Mostly Always the Same Places

Foggy Sunrise, Port Angeles, 01/17/09. (Click for larger image.)

Rialto Beach again. Far less surf and no birds anywhere, everything else more: more warmth, more drift strewn around on the foreshore, lots more people. I saw no cedar other than the log I sat on to dump out my boots on Friday, but plenty of bits of madrone, and surf-peeled red alder with underbark glowing like neon. One small young tree (a hemlock?) so recently washed down the river that a couple of branches still had branchlets covered with needles drooping down; and one of the beachfront Sitka spruces had fallen over in place, undermined by the recent storm surf.

Red Alder Log (Click for larger image.)

I went along the beach to see how Ellen Creek was running. Not very deep. The through hikers were going to the back of the beach to cross on the drift logs, but with knee boots you could stand right in the middle of it. The tide was coming in. Some videos here: (1), (2), (3). I always think of Raymond Carver's phrase, "Where water comes together with other water." And of Ivan Doig's story of getting swept into the ocean, right here, by a winter storm tide.

No gulls, no ducks, no crows, no eagles, no flitty birds in the shrubs by the parking lot, no birds at all. Not on the beach, not on the river.

Quileute River, no ducks, no eagles, no herons, no seal... (Click for larger image.)