Back in the summer, VR (an online friend in Manitoba) assigned me to get some salt water photos. Then I didn't hear from her for a long time, and worried. Well we are both still here, if barely, and happy to be reminded that we had the ocean when we had it.
While this blog was hiding under a rock, I went twice to the outer coast. Was trying out doing it as an overnight trip with motel, instead of a daytrip, to get around my energy problem. It works.
Trip #1: So it took me 5 hours to get out of the house on October 13, then finally I'm rolling determinedly toward Rialto Beach and three miles short of the beach
guess what
Roadblock.
Rialto Beach is in the PARK. At not one single moment in the five days that I had been planning this did it cross my mind that the #shutdown I had been following obsessively had SHUT DOWN MY PARK.
Easy enough to re-direct. First Beach is on the Quileute Rez, under tribal control (not the Park). So I went to La Push. Very warm. Very quiet ocean. I put on my water shoes for a little while. Not THAT warm. Put back on the boots and socks. Read for a while.
Sat in the car on the point overlooking First Beach. Tide coming in, ever so peaceably. Just a few pelicans cruised out towards James Island. Still reading. As IJ reminded me, I can read anywhere. Have often used that fact to get me on the road to Rialto in the past. Wouldn't I rather read to the sound of waves? Yes of course I would.
Hadn't been able to get a reservation in the motel in La Push, so eventually I adjourned to the Pacific Inn Motel in Forks. Supper in the diner. Later I wanted a snack and wandered on down the street looking for the convenience store I thought was there. [Not; that was a floating bit of crosswired memory: in Socorro, NM, the same configuration: motel and diner on the west side of a street in a town at convenient run-away distance from home and near someplace beautiful that I really wanted to be. No little convenience store a block or two down-highway from the Pacific Inn in Forks...]
In the morning, back out to La Push, to First Beach. It was even more blue, and just as peaceable. Watched the tribal fishermen working their nets in the river mouth for a long time. Then wandered home.
As pictures go, very much always-the-same-place. First Beach always looks like First Beach. But each occasion is its own self. Today's shirt-pocket full of small smooth pebbles are different from all the others, have their own parking place on the desk. Today's photos of the Quileute Needles are not the same as last fall's or next month's, even when they are the same.
Trip #2: For October 27 I did have a reservation in La Push: second floor, ocean view, thank you very much. The weather was beyond perfect blue. I myself wasn't feeling too crisp, but off I went to Rialto Beach. All I really wanted to do was read my book so I wandered not very far to the south from the parking lot, and sat by a log, and read.
When it got cold sitting there, even in the sun, I drove around to La Push and checked into the Thunderbird. Room 112. Upstairs. Opened the curtains. Opened the sliding door to the little deck outside the room. I had a bed, a couch, a kitchenette, books to read, a deck, and the entire Pacific Ocean. And I thought I might just move in permanently. Never leave. It's been a long time since I had such an upsweep of delight.
There was not much swell, through the night with the windows closed I could hear only the occasional larger waves. Thump-boom-swoosh reaching in through the glass. In the morning, a soft and subtle sunrise, a perfect blue horizon. The sunlight arrived on the sea stacks and on James Island.
Still not feeling very well, I just hung around sipping coffee and looking out the windows until checkout time, watching the waves break peaceably on the shore of First Beach.
Then I headed home without even going down to the beach, while I still had as much fresh energy and focus as there is available on a zombie day. Do you see? I can go be at the ocean even when I don't really feel well. This is epic.
Thanks to Olympic National Park, for Rialto Beach, and to the Quileute tribe for room 112.
All weekend, on and off, it rained. This morning we had a grey, pink and blue sunrise, then it rained some more.
The river jumped up exactly as predicted.
At the last possible moment in the water year, the rain pushed the precipitation measure at the Waterhole Snotel over last year's total (look at the red line).
Last night, it snowed just a little at the Visitor Center on Hurricane Ridge.
I don't do this often, but this post is a mirror of what I put on the tribe's Education Department blog this morning. The sunrise photos are, after all, from my own deck...
Except for necessary emails re medical and family business, twitter is the only place I can talk these days, and that not very much. But I'm still here. VR has assigned me to go get three photos of the ocean. Luckily she is Canadian, and they call all salt water 'ocean'. Watch for pix from Ediz Hook and Salt Creek. Don't expect words.
