Maybe one learns to live differently at the coast, the precipice of earth, where there’s nowhere left to go besides into the sea. We arrived yesterday in the dark at our enchantingly small 280-square-foot cabin at the ocean’s edge and, after settling in, needed to tend to dinner. With the constant din of the ocean at our doorstep, we drifted off to sleep with thoughts of landslides, but not before recognizing that from our vantage point in bed, we could see a sky full of stars. Over the course of the night, our windows were buffered by occasionally heavy winds and rain. Combined with the knowledge that the Oregon Coast is experiencing a week of king tides, our doom fantasy of merging with Neptune’s wrath haunted what should have been peaceful dreams.
King Tide, you ask? In the Oregon Coast Beach Connection, I found this description: “They occur at a few specific times during the year when the moon’s orbit comes closest to the earth, the earth’s orbit is closest to the sun, and the sun, moon, and earth are in alignment, thereby increasing their gravitational influence on the tides.” In other words, the tide is high, really high. High enough in our imagination to cause significant and instant erosion that could suck our perch into the below; such is the price of active minds to see all possible scenarios.
We woke shortly after dawn with the rain still falling, the wind still blowing, and the sea still churning.
Nearly two hours later, we’d not moved much. The weather is about the same. Our resolve to sit here is strong, but so might the encroaching desire to snack. Good thing we don’t have a lot of options on that front.
The quality of the wind, or more precisely, the noise it makes, is a symphony of sorts. To our backs is the forest with tall trees that create a heavier wooshing sound while the short bushes in front of us produce a wispier-slicing sound, almost like a hissing. From the ocean comes a drone without distinguishable sounds of waves crashing; it’s an engine of constant frequency. Against our door, the creaking of wood and pressure of the wind coming out of the southeast suggests someone is there; alas, it’s an invisible visitor who comes and goes. From time to time, rain accompanies the wind, and when it blows the hardest, a low-frequency moan bears down, reassuring us that inside is the best place to be right now.
Looking out to the place that has captured our attention for hours by now, the ocean is a blown-out frothy mess of foam covered by a uniformly gray sky without definition. Pulses of rain continue to sweep the coast with only occasional gusts of wind, but just as you think that this will be the view for the entirety of the day, a spot of blue seems to be opening a gap in the heavens. The momentary optimistic break overhead brings some calm to the below as the ocean seems to have started moving in slow motion. As the gray returns, so do the height and frequency of the waves. Here, at an hour before high tide, we took a short walk down a path leading to the beach, but it is absolutely inaccessible. At other times, we might have opted to jump in the car to take a walk somewhere else. Instead, we remain planted on our perch determined to witness every minute of our luxury view.
I shouldn’t forget to mention the birds. The larger seagulls, as opposed to the smaller white ones, have been out here in front of our window all day and often in roughly the same area of the sky not far from our cliffside. I imagine they are riding unseen currents of air that are particularly conducive to a fun flight that exists where they keep appearing. Further out and ever-present are the cormorants. With their quickly beating wings, they hug the water before dropping in, often right in front of crashing waves and then diving below it for a swim in the murky depths, probably looking for food.
The sky is shifting with ever-changing weather, offering hopes that the sun will smile upon us. That glimmering idea is soon dashed but will come and go as the day progresses. I suppose I shouldn’t phrase that as something being dashed; the connotation implies that my happiness is somehow compromised without our star making an appearance. That would be wrong, as we welcome whatever the day brings and are quite content just being here.
Ah, little fluffy clouds are always delightful and maybe even inspiring. Their appearance has me wondering why the birds are so quiet when the tempest rages. While we’ve seen birds aplenty this morning, we were yet to hear a single call until this bit of blue sky was had. I recently noted that in Phoenix, Arizona, during the heat of the day, the birds there are quiet, too. There’s a lot to know about the lives of other species, with little time to learn much as we are so preoccupied with trying to learn about ourselves. For example, this is the first time in Caroline’s or my life that we’ve attempted to sit in front of the ocean all day without jumping in the car to hit another amazing spot or needing to go fetch something or other. We have all that we need, but finding the patience to enjoy this luxury of watching the entirety of a day change from dawn till evening from a single beautiful location with an incredible view could yet prove more difficult than it sounds. How is it that it took until we were in our 50s to consider staying in place to observe where our minds went?
