Step Out Onto the Planet

October 2, 2012, part 1. We headed right back to the Outer Coast the next morning, just PG and me. Destination, Second Beach. It's a hike-in beach, not a drive-to. The trail is through second-growth forest, lavish enough in the morning light. Trees like to grow here.

Trail to Second Beach (Click for larger image.)

You go up a bit, then down down down the steps to the beach. There is always a greater or lesser pile of logs to be crawled over to get out onto the sand. Lesser, on this day. PG & I are short people, I was glad there wasn't a serious log barrier. Without too much trouble, we stepped out into the gorgeous space of Second Beach.

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Second Beach, October 2, 2012. Soundscape for Cee.

The beach is sandy, broad and flat, very unlike Rialto. The tide was coming in, plenty of whitecaps out there, but it rolls ashore in waves only inches deep almost everywhere. Note the 'almost'.

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Incoming Tide. Soundscape for Cee.

We ambled south. There was a subtle show of garnet sand,

Garnet Sand (see explanation) (Click for larger image.)

There was a dead bird with really big beautiful wings. No eagles, not really even gulls. Where were the fish that bring the birds, if you please? It kept right on being sunny and beautiful. There were itty bitty flitty birds at the back of the beach; PG studied them carefully: savannah sparrows. There was a large chunk of marine debris, a 5-foot tall chunk of styrofoam partly encased in concrete. Huh? The tide kept coming in.

Styrofoam in concrete. Winter tides are going to break this up and strew it all over the pristine beach, but it's too heavy to move... (Click for larger image.)

Eventually we thought to head back, and found our inches-deep waves rolling right up to the sea stack tucked back against the hill. This pinchpoint had caught all the logs which were no longer at the foot of the trail. Our choices were to get wet in front of the rock, or go around behind— crawling over the field of logs. We opted for the log crawl.

Note the wave washing the log in front of the rock (Click for larger image.)

As we came out through the log field we saw that a couple was watching us. They called out that they had opted for the water route. We were afraid of that one, we said, but this wasn't too much fun either. We saw you down the beach, they said, and wondered which way you'd go. They waited until we were safely back out on the sand, then started back up the hill, as did we shortly behind them.

(Continued in next post. The title of this one is from a poem in Lew Welch's Ring of Bone.)