth in non-fiction
[Posted Aug. 30, 2011]
[Learn more about Matt.]
In this column, I’d like to digress somewhat from my usual subject matter and discuss the most important principle underlying “One Man’s Beach.” That principle is: I never make anything up. And yes, a while back, I really did see a long-haired, bare-breasted woman (mermaid) nestled in the riprap.
In 1960, an ailing, 60-year old John Steinbeck had a specially-constructed camper built onto the back of a pickup truck (one of the first RVs of its kind), dubbed it Rocinante after Don Quixote’s nag and took to the road. His French poodle Charley rode shotgun and the literary result was “Travels with Charley,” the greatest dog book of all time and a fascinating glimpse at America, then beginning a rapid descent into cultural homogeneity brought about by the Interstate Highway System and the concomitant rise of chain stores. The book became a huge bestseller, a staple of high school English classes, a definitive model for travel writing, and Steinbeck’s final contribution to American literature.
I’ve read the book at least a half dozen times and worship it for many reasons. Chief among them is Steinbeck’s anguished description of blowing out a tire on the Oregon Coast on a rainy Sunday, and how an elderly and laconic garage owner improbably rescues him and sets him up with new tires. Steinbeck never mentions the name of the town with three or four service stations, “…we came to a damp little shut-up town whose name escapes me because I never learned it.” Initially, I thought it was Lincoln City, but after my last reading, I believe Steinbeck broke down in Tillamook.
As I said, I worship “Travels with Charley” and thus it shocked and saddened me to learn this spring that Steinbeck apparently fabricated many of the scenes in the book. According to Bill Steigerwald, a journalist who retraced much of Rocinante’s route and consulted an earlier draft of the book, and Bill Barich, author of “Long Way Home: On The Trail of Steinbeck’s America,” Steinbeck spent most nights not in the camper, but in motels, even luxury hotels! He failed to mention that his wife accompanied him for many stretches. And there was also the little matter of inventing characters and making up dialogue to impart his political views of American life. I mean, did Steinbeck even bring along Charley?
Learning the truth about “Travels with Charley” truly depressed me. I don’t like discovering I’ve been duped by something I’ve read. The experience prompted me to think about how I approach my non-fiction subjects, such as what I witness during my habitual visits to Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. I could have easily made up all kinds of untraceable fantastic stories about what I see and get even wilder columns than the ones I produce.
That’s called lying and the result is the self-aggrandizement of the writer who couldn’t get the real goods and the perpetration of intellectual and emotional fraud against the reader. I find fabrication or embellishment in non-fiction unseemly, desperate, and ultimately dispiriting and crippling to the writer. The fraud may never come out, but I like to believe it will burrow its way into a phony writer like a pathogen and inflict damage in one way or another.
What really happened to Steinbeck on the Oregon Coast? Did he get drunk with a young Ken Kesey in a Florence bar full of loggers? Did he marvel at the sinuous green steel of the Yaquina Bay Bridge? Did he check out the beach at Oswald West State Park? Did he even get a flat tire in Tillamook? I want to know and I’ll never know.
I guess I’ll forgive Steinbeck for his transgressions because I still love his fiction, especially “Cannery Row,” for the discussion of progressive ideals and working class people he gave voices to — something practically vanished from American fiction these days. And I guess I still love “Travels with Charley” because of the dog and the camper and hitting the road to discover something about one’s self. And, well, years ago, as a direct result of reading “Travels with Charley” at a critical juncture in my life, I bought a camper, rigged it up, drove the endless Alaska Highway with Ray my trusty shepherd by my side, all in an attempt to become a writer. Things didn’t work out so well, but I got one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction writing about the experience. (You can read it on one of my Facebook page notes at <http://www.facebook.com/people/Matt-Love/735838324.)
By the way, I didn’t make up a single thing, like I never do with this column.
A plea for Divine arbitration
[Posted Aug. 2, 2011]
Dear Supreme Being:
I want to thank you for successfully intervening and settling the labor dispute between the players and owners of the National Football League. To the great relief of millions, the biggest sporting enterprise in American civilization will unfold this fall and once again spectacularly conclude with that quintessential American orgy of violence, fanaticism and commercialism known as the Super Bowl.
Yes, thank you! Imagine the cultural revolution that would have ensued had the labor dispute cancelled the season. The average (overweight) American man would’ve had nothing to do on Sunday afternoon, Monday night, and the occasional Thursday and Friday evenings, and thus, they could have entertained some cultural options. They could talk to their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends. They could even have sex with them. They could play with their children or walk their dogs. They could do some home improvement. They could read literature or volunteer at the food bank.
Or, heaven forbid, they could’ve brought their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, children and dogs, and visited the Oregon Coast beaches, where I would’ve invariably suffered their presence and their umbrellas and cell phone use. You see, I have a real phobia of encountering other humans on the beach (which is why I usually go at 5:30 a.m.) because I don’t want to have to deal with all their attendant neuroses. I have my own to work through.
Supreme Being, quite naturally you recognize the true nature of my appreciation: no pro football = more humans on the beach. More people on the beach = an irritated recluse. Thus, I can’t say it enough. Thank you!
But ... although I hate to seem ungracious, I need a bit more from you. More intervention.
The NBA season looks imperiled so please help out there. Moreover, I keep waiting for Oregonians to suddenly wake up and confront the academic-free zone lucrative sham that is big-time college football, which, should that happen, might compel Oregonians not to follow the fortunes of UO and OSU football. If that happens, humans might decide to turn off the TV and come to the beach.
I can’t have that.
The more the bread, circuses and concussions in American culture, the less chance humans will appear on Oregon’s ocean beaches and pollute the moment for me. Supreme Being, please continue to assist me on this account and I will forever serve you.
Thoughts on the writing life
[Posted July 19, 2011]
Over the last decade, I’ve given nearly 350 presentations about my books and various other Oregon literary/historical topics. Traveling all over the state, I’ve gigged at bars, barns, bookstores, galleries, coffee shops, theaters, utility closets, fairs, fields, parties, prisons, libraries, parks and historical museums. I’ve met thousands of fantastic Oregonians who have responded enthusiastically to my personal, somewhat eccentric approach to telling Oregon stories. At the conclusion of these events, certain audience members, aspiring writers I presume, invariably ask some or all of the following questions:
1. Where do you get your writing ideas?
2. Who or what is your muse?
3. What’s your writing process?
4. How do you cope with literary rejection?
5. What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?
6. What’s the secret to your success?
7. What type of writing workshop or group do you recommend?
8. Do you think you would have become a writer without the beach?
Generally, I believe no formula exists for becoming a writer although bookstores and the Internet are crammed with how-to guides that preach otherwise. Nevertheless, the audience wants answers so here’s generally what I say:
1) Beach (Best place to think. No distractions. I never use the phone or listen to music there.)
2) Beach (She calls to me two or three times a day. We meet on the sand. There is no cigarette afterward, and then I get to work.)
3) Beach (Go to beach and write the openings of pieces in my head. Walk until they are perfect. Then sit down to the computer and type away. I never stare at a screen without knowing what I’m going to write first.)
4) Beach (I would have quit writing along time ago if I didn’t have the ocean to annihilate my angst and ego after receiving rejection after rejection from mainstream publications and publishers. The old sound of the ocean helps me start anew every time I hear it.)
5) Beach (As in, go to it all the time and think about what you want to write instead of wasting time inhaling popular culture.)
6) Beach (Making the time to write, which means going to the beach all the time, which is my preparation to write. Weather doesn’t matter.)
7) Beach (It’s totally free, in Oregon at least, and you won’t ever have to endure the one narcissistic lunatic who typically ruins a writing workshop or group.)
8) No. One man’s desert? One man’s mountain? It would have never happened for me without the beach, Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, preserved in the manner they have been for all those years, until I came along to discover them in my 30s, when I moved to the Oregon Coast some 15 years ago.
A McCall to arms
Teaching Oregon’s more recent history
[Posted July 5, 2011]
In 1974, The New Yorker magazine published a 6,000-word article about Oregon’s unprecedented governing initiatives under the leadership of departing Republican Gov. Tom McCall, then near the end of his second and final four-year term in office.
McCall called the initiatives, collectively, The Oregon Story. In the article, McCall described The Oregon Story as one of “innovation and regeneration that can actually be used anywhere. We’re trying to export the hope and the formula.”
By 1974, Oregon could boast of many recent political innovations, most of them nationwide firsts: protection of ocean beaches from privatization and development, a law dedicating one-percent of highway funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths, a mandatory 5-cent deposit on returnable cans and bottles, an effort to clean up the polluted Willamette River, visionary land use planning to preserve farm and forestland, a forest practices act, and an astonishing level of voluntary energy conservation promoted by state government.
Everyone who has ever spent any time in Oregon and walked on an ocean beach has benefited from the bold bipartisan political initiatives achieved during the McCall era. In effect, these initiatives led Oregon to become, within a generation, one of the most desirable places to live in the country.
Older generations of Oregonians certainly remember the importance of Tom McCall and The Oregon Story. But what about Oregon’s schoolchildren? Do they know the story of Tom McCall and why they get to play on the beaches for free? Or ride their bikes on dedicated bike paths? A curriculum that teaches about Tom McCall’s leadership and The Oregon Story is long overdue for Oregon schoolchildren.
That day has finally arrived and it behooves all Oregon elementary and secondary teachers to investigate how to integrate an exciting new (and free!) online multi-media curriculum called “Tom McCall: A Better Oregon,” into their classrooms. I’ve taught social studies and language arts for 14 years in Oregon public schools and declare it by far the best teaching resource on modern Oregon history and politics that I’ve ever encountered.
Compiled by Marilyn Walster and hosted by the Oregon Historical Society, “Tom McCall: A Better Oregon” (www.ohs.org/education/tom-mccall-better-oregon/) has study units, lesson plans tied to state standards, audio, slide shows and video.
My favorite section of the curriculum is the compilation of fantastic McCall quotes, including my favorite: “Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get. And I think you’ll be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.”
Does any Oregon politician feel that way anymore, let alone say it publicly?
The goal of the curriculum is to educate students about their personal connection to Tom McCall and The Oregon Story and inspire them to design and implement community service projects that protect its legacy. I was so motivated that I had my journalism and photography students at Newport High School produce a 32-page magazine called “Sandtuary” that extols the virtues of Oregon’s unique heritage of publicly-owned beaches. We distributed 3,000 copies of it and received marvelous feedback from readers, many of whom had never heard of Tom McCall or the 1967 Beach Bill he signed into law.
I urge all Oregon teachers to spend some time on the site and think about how to teach about McCall next year. At the very least you will educate yourself about a special politician who unequivocally made your life better. He might also be the very reason you moved to Oregon.
Time to take the dog for a walk
[Posted May 25, 2011]
Dogs. Dogs. Dogs. I love them all. They seem to have accompanied me during most of the sublimely perfect private moments of my life. I can’t imagine not having one with me at the beach. I wouldn’t know how to walk.
In my 14 years living on the Oregon Coast, I have successfully rescued seven out of 11 stray dogs. I adopted two and would need a book to describe the ways I benefitted from the experience of walking approximately 10,000 miles (mostly on Oregon’s beaches) with my canine friends. Wait! I did write a book on the subject! I hope it comes out one day, but really, one has to wonder if the literary world needs the publication of yet another dog book.
Perhaps what the world needs is a book about terrible dog owners.
I love dogs, but loathe the very existence of some of their owners and lately these people seem right in my face. They neglect, they abuse, they scream, they chain, they forget that puppies grow up. They prefer watching television or trolling the internet instead of interacting with their pets. And some of their kids are even worse. It just dumbfounds me to see a family with grade school children and a dog, yet the kids never bother to walk the dog, or even play with it. My childhood dog, a beagle named Tex, was my best friend and we walked everywhere together. I am talking miles and miles around Oregon City in the 70s.
Just think what these dog owners miss by not daily venturing out into their local communities and natural places. They might talk to a neighbor or see a bald eagle. They might discover the meaning of life. They might even fall in love. The stuff I’ve witnessed walking Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches at all hours in all weather with my dogs transformed me spiritually and aesthetically. That wouldn’t have happened without my dogs because I never really walked anywhere until I got them.
If you are one of the terrible dog owners, then I am calling you out — meaning outside. Grab the leash and hit the streets, fields, or woods or beach. A mere 30 minutes a day will measurably improve your dog’s disposition not to mention your mental and physical health.
An hour a day might revolutionize your whole soul. It happens. I’ll never forget how, when I first rescued Ray (my dearly departed shepherd), he would come to the bed or couch whenever I felt waylaid by depression or existential uncertainty, and keep grunting until I got up and took him to the beach. He would not take “no” for an answer. By the way, he despised television when I had it a decade ago, and would actually leave the room when it came on.
And because for some reason I could not refuse Ray’s entreaty to take him for a walk, my whole life changed. For one thing, at that point in my life, at 35 years of age, I hadn’t written a word for publication and didn’t know who I really was.
Walking my dog changed all that. It might help you too. And if you don’t have a dog and can’t assume that responsibility, walk the neighbor’s dog even if the neighbor regularly walks the dog. I do that all the time.
Don't be a number
[Posted May 11, 2011]
A couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting on the beach, leaning against a driftwood log, and admiring the sun-soaked scenery: families fishing from a jetty, dogs romping to and fro, a couple of paddle surfers trying to catch a wave, an elderly woman hunting for treasures, and an unsupervised kid digging a hole to China.
I whipped out my trusty spiral notebook and pulled a pen from my pocket. I pledged I would write the first thing that came to mind — Bob Seger.
Yes, that Bob Seger, the meat-and-potatoes heartland rocker with a string of classic 70s/80s hits about the agonies and ecstasies of living in a small town and not succumbing to its provincialism. I hadn’t thought of Seger in decades, but recently a teaching colleague burned a greatest hits CD for me, and after listening to nothing but Seger for a couple of days of driving around Newport, I think I really heard him for the first time. And it tasted good.
One song in particular, “Feel Like a Number,” seized me and I can’t get one stanza out of my head:
I’m just another statistic on a sheet
To teachers I’m just another child
To IRS I’m just another file
I’m just another consensus on the street
…and I feel like a number
Feel like a number. My students are numbers, to realtors, talk show hosts, business tycoons, the state and federal government, and a lot of administrators (although not mine). Feel like a number also concisely summarizes the way many students view themselves as the result of our diabolical educational testing culture that I find myself enmeshed in at Newport High School where I teach English, journalism, and rock ’n’ roll.
So what can a teacher who loathes standardized testing do? In my nearly 20 years of teaching some 25 different subjects at eight different schools, I have formulated a personal teaching philosophy (not a paradigm) that keeps me sane, lively in the trade, and that I like to believe undermines the insidious regurgitation demanded by the testing establishment. It all comes down to this: provide students with multiple creative opportunities to not feel like a number in service to the state: poetry slams, rock festivals, open mics, photography, memoirs, literary reviews, reporting, saving animals, and plenty of hard core Oregon field trips, including the beach as much as possible.
In “Feel Like a Number” Seger sings another stanza that also connected to me:
Gonna cruise out of this city
Head down to the sea
Gonna shout out at the ocean
Hey it’s me!
Hey, who said meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll didn’t tell the truth? My daily visits to the ocean fire me up to have my voice heard. I recommend this sort of daily “shout out” to my students and I tell them it doesn’t really matter if their voices emanate from a chorus, quartet, duet, or solo performance. It only needs to sound honest, never a false noise manufactured by the media or spiritual charlatans, and announce as affirmation: “I’m not a number!”
Then I suggest to them, go out and do something about it.
Cruller muller: To confront donut-shop adversaries?
[Posted April 27, 2011]
My Monday morning began at the ocean and I listened in the darkness. What I heard — what I always hear — sounded infinitely more interesting that any sound generated by the National Entertainment State, as Gore Vidal memorably described it many years ago when there were basically five channels on TV and you rented a rotary phone from Ma Bell.
But to hear the ocean, you have to go to the ocean and you have to listen, and also remember that the old sound of the ocean does not emanate from an echo chamber, and neither for that matter, does knowledge, experience, or truth. All these things come from listening and never listening to the National Entertainment State.
On a furlough day from my job at Newport High School because of budget cuts, I cruised north up Hwy. 101. It was 5:30 in the morning and rain slanted against the truck. Destination: the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem to teach another workshop to Penned Thoughts, an inmate writing group. They invited me back and I was honored to return and discuss their essays generated from my earlier visit in October.
Traffic was nonexistent except for a plodding late-model sedan half wrapped in plastic and duct tape. I rolled into a coastal town and made my way to an establishment for drip coffee and a table to edit the last of the essays.
I walked in and saw four senior citizens, sitting around drinking coffee. I placed my order and I took a seat near the quartet. Out came the essays and a pen, but within seconds I stopped editing, started eavesdropping and taking down comments issued from the quartet’s apparent ringleader.
“Same sex marriage is a perversion. The kids today don’t know anything. They know nothing of art. When I was in school, two percent had sex. Now it’s 90. All teachers are mostly twits. I have no use for them.”
And so on until I stopped writing.
Two hours later I sat with the eight men of Penned Thoughts assembled around folding tables in the Oregon State Penitentiary’s chapel library. I told the group of my encounter in the establishment and asked them what they might have done in my shoes. Not every inmate spoke up, but the ones who did felt I was right to say nothing and walk away. It wasn’t the right time or place to confront an adversary.
That word “adversary” stuck in my mind. How do you engage your adversaries in thoughtful action? The great Oregon poet William Stafford once wrote, “Justice will take a million little moves.” I needed to make a move in that direction. But so often, the purveyor of these critical moves must act swiftly, spontaneously, on instinct. I was dead that morning.
I taught the rest of the workshop and the group wrote well. I didn’t want to leave, quite possibly because I was assisting the men engaging their inner adversaries in thoughtful action through a quiet and echoless process that only writing the plain truth provides.
As I gathered up my papers to leave the chapel, one of the inmates slipped a piece of paper in my front pocket. He told me it was his suggestion on how to engage the men in the donut shop. I read it when I got back to the truck.
“Next time maybe you could briefly say something, then go to the waitress and buy their coffee or breakfast and not let them know it. That might make an impact.”
I drove home in silence — no music. The rain never let up. I wanted only to get to the beach, empty my mind, ramble with the husky, and listen to the ocean. As E. B. White once wrote, “The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way.”
Several hours later, I was on the beach, and listening. It took all of five minutes for me to learn what I would do next time if I encountered an adversary of the type I overheard in the establishment.
Matt Love lives in South Beach. “Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker,” his memoir of caretaking the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, is available in coastal bookstores or through www.nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
He'll leave you wanting Gilmore
[Posted April 13, 2011]
I first met Newport resident and man of letters Ed Cameron about a decade ago on one of my visits to the Nye Beach Writers’ Series events. I can’t remember the name of the poet who topped the billing that night, probably because he or she was predictably precious and thus easily forgettable. But I’ll never forget when Ed Cameron took his turn at the open mic that followed the main presentation.
Ed read a riveting and humorous short prose piece about two Cannery Row-type characters who lived in a Newport flophouse called the Gilmore Hotel during the hazy loose days of the 1970s. Apparently, each year, an election for the office of Mayor of Nye Beach was held in the Sandbar, an exquisitely gritty Nye Beach bar, and one time a dog received the most votes! Who said democracy doesn’t work?
Did I say something about the Oregon Coast being hazy and loose in the 1970s? I only wish I could have seen it for myself. The stories I have heard are simply incredible, especially the cheap counterculture scene connected to Cannon Beach, which is as impossible to imagine today as Sting writing another “Roxanne” or a resurrected Tom McCall winning the Republican primary for governor.
After the reading I made the acquaintance of Ed and we repaired to the Sandbar. There, with oceans of peanut shells littering the floor and plenty of updated Steinbeck characters doing their thing, Ed gave me the lowdown on the Gilmore Hotel in its seedy heyday and how it operates now as the famous Sylvia Beach Hotel, doubtless one the coolest literary establishments in North America.
Ed also informed me that he had a major hand in running a little newspaper called the Gilmore Gazette, which ran from 1981 to 1993, 30 issues total. Ed wrote articles, contributed many of the cartoons and distributed the Gazette to the local bars. I asked Ed a lot of questions that evening in the Sandbar and thought how I would love to read a book about Nye Beach that shed some light on that funky era.
That book is here, and I declare “Gilmore by the Sea: A Graphic Novel,” by Ed Cameron, the most entertaining historical work I’ve read about the Oregon Coast, or Oregon for that matter, in a very long time. And not only entertaining, but also original in its arresting combination of cartoons and prose. The man can write and draw!
Although Ed calls the book fiction, he said his “cartoons and text derive largely from his residency in the Gilmore” so really, we’re talking about what Jack Kerouac used to call his books: “true life novels.” It probably all happened and I hope it did.
Ed plans a publication party for Gilmore by the Sea on Sunday, April 17, at Newport’s Cafe Mundo. The party runs from 5 to 8 p.m. and features music and something intriguing called The Nye Beach Literary Festival, which I gather will mean readings from various poets and writers.
Sounds kind of hazy and loose. I’ll be there.
Waiting for 'the big one'
[Posted March 30, 2011]
Texts started blasting in after 2 a.m. on March 11. Then a call. Then another call.
I heard them from the bedroom while the phone rested on the kitchen counter. What the hell was going on? No one communicates with me at this hour. In all seriousness, I thought either my elderly father had taken gravely ill or Keith Richards was dead and family or friends had to inform me.
I got up and read the texts. One after another warned me about going to the beach for my routine predawn ramble. Something about a tsunami. I went online and learned the awful truth. An earthquake had sent up a tsunami that had ripped through part of Japan and caused unspeakable damage.
There was more. Experts predicted a wave of unknown size and force would reach Oregon’s coastline at around 7 a.m. Low-lying coastal residents had to evacuate, but I wasn’t among them because of my home’s safe elevation.
I went back to bed and wondered where I would have the best and safest vantage point to watch the historic big wave come ashore. It all brought to mind the March 27, 1964, Good Friday Earthquake in Alaska. That earthquake measured 8.4 on the Richter Scale — the most powerful one recorded in North American history — and the resulting tsunami that smashed into the West Coast claimed several lives all along the West Coast. After it hit the central Oregon Coast, the Newport News ran the following story:
Tidal Wave (sic) Leaves Debris Along Coast
The earthquake which struck Alaska last Friday was felt here with a series of four tidal waves which caused the death of four members of a family on an outing to the beach. Dead are four children of Mr. and Mrs. Monty McKenzie of Tacoma.
The family was spending the night on the beach near Gleneden Beach north of Depoe Bay. The family was asleep when the waves hit about midnight, carrying the four children out to sea. One body was recovered, but the others have not been found. The children were ages 6, 7, 8 and 9. The family lost one child last year in a fire.
Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie were washed onto the upper beach. The parents were taken to the Pacific Communities Hospital and treated for shock.
These four children were the only known Oregon fatalities of the 1964 tsunami. (Editor’s note: This first news item turned out to be incorrect. The family was actually camping at Beverly Beach, not Gleneden Beach).
An hour later I got a call from Newport High School — no school because of the imminent tsunami. I tried going back to bed again, but it was useless. I made coffee, followed the terrible story online, and wrote e-mails to various parties telling them I wasn’t insane enough to hit the beach with a tsunami in the forecast.
Another call came in. The Newport Starbucks was closing. Gas lines were forming. Then a text arrived from a journalist for the school’s news magazine I advise. She was already on the story and taking photographs of the evacuation. I texted her to get the story “gold.”
At 6:45 I walked to the cliff overlooking the beach with coffee and camera in hand. I’d read about tsunamis for years and now I was finally going to see one. I felt nervous and giddy. I waited and waited. I walked back to the house for more coffee and learned the experts had pushed back the time.
The big wave never arrived where I live, although a series of smaller ones did elsewhere along the West Coast and a few people died as a result. We all know a much bigger one is coming. I wonder if the Oregon Coast is truly prepared, and if the state and federal governments have provided us with adequate resources to alert and evacuate. We’ve never faced a Hurricane Katrina-like scenario here. Could we pass a test like that?
Take 'Sandtuary,' at Café Mundo
On March 18, 2011 at Café Mundo in Newport, my journalism class will launch Sandtuary, a special edition of Newport High School’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s legacy of publicly-owned beaches. We hope you can join us for a special evening of music and spoken word jams that begins at 7 p.m. After the student performances, Lincoln City surf rock band the Retroactive Gamma Rays will tear into action and keep the party going.
This 32-page publication coincides with the release of a new curriculum about Tom McCall, the legendary two-term Oregon governor who in 1967 signed the famous Beach Bill into law protecting the dry sand areas of the ocean beaches from privatization. This revolutionary piece of legislation reaffirmed the state’s sacrosanct notion of publicly owned beaches first initiated by Gov. Oswald West.
West was governor in 1912 when he rode his horse from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain and into Nehalem. He later said the ride inspired him to write a masterfully brief 66-word bill that declared the wet sand areas along the ocean beaches a public highway.
The Oregon Legislature passed the bill in 1913, and with his law, West changed Oregon and all of our lives forever. He helped create a special relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. He created a special place that you probably enjoyed today.
West’s law protected the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches, but the state had no such safeguard for the dry sand areas, the space where virtually everyone recreates. In the summer of 1966, an elderly couple and their nephew were kicked off this dry sand area, in front of a Cannon Beach motel, by the owner of the business.
The event touched off the epic 1967 legislative battle that eventually culminated with passage of the landmark law known as the Beach Bill. This law, which nearly died in committee due to a cabal of coastal legislators, empowered Oregon “to forever preserve…ocean beaches of the state…so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
I love that phrase, “the free and uninterrupted use thereof.” Sounds like pretty much what’s going to go down at our launch party. This year, I have some incredibly talented writers, poets and musicians who regularly produce some of the best student work in my nearly 20 years as a teacher. I like to think we report, write, design, shoot photographs and rock out better than any high school in Oregon and keep the spirit of Tom McCall alive in our words and deeds. Just read part of the beach manifesto the students wrote:
We the students of NHS…
Have grown up on these beaches.
We understand the sanctity of each grain of sand.
We use our sandy playground to swim, surf, and frolic by day,
Bonfire and stargaze by night.
We fall in love by the tide pools.
We embrace our tubular waves with passion.
We know every inch from Agate to Ona.
The salty waves run through our veins.
We the students of NHS…
Traded the metal shackles of privatization for sandy socks long ago.
We insist on our right to unharnessed nature, to free beaches.
We grapple at the thought of Californication.
The beaches are in us and of us.
Who dares to privatize?
Who dares to put a price tag on our catharsis?
Wow! If you want to hear more of that kind of youthful passion, come check out the Harbor Light staff on March 18. If you do, you’ll also get to hear the only pop song ever written that has the names of Tom McCall, Oswald West, Ken Kesey and Steve Prefontaine in the lyrics. You can’t miss that!
See you at Café Mundo, located in Newport’s historic Nye Beach area at the corner of NW Coast and 2nd Court.
Public beaches, sans the public
[Posted March 4, 2011]
The sun came out on the last Sunday in January and I went to my church — I mean the beach — to ponder a question that has confounded me ever since I moved to the Oregon Coast 14 years ago.
Sonny and I once again took our secret forested path to the ocean. I virtually never encounter another human being on this path and for that I thank those Americans who never walk more than a few yards to experience anything.
We hit the beach and I looked north and south — no one around. We romped to the ancient drift log that’s stuck around for a couple of years. I sat down on it while Sonny sniffed the air and sought to make sense of her world. If only it was that easy for human beings.
