The veranda is dripping while fog clings to a mountainside across the way. Between us and the mountain, the forest is showing some of the colors of fall. Somewhere unexplored just yet is the Pistol River that will have to wait for us as we are moving lazily after two solid days of scurrying over the desert, through farmlands, and into the coastal mountain ranges that have brought us to the edge of the Continental United States. We are on vacation and determined not to act urgently unless trying to capture peace and quiet in our remote self-isolation.

At the moment, there’s a reluctance to move at all as the quiet reassures me that it’s okay to sit here and listen to the birds chattering in their morning routines. The pink of the first sky has given way to clouds reminiscent of yesterday’s that we experienced just south of here. Steller’s jays and robins flutter about, telling my imagination in their tweets that they are our prison guards here to ensure that today we do not move from our encampment in the woods. At the moment, I’m good with their command, as parts of our human routine come with their own demands that are on hold while I follow this word trail in my head.

Alas, the breadcrumbs of thought bring me to ideas of food that won’t be had down the road in some toasty seaside cafe. No, we are eating right here as soon as I move my cold self into the kitchen. Cold because last night I turned off the heater in order to have a cozier quiet, as our luxurious feather comforter from home is along to make strange beds more familiar. How’d that work out for us? My poverty of language when it comes to explaining the warmth and happiness of sharing a bed with Caroline as we nuzzle in a chilly room will never convey how, from shoulders to toes, we bask in a sense of delight. The old cliched, “This ain’t our first rodeo” comes to mind as it was right here on this coast that it had first occurred to us to bring our blankets along after learning we didn’t enjoy our sleeping bags in a yurt that much and that with the little space heater that is available in every one of these little canvas dwellings by the sea that our own bedding would be better suited for our stay. So on subsequent visits, we brought our pillows, a sheet, a blanket for insulation between the sheet and a plastic-covered two-inch thick mattress, and our big fluffy comforter. Seeing we cannot stay in yurts this trip due to the pandemic, we are doing “modified yurt” while luxuriating in a house.

The likely inaccurate weather report has us heading into town. Yeah, this is our road leading to and from our spot along the river called The Fish Inn. With high winds predicted, we don’t want to be traveling this tree-lined trail through the woods, as it could be a minute before a fallen tree gets cleared. Maybe we should consider acquiring an ax in town in case an emergency were to arise.

Speaking of “emergency,” you must have known that if a yarn store was open, we’d be stopping in. Caroline’s justification, which was almost but not really valid, was that I could get a photo of her wearing her Monterey Bay mask in Oregon. “Wow, wife, that’s such a novel idea,” said the reluctant eye-rolling husband. But of course, I fell for it as not only do I want to remain happy, I want Caroline to be happy too, and if supporting a local business so I might gain a new pair of socks is part of the equation, well, then I’m actually pretty enthusiastic about my side of the win. Do you see that yarn she’s fondling? My feet will be adorned with that after it’s automagically transformed into custom-fitted socks.

The idea was to fetch a couple of things and get back up the road before the purported gale-force winds hit, but it looked so nice and tranquil that we decided some sightseeing was in order. Zoomed into the map, it looked like there was a trail we’d never been down, and so, being the intrepid adventure travelers we are, we moved down the road in that direction.

Chetco Point is guarded over by this totemic figure that is likely some vandalism more than the ancient carving I’d like to tell you it is. This idea spurs another thought about the first humans who learned to draw as they trolled their fellow tribal members. Think about it: it’s about 35,000 years ago, and you leave a face like this in a known location; the next time your group is traveling through, they’re startled by the giant face looking at them through the rocks. You get to claim that aliens must have done it or that the gods left it as an inexplicable message to spur deeper thinking, but you don’t have the intellectual tools yet to examine the phenomenon, and so the tribal members remain perplexed for centuries, a big win for the prankster artist.

Enough of the comedic shenanigans and back on to the path of beauty. You’d never believe what’s up this paved trail between the two giant rocks that make up this point jutting into the ocean; it’s a bridge. A beautiful heavy wood bridge connects the rock outcroppings so we can step out even further away from the habitable land onshore. This moment of human goodness has been brought to us by the commons. For those who need a refresher on exactly what the commons are, please take a gander here at the explanation from Wikipedia:

The commons are the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.