When things change, even only minor aspects of a place, novel views are introduced that challenge the eye and senses to register these alterations in comparison to memories already formed. We intuitively know when presented with the unfamiliar that we should store as much as possible, as not knowing when we’ll return, there could be lessons that are essential to our survival with our recently discovered understanding of new possibilities. This archaic response to our environment helps us form pleasant memories here in the luxury of modernity where simply existing is mostly now taken for granted, especially where a kind of peaceful wealth is had.
But even if you are well-tuned to awareness, do you have a like-minded partner with whom to share these things? Without another person by your side, who is there to affirm and celebrate your knowledge? I understand that we can’t always be with someone else, and even when people are with others, they are all too often still alone; such is the tragedy of relationships of convenience. Cultivating friendship is de rigueur, but patience and deep curiosity are also cornerstones to building a foundation that might endure the difficulties of growing up and growing older. Why we put the onus of relationship survival on familial connections and not on friendships and marriages is beyond my comprehension. I can only guess that it goes hand in hand with the idea of consumer culture, where we throw out the old and replace it with the new.
We should ask ourselves how are we so blind as not to recognize that there is no new and old; there is only flow in the now. This cycle of motion, at least from our perspective while living, is never-ending; we are until we are not. The larger questions of why and what has been or will be are great for philosophical and historical meanderings but are not always conducive to experiencing our brief moment in existence, though they can lend context and deeper understanding as we gaze out into the universe that marks our time here. We must strive to live life with first-hand knowledge instead of experiencing it through surrogates. This does not imply we peer into the void with the blank slate of the infant; knowledge is an important key to unlocking access to the domain of rich experience where we dip into flow. I will not survive seeing the day go by exclusively on the pages of a book, on the screen of a device, or from the person on the stage sharing their adventure. I need to stand here at the edge of the ocean and report back to myself just what I saw and what I experienced. With Caroline nearby, I have a witness to verify that my perceptions were indeed real.
Our spatial orbit today is small, though traveling our internal space is as close to the infinite as we will ever know. I don’t believe we went for more than 10 minutes before acknowledging one another in some small way. I can’t say we were ever more than 10 feet away from each other, and for a good part of the day, we were a mere 10 inches away from each other as I was writing, and she was knitting, spinning, or penning postcards to friends and family. I played at trying to make drama a couple of times, so I might spice up the story, but the truth is we did co-exist, snuggled, and acted a bit goofy as we went about our day on a 22×20-foot plot of earth.
What was there that you missed? It was right in front of you; you walked by it dozens of times, but still, it eluded your senses. What might we think about that is also within our perception but outside of our active mind? Here is where we train ourselves to take time to be human, not just to be awake and breathing but truly human. The flower is present; maybe it offers a delightful appearance, it might exude a seductive fragrance, it will likely attract local pollinators, and after it fruits, it may produce nourishment for something else or create offspring, but it will never contemplate its existence. Are we too busy doing our job as a kind of function instead of breaking out of being not much more than plants and exploring our possibilities by seeing what lies deeper within? Our humanity is inside our creativity, our expression, and our ability to put ourselves somewhere different, both physically and intellectually. How do we see the flower within us when our senses are tuned to finding ourselves through those things we are not?
I told myself to write in that little box here in this photo. I insisted that I sit in there at the table at the window on the left, look out, and write something or other. It didn’t matter what I wrote, it only mattered that I look out to the vastness of the ocean and pull what I might from its depths and call it thought. The objective was enhanced when I was inspired to take a photo. If it turned out well, I’d include it in this blog entry, and it would become part of the narrative in some way or another. If I only felt like posting five images, my work would be soon over unless each photo produced a thousand words apiece and in that situation, I’d only be working on the second photo by this time.
There, on the right, not the side of the tiny house but those two windows facing the ocean, I’ve been occupying a place at a small dining table where I set up shop to write. As the weather changes, I find myself wandering outside more frequently. This doesn’t alter the pace of writing as earlier, when the driving wind and rain were hammering down upon our perch, I would walk over the two or three steps to the other window and gaze at the fury of nature in amazement that I should be so comfortable while the sea tried to capture the shore. I made reference to the size of our little getaway cottage, but I should point out that this type of place represents a corner of fantastic wealth as we never saw ourselves as being the kind of people who get to put up oceanside on an isolated part of a coast where being alone without neighbors seemed rich beyond our comprehension. But here we are in a room smaller than some people’s master bathroom, and yet we are in the lap of luxury with an opportunity afforded to few.