The question is: Why do some coastal residents rarely or never go to the beach? Recently, my quest for some kind of satisfactory explanation took on a renewed urgency after I heard the incredible story of a man who worked in Lincoln City for a decade and never once visited the beach.
I heard of similar stories when I lived in South Tillamook County. It wasn’t all that uncommon to hear of folks from the Cloverdale/Hebo/Beaver areas who hadn’t stood near (even seen!) the ocean for years.
It’s not like tourists overrun Oregon’s beaches like they do attractions such as Yosemite or the Eiffel Tower. Nine times out of 10 when I walk on the beach I never see anyone, although I admit it’s usually either raining, 6 a.m., or something spectacularly banal on television has sucked in the masses.
What is the reason? Are any of you reading this one of these people?
In response to my question, friends have suggested that because the beach is such a short distance for locals, this is satisfying enough for some. In other words: “I don’t actually go but I live close by and could if I wanted to. That’s sufficient.” The Oregon Coast TODAY is a quality, family run publication so I’ll omit my profane response to that lame excuse. You can guess at it though.
Why? Did these non-beachgoers actually exist before 500 channels on TV, Netflix, the Internet and video poker? Are we all working too hard in this country? Are Oregonians losing their minds? Perhaps a sociologist could provide some answers. I really don’t know what to think of these people, but I always react with astonishment when I hear these stories. Then I get a little sad.
If you haven’t gone to the beach, and I mean on the sand near the ocean, not looking at it from a vehicle or living room window, I really must insist you stop everything and visit immediately. Remember, this is Oregon — it won’t cost a cent. Just a little time.
The World's Greatest Therapist
[Posted Feb. 16, 2011]
“I just need to see the ocean. You know what I mean,” Megan wrote me.
Yes, I knew what Megan Dodds meant in her email. My former star writing student at Newport High School was dealing with a crisis and needed a break. She wanted to come home and perhaps talk to someone or some thing about the ordeal.
Her father, Officer Steven Dodds of the Lincoln City Police Department, had survived a near-fatal shooting on Jan. 23. Upon hearing the news, Megan rushed to Portland, interrupting her freshman year at OSU. She had spent two emotionally charged weeks at her father’s side and had been dealing with peripheral issues related to the shooting that she couldn’t have possibly foreseen.
I responded to Megan’s email and we arranged to have lunch in Newport and catch up on life. On an overcast Saturday afternoon we met at Café Mundo in Nye Beach. When she arrived, I noticed she carried a journal, the same classic black and white composition book that I require of all my English students to keep. They have to write 10 pages a week and have it with them at all times. Some students complain about the requirement but I pay them no mind. Years later, they always thank me.
“Are you writing about what’s going on?” I said, pointing to her journal, which was ornately decorated and looked like a writer’s best friend.
Yes, she was writing about the crisis. In fact, she had just visited Don Davis Park, sat on a concrete block that overlooked the ocean, and written a piece.
“Do you want to see it? I’m having a little trouble with the ending,” Megan said.
Yes, I did want to read the piece. I have always loved Megan’s writing, and can still recall virtually every word of her ocean essay and a memoir that opened with an astonishing use of her image in a mirror.
After reading her journal, and taking a moment to compose myself, we discussed the piece’s ending and I suggested one minor edit, which she accepted. As a senior, Megan always received my editorial suggestions with enthusiasm, but also had a gift for intuiting when some passage of an essay wasn’t working.
As Megan ate her grilled cheese sandwich, I read the piece again and then asked her if she would allow me to share it with other readers.
She consented. Here it is:
World’s Greatest Therapist
I step out of the car onto Second Street. Immediately I taste the familiar salt in the air. No roar of traffic, just the low hum of the ocean a few hundred feet away. Serene. Tranquil. It’s so good to be home.
I now sit atop the hill overlooking the short waves winding their way out from underneath the ominous wall of fog. It has waited for my return. Through all the crashing, it seems to welcome me, reaching out to embrace me with its lethargic, foamy arms. The harder it tries to feel my touch, the higher the tide rises over the dampened sand. It chases away a young boy and a dog, and crashes over rocks to get to me. It wants to help me wash away everything that has passed over these two weeks. Fear, sadness, stress, anger. All gone now. They have become part of the ocean.
– Megan Dodds
The Lincoln City Police Employees Association has created a fund for Officer Steven Dodds. Donations may be made under the name LCPEA to STEVE DODDS at West Coast Bank, 4157 N. Hwy. 101, Lincoln City, OR 97367.
The journey of Vivian Vickers
[Posted Feb. 4, 2011]
From a press release:
On Jan. 22, 2009, the Lincoln County 911 Dispatch Center received a call about a missing person in the Surfland area of South Beach, Ore. Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to the area and obtained a description of the missing person. The missing female, 90-year-old Vivian Gertrude Vickers of South Beach, had left her home sometime between 5 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. that morning, according to family members who were staying with her. Deputies were unsuccessful in locating her during a search of the immediate area around her residence. Search and Rescue K-9’s were also deployed and several indications from the dogs led searchers to the beach area, however, no sign of Vickers was found.
I walked the beach in the Surfland area that Thursday morning two years ago at the same time Vivian Vickers disappeared. Later that afternoon, after teaching a half day at Newport High School, I relaxed on the front deck of my home in the Pacific Shores neighborhood, just south of Surfland, when about a dozen uniformed men and women appeared on the street.
The day was clear and dry and I walked over to greet them. They introduced themselves as a search and rescue team looking for Vickers, who was described as, “5 feet, 2 inches tall, weighing 100 pounds, blonde or tan colored curly hair, and (having) a glass left eye…wearing a blue flannel or fleece pajama top and pants bottom and light colored shoes…suffering from dementia.” I told the team I had visited the beach that morning and hadn’t seen anyone.
The official search ended on Jan. 24, having found no trace of Vickers.
The next week at school I told my creative writing students about Vickers. We read about her in the local newspaper, discussed the incident, and then wrote short non-fiction or fictional pieces exploring her disappearance.
I chose the non-fiction route and propounded the theory that Vivian Vickers disappeared into the ocean after a brief but overpowering fit of sanity blasted through her dementia. Look at the facts! Look where her trail went cold! She wanted a return journey to her place of origin and did exactly that. “Nature assisted suicide” I called it, and I expressed my desire to die in precisely the same way when the proper time came.
The literary exercise went well and I thought little of the mystery until almost a year later. While preparing my senior English students to write essays about their connection to the ocean, Vickers popped into my mind, and I told the story again. One girl said her family knew Vickers and that she had told people — in her lucid moments — that if anyone tried to remove her from her home, she would walk right into the ocean.
The moment I heard this incredible hearsay I became obsessed with Vivian Vickers’ final journey. I talked to the police and emergency response personnel. I talked to Vickers’ neighbors. I interviewed Vickers’ nephew and his wife, the family members staying with her that fateful morning. He told me Vickers had lived in Surfland for nearly 30 years and that because of her worsening dementia, he felt it necessary to move her to Nevada where he lived. She had no children of her own.
This Jan. 22, at approximately 6 a.m., for the second year in a row, I followed the trail Vickers may have taken from Surfland to the ocean. What I hoped to find or feel I didn’t really know. I ended up finding and feeling nothing except for confirming my desire to go out the same way I think Vickers did.
I can’t get something one of the searchers said to me out of my mind. I asked why Vickers’ body never washed ashore, if she indeed had walked into the ocean. He provided a litany of technical reasons, but then added, almost as an afterthought, “The ocean only keeps who it wants.”
My non-fiction investigation of Vivian Vickers has concluded. Writers of fiction, it’s your turn now.
Reflections on a first beach date,
and keeping a journal
[Jan. 21, 2011]
“I’ve never really been an ardent fan of the beach, especially in Oregon. But this time I wanted to go. The weather was incredible: 70 degrees, hot, no wind, and not a storm cloud in the sky. Somehow it seemed it was planned. We had the best time imaginable, just doing nothing — walking and talking and getting to know one another. I guess I know now why the beach means so much to some people. It just puts you in awe.”
So I wrote in my journal on Oct. 19, 1981, during my senior year at Oregon City High School, about my first date with a junior girl who would quickly become my girlfriend.
Her name was Tricia and she had driven us to Cannon Beach in her brown Pinto hatchback and its tinny AM radio. Yes, Tricia drove because I absolutely hated to drive. When I look back on those days, it’s quite possible I existed as the only high school senior boy in America who loathed driving and preferred his dates take the wheel. I had a license, a VW Dasher, and a generous mother who paid for my insurance and gas, yet for some unknown reason, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for driving.
On occasion, I pull out my old high school journals and read entries to my Newport High seniors to offer a glimpse into the state of my life 29 years ago. The goal is that by sharing my experiences, I can provide a little historical context, perspective, and levity to my students’ turbulent senior year. Another aim in reading from the journals is to show how a person can change (hopefully for the better) over the intervening three decades. And perhaps most importantly, I want them to see the value of keeping a journal (on paper!).
When I read, “I’ve never really been an ardent fan of the beach, especially in Oregon,” I accomplished all three with one sentence, because if my seniors learn anything from me, it’s about the unprecedented nature of Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches and what it means to all of us.
When I came across this arresting passage in my journal not too long ago, I reflected about that first perfect date at the beach. As I recall, Tricia and I took a long walk down Tolovana Beach, ate a picnic lunch my mother may have packed, and then carved our names in one of the ancient wooden picnic benches decorated with a million other teenage names and their simple equations of love. (I looked for the exact table years ago but Oregon State Parks had replaced it with a practical and unromantic composite version made from recycled materials.)
After Tolovana Beach, Tricia and I explored the tide pools around Haystack Rock and held hands as we skipped in the surf. I don’t remember what we talked about and neither does my journal. I do remember I was pretty much in awe of this girl.
Tricia later made me a stained glass mirror of this scene and gave it to me on my 18th birthday. It still hangs in my mother’s house.
Civil War: Trading downs for dunes
[Posted Jan. 4, 2011]
Oregon’s kicker booted the pigskin deep into Oregon State territory to begin the biggest football game in the state’s history. Or did the Beavers kickoff to the Ducks to open the Civil War?
I didn’t have a clue and couldn’t have cared less. That story bored me to death. The media had already published a billion words and broadcast a million images about the Civil War before the game even started. There was nothing interesting left to say but people kept talking about it anyway. If I saw another large man with a goatee wearing a yellow/green or orange/black muumuu, talking incessantly about “zone coverage” or “no huddle offense,” I wasn’t responsible for my actions.
What did Popeye always say before eating the spinach? “I can only stands so much and I can’t stands it no more!” As a writer, I couldn’t stand further hype so I ate my spinach and went in search of a Jimmy Breslin Moment, a unique editorial angle that I named for the legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Breslin didn’t try to get Lee Harvey Oswald’s story. Instead, he visited Arlington National Cemetery and found the man assigned the duty of digging JFK’s grave. Breslin got his story and turned in one of the best pieces in the history of American journalism. (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm)
While the game Ducks and Beavers battled in Reser Stadium, (or was it Autzen?) Sonny and I ambled down our secret path at South Beach State Park to see the ocean. I brought along a camera to document the Breslin Moment sure to unfold right before my very eyes. I knew it would because on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches, they always do.
We emerged from a stand of stunted shore pines and ascended a dune. I surveyed the beach north to south on a fine dry afternoon, a perfect day for football. No one was there except for a couple sitting on a massive and ancient 20-foot drift log polished smooth by a century at sea.
The woman sat to his left. He had his arm around her. I went prone to the sand and crawled nearer for a better look. Sonny started walking on my back and then kept blocking my view. The camera came out and I clicked away. The couple stared at the ocean and then they kissed. I watched the couple for a good 15 minutes and briefly considered asking for an interview. It didn’t feel right though, so Sonny and I left for home. I never saw the couple’s faces.
The game was probably in the second quarter, or more likely, barely two minutes into the first because of all the commercials for beer and gadgets. Later, I learned Oregon won and will play Auburn in the biggest football game in the state’s history and compete for the national title.
You’ll know where I’ll be.
Operation Oregon Beach Legacy, Part 2
[Posted Dec. 22, 2010]
A thrashing November rain pelted 35 of my students from Newport High School as they walked down the forested path to Short Sands Beach in Oswald West State Park. Our mission: to produce a special edition of the school’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s unique history of publicly-owned beaches.
We had approximately two hours to take photographs, interview people, write poems, eat lunch, visit a sacred site, and let our creative animals run wild on the beaches. We brought along food, fire, soda, surf boards, tea, rock and roll, hula hoops, hacky sacks, a football, teen angst, middle-aged angst, and a couple of love birds. We would dance like fools in the rain and flood our senses with thoughts, images, desires, and later produce the special issue and distribute it up and down the Coast during Spring Break. If this wasn’t hard core gonzo Oregon journalism at its finest, then the genre didn’t exist!
We would not bring bottled water or umbrellas. The path ended and the staff beheld the untainted and raw beauty of Short Sands Beach. “Bring wood and oil!” I screamed, quoting my favorite line from “The Lord of the Rings.” Within seconds, a mountain man in training had a blazing fire going.
Some kid told me his cell phone worked, which I had assured the staff on the bus was a total impossibility in the park. The word got around fast and many students went to their pockets like Wyatt Earp went to his holster at the O.K Corral.
Damn! I felt the earth move under my feet and figured Oswald West and Tom McCall were spinning in their graves (Memo to self: contact officials about installing a secret electronic dampening field in the park). For a moment, I considered confiscation but then watched drops from heaven splash down as a girl scrolled her fancy phone. I prayed: “Let it rain and let it ruin.”
There wasn’t a soul around! No one to interview except our inner angels and demons! We ate our lunch, chewed the fat, and listened to a couple of positively dank (teenage for cool) mix CDs specially prepared by students for the field trip. How my 20-year old CD/cassette player withstood the rain is beyond me.
Maybe it was waiting its whole machine life to play Led Zeppelin at Oswald West State Park as 35 kids rocked and rained out.
After a soggy lunch, I led them up the rooted path to the Matt Kramer Memorial, the most sacred spot of Oregon journalism, dedicated in 1972 to the veteran reporter who, well, let me quote the plaque:
“The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill. This landmark legislation guarantees forever the public’s right to the free and uninterrupted use of one of Oregon’s most popular recreation attractions, its ocean beaches.”
We laid hands on the memorial and swore an oath to uphold the truth with our journalism, and to the power of reporting with objectivity and a religiosity for facts. I told the staff, “Look where great journalism can lead.” And I wasn’t talking about the memorial. I meant the free and publicly-owned beaches the memorial overlooks.
I wonder if Oregon will ever erect a memorial like this to a blogger?
Time to play! We returned to base camp and collected our toys and went to the beach. The lovebirds snuck off and I sent a runner after them. I winged a football to a couple of foreign exchange students who made some tough catches. One girl grabbed some kelp and we jump roped as the surf filled our shoes. The hacky sack came out. I found myself screaming every sentence.
I was losing my mind. At some point, a kid took the 10,000th photograph of the mission. I yelled out I had 20 bucks for the money shot. A hard rain never stopped falling.
A thrashing rain fell as the bus rolled to a stop in front of Newport High at 3:15. Hell yes! Three minutes ahead of schedule!
Teach the beach: Legacy trip, part 1
A thrashing November rain rattled the bus as it rolled away from Newport High at 8:03 a.m. Damn! Three minutes behind schedule!
I received a text from a super slacker running late: “would I wait?” Hell no! We couldn’t waste one second if 35 of my journalism and photography students wanted to begin Operation Oregon Beach Legacy, our mission to produce a special edition of the school’s news magazine, The Harbor Light, documenting and celebrating the state’s history of publicly-owned beaches.
We planned to release the publication during Spring Break, when so many tourists enjoy free use of our beaches and have no idea of the heroic historical efforts to protect them from privatization. The edition would coincide with the release of a new curriculum about Tom McCall, the legendary two-term Oregon Governor who in 1967 signed the famous Beach Bill into law.
As for the curriculum, I say — it’s about damn time! Oregon kids have stomached enough Lewis and Clark and Oregon Trail mythology to last 10 lifetimes and need to learn why the state became such an acclaimed model for conservation and progressive governing in the McCall Era. Oregon teachers, find this curriculum online, shape it to your needs, and then implement it with passion — not as a requirement. Might I suggest going to the beach and playing with your students as the unit’s outcome?
And on the subject of legendary Oregon governors, a thrashing rain rocked the bus as we headed north on Hwy. 101 to our destination, Oswald West State Park north of Manzanita. West was governor in 1912 when he rode his horse from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain and into Nehalem. He later said the ride inspired him: “So I came up with a bright idea…I drafted a simple short bill.”
The bill was 66 words long and masterfully read: “The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, excepting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
The Oregon Legislature passed the bill in 1913, and with his law, Oswald West changed Oregon and all of our lives, forever. He helped create a unique relationship between a state’s citizenry and a specific natural resource unlike any other in the country. He created a special place that my students enjoy practically every day of their lives.
West later wrote in his 1949 memoir, “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.” This “great birthright” is our publicly-owned beaches and I make my seniors memorize the quote if they want to pass my class. The state department of education doesn’t recognize it as a curriculum standard. Nor do they mandate a field trip to celebrate Oregon’s sheer awesomeness.
A thrashing rain battered the bus as it stopped at the park at 10:43. Time to unlock, unload, rock, report and roll!
Coming on Dec. 24: Part Two — Led Zeppelin, cell phones and Matt Kramer.
A rave for 'Waves'
Can you remember the last time you discovered a book by chance, and it totally reoriented your thinking about a subject?
I can. This summer I stayed in a cabin overlooking Falcon Cove and inspected the owner’s small, excellent library. One title intrigued me and I pulled the book from the shelf. Four hours later I finished it and knew I would never look at the ocean and beaches the same way again. I also knew I would have to totally rewrite a 50,000-word manuscript about Oregon’s ocean beaches that I thought for sure was ready for prime time.
“Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface” by Willard Bascom is a classic of natural science. I own the 1980s revised and updated edition but the book first came out in 1964.
It begins: “Is there anyone who can watch without fascination the struggle for supremacy between sea and land?” Well, no, not if a person is even remotely sentient and actually manages to hit the beach every now and then and notice, I mean really look hard at what is all around you.
Until reading this book, I thought I was noticing everything at the ocean’s edge. As it turns out, there is a lot more to understand about the sand I walk upon and the waves that hypnotize me. For starters, I had no idea mathematics played such an interesting and elementary role in the motion of waves or the slope of beaches.
Limited editorial space here prevents me from a complete summary of Bascom’s 365-page book, but he basically examines everything related to waves and beaches and explains them right down to their tiniest tumble or, literally, a grain of sand.
One of the utterly fascinating benefits of reading this book is learning the names of features I’ve seen a million times but didn’t even know had names. Take for example, the various marks on the beach made by retreating tides: swash, backwash, rills, cusps, domes, pinholes, ripples. I can’t say I’m now obsessed with identifying everything I see at the beach, but a bit more knowledge of the natural world isn’t such a bad thing in life. In fact, a lot more might save the planet.
In “Waves and Beaches,” Bascom writes simple, yet beautiful and informative sentences, like: “Waves are undulating forms that move along the surface of the sea.” Or try this one: “A beach is an accumulation of rock fragments subject to movement by ordinary wave action.” And my favorite: “Beaches are ever-changing, restless armies of sand particles, always on the move.” Bascom might have considered himself more of a scientist than a writer, but he knew how to construct metaphors in nature and slyly present them to readers:
“A wonderful time to observe … is early in the morning, especially after a high tide. Often the air is still and pleasant light fills the sky. The beach is clean and virginal, the night’s waves erased the human marks of the previous day.”
Bascom was obviously a gifted man of science who saw a beauty and assurance in the formulas and equations of the waves. Without reading his book, I would have never known such precise things do exist. When I ramble the beach, which is roughly two to three times a day, I think of love, loss, rebirth, a little evolution. I also smell and touch. In other words, poetry. Not math! But math is good too, at least the way Bascom presents and explains it in his masterpiece that every serious beachcomber has got to read.
Taking pen to penitentiary
[Posted Nov. 10, 2010]
The professor gave the group the writing prompt: “What object, person, place, or picture could you look at for an hour? Use all your senses to describe it.” She put a mixed CD into an ancient boom box from the break dancing era. The first couple tracks skipped and she replaced the CD with another one. The Replacements’ obscure alternative rock classic “Achin’ To Be” came on and the group’s seven members, all men, all clad in blue jeans and blue shirts, began to write immediately.
I watched for a couple of minutes and was astonished when no one strayed off task. No one dug into their pockets for a phone, either. They weren’t allowed.
The sound of geese broke my concentration and I turned to look out the window. Through metal bars (or was it a wire screen?) I saw several small formations fly by in an atypical formation.
Even though I wasn’t an official member of the group, which goes by the name of Penned Thoughts, I joined in on the prompt and opened my piece with a familiar image from the singular obsession of my life: “When I walk along the beach with Sonny, I usually keep my head turned toward the ocean. I like watching the breakers to see how gray mixes with white…”
Gray mixing with white. I had watched this curious Oregon color for an hour that very morning before the drive to Salem to join the writing group.
Ten or so minutes later, the professor, Michele, asked if anyone wanted to share. No one volunteered. She waited. A small man to my right, with two cannons for arms, two cannons covered in tattoos, said, “I’ll go.”
He began to read his thoughts about the ocean, the surf, and the Zen moment of riding a wave. He wrote crisply and beautifully from a distant memory because he hadn’t surfed in 20 years — or more. He might never surf again. Men incarcerated for long sentences, including life, at the Oregon State Penitentiary, don’t get to surf.
The man concluded his piece. The sound of geese again entered the room, only it seemed much louder than before. I looked out the window again and could not believe the numbers flying past. The word “surreal” is by far the most hackneyed, misunderstood and overused adjective in English today (it is not a synonym for bizarre). I’ll save you a trip to a dictionary by providing the best visual definition of the word that I’ve ever seen: men who have committed violent crimes self-reflecting on paper (in longhand!) while the Replacements rocked out in all their ragged glory, sharing the stage with a cacophony originating from a flock of geese. All from a maximum security prison.
Another man volunteered to read. He looked all of 21. He launched into a narrative of hanging out with a buddy, carrying his surfboard down to an isolated cove near Coos Bay. The piece took a fascinating twist when the writer introduced the character of a surly owner of a private campground who always yelled at the local surfers for their alleged trespassing on his property. The reader and his friend ignored the man. The ocean beckoned.
The inmate kept reading. He paddled out to meet the waves. He described a multi-colored sky, I think. At that point, I drifted away, lost in his Oregon story. He was gone too…at least for a moment.
Visit from an owl
[Posted Oct. 27, 2010]
Sonny danced on the sand of South Beach State Park, tangoed toward me with outstretched paws. She bit down hard and splintered the stick in my hand. Man does she ever love playing our new game of capturing paranoia! We call it Tea Party!
Time to go. We ambled down our secret path through ripe huckleberries and Scotch broom. Suddenly, a bird glided into view, but I didn’t see its head, only a large wingspan colored brown and white. I followed its flight as it banked left into a stand of scrawny shore pines. The bird landed on a branch 10 yards away, swiveled his head right, left, then straight ahead. A barn owl stared at me.
I recognized it as a barn owl because they used to regularly cross my path during my 10 years as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I once even held an owlet in my hands after he failed to fledge from a nest.
Two hours earlier, I had received a letter from a literary agent working in one of those distant towers of glass and steel that makes or breaks writers across the land. At the behest of an influential Northwest author, the agent had read my self-published memoir of caretaking the refuge and began her letter by writing, “It’s awesome!” She then detailed the multiple changes the book needed to attract a national publisher.
A solid 95 percent of her editorial suggestions made sense although I wondered if I possessed the desire to revisit an already intense personal story and further probe what happened during the most defining experience of my life. I had left out a lot for a reason and it wasn’t because of an overloaded word count. Moreover, as I wound down my recent tour to promote the memoir, I had grown tired of talking about the refuge. It felt time to move on.
Still, a letter from New York! Should I pass up an opportunity every serious writer dreams of? What is my ultimate goal as an Oregon writer? Do I want a national audience? What price would I pay to achieve that?
Naturally I took to the beach with the dog for answers. “The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way,” wrote E.B. White. I can’t think of a more suitable sentence written for those of us obsessed with the ocean. How some landlocked people make decisions without consulting the ocean escapes me. Is that why the White House always seems to make such terrible decisions when it comes to safeguarding the Republic? Should we move the capital to the Oregon Coast?
I listened to the sea: look out to me, empty everything, and search your heart and mind. Make the search honest. When the search ends, the answers will emerge.
The owl’s unlikely appearance near the beach coincided with the exact moment I faced a crucial decision about my literary future. When I saw the owl, I instantly identified him as an emissary from the refuge. Yet his message defied interpretation. An admonition? A demand? A plea? A “Hello Matt, we miss your spirit. Don’t you think you should finally come visit your old friends?”
I stared at the owl for five minutes.
“Why are you here?” I said aloud. The trees beckoned me toward the owl. He hesitated for a few seconds, then lifted off, on course to the sea. I followed and Sonny followed me.
On the road
[Posted Oct. 13, 2010]
Not long after I read an article that mentioned a line Jack Kerouac underlined in his copy of Henry David Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” (“The traveler must be born again on the road”), I pulled my bike into the day-use area of South Beach State Park. A drizzle fell and the temperature hovered near 50 degrees but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. Hey, this the Oregon Coast in the summer and if you don’t like it, you can go straight to … Malibu!
What a scene around me: A dozen canines shook off sand and water; kites danced in the clouds; families roasted hot dogs; a tattooed beauty with her two children emerged from the dunes. I didn’t see a single cell phone or electronic gadget in use.
I noticed a 1970s Mystery Machine/Scooby Doo van to my left with its cargo door wide open. Inside, carpenter tools hung orderly on the wall, a mattress rested on the carpeted floor, and the roof rack was piled high with lumber and camping gear. A black mutt leashed to the van’s wheel drank water while his 40-something master, bearded and disheveled, drank coffee and checked out the hot mom.
He opened with the oldest conversation starter since humans walked upright and gained the power of language: “So did you hear anything about the weather?”
“I read it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, but nothing’s ever for sure in Newport.”
“Cool. It doesn’t matter. I just love being here.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Idaho.”
“Taking a little vacation?”
“No, I’m on the road.”
We both knew the difference between the two. Or I used to know.
I never got his name but I got his story: he had lived in Seattle for 13 years, moved to Idaho, recently abandoned it, and headed to Oregon looking for handyman work along the way. He had wanted to relocate in the Willamette Valley, tried Eugene, but didn’t take a shine to the hippies. He then found the central Oregon Coast, made some friends, and thought he might settle near the ocean, temporarily, around Newport. He asked me about local construction work and I told him it was grim.
Next, he launched into some of the most enthusiastic praise for Oregon’s publicly owned beaches I’ve heard in a long time, outside of my voice. It wasn’t even prompted.
“You never have to pay anything and can go anywhere you want,” he said. “Sometimes I just sleep in the van and hear the ocean all night.”
We said our goodbyes, his dog waved a paw to me, and I rode away feeling as if I’d taken a direct lightning strike of existential energy. A man, his van, a dog, unemployed, the road. Their entire collective image made a large noise. It sounded like hearing God or God calling me out.