Sure, we want to indulge our senses every minute of every day we’re out here on remote self-isolation, aka vacation, but due to the volatile pandemic situation and news flying in about shifting lockdowns and quarantines with rising infection numbers and death toll, we pay attention with an alert ear to what’s on the wind. We do not look at the clouds with the sun trying to poke through and wish for a moment of blue sky as the glistening water is already all that we could have hoped for. Just to hear the sea crashing into the land after a long journey from the other side of the planet is a gift of extraordinary value offered to so few. Should we have to cut short our plans, knocking on wood that we won’t have to, we are resigned to the notion that even this will have made for a perfect getaway.

Maybe you thought I’d leave out the details of a pile of nothing? Not a chance because without the visual reminders of those things underfoot and overhead, we only have the myopic view of what was obvious and in front of our noses. What is under our nose and outside of our peripheral vision also holds attraction, should we take the time to recognize the picture is best experienced when taken in its totality. Trying to convey a composite image of our day requires that I find what might have been overlooked if I was only looking for the obviously spectacular. While some will object and say this accumulation of twigs and branches washed ashore by the tide is a pile of detritus, I’d counter and ask them to see the sunrise and sunset that once shown upon the remnants of these former plants and remember that one day their own bones will one day be bleached and discarded as the beauty and wit they once supported is long gone.

Just how amazing can this kite you bought ten years ago that fits in a box the size of your palm be? Well, to Caroline, it may as well have been the greatest kite ever made because even at 50-something years old, she giggles at her flying skills as the tiny kite goes aloft. The winds were so strong that, at times, she appeared to possess acrobatic skills for flying such things as it raced towards the ground and performed a dozen or so tight spins. In the end, the short 30-foot-long string was a tangle of knots that put a stop to her moment of entertainment. Time to go check out what’s exposed here at low tide.

While I’m redundant in stating that this is our 20th visit to Oregon over the previous 18 years, this is once again an encounter with a 1st. The shark tooth rock at Meyers Beach North, south of Gold Beach but north of Pistol River, has never been inspected by us from close up. Maybe the water was too high, or we missed the break in the guardrail that indicated where the trail was, but here we are down on the beach, getting a different view of things. The silver plants in between the ice cycle plants were what caught Caroline’s eye up on the sheer cliffside. I couldn’t answer her as to what they were as I have no idea, and while I’d love to ask someone who reads my blog what it is, the fact is that no one reads my blog, especially these particularly long-winded entries that are loaded with rich nuggets of wisdom.

They don’t jump around, don’t have fangs, and can’t fly; as a matter of fact, we’ve rarely seen them move, but starfish hold particular interest for these two intrepid explorers of things already discovered. I’d guess it’s their terrific colors punctuated with the starfield-like dots on their backs that are at least part of the draw. Or maybe it’s the cold-blooded death squeeze they put on the mussels and anemones they hang out with, whose screams we might be able to decipher if we spoke their language. While the immobilized starfish cling to whatever they can hold onto while out of the water, maybe we’d do the Cnidaria and Mollusca families a favor if we kicked in the faces of these Echinodermata? Heck, I don’t even know where the face of a starfish is. If I had to guess, I’d venture to bet it’s in the center of the other side we cannot see, but that then begs the question, where’s the butthole? Nice, Caroline just informed me that they then must be Johnfish as I, too, put food into the hole that shit’s been known to fall from.

It was getting windy, so maybe the promised storm was finally coming in. No time to stick around like these barnacles, and we were short upon running out of daylight, too, so we headed for the exit.

Not that we were done with the day, far from it. You see, we had gone back to the house earlier for lunch, and we’ll be there again soon so Caroline can spin some cotton into yarn and continue following a weaving course she’s been taking. I’ll return to writing today’s blog entry before tending to dinner. Speaking of that, we’ll be having seared scallops with a tomato and avocado salad, but don’t think for one minute that there won’t be some kind of snacking indulgence; we are, after all, on vacation; I mean remote self-isolation.