There’s a metaphor in these stairs we’ve attempted to navigate a few times today. Each of our three tries to reach the beach has been foiled. The first time we descended the narrowest and steepest cliffside trail we’ve taken, we were repulsed by strong winds as we emerged from the thicket that was taller than we were. The second time, we made it to an outcropping where a seagull stood, but the surf 50 feet below seemed to be cutting in under the cliff that was supporting it. I was certain something was on the verge of collapse; time to retreat. The third time, we made it to this point where we were only about 20 feet above the crashing surf, but beyond this, the narrow trail no longer had a rail, and with the wind still blowing at a brisk clip, I reached the end of the line. As for the metaphor, we tried this at different times of the day, and each ended a little further than the one before it. Tomorrow, we’ll hope for calmer winds, and we already know that today was the peak of the king tide, so maybe we’ll arrive on the unprotected landing and muster the courage to go on. So, the point is that we keep on trying to make progress, and maybe someday, we reach a new objective. It may not be the ultimate goal, but you are doing new stuff, and each attempt has you witnessing something you’d never imagined before.
This rocky beach was the objective. We can see no other way to get down there except the harrowing trail cut down the cliff face. There’s nothing particularly important about this short part of the Cape Perpetua Southeast Marine Protected Area, no special shells or rocks; it’s just a difficult-to-reach remote beach that few people will ever have the opportunity to walk along. In that sense, it’s another book that holds enough interest to at least open it and check out a few pages before deciding if we’ll continue. Should we be able to find Ocean Haven as a perfect destination, we’ll be increasing the chances that it will join our list of yurts and places as a desirable location to refresh our senses.
Yes, it’s a perfect view, but our typical stay along the Oregon coast doesn’t involve us staying in place for any period of time, especially during the day when we should be out exploring. For the people that own this property, it’s not important for them either to have this view as they allow people like us to borrow it. Maybe they are making a sacrifice in order to generate enough income to pay for the extraordinary price tag of owning such a place. This had me wondering about the economics when I found that the property last changed hands in 2017 for $1,200,000, which would cost about $5,500 a month with a mortgage. They rent out five units and appear to be mostly sold out, even in winter, so conservatively, it might appear the owner is earning maybe $15,000 a month gross. While not lucrative in the Silicon Valley sense of wealth, it would hold its own and allow them to buy another coastal property that could be their own to enjoy in full privacy. Why am I doing this math in a blog entry that’s been about the sensual pleasures of being by the sea? Because Caroline and I are trying to determine just where our retirement might be taking place someday when we are old(er).
Funny thing about looking beyond the window and how the frame conveys ownership, even if only temporary, as a renter. We can see precisely the same view from the road, a pullout, a campsite, or any number of other locations along the coast, but here, behind the glass, one has the strange opportunity to imply they own this little slice of the big picture. We are happy to borrow it and bury it deep within our memories. It’s possible that our memories and romanticizing of the experience will be longer lasting than living here, as there seems to be a certain acceptance of place that steals some of the magic compared to those who are only passing through. If we lived here, would I spend 15 hours before the sea trying to capture some essence of the place to write a blog entry about it?
Our wildest dreams usually fall short in producing picture-perfect sunsets that punctuate a day with a resounding sense of wow. Even when we are not given these treats, it seems like we are rarely disappointed by what the day ultimately delivers. By now, the succession of impressions started to blur, and the length of our Remote Self-Isolation vacation begins dilating as though we are entering a wormhole in time where we’ll be out here forever or until the day we turn the car around and feel like a time contraction teleported us to arriving just the day before.
It’s well into the night by the time I finish here. There’s the occasional flash of lightning over the ocean to the northwest, while to the southwest, we can see stars in a clear patch of sky. The ocean is quieter tonight than the ceaseless raging beast it was last night. The winds are calm, and we feel assured that we are far enough away from the cliffside that we are not in imminent danger of sliding into the ocean to our deaths. Just then, the winds pick up again and another flash of lightning catches my eye. Tomorrow will certainly be something different.