If you think you’ve heard this call from your higher power, you immediately answer — or end up shriveled in every way that verb connotes about the modern American man. And sexual impotency has nothing to do with it.
I used to travel a lot in my 20s and early 30s, around the country and the world. I saw a great many fascinating things and met incredible people. At some point, though, it was time to end the journeys, settle, mature, and get some solid teaching and literary work done. The Oregon Coast has held me for 14 years now, and will for the near future. It won’t forever, though, and I already have my rig picked out and a mix tape ready to rock.
That’s a cassette tape.
Watching the weathered men
[Posted Sept. 29, 2010]
In the course of promoting my new book, I’ve driven up and down the Oregon Coast a dozen times this summer and consistently encountered the same troubling image: weathered, middle-aged men walking Hwy. 101 with all their worldly possessions.
I’ve lived on the coast for 13 years and have never seen so many homeless men on the road. I started keeping count in June but finally gave up.
Some sit in the shoulders holding cardboard signs reading “Hungry” or “Need Food.” Sometimes they have a backpack, wagon, suitcase, even a ragged bicycle. A few have dogs. Infrequently, a woman accompanies a man. Life looks damn hard for these men.
The only thing I haven’t seen is a bindle. There is no Jack Kerouac romance of the road for them. There is no John Steinbeck around to chronicle their stories, only a couple of radio and television charlatans who claim to speak politically and spiritually for them. These weathered men have no irony about them whatsoever. You can’t have irony when you’re invisible to the unwashed commentators.
I can spot the difference between a sojourner and a homeless man. A few younger, sturdier men obviously tramp the Oregon Coast on some existential errand or walkabout, most likely returning to something solid, dry. Where the weathered men end up I can’t even imagine.
Please don’t think I’ll sound flippant with what I’m about to write next: At least near the beach these men and their dogs can find some scrap of solace from the ocean, a free bed in the sand, and some of the amenities provided by the Oregon Coast’s vast system of federal, state, local and county parks and recreation areas, which have become de facto social service agencies for all kinds of men, women and children dispossessed by the recent economic calamity.
Don’t tell me I exaggerate. I hit the various beaches near my home at dawn every morning and have seen plenty of weathered men sleeping in the dunes and willows. Although I could easily take their photographs and perhaps better document their plight, I will not do so; it feels wrong to me. To walk past these men and do nothing is a profoundly distressing experience with which to begin my day, but generally, that’s what I do. Walk on by.
In recent weeks, I’ve given a $20 bill here and there to a few weathered men (I also donate to various social service agencies). I’ve stashed cans of dog food in the truck and dole them out when I see a homeless man on the road with a dog. He gets the $20 if he promises to take care of the dog.
Sure, I know some of the money goes for booze. But not all of it.
When the hard rains come, I suspect the beach will provide little psychic and absolutely no physical comfort for the weathered men. At that point, they’ll mostly disappear from my sight as I cruise Hwy. 101. I don’t have a poignant or prescriptive ending for this column. It just ends.
The 4th annual
Project Homeless Connect
What: A free, one-stop shop for the homeless in Lincoln County, with food, services and assistance from 40 federal, state and local agencies, and non-profit groups
When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7
Where: The Church of the Nazarene, 227 NW 12th St., Newport
Details: Dental and medical care and advice, paperwork help, food stamps, haircuts, immunizations, bike repair, pet care, packaged food and a hot meal.
Contact: To volunteer, call 541-336-7772, or head to homelessinlincolncounty.org.
Blown away by 'Washed Ashore'
[Posted Sept. 13, 2010]
This summer, after attending yet another Lincoln County School District meeting where bottled water was offered to teachers a few feet away from drinking fountains that provide a quality of water that 99.9 percent of the world’s population would love to enjoy, I took the verb “seethe” to a whole new level of intensity.
I might also add that about half the bottles at the meetings ended up in the trash.
Later, I went to the beach: more water bottles. May I update Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? Plastic, plastic, everywhere, despite drops of clean, free water to drink.
All this plastic was polluting my mind (and quite likely my body) when I found myself exploring Nye Beach and wandered inside the Newport Visual Arts Center, near the turnaround. There, I had my mind completely blown in that special way only compelling visual art can accomplish.
From now until Oct. 31, the center’s Runyan Gallery will host “Washed Ashore: Plastics, Sea Life and Art,” a traveling exhibit to, “raise awareness about the use of plastics and the dangers those plastics pose to our environment, and all life on the planet.”
Lead artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi, who hails from Bandon, has put together an, “exhibit made from plastic pollution that washed ashore on remote beaches throughout southern Oregon.” Volunteers collected all the plastic in 2010 and this detritus became the material to fashion giant sculptures on display in the gallery. These sculptures will astonish you with their weird beauty and subtle, yet jackhammer message of the tragic throwaway society America has become and how this propensity is killing marine life.
I’ve seen a lot of great art in my time, at some of the most famous museums in the world, but I have never seen anything that moved me like this show did. I’ve already gone back three times. I’ve pretty much told everyone I know in Newport that they must see these sculptures.
All I can say is, if you care anything for Oregon’s oceans and beaches, visit the gallery now and bring along those sinners who buy bottled water. If they don’t repent right then and there, check for the existence of a soul. You may have to look hard.
My favorite sculpture was, naturally, a huge jellyfish hanging made from water bottles that hung from the ceiling. I wish I had the money to buy it and display it where teachers gather to discuss improving education and drink bottled water.
The Washed Ashore exhibit is free, but I bought some t-shirts to help the effort. The Newport Visual Arts Center’s hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in September and Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in October. For more on the exhibit, visit www.washedashore.org.
Max Plank:
The physics of forts, then and now
[Posted Aug. 31, 2010]
Whenever I ramble the beach and encounter a good supply of driftwood, I immediately size up the potential for a good fort. Not that I build one, but I like to imagine what my friends and I would have constructed in our youth.
Forts excited our passion. We built them anywhere and everywhere. I remember the summer days of riding our bicycles (without a helmet) to the woods near the edge of Oregon City (without bottled water, a cell phone or music). There we played war. It was always World War II, never Vietnam, an epic catastrophe then about to crawl into the light at the end of the tunnel.
We fought the Nazis and Japanese and dug trenches and bunkers. We built forts so tight they could’ve withstood a bazooka round. We executed basic squad tactics and stole butter knives from home to affix as bayonets on our toy M-1s and lied to our mothers about inexplicably missing tableware. Somehow, we all owned entrenching tools and canteens.
There was never an adult around to supervise. We came home at dusk, starving, exhausted. Then we’d get up in the morning, throw down some sugary cereal, improvise a sack lunch, ride out and do it all over again.
Those summer days came rushing back to me recently after discovering a fort on one of my regular beach rambles. It’s truly a rare thing to see one these days. I could count on one hand the forts I’ve come across on Oregon’s ocean beaches since I moved here in 1997. It’s not like there’s a lack of driftwood and kids either. What’s going on with that?
I cruised the sandy berm of my local beach and saw in the distance what looked like some kind of structure. I walked toward it and soon recognized the bleached façade of a somewhat circular fort. From the outside I could tell it was solidly built, logs sunk deep into the sand. Built smartly too, because the creators situated it well above the wrack line so conceivably it could last well into the late fall.
Next I went inside and made my inspection: a fire ring, benches, seaweed, shell, rope and feather decorations, alternating planks, pallets and logs, a rectangular window, more like a slat, with an ocean view. It then hit me like a blow from a skillet — an advanced aesthetic was at work, or should I say tease, here.
The window beckoned me. I noticed an etched sign resting at an angle on some ancient logs. It read: “Fort Sex.”
Ohhhh, the kids these days. Make Love Not War it is.
Beauty and the beach
[Posted Aug. 15, 2010]
One overcast day in the spring or summer of 1971, it’s not exactly clear what month it was, a white van came to a stop in the remote north Oregon Coast village of Falcon Cove, where residents enjoy the near exclusive use of one of the most secret and gorgeous beaches in the state.
Back then, maybe a dozen folks lived in Falcon Cove year round, quite likely the same number as today.
A man emerged from the van. He probably carried all manner of camera gear: bodies, lenses, tripod.
A woman, a blonde named Javon Monahan, an artist and former Portland State University student, also emerged from the van. She probably wore some kind of loose-fitting long coat. She wore nothing else on underneath.
They went to the beach. At some point, she flung away the coat and the unknown photographer clicked away.
A color photograph of a naked and smiling Monahan running through light foam down the wet sand of a beach appeared in the September issue of Playboy, part of a pictorial essay titled, “Girls of the Golden West: A tantalizing blend of simplicity and sophistication, these natural beauties glory in their free-spirited way of life.”
The photo’s caption located the beach as somewhere “near Seaside” and the sandy beach does not resemble the cobbled one at Falcon Cove. I can’t place it myself. What I surmise is that Monahan made several stealth streaks at various unpopulated north Oregon Coast beaches and the best photograph made it into the magazine.
As for the photograph, if contrasted with contemporary depictions of beautiful American women in the mass media, which are almost all vulgar, Monahan looks organic. Her unadorned image seems to me almost totally benign as far as exploitation of women goes (OK, I admit it was in Playboy). The photograph moves in hazy slow-motion, in washed out greens and grays, and exudes a pronounced hippie vibe. In other words, for many of us, daily life on the Oregon Coast.
I gleaned this tale from a fantastic little memoir called “Falcon Cove Stories: A Look At Its Beginnings” written by Jacquie Quint (published in 2010) that I picked up during a recent stay in the area.
Upon my return home, I immediately went online and purchased the September issue for $10. A few days later, the magazine arrived and thumbing through its pages was an instant time machine trip to a pre-Watergate America of flared corduroy trousers, rum and Coke, and really big afros.
Naturally I would love for readers to see the photograph, but the Oregon Coast TODAY is a family publication so you’ll just have to imagine Monahan’s beach run. Or better yet, recreate one for yourself.
According to Quint’s book, a prudish neighbor who saw the photo shoot unfolding called the sheriff’s office. Fortunately, Monahan and the photographer worked fast. They climbed back in the van and drove away before the law arrived. Where they went next is anyone’s guess, but somewhere in this world, there are lost or forgotten negatives of all of Monahan’s glorious runs, and I would dearly love to see them developed. For only the strict sake of historical preservation, I assure you.
Taking the Pen to paper
[Posted July 21, 2010]
A year ago, I struck up a correspondence with an inmate at the Oregon State Penitentiary serving a life sentence for murder in a robbery that went horribly awry. He’s 46 years old and spent his last 16 years in prison.
He’d read a column of mine in the Oregonian about a book on a famous penitentiary and wrote asking for help publishing his fiction. We became friends — of a sort — and have since exchanged nearly 50 letters (he has no e-mail access). I sent him a few of my essays and purchased his leatherwork, including a handsome wallet and camera case. He’s also a fine visual artist and is working on a painting of Ray, my recently departed dog. This summer, at behest of the inmate, I plan on visiting OSP and conducting a writing/publishing workshop.
I mention all this because in one of my letters I asked him about his experiences on Oregon’s beaches (He’s a native Oregonian). He responded with a terrible story of how the events that spiraled out of control and culminated with the murder actually began at the beach. He told me that because of this, he felt like he had disgraced Oregon’s “great birthright,” as Oswald West so memorably described Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches. If he ever got out of prison, which seemed like a long shot, he wanted to make amends. He wrote:
“I would go to the beach and walk barefoot on the sand reconnecting to the earth and my loved ones (he has children and grandchildren), holding hands, running, our feet splashing in the surf, our giggles and laughter caught up in the salty wind, blowing off the sea … collecting shells, building castles, a small fire of driftwood to roast hot dogs and marshmallows…”
Since his incarceration, the inmate has turned his life completely around, found Jesus, conquered various addictions, begun counseling others on addiction, became an artist and leather crafter, raised funds for Salem-area athletic teams, and performs countless other acts of private and public social service.
Recently, the inmate asked Governor Kulongoski for clemency, a commutation of the life sentence so he can at least have some hope of release in his late 50s. No Oregon governor since Tom McCall’s has granted clemency. I offered to write a letter on behalf of the inmate’s appeal and he accepted.
Yes, I know he murdered someone. No, a loved one of mine has never been murdered. Yes, I know the story of Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbot. No, I don’t consider myself a naïve bleeding heart. A larger debate on capital punishment and the American penal system is well outside the scope of this column but worth talking about nonetheless. And not the sort of talk that regularly appears on cable television or online forums.
My intuition guides me here. I believe in all my heart what Portia said in “The Merchant of Venice”:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath.
It is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
It is mightiest in the mightiest,
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.
I want the inmate’s bare feet to walk on the beach again. After that, I sense he will help desperate people in need, and work incredibly hard to pay his great debt, which he knows is eternal and never fully repaid.
Raised by the Power of Ten
[Posted July 6, 2010]
On June 7, I awakened at 4 a.m. to walk the dog, write, answer email, drink coffee, and plan the day’s lessons. Soon, the dawn made its way through the skylight and it was time to rock and roll.
At 5:15 I pulled into the parking lot in front of the Fishermen’s Memorial, the traditional starting point of my annual Newport High School Senior Beach Walk. A soft rain fell as I listened on cassette tape to Getz and Gilberto’s samba treatment of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring”: I’m as busy as spider spinning daydreams/ spinning spinning daydreams/I’m as giddy as a baby on a swing.
“Giddy as a baby on a swing” is about as precise a simile there is to describe my mood every time I hit the beach with young Oregonians.
But where was the spring? We seemed to be on the 45th of 40 days and nights of rain.
By 5:30, 10 students had gathered by my truck and we headed out on the final Monday morning of their high school careers. Naturally I gave them my speech about Oswald West, Tom McCall and Oregon’s Great Birthright: its free, publicly owned beaches. I wanted to believe I was the only teacher in Oregon doing this sort of thing, especially in the rain, especially at dawn.
Last June I inaugurated the event and close to 40 kids showed up. Of course, a year ago, I taught twice as many seniors, it wasn’t raining, and this year’s group clearly played more video games. Nevertheless, 10 hearty Cubs got up early to walk with me, their teacher, and the rain made us all the more hard core.
I admit it here: just seconds before the walk began my recent consternation about my teaching job threatened to pollute this sacred moment. I couldn’t get the gig out of my mind and no one should ever have employment on the mind when visiting the beach.
After we descended the stairs and struck sand, the rain fell a bit harder, I instantly exorcised all the demons of state testing and failing students and began to walk in the moment.
How and why? Easy. It’s the old sound of the ocean and its annihilating power.
We cruised to the jetty, or the Great Wall of Newport as one student described it, and climbed atop the slick and jagged riprap. Out west, the bar looked calm and a speedboat (or was that an ark?) ripped through the gap. We talked of this and that, rock and the death of rock, love and the lack thereof, laughed, rubbed the rain into our faces, shot beady photographs, and at one point, I had the Power of Ten face seaward, clasp hands and raise their arms to the sky. It might be the greatest photograph I have ever taken.
We headed north down the beach and the rain subsided. As we began to veer into the dunes and back to the parking lot, I noticed a large bird perched on a branch of an ancient log resting at the wrack line. I directed the group’s attention to the bird and we converged upon it. Seconds later, amid various speculations about the bird’s identity, a bald eagle lifted off, flattened out, and flew north. I shouted something about this being a good omen, that these seniors could employ this image as a metaphor for their impending graduation. Perhaps that was too preachy. I tend to get that way on the beach when I walk there with other humans, which virtually never happens.
Fifteen minutes later we sat around tables at Pig N’ Pancake where we wrung out the rain and ordered from the pleasant waitress. I bought them all breakfast and we ate together as friends, Oregonians, countrymen. In two more days our remarkable journey together that was the 2009-2010 would conclude and I would never have the privilege of teaching these fine young people again.
Making Angels
[Posted June 21, 2010]
In mid-May yellow buses from distant lands began appearing in Newport. I saw one from Idaho, another from Montana, and several hailing from the Willamette Valley and Southern Oregon. All the buses had one destination and one sacred mission in mind: South Beach State Park, where children can play on the beach.
Have you ever witnessed a child visit the ocean and walk on the beach for the first time? I have, years ago, in my capacity as caretaker of Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I will never forget that moment and access it every now and then as one of my most powerfully-motivating editorial and pedagogical images.
After planting trees with several sixth grade classes from Hillsboro, I accompanied the students to Neskowin. On the way there, with rain pelting the bus as only Oregon coastal rain can, his teacher told me that he had never seen the ocean despite living most of his life an hour away. I’m not sure how or why this tragedy came to be, but I know it amounts to a crime against a child.
The boy walked the path from the wayside, hit the beach and started running madly to the water. He then stopped, flung himself to the sand, rolled on his back, writhed, and started making angels. He looked like a complete idiot and it was one the most beautiful and hard core Oregon things I’ve ever seen in my life.
In my 10 years on the refuge, I led close to 50 groups in tree-planting and blackberry-hacking activities. Most of the children came from Willamette Valley public schools and crossed all demographic lines. Before we went to work, I always arranged the kids in a circle and asked for a show of hands from those who had never visited an Oregon beach. Invariably, multiple hands went up and the numbers shocked me every time.
More recently, as I led my Newport High School seniors on our annual history walk around town, I spotted a bus from Oakridge parked on the Bayfront. I bet my students that at least one of the children on the bus had never seen the ocean. A few minutes later, I asked an Oakridge chaperone the question.
Make it two kids.
If I had the money, I would launch the Oswald West Foundation and call our only program Operation Great Birthright. No curriculum. No tests! Transport every kid in Oregon to the ocean at least once and let them play on the beach for one afternoon. Okay, maybe I’d force them to recite West’s famous quote about Oregon’s ocean beaches, “No local selfish interest, should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people,” before feeding them lunch, but that’s the extent of the teaching.
What kind of money would it take to establish such a foundation? We’re talking funds for buses and lunches, a couple of staffers paid bohemian (surfer) wages to coordinate logistics with the schools, some beach toys, and some shelter dogs to run with the kids. Really not that much at all. Probably the cost of one artillery shell.
The beach, of course, doesn’t cost a cent.
Somehow, I need a quick way to rake in the cash to fund the Oswald West Foundation. I really don’t have many scruples where the money comes from and I’ll gladly sell out my literary soul to give every Oregon kid a chance to see the ocean.
I know what needs doing — write the big vampire-on-the-Oregon Trail novel. Make my lead bloodsucker sexy, smart, brooding, celibate, and possessed with a weird passion for building sand castles that recall the grand citadels from Transylvania. It would sell millions!
Oil and the Oregon coast
[Posted June 9, 2010]
In 1978, something called the Governor’s Task Force on Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Development published an 8 1/2” by 9” 54-page pamphlet titled “Oregon and Offshore Oil.” Five years ago, I excavated a $3 copy from an Oregon coast thrift store and read it. I unearthed it a week ago because sometimes I perversely enjoy reading official insanity produced by a government agency.
Who knows what the “Oregon and Offshore Oil” press run was or how it was distributed. Its initial release came 117 years after the first commercial oil well, five years after the Arab oil embargo and shocking gas lines, and 25 years before the American invasion of Iraq, which instantly dropped the price of a barrel of oil.
The top half of the pamphlet’s cover is Texas tea black. The bottom half is Douglas fir green. A lowercase, cream-colored “Oregon” in a fat, round 70s style font separates the black from the green. The black at the top appears ready to spill over the green at the bottom. The word “oregon” dams the black away from the green. There is a black line drawing of an offshore oil platform inside the second “o” of “Oregon.” Below the “g” and surrounded by green sits the black-colored phrase, “and Offshore Oil.”
Connie Morehouse designed the cover and I count it a masterpiece on every subconscious, subversive propaganda and graphic design level. How it passed muster from her pro-oil superiors is a miracle. Maybe she was one of those Americans who actually listened to President Jimmy Carter when he asked Americans to turn down their thermostats and wear sweaters. Carter also created the Department of Energy and pushed for the research and development of alternative fuels. He lasted one term.
“…Oregon’s role in the unfolding energy drama may soon change,” reads “Oregon and Offshore Oil,” on page three. The next 51 pages describe how this might happen the unique Oregon way since federal law ceded control of submerged lands up to three miles from shore to individual states. The pamphlet addresses potential environmental problems and reassures they won’t happen — can’t happen. It includes an economic multiplier model. It has a photograph of Gov. Bob Straub in a pinstripe suit visiting what appears to be an offshore oil platform. It also contains a glossary of oil production terms. Had the plan unfolded, it would have mutated the Oregon coast into an industrial landscape of almost inconceivable soulless proportions. Well, perhaps not so inconceivable. Visit Louisiana’s share of the Gulf of Mexico for reference.
According to the pamphlet, exploratory drilling off Oregon occurred at seven sites in 1964-65. Initial results were not promising but also not dissuading. Thus, 14 years later the state published “Oregon and Offshore Oil” with encouraging sentences like, “The thick sediments located off the Columbia River’s mouth and near Newport and Coos Bay may be likely sites.” Presumably Oregon officials released it to soften potential resistance, which figured to be stiff since it was the tail end of Oregon’s great run as the national model for implementing aggressive conservation measures. The pamphlet’s timing, however, was odd.
In 1977, a year before the publication of “Oregon and Offshore Oil,” the Bureau of Land Management ranked the Oregon and Washington continental shelf as lowest “among all the areas in terms of its resource potential and desirability for leasing. Consequently, the region was dropped from a schedule prioritizing offshore drilling sites.
Gov. Straub asked the BLM to reconsider. He was the same Bob Straub, who 10 years earlier as State Treasurer, had led the successful fight to stop the relocation of a section of Hwy. 101 down Nestucca Spit. When the pamphlet came out, BLM had apparently not reversed the ranking and the prospect of several drilling platforms in the Columbia River estuary seemed remote. Yet you wouldn’t gather that from reading“Oregon and Offshore Oil.” It made oil production feel like a done deal, complete with backing by the state’s top elected leader who had unassailable credentials when it came to protecting the environment.
As we all know, drilling for oil off the Oregon coast didn’t happen. I don’t really know why. Today I can’t seem to find anyone who remembers anything about the issue. Whatever the reason, it was a victory for the Oregon coast. Oregon’s drilling scheme died in 1981 and seemed buried for all time when Congress banned drilling for oil and gas in offshore waters.
Then came a series of calamitous events — 9-11, two Middle East wars, $4 a gallon for gas — and Presidents George W. Bush and Obama pushed for renewed exploration off Alaska, both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico.
Then came the recent BP spill, the largest one in American history. You’ve seen the horrible images. More are coming. Recently, I’ve thought about them when I walk Oregon’s relatively pristine beaches. I also think this: Do we ever learn anything from our history in this country?
[View live feed of oil spill under the Gulf of Mexico.]
Lesson plan, torn asunder, yields ‘madness’
Oregon Coast TODAY contributor Matt Love became a writer on the refuge — the 600-acre Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, near Pacific City. In his 10 years as caretaker there, Love restored more than just acres of native trees and grassland. In between writing three books and running his own press, he rediscovered a passion for teaching. His latest work, “Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker,” is a 177-page account of this decade of awakening — including this adventure at Neskowin Valley School.
April 1999. National Poetry Month. I begin my three-week unit with seventh and eighth graders attending Neskowin Valley School. I’ve waited all year to teach my favorite subject.
We read poems, write poems, memorize poems, randomly construct poems like the surrealists did, study different forms, techniques, and listen to Jack Kerouac perform his crazy cool American haikus. After reading an Emily Dickinson biography and learning she called her poetry “snow,” I suggest the students name their poetry. Hearing this, they look at me like I’m stupid, and when I suggest they “loaf and invite their soul” on a weekend, one of the girls asks if she can do that watching a video.
My material bombs; explosions resound throughout the room but only I can hear them. Students insist on rhyming every poem. They’re bored listening to Kerouac. They have trouble grasping the concept of metaphor. When I ask each student to choose a poem from a collection of nearly 50 books in the library that best captures a mood they’ve recently experienced, and read it aloud, some of the girls recite Mother Hubbard. Some girls write poems on a single subject – pets. One boy projectile vomits in the classroom during one of my dramatic readings. He claims he has the flu and I have to clean it up. Rapidly, I sense nothing of educational or personal value is happening with this unit, assuredly the opposite whenever I taught poetry at the high school level. My sophomores, juniors, and seniors poured it out and poured it on: love, fear, loss, death, angst, hate, pain, lust, losering, and very bad sex.
One afternoon during a lesson investigating the poetic value of popular music, I play David Bowie’s “Heroes” and ask, “What do you think he’s after when he sings, ‘We can be heroes, for just one day’?” Nobody says a word and I wait, and wait, staked out naked on an anthill splashed with honey and Drambuie. What happens next is a first in my teaching career: I abruptly suspend a lesson in progress because it’s tanking so badly and I’m a teacher in the throes of professional disintegration. I cannot continue even though I have 30 minutes to fill and many more carefully selected pop songs to play, including some of the girls’ wimpy boy band favorites. It doesn’t matter. I’m whipped here. The ship of poetic state hath sunk and this captain honors maritime tradition. “You know,” I say, “I’m going to stop now and we’re going to move on to something else.” No explanation. No excuses. No tirades. Lucky for me, seventh and eighth graders are totally oblivious to a visceral teaching shipwreck in their midst, and they transition smoothly into our next activity, recess, while I collapse into the easy chair. It’s now fourth and 35 from my own 10-yard line in the second quarter of a zero to zero football game for the World Championship of Teaching Poetry but I won’t punt. I don’t know how to punt when it comes to poetry, but I have 20 minutes until the students return from recess to invent a new gadget curriculum play.
They take their seats and I announce “Poetry Madness,” a hike, tomorrow, rain or shine or gale force winds. We shall hike a five-mile round journey of Keatsian proportions down nearby Nestucca Spit to the jaws of the river, to the roiling bar of Nestucca Bay, where bald eagles soar, to become poets ourselves, bards of yore, the unacknowledged legislators of the world! Raw nature will seize us by the throats and strangle the verse forth. We’ll be “mad to be in contact with it” as Whitman wrote, and I’ll quote that line before we begin our march down the sand. If these kids aren’t inspired to embrace poetry after this experience, then literate American civilization is doomed. The students seem mildly interested in my idea, and, well, if it means missing class, then…hell!...we love poetry, Matt! That night I spend an hour on the phone pleading with parents to help with carpool. I don’t tell them about the sinking ship.
We hit Bob Straub State Park and Nestucca Spit in the morning on a splendid sunny morning I might as well have ordered from Wordsworth. Before Poetry Madness officially begins, I quote Whitman “…urge and urge and urge…” and then 20 students, six parents, one teacher and three dogs, including Ray, embark on a field trip with no predictable outcome, a teaching first for me. An hour later the students and I sit in a circle at the bar’s edge, where the Pacific Ocean slams into Nestucca Bay. We pull out our journals and list stream-of-consciousness images flooding our minds. We edit them to a favorite five, then to the ultimate crystallized 15-syllable image. After that, we read the poems aloud and I keep interrupting the students to recite louder so we can hear them over the sound of the crashing surf. I read last and thank the students for their serious poetic effort.
No more seriousness for one middle school field trip! We must play and play hard. I choose teams and announce each one has 45 minutes to construct a poetry fort out of driftwood worthy of Walt Whitman’s presence. When finished, invite me over for a poem and a cup of tea. “Ready, go!” I scream. As the students dash around building forts, sometimes three or four working together to drag a piece of large driftwood, I get a bonfire raging to roast up hotdogs.
On the hike back up the Spit, a girl discovers a beached seal pup and wants to carry it home and call the authorities. The students plead with her to leave it alone, the mother will return to feed it. If you touch the pup, the students tell her, voices rising, the mother might abandon it. I stand back and say nothing, wishing some mounting peer pressure will win the day. The girl refuses to listen. She’s been like this all year long with students and adults alike. She strides toward the pup, a few kids start screaming at her, and the class turns to me. “Disrupt the disruptor,” the Old Man, a master teacher of 40 years taught me about handling a recalcitrant student in situations like this. I unsheathe the verb.
“If you pick up that seal, you will kill it. You will as good as put a bullet in its head and watch it die. And all because you never listen to anyone. Because you think you know everything and you know nothing about this. Nothing. Less than nothing. Everyone here knows more about the seal than you do. I respect you care about the animal but your feelings are going to murder this baby. (Pause) Now go ahead and pick it up and we’ll all watch you kill this seal, right now, right on this beach. It’s all any of us will ever remember about you. I’ll even write a poem about it.”
She retreats from the pup and all the kids’ eyes follow her. She walks alone on the way back, occasionally turning around for a brief look. I don’t say a word to her for the rest of the day.
Art is not dead
[Posted May 12, 2010]
The manifesto read:
We, the artists of Newport High School, convey our visions to inspire others to experiment with innovation. We materialize imagination amidst rampant uniformity. Our creativity transcends the idle threats of censorship and financial disadvantages. The impulses to paint, sculpt, draw, photograph, compose, design, write, dance and act eclipse all distraction. The nature of creation that courses through our veins and seeps through our pores promotes purity over corruption. We make a statement: art is not dead.
Hayley Trivett, editor of Newport High School’s newspaper The Harbor Light, wrote the manifesto for a special edition that featured nothing but art and the students who made it.
In recent years, all the state, local and federal philistines have entered into a sinister alliance and conspired in plain view to deny students like Hayley opportunities to make art in their schools and explore the wonder of what it means to become an artist. These same philistines also require children to take more math, science and tests, tests, tests, all in the name of improving the national economy.
At times, I have observed young people with artistic sensibilities feel powerless to fight back against the philistines and catch a social disease known as malaise. Its chief symptom is the use of the word “whatever.” I sometimes liken my role as a teacher to that of a doctor who specializes in curing young patients of malaise. Making art is one of my remedies. Urging the afflicted to visit the beach is another.
Hayley had written a savage literary manifesto for the special edition, but we also needed an equally savage visual statement to go along with it. I serve as the newspaper’s advisor and suggested the staff build a monumental sculpture on sacred Oregon ground — a publicly-owned beach. They agreed enthusiastically.
We rendezvoused at South Beach State Park on a sunny Thursday after school. I brought a shovel and a dog. They brought muscle, a knife, and cans of spray paint. The beach provided everything else, as it always does if a person is attune to receive its literal and metaphorical gifts.
We worked like beavers on energy drinks and it took us only an hour to build a masterpiece of driftwood and other flotsam and jetsam. Our angst and joy simultaneously streamed forth as we let imagination guide our hands and vision. I yelled a lot. I urged the students to yell too. They did. One girl spray-painted the word “ART” in gold and green on a smooth plank and we wedged the plank into place so it shot straight to the sky. The artists climbed on the sculpture, posed, and leapt off. Then they ran wild into the surf and danced. My dog chased them.
Two weeks later nothing remained of the sculpture. But its making would last forever.
Spreading Ray’s ashes
[Posted April 28, 2010]
I pulled the truck into the parking lot of Bob Straub State Park. Ray’s ashes rode shotgun and Sonny the husky jumped for joy in back. She knew where we were — Nestucca Spit.
My great dog was gone three months now, a victim of a swift and vicious cancer. I always knew when Ray died I would return him to Earth at Nestucca Spit, the place where we rambled together over a thousand times and I launched my writing and spiritual life.
Today was the day. The grieving needed to end and my edges needed sharpening. For the occasion, I wanted relentless rain, a deserted beach, and this being Spring Break on the Oregon Coast, I normally would have found the Spit in exactly that condition.
But the sun shone extra bright that morning and to me augured well for my damaged country at ridiculous war over a question as simple and humane as whether one of my terribly sick students receives the decent healthcare she can’t possibly afford. My mom always taught me: help people. What’s wrong with that?
The wind whipped hard as I walked Sonny around the dunes for a few minutes. I put her back in the truck, shouldered a backpack, and headed out with Ray for one last ramble.
I’d never seen the Spit so crowded, even in the summer! Close to 30 people and a half dozen dogs frolicked to and fro. It was practically Paris on Bastille Day. I desperately wanted privacy but hardly begrudged these vacationers. Better here than Disneyland.
Spreading the ashes to the wind would never work. Too many humans, too stiff a breeze and the tide too far out. I needed a new plan.
I hit the beach, began walking north and then turned back to see a motorcycle a half mile down the Spit, motoring north. As it approached I noticed a portly man driving it with a portly boy seated behind him. Strapped to the boy’s back was a quiver holding two fishing poles. They stopped 50 yards away and I snapped a few photographs of them for my ongoing documentation of the decline of American fitness, which pretty much means I take photographs all the time.
A white pickup with the words “Beach Ranger” emblazoned on the door cruised into the scene and halted near the motorcycle. Driving a vehicle is legal on Nestucca Spit, but I wasn’t sure if motorcycles were allowed. I also didn’t know if spreading your pet’s ashes was legal. Doubtless, Oswald West would have approved of my plan, so that settled that.
I walked north away from the law, a green ocean to my left, until I came upon an ancient, gigantic and snaking root wad 20 yards above the wrack line. It was charred black in some places from a million campfires and bleached white everywhere else from floating forever.
My dog will rest here, I thought. I dug a burial chamber in the sand under the root wad, emptied Ray’s remains, and then propped up the first picture I ever took of him. I shot a couple of photographs, covered the ashes with sand, said goodbye aloud to my greatest friend, and left Nestucca Spit. All around me life went on, including two thin boys tossing a football.
I turned to look back once. It might take a few days or weeks for the tide to roll in high enough to reach the root wad. But it would, and when it did, Ray would return to the sea. I can’t think of better ending for him — or me — when the proper time comes.
Coyote delivers a message (again)
[Posted April 14, 2010]
I took to the beach at dawn on the Saturday of the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival. An English teacher’s work is never done, so I had my students’ poems stashed in my pocket and thought I might edit if the weather allowed.
Sonny my invalid husky led the way, with her bumblebee lope. As I sipped black coffee from a mug advertising a new anti-psychotic drug, we forged our way through the stunted shore pines and blooming Scotch broom of South Beach State Park.
Ray entered my mind. My great writing dog was dead going on two months now and I still hadn’t decided how to proceed without him — existential, literary, or canine wise. At times I felt I’d received a message from my intuition or the natural world, but in the end they all proved opaque.
Sonny and I ascended a dune and beheld the ocean. I saw a layer cake sky on the horizon: white, gray, white. The middle layer shined a spotlight at the water’s edge. I looked north to the jetty and south as far as I could see — not another human being on the beach. I sat down on the dune and stared out to sea. Sonny probed the grass for a minute and then came to rest by my side.
At some point I looked south and saw a medium-sized dog, about a quarter mile away, coming toward me, running through the incoming tide with astonishing speed. The spotlight lit him up and he had the most unusual taut and fluffy body. He then stopped for a second to sniff or eat something at the wrack line. Suddenly, I noticed the dog had no master. Then I realized this was no dog.
Coyote ran and ran and a few seconds later passed in front of me, but not before turning his head my direction for a good 20 yards, and sending me a message only a fool would deny. Sonny saw him too and seemed poised to bolt, but I grabbed her collar and she settled down to watch the show. I listened to Coyote.
His message? Lighten up. Run like me. Ray would love that. Use me as the metaphor you need to heal.
Coyote kept on sprinting north, framed against the jetty and the lighthouse, and I watched him for another half mile. Then he took an abrupt eastward turn, flew up a 10-foot wall of sand, and vanished into the beach grass.
I hadn’t brought my camera. I never seem to have it around when Coyote appears. No big deal. He probably wouldn’t show up on film anyway.
Eighteen months ago, in this column, I wrote about an extraordinary encounter Ray and I had with Coyote on the beach. His appearance coincided during a moment of great personal distress, as I struggled with the crushing defeat of my campaign to limit human access to the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge, a place I served as caretaker for a decade and put my whole heart into restoring.
In that encounter, which I remember as vividly if it happened 30 seconds ago, Coyote imparted a message to me, to release my shame and anger connected to the defeat. It struck me as absurd to write that back then because I was no animist. And so I sort of listened to him. Well, not really.
It strikes me as just as absurd to write about Coyote’s new message because I’m still no animist.
This time around, though, I hope I’ve listened better.
Stray thoughts
[Posted March 31, 2010]
In February, as dusk ended a clear and dry day, I pulled my truck into South Beach State Park. Sonny, my husky, needed a short walk on the beach before I attended a fiction workshop at the Newport Public Library.
My great writing dog and best friend Ray had died in January and I hadn’t slept or written much since. I thought an evening of writing fiction might get my mind off sorrowful things and start me creating again.
Suddenly, approximately 50 yards away, a dog appeared in my headlights. He wore no collar. He was vaguely brown, somewhat large, ears pointed upward, an über mutt, and stood stationary in the grass just off the road. In other words, he looked a lot like Ray, a stray found near Neskowin back in 1998, who came into my life and helped me become a writer.
I stopped the truck but kept the engine idling and the headlights on the dog. I opened the door and stepped onto the road. A few seconds later the dog bolted into a thicket of shore pine and Scotch broom. I got back in the truck and circled the day use area parking lot a couple of time, searching. Nothing.
After walking Sonny on the beach, I went to the fiction workshop where, interestingly enough, the writer didn’t have us do any writing. I suppose it didn’t matter; the stray dominated my thoughts.
The workshop ended and I headed home. The sign for South Beach State Park came into view. Why not? I veered into the day use area parking lot, powered down the windows, slowed to five miles per hour, and began looking. No other vehicles were around.
The dog rested on the pavement in front of the restrooms. “There you are,” I said aloud, quietly. I switched on the high beams, and angled the truck for maximum illumination on the restroom. The dog didn’t move. He was 15 yards away. I could now see clearly the dog resembled an American boxer in the face and tail, but shaggy in coat like Ray. He also looked old.
This dog is going home with me. I am sure this is a message of some kind about Ray — or from Ray.
I reached behind my seat and opened the “Stray Canine Rescue Kit,” a necessary item for any dog lover that includes: treats, a leash, thick gloves, heavy jacket.
With treats in hand, I walked toward the dog, saying nice things. Behind me, Sonny howled her husky howl from the back of the truck.
I came within five yards, extended the treats, sat down on the grass, and then the dog sprinted into the beach grass and dunes. He stopped some 20 yards away and watched me. I placed the treats on the sidewalk and returned to the truck. As soon as I shut the door, the dog raced over and gobbled up the treats.
We basically repeated this routine for the next 30 minutes until I ran out of treats. The dog never let me near enough to snap on the leash.
I raced home and whipped up a hearty meal of fresh hamburger and dog food and placed it on a tin plate. Five minutes later I circled the deserted day use parking lot four times looking for the dog. He wasn’t there. I set out the food and water near the restroom and waited for an hour, grading papers. He never showed. I didn’t sleep one minute that night.
In the morning, well before dawn, I stopped by the park on the way school. Something had eaten the food. I searched the dunes for 10 minutes, calling out for the dog. Nothing.
How to become an Oregon beach fanatic
[Posted March 16, 2010]
First, you must visit the beach at least every day — every day! Twice is better, three times quintessential. Weather is irrelevant. In fact, you prefer the wind and the rain because they deter weaklings who might otherwise pollute your moment.
If your job conflicts with visiting the beach every day, quit the job. If your partner protests your fanaticism, quit the partner, and imagine meeting the perfect mate on the beach, during a storm, when driftwood, kelp and foam tumble together at the wrack line.
Naturally, you won’t meet this person, but sometimes, to paraphrase a classic song by The Temptations, just your imagination can help you run away.
Bring a dog or two or three when you visit the beach. A dog romping on a beach is one of the happiest sights in the world. This image so utterly obliterates all your depression and narcissism, that when you leave the beach, you feel fired up to enact one of those “millions of little moves” we need for justice, as William Stafford described them in one of his poems. If you don’t have dog, go adopt one from a shelter, and congratulate yourself when you do, because you just made one of the moves.
Second, you must become eternally vigilant to any person, place or thing that dares to overthrow or undermine the sanctity of Oregon’ publicly-owned beach legacy. They are legion and they are relentless. You must fight to protect the state’s “great birthright,” as former Governor Oswald West defined our beaches. Others Oregonians have, which is why you are walking the beach for free.
You must honor this heroism for your children, grandchildren and their dogs. You can do this by writing haikus about Oregon’s beaches in the sand. Traditionally, haikus lack political references but these haikus are intended to instruct so it’s OK.
Finally, if you happen to see a wedding in progress on the beach, join the assembly, blend in, look happy. When the reverend comes to that part asking someone to speak up if he knows any reason why the couple shouldn’t marry, raise your hand and launch into a speech on how special this nuptial is because it took place on sacred sand. You will also point out that no one paid a cent to rent the beach nor was required to obtain a permit. You will end the speech by saying what a nice name “Oswald” is for a boy and “West” is for a girl.
Stuck in the past
[Posted March 3, 2010]
Six years ago, my good friend Rose and I, joined by our four dogs, rambled down Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park on a glorious fall morning.
Suddenly, a pickup truck with two male passengers blew past us from behind at close to 50 miles an hour. The roar of the ocean was so loud we never heard it coming. The driver never once slowed down and nearly ran over Sonny, my husky.
I cursed the driver and his companion, and turned to Rose and wished aloud for something specific, just and cosmic to happen — immediately! Approximately 15 seconds later, the driver made an abrupt eastward turn to avoid a wave. He left the wet sands, found the dry, and his truck instantly ground to a halt. He was stuck and the tide was coming in.
Rose and I simultaneously let out exclamations of joy, sprinkled with a few preferred epithets for emphasis. The gods heard us for sure.
We stood about a quarter mile from the men and stopped walking toward them. The dogs stopped too, and lined up to watch. The driver emerged, surveyed the situation, looked west, and began searching for driftwood to jam under the submerged wheels in hope of improving traction.
A minute later, the passenger exited the cab to assist. On their knees, both men dug in the sand with their hands around the front wheels. They stuffed driftwood in behind the tires. The driver got in the truck and the passenger went behind to push. The engine revved, the sand flew, tires spun, and the truck briefly moved sideways, and then didn’t move at all. The front wheels were now buried deeper than before. The men came together, talked, pointed to the ground, and went back to work. Five minutes after that, and more revving and flying sand, there hung in the ocean air a mounting sense of futility that ratcheted up by the second. Then a wave grazed the truck’s back tires and the ratcheting up was over.
Rose and I watched all of this and didn’t say a word. The truck rested about a mile and a half from the parking lot. From a distance, the men appeared typically American, meaning obese and therefore physically unfit. I doubted their stamina to walk to a phone and call for help. I saw no cell phone in use. Neither Rose nor I had a cell phone with us.
“Should we help them?” I asked.
“No way!” said R. “They deserve it.”
I wanted to mull my next move over. I wondered: What could be taught here by doing something? Or nothing?
“Let’s go,” I said.
Rose and I turned around, called the dogs, and headed to the parking lot. She skipped a bit on the sand while the dogs darted around her. I lagged behind, but never looked back.
My decision went against my mother, a retired elementary school teacher, who taught me to help others in obvious distress, without question or judgment. The story of the Good Samaritan is very big with her. Instead, I followed the advice of my father, a retired secondary school teacher. In some obvious teaching situations, he often counseled doing nothing was the best way to educate. Allow the student to learn the lesson himself.
The next morning I went to the Spit alone with the dogs. No truck. All signs of its capture had been erased by the high tide.
Six years ago I thought I made the right decision by not helping the men. Since the incident I have used the story as a prompt with my students in writing about ethics. Their articulate and concise reasons for reaching out to the men have totally changed my mind. I can recall many of the best pieces, but two stand out. One girl wrote, “By not helping the men, Mr. Love became just like them, someone he doesn’t even like.” Another girl wrote: “I thought you were a writer. Aren’t writers curious?”
Yes, they are. Or should be. I realize now the better story would have been to go right up to the men, without judgment, and offer to help. Then see what happened.
Sandy sacrilege
[Posted Feb. 17, 2010]
The sun rose brightly on our national holy day and by noon most of the flock had taken to drink and barbecued flesh. It was Super Bowl Sunday on the Oregon Coast and across the country, and the flock was ready to get it on in, worshipping their secular gridiron gods (and their advertisers) on shiny flatscreen altars.
I don’t subscribe to cable television but wanted to worship a little bit myself, so I hit Newport’s Bayfront and found a seat at the end of a bar overlooking the sea lions. I wrote my Old Man a letter while the pregame festivities went on and on and on.
The game finally started and I felt zombified after three possessions and all the loud commercials. About the only thing even remotely interesting wasn’t even happening on the field. Rather, it occurred when a grizzled fisherman brushed past me on the way to the jukebox, talking to himself or his other personality — I wasn’t sure.
I expected slicked-up country crap or something by .38 Special. Instead he played English Beat and when “Save It For Later” came on, he exclaimed, “I love this band!” That a Newport fisherman loved a semi-obscure late 70s/early 80s ska band was almost enough to keep me around into the second quarter. But he left, so I did too.
Sonny, my husky, rode in the back of the truck and howled as we crossed the Yaquina Bay Bridge. I knew what she wanted and she always gets her way with me. We’d already visited the beach twice that morning, but the weather ranked as one of the finest days in February I’ve seen in 13 years on the coast, so we headed to South Beach State Park for another romp.
Close to 50 vehicles filled the parking lot and the large number surprised me — this was Super Sunday and the game was on! Who were these infidels? I checked the license plate of every vehicle. All Oregon.
But of course.
I rolled down my window to ask a couple their reason for visiting the beach at such a sacrilegious time. “A game? Who’s ahead?” the man asked. “The Sox?”
Sonny and I took our usual forested path to the beach and then ascended a dune that provided a matchless view that stirred the souls of St. Tom McCall, St. Oswald West, St. Bob Straub and St. Matt Kramer: about 50 or so men, women, children and dogs recreating on their publicly-owned beaches and not paying a cent for the privilege.
They ran, they walked, they waded, they built forts in the driftwood. I think I even saw a football tossed around.
One elderly couple captured my attention. They hustled to and fro on the beach in preparation to launch a kite. I sat down on the sand with Sonny and watched them. I pulled my camera out.
The kite made it aloft on the first try and floated this way and that. I would say it danced more than floated. A few minutes later the kite returned to earth and the couple launched it again. This routine lasted for 20 minutes and I marveled at the couple’s precise teamwork. In all that time, it didn’t appear as if they said one word to one another.
I heard later the game went down to the wire and the Saints won. I also heard that the Nielsen ratings service estimated that 106.5 million people watched the Super Bowl, a new record for American television. The previous mark was 105.97 million in 1983 for the last episode of M*A*S*H.
Saying goodbye to my best friend, Ray
[Posted Feb. 3, 2010]
The waitress brings over dark ale. I sit in a lounge overlooking the beach and outside the rain drifts left, rips right, up, down, folds over, then unfolds. The sky is saturated and weighs down the gulls bouncing along southward. How many shades of gray can you count during a winter storm on the Oregon Coast? Would some artist please paint a gigantic oil that captures them all?
My mind goes to the best friend I’ve ever had. He died on January 8 and I held him close at the end, telling him how much I loved him and would miss our times together. His name was Ray, my old shepherd mutt, my sidekick in this column, and I euthanized him after a short, terrible bout with cancer.
Twelve years ago he came into my life as an emaciated stray found on Highway 101 by a teaching colleague. I hadn’t written a word about Oregon until I met Ray; now I’m close to a million. When I reflect upon on all that I’ve written since 1998, Ray appears in print about 70 percent of the time, including serving as an important character in my last three non-fiction books.
Ray and I roamed all over the Pacific Northwest, but the beach was our special place. I like to think we set some kind of record by visiting every city, county, state and federal beach park on the Oregon Coast.
It’s obvious to me now that his presence constituted one of the main reasons I became a writer and write almost exclusively about Oregon. He made me get up in the mornings with his staccato grunts and stoic stares, take him to the beach, and as a result, something creative happened inside me and I began to write.
I picked up his ashes a while back and at some point will drive to Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park where Ray and I rambled a thousand times when I lived in the area and served as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge. What adventures we had on the Spit! But this is our last one. Goodbye old friend. I owe you so much.
Add to the chorus of ocean voices
Over the years, in the course of my reading, teaching and inveterate beach rambling, I’ve recorded my favorite quotations about the ocean and often write columns with some of these lines in my head.
I also begin every school year with my senior English students by having them write a 150-200 word, non-fiction response to one of these quotes. The only requirement is integrating the quote into the essay.
This assignment typically produces the best writing of the year and I suspect it’s because my students have such an intimate, Oregon-centric connection to the ocean and beach. We talk in class — or I should say, I sermonize — about Oregon’s legacy of publicly-owned beaches. They know the inspiring history of how it came to be and how they directly benefit from the work of others.
Funny how that sort of thing never appears on a state test.
Their pieces range far and wide but my favorite subjects are: the skipping-class-on-a-sunny-day or sneaking-out-at-night-to-go-to-the-beach narratives.
Perhaps some of you ocean/beach fanatics might like to try this assignment too. It seems like half the people I meet on the Oregon coast are working on a book anyway, so consider this a warm-up exercise. Send me your responses and if something seizes my attention, I’ll run it in this space in a future issue. Have fun!
Walt Whitman
You sea! I resign myself to you also — I guess what you mean / I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers…
Henry David Thoreau
Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.
Lord Byron
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!
John Keats
Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired / feast them upon the wideness of the sea.
Richard Hugo
The Ocean has the last word on
possession.
William Stafford
That instant, that clear space, that bright room inside a wave
Led Zeppelin
Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar. Play for free, play for me and play a whole lot more!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
That I am weary of words and people / sick of the city, wanting the sea.
Rachel Carson
There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.
D.H. Lawrence
I am the sea, I am the sea
E.B. White
The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way.
Richard Hugo
On this dishonored, this perverted globe / we go back to the sea and the sea opens for us.
Neil Young
The ocean, the drug that makes you dream.
Jim Harrison
I sat on numerous beaches and stared at the ocean until it was an ocean inside my head. The experience was a world away from the American idea of God as someone who drove around in a dump truck full of figurative candy to toss to deserving people if you beckoned him properly. The ocean was a god unknown, galactic, and in her own quiet way maybe enjoyed the moon as much as we did, what with the way the ocean gets pushed around by the moon and her tidal energies.
Steve Miller
Jungle love in the surf and the pouring rain, everything’s better when wet.
A heart that is 'barefoot always'
[Posted Jan. 6, 2010]
Not too long ago, while grading papers in a Newport bistro within view of the ocean, I overheard a conversation between a father and daughter.
From what I gathered, they weren’t locals and had met in Newport, at the beach, because it lay conveniently between their respective cities.
She neared completion her bachelor’s degree in a social science field. He looked the very picture of a businessman in a fast paced sector of the service economy. He was in his late 40s.
They discussed her plans after graduation. She broached the idea of living at the beach for a year and working at some retail job, then going back to school and teaching. She wasn’t sure. Who really knows anything at 21? She just wanted away from an academic routine and a college town. She also felt the call of the sea, the old sound of the ocean. I heard it my early 30s and have never left. I sort of wish I had heard it when I was her age.
Her father wasn’t really opposed because he didn’t hear a word she said and launched into an agenda – his agenda.
“Take the GRA (sic) and get into a professional school. Then I’ll help you with a house and you can cover the mortgage once you get a job.”
Next, he suggested she think about acquiring a new, more reliable car. He would help her with the down payment and then she could handle the payments.
She didn’t object but she didn’t assent either. She held her water glass aloft in the most curious way. To me, she appeared almost in a daze. The idea of assuming a large amount of debt for material objects tends to daze me too, which is probably why I drive a truck with 250,000 miles on it.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the contrasting metaphors between the daughter’s desires for her near future and the father’s desires for her far flung one.
She wanted to hear Neil Young’s “Harvest”; he stopped listening to rock ‘n roll years ago. She wanted to surf; he wanted her to drive. She wanted to saunter down the beach; he wanted her to jaywalk on asphalt. She wanted a heart that was “barefoot always” as Emily Dickinson put it; he wanted her heart to wear heels.
Could the father and daughter ever seize upon a metaphor they could both get behind?
I’ll never know. I do know that I feel incredibly lucky to have had parents who accepted the metaphor I constructed for myself in my 20s. They actually helped me construct it, even though they didn’t understand what I was doing. I like to think that if I’d ever had children, I would have done the same, that I would have suggested to my daughter that having a heart that is “barefoot always” is just fine.
What's the deal with George Diel?
The 12 days of Christmas approached and the weather turned frigid. I drove north on Hwy. 101 to a literary gig in Cannon Beach and the holiday spirit eluded me. The very idea of tiny little tots with their cell phones all aglow induced nausea. I saw a Salvation Army Santa washing down a hot dog with a Rockstar and overheard Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album. Seeing fresh clearcuts in the Coast Range didn’t help either.
I needed something, anything, a divine or pagan intervention, an unexpected gesture or gift, a miracle or existential mind bomb, something to pulverize the incipient Scrooge within me.
The dogs bounced along in the back of the truck as we coasted through Rockaway. They needed a romp on the beach, and Sonny the husky howled her demand. I call it her beach voice and it rules my life.
I pulled off Hwy. 101 into the Manhattan Beach Wayside, just north of Rockaway. The park’s host displayed a little Christmas tree on the dash of a 40-foot RV. It was really festive but did absolutely nothing for me.
A plaque affixed to a large rock at the entrance to the parking lot caught my eye. I’ve visited Manhattan Beach Wayside many times over the years, but never noticed it. I’ll check it out after the beach, I thought. The sun was fading and I wanted to see its demise out over the Pacific.
I let the tailgate down and lifted my two old invalid furry friends to the ground. We walked to the beach, although “gimped” probably is a better verb for the dogs when we ramble the sand these days. They’re not much longer for this world and when they’ve departed, this column ends.
After the walk, I loaded the dogs and drove to the plaque. I left the truck idling and went over for a quick inspection, thinking I’d probably learn something about a long dead local timber baron or civic booster. I didn’t bring anything to take notes.
An image of an elderly-looking and bespectacled man was etched into the plaque. It read, in part:
“Commemorating Dr. George Diel
1912-1986
Advocate of the belief that Oregon’s beaches belong to the people and should remain in perpetuity the unspoiled legacy of all.
A prime initiator of Oregon’s historic beach preservation law. Cofounder of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, an organization for the protection of Oregon’s coastline...”
As regular readers of this column know, I worship the “unspoiled legacy” of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. It is no exaggeration when I say that I have written (and read) more words on this subject that anyone in the history of Oregon.
Who was Dr. George Diel? I had never heard of him. I had thought the Matt Kramer Memorial in Oswald West State Park was the only monument to the Beach Bill, the famous 1967 state law that helped preserve the dry sand areas of our ocean beaches from privatization. I knew all the heroes and villains from that epic story. Or so I thought. Was there another unsung hero?
I ran back to the truck and snapped a couple of bad photos with a cheap point and shoot film camera I carry for journalism emergencies.
Some six hours later I was back home consulting the bible on state park history, “Oregon’s Highway Park System, 1921-1989, an Administrative History.” The Manhattan Beach Wayside was established in the early 1970s after the state acquired the property from Publisher’s Paper Company following litigation. There is no mention of Dr. George Diel or the plaque.
I entered the doctor’s name in a few internet search engines and learned he received the Feinstone Environmental Award in 1976. He lived in either Twin Rocks or Rockaway. He was active in the lobbying to pass Oregon’s historic land use law in 1973.
And that was all. But it won’t be after I start digging.
I received the best Christmas gift at the Manhattan Beach Wayside — a story, an Oregon beach story. I could now deck the halls and dive into the figgy pudding!
If you know anything about Dr. George Diel, please contact me.
The Wading Man
[Posted Dec. 9, 2009]
Where is the line of intervention a caring human being should — must — cross when another human being is on the verge of annihilation and apparently needs help? Maybe no such line exists. Maybe all of us have our own existential journeys to complete and no one should deign to intervene.
The first day we saw him he stood almost waist deep in the Pacific Ocean and dodged here and there to avoid incoming waves. He neither advanced nor retreated.
My associate and I sat on some accursed riprap and watched him from 150 yards away. He wore surfer shorts and a blue t-shirt, appeared heavy set, and left a neatly folded towel at the wrack line. The temperature hovered near an unseasonably warm 60 degrees on the last Saturday in October.
The man just stood there for five, 10, 20 minutes. He never once turned to look at the shore; he never once let the water rise above his waist. I’ve rambled Oregon coast beaches close to 2,000 times since moving here in 1997 and I’ve never seen anything like this. It was not normal beach behavior.
My associate and I talked about the man, wondering if he was in some sort of personal distress. We made up stories about him. We guessed: how long would he stand out there?
Finally, we had to leave. We passed within 75 yards of the man and then took the path back to the house. Neither one of us remotely considered going up to him and asking about his welfare.
The next day my associate and I rambled a long way down the beach under overcast skies at 3 p.m. As we made our way up the path, I noticed the same red sedan in the parking lot from yesterday come to a stop. The same man from the beach emerged and he wore a generic Sunday church suit. I pegged him at 55 years of age. From 50 yards away, we saw him change into his surfer shorts and blue t-shirt. He shut the car door and started walking west, to the sea. No towel. The waves looked hairy to me, much rougher than the previous afternoon.
We tracked the man’s slow, slightly angled walk to the ocean. His fists were clenched the entire way, a detail I noticed when I began taking photographs of him. He walked right into the water until it reached his waist. He then dodged here and there to avoid incoming waves. He neither advanced nor retreated. We watched him for 15 minutes.
Where is that line?
I told my associate I had to inspect his car: Chevy Impala. No dents and no rust. Fairly clean inside except for a few CD cases littered on the floor of the back seat. I couldn’t see one title! I wanted to know what music he listened to before he walked into the ocean. Who was he? What was he doing out there?
Three women came up the path and surprised us. They mentioned the man’s odd behavior. “Should we call it in?” one of them asked. I told them we saw the man at exactly the same time yesterday and he did exactly the same thing. We all discussed the situation for several minutes and then reached a consensus. No one called. We watched for another five minutes and then walked away.
At 3 p.m. the next day I visited the beach alone. The man wasn’t there, but neither was the Impala.
I know I want to end my sentient journey on earth by throwing myself into Hart’s Cove on Cascade Head and returning to the beginning of all life — the ocean. When that time comes, please don’t try to stop me. I won’t need an intervention although it could look like it from afar. But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with someone coming up to me and asking how I am. I’ll say, quoting The Beatles, “I Feel Fine.”
Can't find a better (beach) man
You vex me sir. You haunt me. You assault me. With your legendary rambling you challenge my self-anointed title as “Oregon’s Most Hard Core Beach Walker.”
I don’t know your name. I don’t know who you are. I do know we share an obsession — to ramble down Oregon’s publicly owned ocean beaches at all hours, at all costs. I also know we’d both break up with a partner who would dare carry an umbrella on the beach or listen to anything but the old sound of the ocean.
A few bits and pieces of information about you have come my way. According to acquaintances, you work in marine science and walk 10-15 miles a night, every night, regardless of the weather. I also hear you suck others into your vortex with e-mail and text message blasts to rendezvous at this or that Newport-area beach and share a towering bonfire of your own making. For all I know, at the bonfire, you strum Metallica covers on guitar, roast animal flesh, slake your thirst with cheap beer, and dance like the unhinged lads in “Lord of the Flies”!
Everyone who knows of you and me says we have to meet; that we are brothers forged of Oswald West’s sand and salt; that we worship Tom McCall and Bob Straub; that our entire physical and mental well being depends on daily visits to the beach.
We might have met once. In my latest book, “Super Sunday in Newport,” I describe an encounter last year on the beach with a man who was walking at dawn in torrential rainstorm. I wrote: “He wears a hooded sweatshirt without using the hood and the rain has turned his faded Levis a dark blue. He also wears Jimmy Connors-era white tennis shoes without socks. He has no hiking accoutrements whatsoever, not even a canteen…he tells me he’s walking from the south jetty in Newport to Lost Creek and back. I add up the miles. Close to twelve…”
Was that you? It had to be!
Name the time and beach sir. We’ll walk and walk and walk. We’ll outdo Charles Dickens and his daily 20-mile walk through London. We’ll outdo the Romantic poets and their epic walking tours through the Lake District. We’ll cruise Oregon’s “great birthright.” We’ll suck the marrow out of it and won’t pay a cent for the privilege. We’ll swap hard core beach stories of the type that only men like us could possibly understand.
Are you game? And if you are a better beach man than me, I will admit it.
The One and only Ona Beach
[Posted Nov. 11, 2009]
During the wonderfully crisp October days and nights on the Oregon Coast, I’ve loaded up the dogs and taken them to Ona Beach, seven or so miles south of Newport.
Normally I never recommend hanging out at a beach that abuts Hwy. 101, but Ona is a glaring exception. Something gloriously subtle or gloriously spectacular always unfolds there and I suspect Beaver Creek is the reason. It empties into the Pacific at Ona Beach and creates a meandering little estuary that attracts an astonishing variety of wildlife and eccentric human beings. Which is exactly why living near a bigger estuary, say Yaquina, Nehalem or Nestucca Bays makes for such interesting times. I’m sorry, but living near a lake can’t possibly compare.
Here’s just a partial list of what I’ve observed at Ona Beach during the last year:
Sea lions, seals, Old Believers, star gazers, a man practicing his sand wedge, hundreds of pelicans, a troubadour, poems for Bob Marley, peace signs in the sand, forts, pillboxes, altars, cairns, salmon, beavers, otters, blue herons, bald eagles, bonfires, Texans, bottle scavengers, landscape painters, a bicyclist riding on the beach, a woman walking to the Oregon Country Fair, dreadlocked campers, homeless ramblers, gulls, a romantic breakup (not mine), tai chi, post modern sand castles, and what appeared to be a group of people on a silent retreat.
I might also add that I didn’t pay a cent to observe any of this, which makes it all the better.
Ona has always struck me as a curious word. I consulted the Bible on such matters, “Oregon Geographic Names,” and it suggests the name originates from the Chinook lingua franca. If true, that adds even more mystery to this beach.
As I said, Hwy. 101 runs right next to Ona Beach but I hardly sense its baleful presence once I hike away from the parking area and down to the creek. The cell phone reception is pretty bad there too, meaning that St. Tom McCall or St. Bob Straub must have blessed this beach from beyond the grave. Not that I’ve tried to call anyone from there myself, but I’ve watched people from a distance gesture in frustration when trying to talk on the phone. I will never understand this type of human being, especially if they grew up in Oregon.
6:20 a.m. and my dog Sonny the husky just ruffled the blinds on the glass front door. That’s her signal—time for Ona, Matt, so quit working on the book and let’s roll! I poured some black coffee in my Big Pharma travel mug and we were off to watch the sun rise.
Matt Love is the publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and was recently awarded the Stewart Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his contributions to Oregon literature. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com. His new book, “Super Sunday in Newport: Notes From My First Year in Town,” is available in bookstores along the coast or through his web site.
Halloween on the Nestucca Spit
[Posted Oct. 30, 2009]
It was two years ago, when I still served as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge in South Tillamook County and visited my favorite place in the world…
About an hour of multi-colored light left before Halloween night comes to Nestucca Spit. I want a quick run with the dogs before retiring for the evening with a novel.
What a grand fall football day it was! Cold. Dry. Sunny. Alder leaves dropping. No wind. Perfect weather for young men to knock the hell out of each other and suicide beautifully on a freshly limed field. It even smells like football season in Pacific City, with all the smoke from the nearby slash fires drifting through the air.
All the world’s a campout tonight, if you are of the right mind to recognize it.
I pull into the parking lot of Bob Straub State Park and see a young thin man walking in the dunes with his eyes pointed to the ground. Odd. But stranger things have been seen on the Spit so … whatever.
The dogs and I ramble down the beach for a few minutes and then encounter a shiny and red truck stuck fast in the sand. Two large men kneel at the truck’s back tires. The tide’s receding so the waves pose no immediate danger.
I walk up to the men, who sport red faces, W.C Fields’ noses, who most assuredly exude a Brokeback Beach sort of vibe, which is cool by me and The Spit. It never discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation; it just wants you on the beach doing your thing.
“Hello,” I say, “what’s the problem?”
“We thought we’d drive to the end. We’ve never seen it. We’re not sure about how to drive this so we thought we’d stop and let some air out. Is the tide coming in?”
“No. You should be able to make it to the end. No problem. It’s really incredible there. I live around here and it’s worth the trip.”
I offer to push the truck in attempt to set it free. Much to my surprise, the scheme works! The men say thanks, and as the truck lumbers past on its way down The Spit, I entertain serious doubts it will ever return.
The dogs and I continue for a half mile or so and then head east into the dunes for the route back to the parking lot. In the dunes, I see the young man again. He holds a paper grocery bag. The dogs sniff him out and then fan out to hunt coyotes.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I ask.
“Great. What a day huh?”
“Fantastic. Do you mind me asking what’s in the bag?”
“Mushrooms. I sell them to a local restaurant. I get $5 a pound.”
Sure you do, dude.
“Happy Halloween,” I say.
“Same to you.”
We make it back to the parking lot at dusk. I load the dogs in the truck and am about to enter the cab when I notice a middle-aged man reading a magazine in the truck. Odd at any time at the Spit, but with the sun going down in pulsing oranges and yellows over the beach, a hundred yards away? On Halloween? Double plus odd.
I have to see what he’s reading — the writer in me, you know? I pretend to go pick up a shred of paper near his truck. He pays me no mind. I get close enough to see the magazine’s cover — Playboy.
As I drive home, I notice a few kid trick or treaters in Pacific City starting their rounds. They skip along in flimsy costumes, with parents in the background, excited about the dry weather and potential for a lavish candy haul. At that moment, I envy their youth and can only hope many years will pass before these children will think of big trucks, psychedelics and pornography.
Bridge crossing was a riveted experience
A man can’t always walk on the beach. I like to think walking the beach can take me anywhere I want to go, and while that’s true of my mind, it’s not true of other destinations.
I stood before the south approach to the Yaquina Bay Bridge, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works Project No. 932, and most of it wasn’t there. Fog nearly swallowed all the soaring green steel.
What an imperfect morning to try and conquer one of my greatest fears! I’ve always had a fear of heights. It’s why I fell off the roof and broke my arm in third grade. I couldn’t walk 50 feet on the Golden Gate Bridge. I never went to the top of the Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building.
I began to walk the plank and noticed a smashed gull in the road. A cormorant flew over me; a cormorant flew under me. A man holding a Dutch Bros coffee in his right hand and a maple bar in his left strolled south on the opposite sidewalk. I think he was whistling.
RVs blew by and shook the deck. Please Mother Earth! Don’t let a log truck come along! One did.
How many people have jumped off the bridge? Fallen off? Blown off? How many survived?
Damn you, Conde McCullough! I curse you for designing something so beautiful, so alluring, so bewitching, with such gorgeous curves … sort of like my last girlfriend. She dumped me.
I began to run. I stopped after 20 yards, ducked inside one of the ornate turrets to compose myself, read some ungrammatical graffiti, and heard sea lions bark and grunt in the direction of the Bayfront.
Then I examined the girders, rivets, nuts and bolts the Depression-era boys put into exquisite place in 1936. Socialism, it was called, and it built this beautiful bridge and it built it well. That was about the most comforting thought I could muster from the middle of the bridge, 133 feet above the bay.
The walk resumed, faster now, and I saw a man driving an 18-wheeler, texting. A moment later, an obese state worker inspecting something with a hand-held meter approached me and we exchanged “hellos.” I rushed through the other turret and didn’t stop to read, although I did notice a peace sign drawn in chalk.
I never once looked down, which would have been fine since there was nothing to see.
Fifteen minutes later I crossed the Yaquina Bay Bridge on foot for the first time. I turned around: son of a b — I had to walk back in two hours.
Cells vs. Novels: Distinct Distractions
[Posted Oct. 1, 2009]
As August came to a close, I walked the dogs to the beach on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
The beach was uncomfortably packed, meaning several adults, six children and two dogs enjoyed themselves, but I paid them no mind. I planned on heading south, far from the madding crowd, and look for fresh equations of sweet horny math written in the sand by love-struck teenagers. Or better yet, senior citizens.
Before I vacated the area, I took notice of the children; two six-year old girls building a sandcastle, two seven-year old boys building a dam in the creek, and two 11-year old girls reclining on a beach towel, text messaging with dizzying speed.
OK, no big deal on the text messaging, I think. The girls wanted to inform their friends what a great time they were having on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches and their parents wanted the ability to reach them at all times. Yes, all perfectly understandable but still, I’m glad I didn’t grow up in an era when my parents could find me all the time. If they could have, I doubt I’d have many memorable stories from my youth.
A half hour later I returned from my ramble and the girls were still at it. I sat down with the dogs and watched the children play for another 15 minutes. The girls kept texting.
Before I judged the girls too harshly with easy condemnation that comes from getting older (remember what adults used to say about the insidious effects of comic books and rock and roll?), I wondered: was their use of cell phones any different than if both were reading novels? Both activities are inherently unrelated to the beach and transport you away from the immediacy of the ocean. You are not really there. Or are you?
Later that evening, I e-mailed a friend about what I’d witnessed and my confusion over what it meant. Her excellent response is worth quoting in full here:
“The difference between cell phones and novels on the beach is basically threefold: 1) One is aesthetically romantic and pleasing, the other is not. How much more likely would you be to approach a woman who was reading versus one who was ferociously typing away at her mobile keyboard? What would catch an artist’s eye? Sand caught between pages is sentimental; sand caught between buttons is detrimental.
“2) Novel reading is collaborative, an active and dynamic immersion in human culture and experience. It enhances (if engaged in properly, with enough ready breaks and distractions) a beach experience ... whereas a cell phone detracts from it, cutting kids off from the surrounding world and any edifying or memorable engagement, and
“3) One activity is monitored and encouraged by the government and society at large. One is (dependent on your muse) in almost direct opposition. Rebellious revolution or indulgent transparency?”
And what about other electronic devices on the beach, such as handheld video games, movie players and iPods, all three of which I’ve seen in use in recent months?
Isn’t the beach enough? If you don’t want a relationship to the ocean, which is truly about a reflective relationship to yourself, why bother going?
Here’s my rule. No electronic devices of any kind. (You can carry a phone for emergencies but turn off the ringer and vibrator.) I suppose GPS units are okay, but remember “Let’s Get Lost,” that great song by Chet Baker? How about living it every now and then?
I will grant one exception to my rule: you can text or call someone from the beach, imploring them to drop whatever they are doing and join you immediately.
Catch a starry night, before they Gogh
[Posted Sept. 16, 2009]
Amateur astronomers sometimes classify nighttime darkness on the (nine-point) Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, which is based on a number of criteria, among them ‘limited magnitude,’ or the faintest celestial objects that are visible without magnification…
“The Dark Side,” The New Yorker,
by David Owen [Read the article here.]
4:40 a.m. A Wednesday in late August. I wake up and know immediately I must race to the beach and watch the stars before going to work. I don’t know why I know this. A feeling just overtakes me. It’s not like we get to see stars all that much here on the Oregon coast anyway. And if they are out, you have to get up early or stay up late. I much prefer the former. It’s a special time when so much good seems possible from a day.
It takes me five minutes to put my clothes on and load the dogs in the truck.
We reach the sand after taking the path to the beach. The dogs disappear into the void but I can hear their tags jingle here and there. I think they’re fired up too.
I look up. Overhead, a sky so full of stars it staggers me. Black barely manages to twinkle through the white.
“In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today the sky above New York City is Class 9, and at the other extreme of the scale, American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened…”
In “The Dark Side,” Owen describes the situation where air and light pollution have diminished or extinguished most urban and suburban peoples’ (meaning the vast majority of humanity) ability to see celestial objects in the nighttime sky where they live. It was one of the saddest articles I have ever read and portends something, I sense, truly dire for humanity, although I am not sure what shape or direction the calamity will take. It is utterly unfathomable for me to imagine how children will turn out as adults if they never see the stars. And what of those adults who forget what stars look like? What will we have lost? What will it mean to us when our ancient connection to the heavens has been irretrievably ruptured? What of star crossed lovers and all that? What of those splayed in the gutters who need to see the stars? How will we steer ourselves on the uncharted sea? What will become of us? Has science fiction at least weighed in on this looming human and planetary catastrophe?
This morning has to be a Class 3 dark-sky! This must be a one-in-a-million nighttime sky at the Oregon coast. I jog down the beach inhaling the heavens, if a sight can be said to be inhaled. The dippers. Milky Way. Moon. That’s all I can identify and I took a college astronomy course. I wish I could point out all the constellations, galaxies, major stars, planets, satellites and the Hubble Telescope shining before my eyes. That I can’t recognize any of them also portends something dire. I should know their names! I should teach them to my students and assign stargazing for unwritten poetry homework, before it’s too late, even here in rural Oregon, before the stars are taught exclusively as dead history and no one writes poems about seeing them anymore. How come the state requires students to solve algebraic equations to graduate instead of recognizing constellations? I bet we’d turn out better Americans if we did.
“…civilization’s assault on the stars…deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky.”
The dogs and I walk south down the beach and then turn around. I look up again but the stars don’t seem quite as brilliant because flood lights from perpetually vacant beachfront obscure them.
These accursed and unnecessary lights deprive me of a direct and privileged relationship to all the stars out over my local beach at that dark moment in time. I was cheated of seeing a full magical sky of undiluted celestial contrast. And I deserve this view because I got up!
This sky may never come again, for me or anyone else in the ever-polluted future who still cares about such far away scintillating overhead things, if there are any such people left a century from now. Left at the Oregon coast or anywhere for that matter.
‘Sexy’ is in the eye of the beachcomber
[Posted Sept. 2, 2009]
“North America’s Sexiest Beaches” read the provocative June headline on Forbestraveler.com. Naturally, being the obsessed man of the beach that I am, I clicked on the link and perused the list compiled by Thomas Kohnstamm.
Here are a few of the highest ranking beaches and what Kohnstamm said about their alleged sexy quotient:
“South Beach, Miami — What is South Beach? Is it Versace or Daisy Dukes? Is it Winter Music Conference, Art Basel or Spring Break? South Beach is all of the above and more: from highbrow chic to kitsch hedonism. Either way it is one of a kind.
Main Beach, East Hampton, N.Y. — Hop the train or a chartered plane from North America’s sexiest city to its closest (and poshest) summer getaway. On the South Fork of Long Island, shingled mansions rise out of the dunes and play host to the summer party circuit for New York’s high rollers and beautiful people.
Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, B.C. — British Columbia is known as Lotusland and Vancouver, North America’s third largest center of film production, is known as Hollywood North. Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach is where sexy locals and Hollywood interlopers relish the opportunity to peel down to their swimsuits and flaunt what they’ve got among the sand, beachwood and mountain vistas.
La Jolla Cove, San Diego — This beach is less about crowds of gawkers and tourists and more about fit surfers, locals, snorkelers, and international visitors who are true beach aficionados. La Jolla is a San Diego gem and one of the top beaches in all of California.”
The Oregon Coast didn’t rate one mention.
Not long after reading Forbes Traveler’s hopelessly unimaginative list of what a sexy beach is, I looked at a psychedelic sky from my deck and knew a spectacular summer sunset was about to unfold. That’s a rare event around here and I wanted to see it from the beach, so I hurried along and within minutes found myself on the sand staring west. The temperature hovered around 55 degrees and a slight breeze blew south to north.
At first I noticed the extreme low tide, but then something else came into view and I suddenly lost all interest in the sunset.
I saw a woman of indeterminate age walk toward the ocean with her dog chasing to and fro. No one else was around. Approximately 50 feet from the water, the woman stopped and stripped down to a dark-colored two-piece ensemble that I assumed was her bathing suit. Perhaps not. To me, her body language suggested a total and sexy spontaneity, you know, of the type that would get you kicked off most of “North American’s Sexiest Beaches” by security guards. She didn’t have a towel.
The woman sprinted to the ocean and kept running until the water reached her waist. Her dog followed. They danced together in the waves for a couple of minutes as orange, red, blue and purple layered the sky and then ran back to where her clothes rested. She dressed slowly and went on her way down the beach.
She didn’t pay a cent for her swim and I didn’t pay a cent to watch, which really is what Oregon Coast beaches are all about.
The sun set and I returned home, feeling grateful for not witnessing highbrow chic to kitsch hedonism and the high rollers and beautiful people. I felt grateful to live in Oregon where we have a very different definition than Forbes Traveler of what constitutes a sexy beach, and a better one, I think.
An Evening with 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
[Posted Aug. 5, 2009]
In the course of ongoing research into Oregon history, I’ve often asked myself: what is the coolest thing to have ever happened on an Oregon Coast beach?
Was it when distance running god Steve Prefontaine trained in the dunes around Coos Bay as a teenager?
Was it when former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall, in the battle to pass the Beach Bill, stood in front of the Cannon Beach motel that dared fence off part of the dry sands area for the exclusive use of its guests?
Was it when a young John Reed, the famous leftist revolutionary, ran naked on a beach near Arch Cape?
Was it when the rock band Kiss rented an entire floor of a Cannon Beach motel and rock’n rolled all night and partied every day?
No, it was none of these things.
The coolest thing to ever happen on an Oregon Coast beach is when Paul Newman rode (and crashed) a motorcycle on Fogarty Beach. In fact, this image, which is part of the larger story of when Newman spent the summer of 1970 filming Ken Kesey’s epic Oregon novel “Sometimes A Great Notion,” is so cool, it’s one of the principal reasons I want to write a book on the making of the movie.
Just in my initial research, I have quickly discovered that what went down that summer is one great fun Oregon story, which was completely undocumented. Frankly, the stories that have reached me so far border on the incredible, including a sensational yet unconfirmed report that Newman walked into a Toledo bar and cut the legs off a pool table! (Which is totally believable if you’ve read up on Newman’s passion for drinking and practical jokes.) It seems almost everyone who was around Lincoln County in 1970 had some brush with Newman, Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, Richard Jaeckel, Michael Sarrazin or a member of the crew.
But I need your help in pulling this book off.
On Saturday Aug. 8, at the Toledo AWPPW Union Hall, Writers on the Edge and Nestucca Spit Press will co-sponsor an “Evening with Sometimes a Great Notion (the movie).” The event features a slide show on the history of the film, discussion, photography exhibit, and a rare public screening.
Most importantly, however, the event offers an opportunity for anyone connected to the making of the movie to share personal stories that will help me write the book. I also encourage anyone owning photographs or other memorabilia pertaining to the movie to bring them along.
What is your movie story? Did you serve Newman chowder at Mo’s? Did you clean Michael Sarrazin’s room? Did you polish rocks with Henry Fonda? Did you work as an extra? Did you shoot some home movies of the stars?
I want all the stories, all the pictures! If you can’t make the event, please e-mail or call and we’ll set something up.
The evening begins at 6 p.m. with the screening of the movie at around 7:15. The union hall is located at 138 NW 1st St in Toledo. Admission is free. I can be reached at 503-812-1524. I hope to see you there.
Matt Love is the publisher of Nestucca Spit Press. He lives in South Beach and can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
The Briefcase
[Posted July 8, 2009]
Not too long ago, I saw a homeless man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing a loose gray suit from the Ford Administration. I came upon him from behind, driving south over the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, through the green steel and light fog. The dogs bounced excitedly around in the back of the truck, perhaps sensing we were on our way to South Beach State Park for a romp, which we were.
Below us, the sea was calm and a few fishing boats looked ready to shoot the jetties. Some 70 years ago, the government might have hired this man to build a magnificent bridge for a decent wage like it used to with the CCC boys. But we don’t seem do that sort of thing in this country anymore when times are tough. We also don’t seem to know how to build an elegant bridge like the Yaquina Bay. For proof, just check out the uninspired new slab near Beverly Beach. I can just feel Conde McCullough turning over in his grave every time I drive across it.
As the man walked, he clutched a black briefcase in his left hand. In his right hand he held a crab pot with orange ropes. It was empty. I thought: if he catches a crab, how is the man going to carry it — in his briefcase? If he does, which seems probable because a person can’t very well walk along Hwy. 101 carrying a live crab, might he be the first man in the history of the world to transport a live crab via briefcase? Yes, I think, he might.
Where would he take the crab? How would he cook it? Will he share the meal with friends? Will he light a fire on the beach? These are wonderful questions for the imagination and excellent writing prompts for my creative writing students.
I passed the man and noticed what a long stride he had. He was really eating up the sidewalk. It seemed as if he was almost in a hurry to cast his pot into the bay. I checked the passenger’s side mirror. I saw his face and it wasn’t vacant.
Time to fit "Dr. Beach" with a malpractice wetsuit?
[Posted June 23, 2009]
This May, a man who calls himself Dr. Beach announced his choices for “America’s Best Beaches 2009,” including number one. The announcement made headlines on the Web and no doubt the good doctor toured the morning chit chat shows and giggled with the hosts.
Here is Dr. Beach’s list (and you can read it for yourself at www.drbeach.org):
Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii
Siesta Beach, Sarasota, Florida
Coopers Beach, Southampton, New York
Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
Hamoa Beach, Maui, Hawaii
Main Beach, East Hampton, New York
Cape Hatteras,Outer Banks, North Carolina
Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne, Florida
Coast Guard Beach,Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Beachwalker Park, Kiawah Island, South Carolina
Notice anything missing?
Doctor Beach, whose real name is Dr. Stephen Leatherman, is the author of America’s Best Beaches. He is also professor and Director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University, and since 1991, has issued his list.
Below are his picks for the number one American beach going back to 1991:
2008 Caladesi Island State Park, Dunedin/Clearwater, Florida
2007 Ocracoke Lifeguard Beach- Outer Banks, North Carolina
2006 Fleming Beach Park- Maui, Hawaii
2005 Fort DeSoto Park - North Beach, St Petersburg, Florida
2004 Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
2003 Kaanapali, Hawaii
2002 St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, Florida
2001 Poipu Beach Park, Hawaii
2000 Mauna Kea Beach, Hawaii
1999 Wailea Beach, Hawaii
1998 Kailua Beach Park, Hawaii
1997 Hulopoe, Hawaii
1996 Lanikai Beach, Hawaii
1995 St. Andrews SRA, Florida
1994 Grayton Beach SRA, Florida
1993 Hapuna, Hawaii
1992 Bahia Honda SRA, Florida
1991 Kapalua Bay Beach, Hawaii
Notice anything missing?
From what I can tell from his inadequate web site, Dr. Beach makes his choices based on whether or not the water is warm enough (for humans without wetsuits) to recreate in and if there are nearby amenities for beachgoers.
Wrong Dr. Beach. Very wrong. May I share Dr. Love’s second opinion for what constitutes a “Best American Beach?”
It’s really quite simple: The beach must be publicly owned, free to use, access guaranteed by law, and remote and rainy enough so that if a person desired, he could walk, run or light a fire in total solitude (meaning no other humans around) at any time of the day or night.
I just pretty much described all of Oregon’s ocean beaches.
I can’t tell from Dr. Beach’s web site if he has in fact ever visited Oregon and experienced this state’s “great birthright,” as former Oregon Governor Oswald West called our publicly-owned beaches.
Really, Doctor, you should come west. I’ll be happy to tour you around and tell you the heroic stories of Oswald West, Samuel Boardman, Tom McCall, Matt Kramer, Bob Straub and the other Oregon immortals who saved our ocean beaches from privatization, cabanas, espresso stands, fast food carts, and arrogant security guards patrolling for trespassers.
I might even take you to my favorite Oregon beach, Nestucca Spit. It truly is sacred Oregon ground.
But Doctor you will have to rise very early if you want to ramble with me and the dogs. And by the way, bad weather never deters us; the harder the rain falls, the more we dig it. Oh, and I should warn you: should you pop open an umbrella or don an iPod, there’s going to be big trouble. The sight of either one of these on the beach triggers something savage in the dogs.
Of graduation rites, and rights
Newport High School seniors celebrate ‘Oregon’s great birthright’
[Posted June 10, 2009]
I parked in front of my favorite place in Newport — the Fishermen’s Memorial — in Yaquina Bay State Park. It was 5:17 in the morning and drizzle fell. The sun seemed as hidden in the closet as the shag carpet in a coastal motel room, which was just about right on the first day of June. I turned off the headlights, exited the cab, and drank black coffee while I waited.
Minutes later, Ross and India drove up in his Honda and emerged with a dozen donuts baked fresh from JC Market. Then Brittany skidded her Plymouth Roadster to a stop across from me. More cars raced into the parking lot, coming from the north, south, virtually all of them nicer than my truck. Shouldn’t a teacher own a better vehicle than his students? And doesn’t anyone take driver’s training anymore?
We gathered near my truck, 40 seniors, my English students, on the last Monday of their high school careers. The first annual Newport High School Senior Walk was about to begin. We would take to the holy sand and freely recreate on what former Oregon Governor Oswald West called “our great birthright”— Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. These students might have paid $3.50 for latte on their way here, but they didn’t have to pay a cent to walk on an ocean beach.
They knew the story. They knew how decades ago West and other politicians steered Oregon on a different course, a better course, to protect beaches from privatization. And here these Oregonians were, most of them half asleep, primed to exercise their great birthright.
Yes, they knew the story well because I had beaten it into them like a propaganda minister from a fascist state. They had asked me to shut up about the sanctity of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches but I never would. How many words had we written about it? Not enough!
It was time: 5:30. Let the walk begin! Onward to the sea! To quote Marvin Gaye, “Let’s get it on!” If I saw an iPod or a cell phone in use, someone wasn’t going to graduate.
But before we began, I asked someone to repeat West’s famous quote: “No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to impair this great birthright of our people.” Jessica tried and butchered it, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that my students were here at dawn!
We descended the stairs and passed a homeless man asleep in the sand. India and Brittany ran ahead and carried something in a bag. Out came a cylindrical object I couldn’t make out that Brittany staked into the sand. She kneeled down to it and her hand went to a pocket. Seconds later, a bottle rocket lifted off, screamed, exploded, and sparks lit up the sky and scattered to the ground. Great! We had just broken the law!
When the cops arrived, we’d quote Oswald West as our only defense. We would need no other and no Oregon jury would ever convict us.
We walked to the North Jetty in no discernible formation. Serena ran to the water’s edge and stared west. Alex’s dog went nuts. Light began to defeat the darkness and the lighthouse almost looked sexy as she came into full view. We talked and laughed. A few girls skipped. Anna made a goofy face. Five species of birds flew around us and I wanted to run wild so I did. Others joined me. We ran with no particular place to go, the finest way to run.
It was time to leave. First period, you know? We rallied at Pig N’ Pancake and ate together as friends, Oregonians, and countrymen. I bought them all breakfast because they were seniors graduating in five days, because they had worked so hard and so well for me this year, and because they had woken up very early and met me on the beach.
Peace on Alsea Spit
[Posted May 27, 2009]
[Check this week's story about the Newport High School literary review. Matt Love serves as NHS English and creative writing teacher.]
One of my favorite Oregon coast stories unfolded near Waldport come 70 years ago and most people have never heard about it.
But they should.
It is a little-known fact rarely, if ever, presented in high school history textbooks: during World War II, 43,000 men declared themselves conscientious objectors (COs) and refused combatant military service. Almost half of this total came from the historically pacifist Quaker, Mennonite and Church of the Brethren denominations located primarily in the Midwest.
This astonishing 43,000 figure included 25,000 non-combatants (many who served as medics), 6,000 prisoners (men refusing service officially denied CO status), and 12,000 official COs who ended up in the Civilian Public Service. The CPS was established to put COs to work in a variety of public works projects for the duration of the war. In the West, this work entailed planting trees, fighting fires and building roads. Several COs died performing these dangerous labors.
The National Service Board of Religious Objectors, authorized by the government to administer the CPS, established 143 camps across the United States to incarcerate the COs. CPS Camp 56, known as Camp Angel, was situated south of Waldport on the central Oregon coast, near Alsea Spit. Camp Angel earned a unique designation in that it was chartered as the only Fine Arts Program camp in the entire CPS system.
During its three years of operation, Camp Angel’s 25-30 active members of the Fine Arts Program oversaw the production of many original plays, crafts made from a loom and wood lathe, and publication of mainly small press runs of handsome poetry books from the inmates, but also anthologies and literary reviews that included contributions from pacifists incarcerated in other camps. In essence these temporarily stateless men pledged allegiance to an ideal, not a country, and made their own culture, a culture almost entirely distinct from the United States, and consumed it themselves. One of the Camp Angel men, William Everson, wrote a collection of poems titled “War Elegies.” In 1944 it was the first volume published the camp’s Untide Press and contains some of the finest anti-war poems ever written by an American.
The CO camps officially closed in 1945, although some men were held over until 1946 so they wouldn’t compete for jobs with returning veterans. Several of the Camp Angel Fine Arts Program participants, most prominently Everson, writer Kermit Sheets and dramatist Martin Ponch, relocated to the Bay Area, and there ushered in what’s now known as the San Francisco Renaissance, seeding much of the Beat Generation and all the counterculture rest that followed. Just think about that: the Beat Generation born at the wet and sandy Oregon coast.
In recent years, I’ve visited the old Camp Angel site out of sheer curiosity. It’s a Job Corps training center now, and the last remaining building of the World War II-era Camp Angel was moved to Waldport in 1988 and now serves as the Waldport Heritage Museum, which does hold some CO-related material, and is a great little place to learn about history.
As I leafed through this material, the word ‘counterculture’ sprang instantly to mind, as in an authentic American counterculture undertaken at great personal cost to its practitioners. They had no notion of irony or that their stand would turn out for the best in the end. In one of the more stunning photographs from Camp Angel, a tall thin man named Glen Coffield appears with his hair in dreadlocks. Other prisoners wore their hair long tied back in a ponytail. In 1944! Who were these men?
It moves me to the extreme to imagine Everson, Coffield and other men earning some release time from Camp Angel and exploring the beaches and woods around Waldport. I imagine them hiking down Alsea Spit, then nothing but a long stretch of sand without European beach grass, paved streets, houses and satellite dishes. I imagine them carrying books, paints and musical instruments and wine to end of Alsea Spit. They probably would’ve ignited a bonfire clearly visible to anyone from downtown Waldport looking to the ocean. Everyone seeing the fire would’ve known the men who sat around it and wondered what they talked about. They must have considered these unarmed men very dangerous.
Back to the Beach
Sonny returns to the sand
[Posted May 14, 2009]
On March 10, I was driving to the Lincoln City Goodwill with Sonny my husky and Ray the old shepherd in the back of truck. As I neared Siletz Bay I took a peek in the side mirror and saw Sonny’s black and white head poking out the canopy window. She sniffed aggressively at the sea.
Now’s the time.
I cranked the steering wheel hard to the left, crossed Highway 101 in front of a honking UPS truck, and pulled into the parking lot of The Bay House restaurant. I looked out to the bay, saw the tide rolling out and noticed a short stretch of soft mudflat and wet beach not more than 20 yards away.
This is it. Sonny and I are going to the beach.
Six months ago, as regular readers of One Man’s Beach know, her freak injury and subsequent loss of mobility ripped apart my relationship with the beach. Serious reading and writing had stopped, I was barely sleeping, my teaching suffered, my fitness vanished, and I found it impossible to carry on a romantic relationship or travel anywhere. Almost my entire life was devoted to caring for Sonny, and the effort, mental more than anything, had exhausted me to the point where I nearly fainted in class and had to seek medical treatment.
After trying various rehabilitation strategies that all failed, and deciding against the surgical insertion of metal plates, I ordered custom braces from an animal orthopedist in Colorado who constructed the devices using moulds of Sonny’s legs.
Sonny wore the braces when I killed the truck’s engine in the parking lot. They’d arrived that morning and it took 20 minutes of her howling and squirming to attach them. When I fastened the last strap in place and coaxed Sonny to stand up, I looked at her teeter like an amateur wino and thought “there was no way in hell this was going to work.”
I opened the tailgate and told Ray to back up. Sonny came forward, leapt into my arms, licked my face, and I kicked the tailgate shut. I carried her down a steep and rocky path to the beach and recited all my goofy names I’d invented for her over the years. Back at the truck I heard Ray barking.
Driftwood littered the sand and I hopped over a couple of big bleached logs and kept walking until I found a nice spot with plenty of room for Sonny to maneuver. I set her down gently, checked the braces, stifled my expectations, and then backed away. Sonny stood there awkwardly for a minute and then walked toward me like a bumble bee flies. I turned and started striding away and Sonny followed. Seconds later, I began to jog and she broke into a weird lope to catch up.
It was on. I fell to the sand and let her jump on my chest. She began to talk her sacred husky talk and I reached out, grabbed a stick, and tossed it a few feet. She bumbled over, grabbed it with her mouth, and brought it back.
I started crying and couldn’t stop. Sonny and I played on the beach 10 minutes and then I carried her to the truck. I called my ex wife, who had chosen Sonny as a runt puppy to herald the new Millennium, and sobbed her the good news.
March 10th was my birthday, my forty-fifth, and I hadn’t felt that happy in a long, long time. The next day, after school, Ray, Sonny and I went to the beach. We were a team again.
(I want to thank all the readers who responded to my first column about Sonny. Your kinds words of encouragement and advice helped me cope.)
The most important Oregon story, on film
[Posted April 30, 2009]
In November 2005 I gave a presentation on the history of Oregon’s famous 1967 Beach Bill to the Cannon Beach Historical Society. At the time, I thought I was the expert on the subject because my research had debunked the popular myth that Governor Tom McCall almost single-handedly steered the bill into law and saved our ocean beaches from the sinister forces of privatization.
In the audience that afternoon was a man in his thirties named Tom Olsen Jr. He came up to me after the presentation and introduced himself as someone from Portland who owned a cabin in Cannon Beach. His family had a long and distinguished history in the community and he shared my passion for the Oregon Coast. Tom told me he was a filmmaker with a documentary to his credit, “Killingsworth,” which chronicled the rise of Portland’s African-American gangs in the 1980s.
As I recall, he said my presentation intrigued him and that he might have an interest in making a documentary on the hard fought legacy of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches. Might I be interested in helping him out? I was intrigued and gave him my card and never expected to hear another word.
But I did hear from Tom, and three years later, he not only made the film, called “Politics of Sand,” but he went so far beyond my original research that I must now give up my self-appointed title. He now reigns as the official expert on the incredible history of Oregon’s Beach Bill.
Tom Olsen can also claim another title: he has made the best film about an Oregon historical subject in the state’s history. It’s simply a must see for everyone who has ever recreated (for free!) on a publicly owned Oregon ocean beach. Isn’t that everyone reading this column? If you love this glorious tradition, you owe it to yourself to see how it all came about, and more importantly, how close it came to not happening. And it was close, harrowingly close, as the film shows.
You might also want to see the film if you need a little inspiration to help protect Oregon’s beaches and oceans today. Forty years ago, Oregon citizens and politicians looked to the future to protect a natural resource for their children’s enjoyment. Can we honestly say that’s happening today? Watch this film and consider that question.
Yes, I’ll say it again. “Politics of Sand” is the greatest film about Oregon history ever made. And you can judge for yourself this Sunday, May 3, at 2 p.m. when the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport hosts a free screening of “Politics of Sand.” Tom will attend the event, discuss his documentary and sell copies of the film. If you have other plans, change them.
This is Oregon and a native Oregonian who loves the Oregon Coast made a film about Oregon’s beaches. Learn how and why we did it different back in 1967. Then after you seeing it, go up and thank Tom Olsen for his role in keeping this important, maybe the most important Oregon story of all, alive, and in play.
Springtime: season of budgets, cycles
The other day, I saw one and he was alone. The next day I saw three grouped tightly together. Two days later, I saw two more, strung out by 50 yards.
They are here, the first of many to arrive, the bicyclists pumping down Hwy. 101 in rain or fog or sun, on the world famous Oregon Coast Bike Route, to connect to our beaches in a way utterly inconceivable to someone driving a vehicle listening to angry talk radio or Kenny G.
And to think it all started because a lawmaker nearly got run over by a car.
Once upon a time in 1971, a Republican state representative and avid bicyclist from Southern Oregon named Don Stathos was riding tandem with his daughter on a highway to Medford with no shoulder. As vehicles zoomed by, forcing Stathos dangerously off the road, he thought to himself: “Here we are, the richest nation in the world, and we have constructed our environment so we can’t keep in physical condition.”
Stathos then asked, his daughter Jenny Hill of Wilsonville remembers, the simple and eternal question in a democracy: “Why can’t there be a better way?” He answered his own question by introducing House Bill 1700, which required the state to set aside at least 1 percent of the highway fund to build bicycle and pedestrian facilities.
In the beginning, there wasn’t much support from either party for a bill that was, and still is, a radical piece of legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, and quite possibly the world.
Stathos prevailed, barely. It might have helped that he was seen riding his bicycle around Salem. Or that he had a mini bicycle in his briefcase that he would take out and assemble when he lobbied other lawmakers. At each step of the legislative process, the bill passed by one vote. Initially, Gov. Tom McCall didn’t favor it, but he changed his mind because he came to believe it was good for Oregon and all Oregonians, now and in the future. And he came to believe this because he listened to Don Stathos.
On the steps of the Capitol, McCall signed the Bicycle Bill on the seat of a bicycle. Soon thereafter, taxpayer funds for bicycle and pedestrian paths began trickling in. Construction began. Less than a generation later, the bill had put a permanent dent in the automobile’s hegemony, transformed transportation planning, helped citizens stay fit, became a national legislative model, and made Oregon the most bike friendly place in the country. Furthermore, it created unique, multiple and safe recreational and commuting opportunities that led many of Oregon’s citizens, including this writer, to practice a healthy cultural life.
One of the crowning achievements of Stathos’ vision is the Oregon Coast Bike Route, considered one of the premier touring rides in the world. I’ve bicycled it three times, most recently in 2001. It was during my first ride, back in the fall of 1991, that I really “saw” the Oregon Coast, stopped at nearly 50 beaches, and experienced the danger of riding Hwy. 101, with all its RVs, log trucks and teenage drivers.
Soon, bicyclists from all over the world will regularly appear. Motorists, give them some room, slow down, and never, ever, pass on the right into a shoulder. A cyclist could be right there.
Author remains hinged -- thanks to being 'Henged -- on a Newport beach
[Posted March 31, 2009]
A couple of weeks ago, the mail brought two more literary rejections. It seems I have no luck (or talent) attracting a national publisher for either one of my two non-fiction manuscripts about Oregon.
In combination, the rejections plunged me into total defeat. I felt licked and needed to see my therapist immediately.
Naturally, I went to beach. The doctor was in — she always is. And she never charges me a fee or demands I fill out paperwork.
I can honestly say that the availability of Oregon’s publicly owned ocean beaches means more to my mental and physical well-being than the health insurance I virtually never use. I think I’d go insane without this special Oregon outdoor custom.
After reading the second letter, Ray, the old shepherd, and I walked to my beach at dawn.
Art was on my mind, as in: what does an artist do when he submits his art to the national artistic establishment in hope of reaching a wider audience and the establishment consistently rejects his art? Does he quit? Does he retrench and keep trying? Does he take his art in a new direction hoping to please the establishment? Does he embrace the role of maverick and put out his art his own way?
Ray and I took our familiar path to the beach. I looked out to the ocean and noticed the tide was coming in fast, churning brown with lots of foam for extra measure. We jogged out to the sand and I pivoted north to the lighthouse.
But the lighthouse never came into view. Instead, I beheld a series of some 50 sculptures and altars of varying size and shape, all made from driftwood, burnt or barnacled or slimy smooth, all constructed with elaborate care and artistic intent, and spaced within a 40-yard stretch of sand at the base of the cliff. As I approached this marvel, I also noticed large words etched in the sand.
Sea God
Beware!!!
Dance!
In all my years of rambling Oregon Coast beaches, I’d never seen anything like this and I pretty much thought I’d seen (or done) it all. Less than 18 hours earlier, I’d visited the same spot with Ray and nothing like this existed. Most likely, the marvel had been constructed overnight.
I moved closer to inspect. I gave a gentle kick to one of the driftwood pillars, expecting it to budge easily. It did not. It was buried 3 feet deep, as were most of the other sculptures. We are talking about nearly 100 pieces of wood all firmly anchored in the sand.
Suddenly a wave swept into the area and soaked my shoes. I didn’t hear it coming. In a half hour, the incoming tide would batter the installation and, in time, collapse it. It was then I realized I might be the only person lucky enough to see this treasure of pure and undoubtedly spontaneous art. Someone didn’t care if they reached a wider audience. Someone didn’t care if another person saw his art. He made it because he felt like it. Or had to. Who had the time to do this? Who had this great notion?
I called for Ray and we started for home, but not before I took a couple of photographs to capture the moment for myself, as a reminder of why I write.
To the person or persons who made this: thank you.
Tidal character earns praise
Novelist Jim Lynch comes to Newport March 21
[Posted March 18, 2009]
In “The Highest Tide,” published to phenomenal reviews in 2005, author Jim Lynch achieved a literary Triple Crown: 1) best coming-of-age novel set in the Pacific Northwest; 2) best novel to resurrect the writing of the visionary Rachel Carson; 3) best novel to educate people about that awesome place where freshwater meets the sea under tidal influence — estuaries.
And I am pleased to report that Jim Lynch is coming to Newport on Saturday, March 21, to read from “The Highest Tide” (and his new novel, “Border Songs”) as part of the Nye Beach Writers’ Series at the Visual Arts Center at 7 p.m.
But even better than that (at least for me), Lynch has agreed to visit my Newport High School Creative Writing class and talk about the book, the writing craft, his interesting personal story of becoming a successful novelist in middle age, and his obsession with estuaries.
Estuaries. Those of us who live at the Oregon Coast interact with them on a daily basis and understand their magic, their pull. What I like about them is having learned that no two views of any estuary are ever the same. I don’t really feel that way about the ocean or sky.
“The Highest Tide” is set specifically in Olympia, on Puget Sound, vaguely in an era when alternative rock begins to matter to young people and television news reporters start acting like fools, meaning probably the early 90s.
In “The Sea Around Us,” Rachel Carson wrote, “There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.” It is a line, indeed a book, that Lynch’s protagonist Miles O’Malley, has read aloud, practically memorized, and treats as scripture.
Miles is a 13-year old boy, barely five feet tall, who exhibits an almost supernatural connection to the estuary he lives on with his parents. He also seems utterly indifferent to teenage popular culture and would rather spend time alone in his kayak, frequently in the dead of night, exploring the tidal flats and collecting species for an aquarium and restaurant.
Told through his voice some time after the story unfolds, the novel opens as Miles sums up his unusual summer: “I was ambushed by science, fame and suggestions of the divine.”
The plot begins when Miles begins finding sea creatures that have no business being found in Pacific Northwest estuaries. Lynch, an award-winning journalist in his previous literary life, dazzles the reader with exquisite detail about the creatures that Miles comes across. It’s not a stretch to say that once you’ve read “The Highest Tide,” you’ll never look at a tidal mudflat in the same way again, if you are one of those people who notices such things at all. And most of us who live at the Oregon Coast are such people.
By virtue of his freakish discoveries, Miles becomes a local celebrity, a scientific wunderkind, and when asked what it all means by a reporter, he says, “Maybe the earth is trying to tell us something.”
This ambiguously ominous statement attracts the attention of a nearby cult, whose members look to Miles as an oracle. As the media scrutiny of Miles’ findings intensifies, he struggles to understand the separation of his parents, the physical decline of an elderly woman who is his best friend, and his crush on a neighbor, a depressed and volatile punk rocker chick. Then he makes a prediction that the highest tide in 50 years will hit the area, which is of course impossible according to the tide tables. This prediction drives the last third of the novel and hints at one of Lynch’s most powerful themes: we don’t really understand our natural world and this ignorance is fraught with perilous consequences.
Lynch has written a compact, lively, timely, ecologically insightful, and spiritual story. In Miles, Lynch has created an unforgettable adolescent character strongly rooted to nature, a personality trait that study after study concludes is becoming a rarity in American teenagers.
Miles prefers to be outdoors, noticing, investigating, getting dirty, rather than be entertained by something electronic and remote. Once again, that sounds like a lot of us here at the coast. Homework assignment for March 21: read “The Highest Tide” and come out and hear Jim Lynch read from his minor masterpiece.
A Sapphire in the rough: Dr. Bob Bacon
[Posted March 5, 2009]
A true Oregon hero died in January at the age of 90. His name was Dr. Bob Bacon and back in 1967 he helped fight for passage of the Beach Bill, one of the most important laws ever passed in Oregon. Everyone reading this essay benefitted from this law but I doubt very many of you have heard the story of Dr. Bacon’s heroism.
The Beach Bill forever preserved the dry sands areas of our ocean beaches for exclusive public use and is why Oregon is Oregon. It’s also why we all love the coast and get to do all the crazy things we want at the beach and some prudish trophy home owner or fat security guard wearing a headset can’t tell us to knock it off.
The law was nearly tabled in the House of Representatives by a cabal of coastal Republican lawmakers, but through sheer, hard, unpaid labor, an uncompromising attitude, and a stroke of luck, Bacon, who worked full time as an anatomy professor at OHSU at the time, fought successfully to keep it alive. Without him, our beaches might very well look like Malibu’s minus all the bikinis and palm trees.
Exactly what kind of labor? He helped start a grass roots organization known as the Citizens to Save Oregon’s Beaches (the SOB’s as the developers called them!) that became the public face of opposition to those who wanted to privatize our public beaches. He hit the rubber chicken circuit and gave speeches to any civic group that would have him. He testified in Salem. He went on the radio, made phone calls and met sinister legislators in dive bars who told him to compromise or he could forget about the Beach Bill passing (he refused). He was told by his employer to lay low and not get involved in politics. Bacon refused and nearly sacrificed his medical career. He did all of this and much more and wasn’t paid a cent.
Eventually the Beach Bill passed and created one of the unique relationships in the world between a state’s citizenry and a natural resource. Had the Beach Bill not passed, I doubt I would have become the Oregon writer I did. I also know I would most likely be spiritually dead.
It was my great honor to interview Dr. Bacon in Gearhart back in 2003 for my first book, “Grasping Wastrels vs. Beaches Forever Inc.” Below is a brief excerpt:
Love: Did you guys celebrate when you found out the Beach Bill got signed?
Bacon: I don’t know. There was such a sense of relief and the reduction of pressure. I think everybody sort of collapsed. I strongly suspect that there were a few martinis. I was known amongst some of my students as martini maker back then too.
Love: Was that your drink of choice back then?
Bacon: Yes.
Love: Gin or vodka?
Bacon: Gin, the only true martini.
Love: And what brand was your favorite?
Bacon: Oh gosh, I don’t remember.
Love: Were you a Tanqueray fan?
Bacon: I don’t recall that in those days there was Tanqueray. I am a wine person largely today, but the only real cocktail is a martini. True martini. It’s called a Sapphire. Bombay Sapphire. A Bombay Sapphire martini is really something wonderful.
After the interview I took Dr. Bacon to the Sandtrap Inn in Gearhart for a drink. I bought an Oregon hero a Bombay Sapphire martini and I insisted it be a double. I had one too. When they came, I raised my glass and toasted this excellent Oregon man for all his effort on preserving Oregon’s ocean beaches. As should you.
But a toast is only one way to honor Dr. Bacon. In the last years of his life, he fought hard for the establishment of marine reserve areas in Oregon’s offshore territorial waters (0-3 miles out). The fate of these reserves is currently unknown and in the hands of the Oregon Legislature. The story of the battle to pass the Beach Bill and the story of the battle to establish marine reserves have fascinating similarities and some of the same stock characters. Should the reserves program gain legislative approval, one of the areas should be named after Dr. Bob Bacon. People should read his name on an Oregon map for the rest of the time Oregon is a state.
A first kiss sparks a lasting love affair
The author digs into the history
of his love of
Oregon’s beaches
[Posted Feb. 18, 2009]
Over the years, many people have asked me when and where my love affair with Oregon’s publicly owned beaches began.
Let me offer the probable genesis moment: It was 1977 and “Saturday Night Fever” had swept the country. That summer, a girl named Shelley and I held clammy hands as we broke away to find a makeout fort in the driftwood maze of Short Sand Beach in Oswald West State Park, named after Oswald West, the former Oregon governor who helped save the state’s ocean beaches from privatization back in 1913.
West had ridden a horse through this area in 1912 and later claimed the ride inspired him to write his ingenious 66-word bill that declared the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway, and thus in the public trust forever. It was quite possibly the most important law in Oregon history.
I didn’t learn anything about West in school. We got a steady dose of Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail but nothing about the real Oregon heroes who preserved nature so all of us could enjoy it today.
Shelley and I disappeared from view. No one noticed. The other Christians in our youth group from Oregon City Church of Christ roasted hotdogs or played Frisbee. No one read the Bible. I probably should have brought one along. I was a preacher’s kid and supposed to set an example.
It was my first adolescent outing to a beach on the Oregon Coast unaccompanied by my parents. Shelley was in ninth grade, blonde, and often wore yellow. She also wore a shell necklace that I could not get out of my mind, the way it dangled over her cleavage when I saw her pass me in the halls and smile. I was in seventh grade in Oregon City and thought Shelley the most beautiful unobtainable girl in the world. Thus, it utterly astonished me to learn on the bus ride over to the beach that she liked me. By the time I smelled the ocean, I sailed rapturously on unchartered seas.
We found the fort and took cover. I went to kiss her. What lips and eyes she had! After the kiss, I peered through a slat in the fort’s crooked walls, past the smoke, up the cliff to the Sitka spruces and hemlocks swaying in the background.
Sixty-four years earlier, Oswald West rode right through here. Without his ride, I would have never kissed Shelley the way I did, on a beach, for free.
And that’s where I think it all began.
One citizen's mark on the beach
The Letter of the Law
[Posted Jan. 23, 2009]
When I ramble an Oregon coast beach, I always thank former Oregon Governor Oswald West because he was the “First Lawgiver.” His 1913 law declaring the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway led to the creation of a unique cultural relationship between a state’s citizenry and its beaches not found in other coastal states. It established an utterly distinct tradition that absolutely astonishes then delights visitors from other places where beaches are privatized.
A question: Is there anything culturally more sacred to Oregonians than their right to freely recreate on their ocean beaches? No, nothing comes close. Forget skiing on Mt. Hood. It costs too much money and has precluded an entire class of Oregonians for generations. Every Oregonian has a beach story. Not every Oregonian has a mountain story. I don’t.
Having grown up in Oregon in the 1970s and 1980s, and conducted various rites of youth passage at the beach, I might have answered “no” to the aforementioned question back then. Now that I’ve lived at the Oregon coast for the past 11 years and observed what regularly goes down on our publicly-owned ocean beaches, I know the answer to my question is even a more solid “no!”
I also know, back in 1967, the special cultural relationship at the core of my answer was nearly destroyed. Frankly, Oregon was lucky it didn’t go the other way. It had everywhere else.
Oswald West’s law protected the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches, but there was no such safeguard of the dry sand areas, the space where virtually everyone recreated. In the summer of 1966, an elderly couple and their nephew were kicked off the beach by a motel owner as they picnicked in front of the owner’s Cannon Beach motel. They might have been the first Oregonians in the state’s history to experience such a shock. And the nephew, a graduate student in biochemistry at OHSU named Lawrence Bitte, didn’t like it at all. Bitte wrote a letter, excerpted below, to then Secretary of State Tom McCall.
Dear. Mr. McCall:
Tuesday morning, August 16, while visiting the Oregon coast near Haystack Rock (South Cannon Beach) I came upon an area of beach outlined with driftlogs and posted with signs claiming this particular section of beach was reserved for guests of the Surfsands Motel. Upon venturing into this “restricted” area on the assumption that the Oregon beaches were public property (under supervision of the state highway department), we were confronted by an employee of the motel who told us that the beach was owned by a Mr. Bill Hay and that we would have to leave. This brings several questions to mind:
Does ownership of the beach property extend seaward to a point of mean high tide?
Does the owner of beach frontage have, with his title, the right to build earth fills out over previously sandy beaches?
Who issues building permits which allow a private structure to be built on a previously sandy beach beyond a point of natural terrain?
What legally constitutes a beach and can this term be widely interpreted?
I am greatly disturbed by the situation at the Surfsands Motel, because I feel it establishes a precedence which will lead to the eventual defacing of all Oregon beaches and the take-over by commercial enterprises which profit from public use of the sandy areas of the beach. Since tempers are presently running high among those who are aware of the situation, at the Surfsands Motel, would you please answer my questions at your earliest convenience?
As incredible as it may sound, this letter by an Oregon citizen touched off the epic 1967 legislative battle that culminated with passage of the landmark law known as the Beach Bill. This law, which nearly died in committee due to a group of coastal legislators, reaffirmed the public’s domain over publicly owned beaches. The statute empowered Oregon “to forever preserve…ocean beaches of the state… so that the public may have the free and uninterrupted use thereof.”
I’ve written extensively about this legislative battle in previous One Man’s Beach columns, and all the unsung political and journalism heroes who helped win perhaps the greatest political victory in the state’s history.
But I think it’s worth noting that it all began with one citizen speaking up, going on the offensive when a narrow interest threatened to privatize Oregon’s “great birthright,” the memorable phrase Oswald West used to describe our ocean beaches. Think about that citizen the next time you ramble the beach for free.
Listen to the coyote
[Posted 1.7.09]
A month ago, I seethed in anger over the U.S. government’s desecration of a special natural place on the Oregon coast that I had spent a majority of my adult life restoring to ecology. To voice my opposition to this desecration, I planned a very public act of civil disobedience that would quite probably lead to my arrest.
On a 38-degree morning, I walked my dog to the beach to plot my mission. In 18 hours, in the dead of night, just hours before the desecration officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony, I would execute my mission. The perpetrators of the desecration would never see my statement coming. But they would know its maker.
After a half-mile walk from the house, I approached the beach from a winding and descending path that cut through salmonberry and willow. Soon the path leveled, led into an opening, and I looked west, across a creek, out to a Pacific of perfect surfing waves and perfect blue sky.
Suddenly, a large brown, orange and white-colored coyote entered the foreground. He was running north down the sand not more than 50 yards away from me. At almost the exact moment I noticed him, he stopped and turned to me. I’m certainly no animist but I instantly identified the coyote’s presence as some kind of urgent personal message, although I was at a loss to fathom its meaning.
A few seconds later, the coyote resumed his northward course and disappeared from my sight. I felt compelled to follow. I unleashed my dog, crossed a bridge, and jogged down the path to the beach. The dog lagged behind to sniff around and mark his territory.
A high tide had swept the beach clean of all markings except the coyote’s footprints. I followed them for a few seconds and then looked up and saw 75 yards down the beach the coyote sprinting closely parallel to the rock and sandy cliffs that rose 60 feet high in some places.
Then the coyote abruptly halted and turned around. He looked right at me and I was transfixed until my dog zoomed by me in pursuit, if a 14-year old partially epileptic canine with two bad hips can be said to zoom. I marveled at my old dog’s burst of energy and watched the spectacle for a couple of minutes until I realized the coyote hadn’t moved and seemed to be waiting for the dog.
I took off running and when the dog closed within 10 yards of the coyote, I saw the coyote scamper up a nearly vertical 20-foot rock wall, and then, surprisingly, sit up instead of disappearing into the Scotch broom and shore pine thicket. The dog went to the base of the wall and started barking and making short aborted attempts to scale the wall.
By now I had closed within 30 yards and was calling to the dog. He turned his head and then I saw the coyote slide down the wall to within several feet of him. The dog made no move toward him, nor did the coyote advance on the dog.
As I came within 15 yards, the coyote scampered back up the wall and sat up. I went to the base and looked directly up at him, into his white and orange face. We stared at each other for 10 seconds and then I disengaged, leashed up the dog, and headed home. A few seconds later I turned around and the coyote had slid down the wall again and appeared to be following us. I stopped, he stopped, and I began to listen.
Here’s what the coyote told me: let go. The coyote told me to have the courage to not do something out of anger or disgust or vainglory.
And that’s exactly what I did, with my dog by my side, this morning, on the beach, at dawn, a few hours before the ribbon was cut. I listened to the coyote. Others, the desecrators, never heard him.
Sonny's Tragedy
[Posted Dec. 23, 2008]
On Sept. 17, 2008, at approximately 5:30 a.m., fate intervened with my cherished relationship to Oregon’s publicly-owned ocean beaches, the most sacred place in the world to me, and shattered it.
Starting out that clear morning, I expected a routine ramble down the sand with Ray, my shepherd, and Sonny, my husky. I say “routine” because I’d rambled this way nearly 1,500 times over the last decade and it is no exaggeration to claim that these moments with my dogs evolved into my entire spiritual and physical fitness life and helped me compose first drafts of virtually everything I’d eventually see published. In other words, my time with my dogs was my church, my gym, my office, and I might add – my therapist.
We began in typical fashion. Ray lagged behind sniffing and urinating, while Sonny, a fantastic and manic runner, bolted ahead out of sight as she always did, but to no alarm, because she always returned.
But this morning she didn’t return. At some point I stopped rambling and began searching for Sonny. Ray jogged behind me as I called out to her, wondering where the hell she was.
I called for ten minutes. Twenty. Nothing. Desperation mounted in me like never before. Had Sonny been swept away by a sneaker wave? I’d heard of this happening.
Half an hour later, I headed for home and prayed, screamed, aloud that Sonny might await me on the path leading back to the road. Approaching the path, I heard, over the incoming waves, a strange yelp, then, seconds later, an even more bizarre, agonizing cry. I sprinted up the path in almost total darkness and saw something moving awkwardly in front of me. There, I beheld Sonny splayed on the asphalt, drooling, convulsing, and unable to walk. I quickly felt her body all over and she seemed paralyzed in the legs. I picked her up and began running the half mile home. At some point, crying, exhausted, I set Sonny down on a lawn and sprinted with Ray back to the house to get the truck and bring her home. As all of this unfolded, I sensed that my wonderful routine with my dogs, something I’d worked very hard to maintain, was coming to an end. And I was scared.
Thirty minutes later I dropped Sonny off at the vet. She still couldn’t walk, but was lucid, so a stroke seemed unlikely. I couldn’t conceive of what was wrong with her. She had no bruises, cuts, or punctures of any kind. How does a dog simply become paralyzed in the legs?
In a daze, I taught four periods at Newport High School and then rushed over to the vet’s. He informed me that Sonny had contracted coonhound paralysis syndrome, a rare virus originating from raccoons that is apparently passed through saliva. I was told her condition could last four days or eight months or forever.
For the next few days, Sonny barely moved. Then her paralysis ebbed, and she was somewhat able to walk, offering me some hope she might recover.
But one afternoon as I worked in the yard, Sonny jumped off the deck and landed awkwardly on her front legs, which, because of their weakened condition due to the paralysis, could not safely bear her weight. Imagine a man jumping off a roof and landing on his hands and you get the picture. Sonny severely strained, but didn’t rupture, her ligaments, and since that day in September, I’ve immobilized her to allow the ligaments to heal. This has meant no walking at all and carrying her in and out of the house.
In the subsequent three months, I’ve tried various traditional and non-tradition rehabilitation strategies and nothing has worked. Sonny still cannot walk properly, let alone run. One vet has recommended a splint for six months to allow the ligaments to heal. Another vet has recommended Sonny have surgery, which entails inserting metal plates in her legs for support. Other people whose pets have suffered similar ligament damage have suggested something else. Contradictions abound and I’m not sure what to do about her condition.
Since Sonny went down, my whole routine and attitude have changed. I was on such a superb high with a new teaching job, a new book coming out, and my new life here in Newport. Then, the horrible setback occurred and I can’t seem to shake off this feeling of utter dread. This last month, I’ve experienced the worst depression of my life and my physical fitness has nearly disappeared. I don’t write all that much anymore either.
And I barely go to the beach. And never in the morning. And when I do, I often start crying.
Finish the party
[Posted 12.10.08]
Orange and red streaked the sky as the dogs and I made our way to the beach on a recent frosty morning. It was Sunday and I doubted I’d encounter another human being — half the state was on their way to church and the other half was hung over from celebrating OSU’s last second football victory to keep their Rose Bowl hopes alive.
We hit the sand — no one there! We headed north and as a few gulls fed at the wrack line, I came across the remains of a party: a single log still burning, a liter bottle of Coke, and 1.75 liter bottle of Evan Williams (green label) bourbon.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with drinking either Coke or bourbon at the beach, especially around a fire with friends or family in celebration of something wonderful. And especially if you walked home after the party to wherever you are sleeping for the night, which I suspected was the case here because of the proximity of many vacation homes in the area.
But here’s what struck me as wrong with the scene:
Obviously, the revelers inexcusably and criminally left garbage on the beach, about the uncoolest Oregon thing you can do — and that includes using an umbrella or drinking bottled water. Undoubtedly worse, however, these miscreants drank Evan Williams green label, a terrible tasting spirit better used for cooking than drinking. At least go with the 86-proof black label, a decent meat and potatoes spirit and a bargain to boot in these recession-wrought hard times.
Another problem: I don’t like to judge, but the fact that garbage was left behind suggests the presence of vastly inferior human beings and thus, they probably did drink their bourbon with Coke — a desecration on the order of using an umbrella and drinking bottled water while walking down an Oregon Coast beach.
Finally, and most outrageously: the partiers didn’t finish the Evan Williams! At least six or seven shots remained.
C’mon! Finish the party! This is Oregon, home of Oswald West’s and Tom McCall’s publicly owned beaches, where we demand the right to freely recreate and raise hell with the same zeal the 49ers raced to California to strike gold.
Naturally, I gathered up the garbage and brought it home. The Coke bottle would be redeemed for a dime and, as for the bourbon … I couldn’t bear to pour it out, even if was Evan Williams green label.
Plenty of recipes call for whiskey.
Giving Thanks
[Posted Nov. 25, 2008]
This week at Thanksgiving, most families will participate in some kind of ritual before eating the big meal. Well, at least I hope they do. It might be a blessing, a verse, a statement from the patriarch or matriarch, or even a moment of silence. The ritual may or may not follow a religious tradition.
At my family’s Thanksgiving, my mother always says a short ecumenical prayer of thanks. Afterward, during the meal, the men try to catch glimpses of the Dallas Cowboys game silently unfolding on television a room away. My family hails from Texas and once lived or died by the Cowboys’ fortunes on Thanksgiving.
I say “once” because a couple of decades ago, the game’s sound was turned up during the meal. Thankfully, we’ve matured as a family since then.
My mother says excellent prayers, but I prefer invocations above all else to precede the meal. An invocation is a short speech appealing to a higher power. The phrase “higher power” invokes different meanings to different people. Define it anyway you like – this is America, you know, and we enjoy that privilege. In my invocations, I like to count my blessings and give thanks.
This year, I’ll read an invocation after my mom’s prayer. It will go something like this:
I give thanks because I ran down my beach this morning with my dog and not another human was around.
I give thanks that Oregon’s ocean beaches are free, publicly owned, and that I have the fitness to run down them as far as I want to run.
I give thanks to Oswald West, Samuel Boardman, Matt Kramer, Sidney Bazett, Tom McCall and Bob Straub for fighting successfully so many years ago to keep Oregon’s ocean beaches free and in the public trust forever.
I give thanks to my parents, who always supported me when I struck out to see the world and came back broke. Their patience and generosity helped me become a writer.
I give thanks the 18th Amendment was repealed so I can enjoy an excellent Oregon wine with this meal.
I give thanks to my Newport High School students for their passion, creativity and hearty coast sensibilities – no umbrellas!
I give thanks to Newport High School Principal Jon Zagel for letting me run with my ideas.
I give thanks I can hear sea lions barking from my classroom window.
I give thanks to Café Mundo in Newport for its rocking Thursday night open mic sessions and liberal editorial policy.
I give thanks to my great dogs who keep me sane.
I give thanks I live at the Oregon Coast and not Southern California. On business there recently, I saw Santa Monica’s beaches: $13 to park, fences, no dogs.
And of course, I thank Oregon Coast Today for running my columns. It’s the best writing gig in the state.
Amen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re thankful to Matt Love. Thanks for writing!
Forgo the straight line
[Posted Nov. 12, 2008]
“Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Several years ago I saw a man on Nestucca Spit, in Bob Straub State Park, who I cannot get out of my mind.
I was cruising south down the spit with one of the dogs when I noticed someone a hundred yards away coming toward me, riding a bicycle in the wet sand with his right hand on the handlebars and his left hand clutching a bag. Attached to the banana-styled seat was a white fiberglass rod decorated on top with an orange flag swaying limply in the breeze.
I said audibly, “What is this?” At the time, I’d never seen anyone ride a bike down a beach. As of this writing, I’ve seen only one other person. (When she passed me at dawn near Ona Beach, she told me she was riding from Newport to the Oregon Country Fair! Apparently the route was: bike to Florence, turn left.)
The man rode closer toward us, pedaling his one-speed, paint-peeling, contraption of a bike, nonchalantly zigzagging his way down the sand. As he came into complete view, I could see his plastic bag held bottles and cans. I noticed something else too: his face and dress bore the unmistakable hard look of a person who might sleep under a highway on-ramp or camp out year-round in the forest. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.
He passed me and I waved. He gave me a nod and raised the bag in my direction. For a few minutes, I watched him ride down the spit carrying his loot and particularly marveled that, when a wave rushed in, threatening to swamp his bicycle’s chains, he never once altered his course to evade the water; he never once rode in a straight line and the water never grazed him.
Back in the parking lot, the dogs and I encountered a young couple in wet suits unloading two wooden kayaks. I went over to them as they struggled to lift the shiny vessels off a gargantuan blue SUV.
“Can I help you guys?” I asked.
“No, I think we’ve almost got it,” said the man.
“Just out of curiosity do you mind me asking how much the kayaks cost? They look spectacular.”
“They’re four grand each.”
“Wow.”
The next day, I brought my old mountain bike to the spit. The dog chased and barked after me all the way to the mouth of Nestucca Bay. There, we spooked 30 or so harbor seals hauled out on the sand. They splashed hurriedly into the water and sent up a charming chorus of snorts and grunts. I apologized to them profusely, turned the bike around, and we made our way north, zigzagging with no particular place to go in mind and a lot of time on my side. I never once rode in a straight line.
Wings generate impressive lift
[Posted Oct. 29, 2008]
Recently, after receiving a literary rejection from a New York editor, I headed to the beach with the dogs to determine a possible course of action. I needed to see the ocean and wanted answers to wash ashore.
Quitting was on my mind. I mean, at what point do you pack it in?
As I walked out on the beach, Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park to be exact, the dogs split off in different directions and the wind nudged me to the water’s edge, where an extreme low tide revealed odd undulations in the sand. To my left, 20 yards away, I noticed an elderly couple standing wordlessly together, vacantly staring at the ocean. A large white box roughly the size of a golf bag rested near them between pieces of driftwood.
Curiosity got the better of me, so I veered toward the couple. As I drew nearer I saw a picture of an airplane with a propeller on the box. A few steps closer and I could read the box’s bold energetic lettering. An explanation of this mystery began to coalesce in my mind when I asked the man, “What happened?”
“I forgot to raise the antenna,” he said in monotone without looking at me. “The antenna on the airplane. I don’t understand how I could have forgotten.” The woman said nothing. She was still searching the horizon.
“Well, you seem to be taking it well,” I said. He didn’t respond.
I asked him more questions and he freely answered them all without a shred of emotion or ever taking his eyes off the water.
It was the airplane’s inaugural flight, brand new out of the box. The plane had lifted off flawlessly from the wet sand runway on a perfect low tide. It had barely cleared a wave and then flown a straight line out over the ocean until a gust of wind rose up and banked it toward Haystack Rock.
“I went to move the stick on the remote controller,” he said, “and…nothing. A few seconds later, the plane somersaulted, then stalled, and then plunged nose first into ocean.”
The man’s wife chipped in a few details and she was equally dispassionate. She never once looked at me either. His stoicism in the face of a comic fiasco entirely of his own doing struck me as nothing short of incredible. The average American man, in a similar situation, would rage and curse until an embolism threatened to form and travel upward. Yes, how refreshing. How unlike me, when I received a letter from a New York editor.
It was time to leave them alone and head down the spit with the dogs. Ten minutes later I turned around. The couple still looked west. Five minutes later I turned around again and saw the woman sprint toward the surf while the man hesitated. She waded into the water and he ran toward her. I made her out picking up a part of the plane, a wing, it appeared. He joined her in the water, and for the next few minutes, they carried out a joint salvage operation. I watched all of this from a half mile away. I could not take my eyes off them. Finally, nothing else washed ashore and they started to leave the beach, each holding parts of the plane.
I had more questions. I called out to the dogs and we hustled to the parking lot. As the man loaded up the wreckage into his camper van, I walked up to him. His wife was inside straightening things up.
“You found it!”
“Yes, but it’s shot. The motor is ruined.”
“I admire your patience in waiting.”
“Well, I was ready to leave but my wife said she would wait a while longer. Then she saw it wash up.”
The wife emerged from the van, petted the dogs, and we all chatted for 10 minutes or so. They had both just retired and had bought the van, a tricked-out beauty I coveted for a literary road adventure some far flung editor would never understand. I also learned the couple planned on spending Christmas at the beach in a campground; they had expected to fly the plane every day at low tide, weather permitting.
I drove away feeling I wasn’t ready to quit the literary dream—not quite yet.
The Tillamookian Id rules supreme
[Posted Oct. 15, 2008]
Sometimes, a man needs more than nature, more than just rambling the beach with the dogs at dawn to keep his mind active. Sometimes, in the course of human events, it is necessary for a man to experience a mind-blowing human event to maintain a healthy psychological balance.
I know of one such event in South Tillamook County.
On Saturday, Oct. 18, the annual bacchanal known as the Hooker’s Ball unfolds in all its outrageous glory at the Sportsman’s Pub and Grub Tavern in Pacific City [Map It!]. Over the years, I’ve witnessed several balls and afterwards always felt at a loss to describe or analyze what occurred there.
Now I don’t even try.
At a certain seasoned point in life, many people claim to “have seen it all,” and thus no longer cultivate the possibility of being surprised or enlightened.
I say for the record here that if you haven’t attended the Hooker’s Ball, then, in fact, you have not “seen it all.”
Exactly what is the Hooker’s Ball? Let me offer a clinical definition: for over two decades, one night a year, local men have dressed themselves as stereotyped female prostitutes, assumed the characters of those prostitutes, and then partied in plain view of their friends and partners in a tavern decorated with erotic female undergarments, including some hanging from the ceiling. Might I add that photographs are taken and that patrons have been known to dance on the tables?
No doubt Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey would feel quite professionally pleased by these developments, since the Hooker’s Ball represents almost irrefutable confirmation of their various controversial theses.
And speaking of Dr. Freud, if you plan on attending the Hooker’s Ball, you might do well to bone up on his famous psychological concepts of the Id, Ego and Superego. You can forget about seeing the latter two in action at the Sportsman’s on the 18th. They get checked at the door. A collective supercharged Tillamookian Id will rule supreme instead.
You might want to take a calming walk on the beach after experiencing this kind of intensity, and thankfully, Bob Straub State Park is a quarter mile from the Sportsman’s front door.
The cross-dressing party hour begins at 9 p.m. A DJ provides the music and first-time visitors should expect the unexpected and be prepared to draw upon Jesus’ wisdom: “Those without sin can cast the first stone.”
The Throw
[Posted Oct. 1, 2008]
I saw something on the beach a while back that I can’t get out of my mind, although I’d like to. It was yet another reminder to me that not everyone goes to the beach for blissful reasons.
The salt and brine smelled especially stiff that afternoon. For five minutes I walked south with my dogs down the sand and gazed upon the incoming tide’s multiple white layers. The sun came and went but that hardly mattered. I had skipped work and had the place to myself.
I turned around to take in vistas from the north. A hundred yards down the beach I saw a smallish barefooted woman saunter at angles toward the waves. She almost appeared to be dancing.
Then I clearly saw her remove a ring from her left hand and clasp it with her right. She stopped at the water’s edge, let the tide wash over her feet, hesitated for a moment, then cocked her right arm back and threw the ring west with all her might. I know the throw didn’t come from a jilted fiancé. Only married people throw like this. Or soon to be unmarried people.
This was no reality show. No one else was around to egg her on or get her to say something contrived or clichéd to the camera. For all know, she could have driven from Pendleton to make her throw. I doubt, from wherever she originated, that it was planned.
She retreated from the water, no longer sauntering. I thought about a line from a Richard Hugo poem, “On this dishonored, this perverted globe / we go back to the sea and the sea opens for us.”
[Posted Sept. 17, 2008]
You can’t Beat dining like Kerouac
“I was guts and juice and ready to go.”
– Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
Fall on the Oregon coast is the perfect time to visit a favorite beach in combination with enjoying the special pleasure of consuming good food and drink there. This year, in what may be a radical change for you, I suggest eating at the beach the way the famous Beat writer Jack Kerouac once ate when he went on an outdoor adventure. Aren’t you game for something new in your life? You just might like it.
OK, I admit some of Kerouac’s writing hasn’t held up well. Frequently, his sentences plod along and much of his work feels dated and unimportant. But when Kerouac is on and riffing, like in many of his letters (“Her face is all moonlight and Keats, man. To live like Jesus and Thoreau, except for women.”) And in “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums,” his words are scripture for how to be “gone,” how not to conform, how to live right with very little want or need, how to interact right with the American outdoors, and how to cross the country subsisting on bologna sandwiches, apple pie and ice cream.
So, for your next beach adventure, I offer a certain Kerouac-styled recipe with the hope you’ll give it a try.
Jack Kerouac’s Recipe for an
Oregon Coast Beach Experience
Serves: As many who are worthy
Notes: In “The Dharma Bums,” which he defined as one of his “true-story novels,” Kerouac recounts a few scenes where he (sometimes with a buddy) experiences a physically and emotionally demanding situation, like a hobo ride in a box car or a grueling mountain climb, that pushes him to a point of total exhaustion and hunger. Immediately afterwards, he restores his energy and celebrates his achievement by preparing simple but hearty food and eating it with gusto – in the field. The food must be cheap and you must revel in it. Thus, it obviously can’t be a vacuum-packed meal from REI.
For example: in the beginning of the novel, Kerouac rides a freight train on a cold night along the coast near Santa Barbara, jumps off, and decides to camp out on the beach. He goes for a swim and then: “I cooked hotdogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the red hot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life.”
Later, after almost summiting a 9,000-foot mountain in Yosemite in tennis shoes, and camped on a rock outcropping at the snow line, Kerouac eats a bulghur and vegetable stew with chopsticks and real chocolate pudding (cooked on a fire then cooled in a snow bank) for dessert. The meal over, he declares, “It was the most delicious supper of all time.”
So the idea is to plan a brutally tough, inexpensive beach adventure, say hiking the length of the Bay Ocean, Nestucca, or Nehalem sand spits, take yourself past your physical and psychological limits, pack along food, and cook up a simple and grand supper in the field immediately after concluding the adventure.
Ingredients:
• 1 cup outdoor adventure that pushes you to total exhaustion.
• 1 cup solitude. Bringing a friend is OK, but he can’t whine, bring shiny, trendy gear or a phone. He should not want to talk much, especially about his job or college football.
• 1 cup of self-righteousness. You are copying Kerouac and that sets a person apart.
• 1 cup of perseverance. You can’t quit.
• 1 cup of unpretentious food that can be cooked or prepared in the field: I like two fried egg, onion and tomato sandwiches with a cold beer, or canned vegetarian chili with fresh garlic and white wine in a plastic bottle that can chill quickly in a stream. All meals have to be cooked in the field or it isn’t properly Kerouacian. Don’t cut corners and bring something from a deli!
• 1 cup of being absolutely in the moment when you are exerting and eating. Think about nothing but the experience, your fatigue, the landscape, and the taste of the food you chose, hauled to a spot, prepared, and savored.
Directions
Mix this all together on a fine summer day and you will be compelled to say, and in fact you must declare, as Kerouac always did: “This is the best meal I’ve ever had.”
And always for dessert, if you can’t cook up chocolate pudding, try Kerouac’s favorite treat: a chocolate bar washed down with port wine.
'It isn't everyone that has an ocean.'
Remembering Samuel L. Boardman
[Posted Sept. 3, 2008]
Every now and then, when life becomes blue or bilious, it helps to hear a good hero story to get one’s self through the day … or week … or month. I prefer hearing the great stories of Oregon heroes where the hero did something courageous that ended up making my life better. I especially like the stories where the heroes later wrote about the experience with the intention of inspiring me to care about Oregon and the preservation of its natural resources.
Samuel H. Boardman is one such Oregon hero and Samuel Boardman was an excellent and passionate writer with the power to inspire.
From 1929 to 1950, Boardman served as Oregon’s first park superintendent. He once took a pay cut to keep his office going during the Depression, when the idea of the state government buying private land for parks was inconceivable, practically dangerous. He is rightly considered the “father” of the Oregon state parks system and almost single-handedly preserved more natural spaces in Oregon — 50,000 acres — than anyone else. Fifty-thousand acres!
If the U.S. Constitution didn’t prohibit the states from issuing their own currencies, Boardman’s face and one of the great places he saved from concrete would be on both sides of our $10 bill. I rank him as one of the greatest Oregonians because of his zealotry for establishing a system of coastal state parks that ended up as a showcase for the rest of country, if not the world.
The state honored Boardman in 1951 by naming a park after him on the Southern Oregon Coast. Samuel H. Boardman State Park, a narrow, 12-mile strip in Curry County, is a priceless gem of a park and a fitting tribute. In the 1940s, Boardman had wanted this land to become part of a larger national park that would have been Oregon’s second, after Crater Lake. Boardman toured federal officials around the area and the deal nearly went through, but a few local stockmen objected and helped kill the necessary Congressional appropriation.
Shortly after he retired, Boardman wrote a fascinating unpublished memoir of his experiences acquiring private land for state parks. It’s more of an extended sermon rather than a memoir. I came across the manuscript in old issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and read it one memorable sitting.
Boardman wrote about Oregon:
Keep it immaculate for the whisper in the treetops tells you what men can’t tell you at Lake Success. Keep things immaculate that there may be a few places open for communion. The quiet of a wooded lake takes you from the hum of Main Street, and the spiritual side of your being is atoned. Never sacrifice His works that the commercial hot dog and its odors may take over.
Boardman on parks:
The value of a park cannot be based on a monetary value. Its scenic spiritual assets are beyond computation. Might not the answers of a distressed world be found in the God-given sermonettes of a park system?
And my favorite lines from Boardman’s memoir? Naturally, they are about the Oregon Coast.
Too much time of a life is spent in the valleys.
The beach is noted for its singing sands. May it ever be a melody of pleasure for its visitors.
It isn’t everyone that has an ocean.
Are you spending too much time in the valleys? Do you need to hear the beach’s music? Oregon has an ocean. You should visit as much as possible and remember the important work performed by an indefatigable Oregon civil servant named Samuel Boardman. Without him, you might not have enjoyed Oregon’s world famous access to hear that music.
The Coolest Literary Place in Oregon
'One Man's Beach' - by Matt Love
[Posted Aug. 21, 2008]
Every time I am in the vicinity of Mt. Neahkahnie, I am compelled to stop at Oswald West State Park. How can I not, knowing it’s named for the governor who wrote and steered to passage an ingenious 66-word bill in 1913 that declared the beaches a public highway, and thus in the public trust forever?
I also dig the existential vibe evaporating off the surfers who dominate the scene, the towering hemlocks and cedars, and that people have to hike a considerable distance to reach the beach.
Together, these qualities push Oswald West State Park into the top 10 list of Coolest Oregon Places.
But what makes this park number one for me is a certain obscure writing attraction that, I declare here, should be visited by every citizen of Oregon, especially any writer.
The attraction is called the Matt Kramer Memorial and it amounts to a plaque tucked away on the route to Cape Falcon. It is so utterly remote and unpretentious that it took me two hours to locate it after I learned of its existence several years ago from a footnote in a book purchased at garage sale.
The plaque, which overlooks Short Sand Beach, reads:
“The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill.”
Just who was Matt Kramer?
He was veteran reporter covering the Capitol beat and the 1967 session of the Oregon Legislature. His dispatches on the early, near-fatal legislative fate of the “Beach Bill” that appeared in newspapers around the state helped keep the bill in the public eye and secure its eventual passage. Indeed, my research indicates that one story in particular, one that Kramer wrote during the May 1967 death rattle of the bill, may be the main reason Oregon has open beaches without fences and security guards wearing headsets.
One journalist. Meager pay. God-awful boring hearings in a legislative subcommittee. No environmental pros from Portland feeding Kramer canned goods. No received wisdom from television or talk radio. Kramer just wrote some straight news of the clarifying inverted pyramid type extinct in contemporary American newspapers. The man simply wrote 40,000-50,000 words in five months (I’ve read them all) and his sentences awakened a sleeping giant—the people of Oregon—to the shocking news that their publicly-owned beaches in the dry sands areas were imperiled by privatization.
My favorite Kramer sentence is:
“There has been a public outcry to preserve the beaches since some private owners began claiming the beach down to the high tide line and began barring the public.”
Clear and incisive. Just like the plaque says. And with his sentences and stories, Matt Kramer made Oregon history.
Looking down to the surfers below the memorial, taking in the Pacific Ocean, looking north to Cape Falcon, I always feel ethereal when I realize the state erected a plaque to a journalist for his work on behalf of protecting Oregon’s beaches. It would be all I could ever dream of achieving from the writing life.
Every journalism school student from an Oregon university should visit the Matt Kramer Memorial as a requirement to graduate. Next fall, I plan on taking my Newport High School journalism students there to lay hands on the plaque and pledge fealty to the power of reporting the news without bias and agenda. We’ll bring some tools and trim back the foliage around the plaque. It’s the least we can do. Then we’ll jog down the path and hit Short Sand beach and play with wild abandon — for free.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Tides, and luck, can change on the beach
[Posted Aug. 6, 2008]
Not too long ago, I pulled into the parking lot of coastal state park at dawn on a week day. I saw a large and shiny red truck parked there, which surprised me, because it’s rare to see another vehicle at this hour, but occasionally one appears.
After I let my truck’s tailgate down, the dogs flew out and headed toward the beach. I took a quick detour toward the other truck to investigate what I already knew I’d find. Sure enough, some dude was asleep in the cab.
Back in the days of my purposeless twenties living in Portland, when rock hadn’t died and you didn’t need a credit card to buy a pitcher of Oregon beer, I lived in a large house with several other purposeless men, including my cousin Darin, who, to that point, was the unluckiest person I’d ever met in my life. He also handled defeat and setback harder than anyone else I’d ever seen.
Darin had always been cursed with bad luck and misfortune. As a teenager he’d lost a coin flip to his younger brother for a ticket to see Game 6 of the 1977 NBA Finals, when the Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Philadelphia 76ers for their only championship. He would let a friend borrow his truck and the friend would fill it with the wrong gasoline and ruin the engine. He would seemingly always get beat on the long touchdown pass in the family’s Thanksgiving football games. A severe reading disability eliminated any chance of academic success. And when the bad luck and misfortune rained down on Darin, he would invariably handle it by brooding with extreme intensity and keeping all to himself, which was bracing to witness because Darin had one of the biggest hearts and kindest dispositions manifest in a young man I’d ever encountered.
During the short time I lived with him in Portland, I remember two, possibly three instances, where he suffered some bad luck or misfortune, and reacted by immediately driving to the ocean. It didn’t matter if it was 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., raining or dry. He would drive to the nearest beach, two hours away, and sleep in his truck until he felt prepared to return home and deal with the problem, typically girlfriend-related. When he arrived at the beach, I’m not sure he ever left his vehicle. I don’t know because I never asked him why he made these impulsive westward dashes. I do know I thought them ridiculous.
Now that I live at the beach, I understand Darin’s impulse. I frequently see people sleeping in their vehicles at coastal state parks in the early mornings the same crumpled way I imagine Darin sleeping 20 years ago. I also occasionally run across someone in the dunes, positioned fetally in a sleeping bag. These people, these Oregonians, had to get to the ocean. During the last decade living near the sea, I’ve felt lucky I didn’t have to drive as far as they do. It now takes me seven minutes to see the marine therapist.
At some point, Darin’s luck changed and now he’s living a full life with a great family in Washington. I like to think an Oregon ocean beach had something settling and pivotal to offer him when he needed it. I know the beach offers the same to me every morning. And of course, in Oregon, it doesn’t cost a cent.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Seal, its fate, occupy one man's thoughts
At 6:10 a.m. Sunday, on my regular beach walk with my two dogs, I discovered a harbor seal pup resting above the rack line, some 70 yards from the ocean. He or she was alive and writhing, apparently waiting for its mother to return. I was the only human being around, which normally I prefer, insist upon, but not this time.
The dogs approached the pup but I herded them away and watched it for 10 minutes from 30 feet away. At one point it looked directly at me, blinked twice, and raised a flipper to me.
I began to feel a mounting distress. I know you are never supposed to touch pups in situations like these, but it seemed a long, long way from the water. I was sure the next high tide would never reach it, although, despite walking the beach every morning, I knew practically nothing of the tides.
Finally I left and ran home with the dogs. I grabbed a camera and drove back down to the beach. I went over to the pup and took some photographs.
I saw a woman and her dog down the beach and jogged over. I told her about the pup and we discussed its possible fate.
“Let’s see,” she said, “high tide was at 4:40 a.m. and then next one is at around 11:30 a.m. What time is it?”
“7 a.m.”
“Just wait and see. If no one bothers it, the mother will come back. Most of the people around here know not to touch a seal pup.”
I don’t like to wait. I feel obligations in moments like these. It is hard to let go sometimes and let nature run the show, as it always has in the past, and always will until the end.
A few minutes later, I said goodbye to the woman and went home. I decided to drive to a café in Newport a couple of miles away and wait with coffee and distractions. The plan was to return to the beach at 11:30 and see if the pup was still there. If it was, the mother probably wasn’t coming back and the pup would die. And it would suffer too, and I felt sure I would be compelled to alleviate the suffering, although I had no idea what that might entail.
In the café, I read the Oregonian and New York Times, wrote in my journal, and read an old copy of a Paris Review collection of interviews with writers. In the book, I came across a line by William Faulkner: “A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination.”
I underlined the sentence and thought I might later quote it to my creative writing students.
Time passed and the three-hour wait plunged me into the second most intense sense of dread I have ever felt in my life. Number one was walking into the Tillamook County Courthouse seven years ago to file for divorce.
The vigil concluded, I drove slowly home to learn the pup’s fate. As I waited at an intersection for the light to change, it suddenly occurred to me: “What a fool! I could have sat on the cliff above the beach, watched in real time how this story ended, and documented the drama with photographs!”
But I let my sense of dread defeat my curiosity about the world, which amounts to nothing less than literary suicide for any writer. Or a kind of suicide for all people too, I think.
The dogs were leashed as we took the trail to the beach. I noticed the wet sand, freshly swept by the recent tide. Had it been high enough? I looked north at the rack line where I last saw the pup.
Gone. And I missed it all.
Matt Love lives in South Beach, and is the author/editor of The Beaver State Trilogy. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
Learn more about seal pups on the beach
Thanking Rachel for a noisy spring
[Posted June 25, 2008]
Six thirty. The mist falls on one of the last spring mornings before summer begins. I hit the beach with the dogs needing the shot of salvation the beach routinely injects whenever the disease of depression infects me.
We cruise north to the south jetty. In the distance, a ship waits for calm seas before making the narrow run between the rocks toward the safety of Yaquina Bay. The dogs break off east to sniff at the wrack line and I turn my head and look the other way, to the water, where all life began.
Ahead, less than a football field away, I see two large raptor-like birds standing on the sand, unmoving, staring straight west, as the last inch of a wave trickles over their talons. What the hell? Hawks don’t surf.
Tacking at northwest angles, I move closer to investigate, employing all my senses as Henry David Thoreau once commanded me — all of us — to do.
Suddenly, it dawns on me: for the first time, I am watching bald eagles in Oregon not in flight. They now exist less than 50 yards away, on my beach, and not another human is around to pollute the moment.
Immediately, I don’t feel the disease of depression anymore because I know that without one woman, a scientist, a writer, a warrior in defense of nature, a hero, a goddess who should adorn our currency, I know that without her monumental effort, bald eagles would not exist in South Beach or anywhere else in America.
Her name is Rachel Carson, and in 1962 her landmark book “Silent Spring” launched the modern environmental movement by exposing the ecological disaster wrought by the indiscriminate aerial application of poisonous chemicals, namely DDT. It was an overnight bestseller around the world and attracted an astonishing variety of readers, including a President of the United States, John Kennedy, who convened a special panel to investigate the disastrous effects of pesticides on the natural world. Later, DDT was banned, and with the help of the Endangered Species Act and Richard Nixon, who signed it into law, the birds came back. The spring wasn’t so silent anymore.
Without Rachel Carson and “Silent Spring,” there wouldn’t be a pelican, peregrine falcon or bald eagle left in this county, even Alaska. DDT was wiping them out as the government and farmers sprayed oceans of this poison across the land and water. It was a modern-day industrial plague encouraged by chemical corporations and their hired men in white coats who apparently never listened to birds.
I feel better after seeing the eagles, but I want more. I want to see the eagles launch from Earth. I want to see something I’ve never seen before. Yes, it amounts to a rude hominid interruption but I’ll beg forgiveness later.
I sprint toward the eagles and they lift off the sand on course for Asia. They quickly bank east and fly toward the cliffs. From nowhere, a third eagle joins the formation and I watch all of this, annihilated yet saved, restored, ready to keep at it and get good work done, part of which is pulling all the weeds from my lawn by hand and not spraying herbicide.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press (www.nestuccaspitpress.com). He lives in South Beach and his books are available at bookstores along the coast.
He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com
Haystack Rock and roll will never die
(posted June 11, 2008)
Is there anything more sacred in nature to Oregonians than recreating on our publicly-owned beaches? No, nothing even remotely comes close. A few confused people might say skiing on Mt. Hood tops the list. To that I say: every Oregonian has a beach story. Not every Oregonian has a Mt. Hood story. I don’t.
If anyone further doubts my claim, they would have been instantly convinced last year had they attended the first annual Cape Kiwanda Music Festival in Pacific City. There, local bands such as Lunker and the Retroactive Gamma Rays ripped through savage sets in front of a laid back audience of all ages, races and sexual orientations, drinking pop, beer or milk. In the background, surfers, dory boats, dogs, a wedding party, flying kites and small camp fires filled out one of the most quintessential Oregon scenes I have ever witnessed. It was sheer Beaver State beauty.
And don’t ever tell me Oregon rawk is dead! Not after you’ve seen Lunker tear it up with a groove so poundingly awesome that even the dwindling numbers of rockfish offshore and the spirit of Oswald West came out to boogie. Or heard the Retroactive Gamma Rays’ spine tingling surf instrumentals that make you want to dance with a total stranger.
Cost of admission? Totally free! Unlike skiing.
You still don’t believe my claim about the primacy of the Oregon beach experience? Well, it’s time once again for the free Kiwanda Music Festival, so on Saturday, July 5, make the drive to Pacific City and judge for yourself. I might also add that this year’s eclectic lineup blows away last year’s stellar one. The music starts at 2 p.m. and runs until dusk. Fireworks to follow.
Just head to Pacific City and follow the signs to Cape Kiwanda. The schedule is listed below.
Cape Kiwanda Music Festival
Saturday, July 5
2 p.m. David Twigg (solo acoustic from L.C.)
2:45 p.m. The Broke String Band (bluegrass from Portland)
4 p.m. Retroactive Gamma Rays (surf rock from L.C.)
5 p.m. The Dead Trees (indie rock from Portland)
6 p.m. The Juke Joint Gamblers (rockabilly from Portland)
7 p.m. The Whiskey Robbers (rock n’ roll from Newport)
8 p.m. Lunker (heavy funk rock from Pacific City)
9 p.m. Ninth Moon Black (ambient metal from Eugene)
The Great Birthright
(posted May 30, 2008)
“In the administration of this God-given trust, a broad protective policy should be declared and maintained. No local selfish interest should be permitted, through politics or otherwise, to destroy or even impair this great birthright of our people.”
This great Oregon birthright is our ocean beaches. Oregon Governor Oswald West wrote these words in 1949, 36 years after signing into law a bill he drafted that declared the wet sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches a public highway. He claimed a solo horseback ride in 1912 from Cannon Beach over Arch Cape and Neahkahnie Mountain, and into Nehalem, inspired him.
West also wrote: “So I came up with a bright idea. And this was very much of a surprise for I have enjoyed but few such in a lifetime.
“I drafted a simple short bill declaring the seashore from the Washington line to the California line a public highway. I pointed out that thus we would come into miles and miles of highway ‘without cost to the taxpayer.’ The Legislature took the bait — hook, line and sinker. Thus came public ownership of our beaches.”
West’s masterfully brief law reads: “The shore of the Pacific Ocean, between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, expecting such portion or portions of such shore as may have heretofore been disposed of by the State, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.”
Sixty-six words. With his law, Oswald West changed Oregon forever. He helped establish and enshrine in law a unique cultural relationship between a state’s citizenry and a natural recreational resource. Unique? It was and still is pretty much unprecedented in the world.
And to think that the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department doesn’t have one sign at any of its coastal parks honoring West, including, incredibly, Oswald West State Park! That amounts to a crime against Oregon history.
He was hardcore Oregon
[Posted May 14, 2008]
On Feb. 14, 2009, Oregon celebrates its sesquicentennial. You can expect significant media fanfare when the big birthday rolls around and all sorts of commemorative events. As Oregon approaches 150 years old, one question all of us living here might want to consider is: what qualifies as something authentic hard core Oregon? Something that can’t be found anywhere else in the country and is worth celebrating because of its utterly unique Beaver State quality. Something worth extolling, too.
May I offer a candidate for consideration? I met him a few weeks ago.
And thought I was a hard core Oregonian who dug Oregon’s ocean beaches!
Six thirty in the Wednesday morning. Rain smashes down on the skylights like a Keith Moon frenzy on the drums. Time to walk the dogs on the beach. If I don’t, a possible canine mutiny.
I don the pea coat and put on the stocking cap. We walk outside and greet slanting walls of rain. An umbrella? Are you kidding me? This is the Oregon coast. I once broke up with a woman who used an umbrella. I couldn’t be seen with her. Who doesn’t want to see rain fall on their partner’s face?
Seven minutes later we hit the beach. The pea coat has lost the battle with the rain. I can’t see beyond a quarter mile.
I let the dogs off leash and they bolt to the ocean. Suddenly, in unison, we see a man walking toward us, emerging from the clouds. It is a man? Or an apparition? The grim reaper? I’ve hit this beach with the dogs exactly 48 mornings in a row and this marks the first time I’ve seen another human being.
Interloper! Trespasser! This is my private church service. I feel violated.
The dogs trot over to the man. He pets them. I change course to meet him. There has to be a story here. Stories are worth interrupting church.
He wears a hooded sweatshirt without wearing the hood. His Levis are soaked through and he wears tennis shoes without socks. No expensive hiking accoutrements whatsoever.
He tells me he’s walking from the south jetty in Newport to Lost Creek—and back. I add up the miles. Close to 12. He must have started two hours ago.
I wish him good luck. He heads north and I head south. I never got his name.
As November nears, the writing is on the wall
[Posted April 30, 2008]
A drizzle falls as the dogs and I ramble south down Driftwood Beach, a few miles north of Waldport. I see no other vehicle in the parking lot, always the best sight at a state park beach wayside.
I am here to read the writing on the wall, or more precisely a sandy cliff, where on a previous visit to the beach, I’d noticed from a distance some letters and symbols carved into its face. At that time, I was eager to investigate, but an unrelenting downpour had swelled a creek and dissuaded my attempt at a long jump.
No downpour today. We approach the creek and I take a running jump and cross the channel by a millimeter.
Safely landed, I move toward the cliff. At the very moment I begin to read some of the words, a hummingbird bursts from a nearby willow thicket and flies inches past my face. It jolts me. I see the whites of its eyes. I’ve never seen a hummingbird at the beach and the juxtaposition of this beautifully tiny creature and the roaring vastness of the ocean presents an electric contrast.
I regain my composure and turn to the cliff. Initials, initials everywhere and not a sentence to drink: M + C = ; JR + S = forever. Sweet teenage math.
Outside of a smiley face and a nicely rendered drawing of a large smiling rodent, initials and names dominate the literature of the cliff. As I read, it suddenly occurs to me that there isn’t a single expression of a political nature. Not even one crude statement in a heated time of contested presidential election and protracted controversial war. What is one to make of that?
I don’t know. I have a theory but will refrain advancing it here and let the reader answer the question for herself. We should all answer it. And free walks on an Oregon ocean beach always makes for an opportune time to answer tough questions of love and war. Did I tell you I figured out the meaning of life there?
What do I really know about the absence of political statements on Driftwood Beach’s cliff, where, 40 years ago, I am sure they would have dominated the literature? I just found this wall and was surprised not to find a single expression of political belief. There is one now. In fact, there are two.
One night a storm will arise and hurl waves into the cliff and erode the carvings. But that might not be until after the first Tuesday in November, when things will surely change. Or remain the same.
Singing the praises of Sidney Bazett
[Published April 18, 2008]
Often when I ramble the beaches with the dogs, I often think about the people who created and protected this inalienable Oregon right that I freely exercise like a religion two to three times a day. These people deserve recognition and honor and that’s one of the reasons I started this column. In the coming months I’ll be profiling some of these people, the kind who never make it into the history books, unlike, say, generals and governors.
In the late 1960s, a Republican representative from Grants Pass offered the following explanation as to why he effectively sacrificed his political career to protect Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches: “The people of this state who can only afford a tank of gas and a picnic basket have the right to spend a day with their children on the beach without having to rent a motel room or pay a toll.”
His name was Sidney Bazett. He is one of the many unsung heroes in the successful fight to pass Oregon’s famous Beach Bill back in 1967. He died decades ago, but left behind a legacy benefitting every living person who has ever enjoyed a moment on an Oregon ocean beach. For free.
Isn’t that about everyone in the state? And everyone visiting the Oregon coast?
In the spring of 1967, HB 1601, which later became known as the Beach Bill, landed in a subcommittee of the House chaired by Bazett that oversaw beach issues. At the time, several motel owners were making unprecedented ownership claims to the dry sand areas of Oregon’s ocean beaches. The bill sought to protect the public’s long-standing use of these areas by declaring state control from the median high tide to native vegetation line, roughly to 16 feet in elevation.
A majority of Republicans dominated the subcommittee and they quickly moved to table the bill. Bazett was not among them. Even though he ran the subcommittee, he didn’t have the votes to push the bill forward and it appeared dead.
Had that been the end of the story, Oregon’s ocean beaches today would be desecrated with fences, boardwalks, ‘no trespassing’ signs, security guards, hot dog stands and espresso carts. In other words, it wouldn’t be Oregon. It would look like everywhere else.
But it wasn’t the end of the story.
Bucking his fellow subcommittee members and the leadership in the House, Bazett employed a series of clever stalling tactics until the public learned what was at stake if the Beach Bill went down. He leaked to the press. He met with members of the public and implored them to come testify on behalf of the bill. He postponed hearings. He bought time anyway he could.
The tactics worked and, later, the Oregon public rose up and demanded their beaches be held in public trust forever. The legislators listened and the Beach Bill has since become holy Oregon law.
For his efforts, for putting Oregon above party, Bazett was, as he later wrote a friend, “shunned,” literally, in the halls of the capitol.
Did I mention that Sidney Bazett hailed from Southern California and was a comptroller in the movie industry before migrating to Southern Oregon? When I learned this, I had to take back all those nasty things I’ve said and written about Southern Californian transplants over they years.
One of them helped save Oregon’s beaches for everyone, including those, “who can only afford a tank of gas and a picnic basket,” to enjoy.
A coast Classic
[Published April 4, 2008]
In serious training for the upcoming third annual Oregon Coast Instant Haiku Classic, I have taken to composing a haiku every morning during my walk down the beach with the dogs.
Let me tell you: composing a haiku in 35-mile per hour winds and sheets of rain is quite the hearty literary exercise.
Fortunately, this morning’s weather proved more amenable to composition. My effort:
Dogs bolt to the waves
One gull probes at the wrack line
West, a crabber floats
The haiku. The ancient, Japanese-in-origin, three-line, seventeen-syllable, five-seven-five structure form of poetry that distills the essence of a moment in nature. In a country where everyone probably talks too much and too loud and takes forever, if at all, to get to the truth, haikus offer a compact and quiet alternative. They never confuse. They always clarify.
The Classic, set for Saturday, April 12, at Café Mundo in Newport in the Nye Beach area, upholds and updates the venerable haiku tradition.
The Classic is a four-team poetry competition, scored by the audience in a format similar to a diving event where judges hold up numerical scores. All poets are randomly grouped into four-person teams. The host throws out a prompt, say “bonfires,” and then poets have 90 seconds to compose a haiku.
That’s right. On the spot, with a full house watching. Then the poet performs the haiku to the full house and judges score the effort. Winning teams advance for the right to take home the coveted Whitman Cup and special prizes.
There’s nothing like it on the Oregon coast, or for that matter, the entire state.
The competition begins at 7 p.m. Anyone interested in participating as a poet should show up at 6:45 (or earlier) to register. The event has been packed the last two years, so spectators should arrive early if you want to get choice seats.
Admission to the Classic? Free… which coincidentally and not by historical accident, is the cost required to ramble Oregon’s ocean beaches. More on that later.
A final word of advice for poets: Get to the beach and start practicing. Others are.
To muse and scavenge
Gulls and poets: much alike
Are you Newport bound?
Off and Running
[Published March 21, 2008]
Welcome to the first installment of One Man’s Beach, my new column for Oregon Coast Today. I have two modest goals for the column: 1) visit beaches from Manzanita to Yachats and share my observations, intuitions and meditations; 2) report on those matters that created and strengthened Oregon’s special relationship to its ocean beaches – a relationship utterly unique in the country, if not the world.
So what’s with the name, One Man’s Beach?
In 1938, a writer named E.B. White moved from New York City to a small farm on the Maine coast. Over the next several years, he contributed a series of essays on his new country life to the New Yorker and Harper’s that culminated in the 1943 publication of “One Man’s Meat.”
Sixty-five years later, the book is still in print and considered a classic of memoir, reportage, observation and the definitive look at the rural American home front during World War II. After the publication of “One Man’s Meat,” White went on to write, among other books, “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little.”
Eleven years ago I escaped the Pearl District in Portland to South Tillamook County on the Oregon Coast as a one-year cultural experiment to improve my mental health and try to establish myself as a writer. I succeeded on both counts and I’m still here, now recently relocated to South Beach. I’ll never leave the Oregon coast and have made its people and places one of my main literary passions.
Not long after moving to the sea, I picked up a copy of “One Man’s Meat” at a used bookstore in Lincoln City, read it that night, and was immediately struck by its compact prose style and participatory, yet restrained narrative voice.
“One Man’s Meat” exerted a tremendous literary effect on me when I first read it and the feeling has remained. The genesis for this column is a direct result of this feeling.
We are off and running, literally, since the last five mornings, in the overdue fulfillment of a New Year’s resolution, I hit my local beach at 6:15 a.m. for a reckless run down the sand. It was either raining or foggy or both. No other human was around. I saw the same western gull every morning in almost the exact same spot. Every morning I saw the dawn descend over the south jetty of Yaquina Bay. I didn’t have to pay a cent for this privilege. Perfect. Quintessentially Oregon. I ate it up…like a big piece of meat.
Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy and publisher of Nestucca Spit Press. His books are available at coastal bookstores or through www.nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com.