According to the photos in the camera, the following things happened since I last posted:
July 21, evening, SA arrived from Northeast Nowhere. She'd come to watch Canoe Journey land on the 23rd. We went straight from the airport out to Ediz Hook to watch the Sunday night flock of cruise ships pass. Setting the theme immediately: journeys, and water. Forgot to take pictures, but anyway you've already seen many pictures of cruise ships steaming past.
July 22 we did important local things like go to the Goodwill to get her some warmer clothes, go to the library and the post office, and eat at Toga's Soup House. All major adventures for someone from Northeast Nowhere. We went out to the tribal library to try to get a clue what time the canoes would leave Jamestown the next morning, what time the landing might begin, and spent a long time talking books and libraries with TH. I introduced SA to everyone as my first library boss, and the person who taught me what kind of librarian I wanted to be.
July 23rd, we had breakfast with JL at Smugglers' Landing, and then went down onto the beach to watch the canoes land. But word was that a canoe had overturned in heavy fog and 4-foot swells, and they had all returned to Jamestown. Arrival time entirely uncertain. So we went to the T-Pier to watch the logship Selinda begin loading, it had come in overnight. Back to the beach. It was a false rumor that the canoes had all turned back, only some had. The rest of the canoes began coming in. Five hours later it had gone on all afternoon and there were 30 of them. This will get its own blog post. (I hope. My impulse to communicate is still uncertain.)
VB and ML had arrived in town also on the 23rd. They came down to watch the canoes, heard how uncertain we were about what would happen when; so went up into the Olympics to Hurricane Hill (wildflowers!); then when I called them to say the canoes were coming in, hustled back down the mountain to watch.
July 24th, the four of us went out to Rialto Beach, so they could see a wild beach on the Outer Coast.
July 28/29: Portland again. Thankyou AngelFlight.
Right along, and especially the past two weeks, I've been spending a lot of time at the tribal library, and dropping in at the college library a bit though I don't work in summer quarter. My library peeps are my support system.
Also I spend a lot of time telephoning Florida, or procrastinating telephoning Florida. Family's woes continue. My cell phone is always in my pocket, and I always know what time it is there.
Which brings us to yesterday, June 9: I went to the ocean.
IJ asked for pictures of elk. No elk by the highway on Beaver Prairie. I drove via the side loop past Quillayute airport. No elk on Quillayute Prairie either. Only once have I seen them out on the prairies in the summer. Don't know where they go...
Except for one eagle sitting in the river, the only wildlife at all at all were the itty bitty flitty birds singing in the woods behind the beach. Never saw a one of them, but they were rocking out all afternoon. The only little birds I know by ear are white-crowned sparrows and canyon wrens, and it wasn't them. Even had I seen the little dudes, I'd probably not have been able to identify them. Happy enough just to be an ear tourist.
There was a lot of kelp on the beach, each big mound a single plant— but brown kelp are not plants, they are in the Kingdom Chromista (1)(2)— torn loose and bundled up onto the shore. Wonder just where, out there, the kelp beds are. Plenty of nice waves. The tide was coming in. I thought I didn't have the energy to run away from the waves outbound, or scramble through the drift on the return; so I turned back from my walk after a while, and sat on a log and read. Got so absorbed, a wave sneaked up and washed up my legs and into my hiking boots. Eeek.
Later I decided, oh I might as well go home; but when I got to the parking lot I realized, 'I can't leave now, the ocean is still making the sound of waves.' On this silly thought I went back out onto the beach in the other direction, and sat on another log. Pretty soon it occurred to me that if I can't leave while the ocean is making the sound of waves, I'd get to stay there forever. Oh, well, maybe that won't work, huh...
The whole train of thought was so entertaining and silly it made me smile, and pretty soon I was smiling and feeling quite contented. I slid down off the log and sat in the sand and among the smooth stones, since the tide should by then be going out. A wave washed really rather close, however, and looking REALLY close since I was down at eye level with it.
Eventually I did come home. I presume the ocean is still making the sound of waves.
Shout-out to @shinyinfo , usually in urban Michigan, right now in California for a librarian convention and Seeing the Ocean while she's there. She inspired the act of will that got me on the road, late late late but hey I got there. Also: thankyou, Olympic National Park.
Did went. I decided the whales either were at La Push, or not; and that I was happy to have seen one a month ago, and happy to know I could go look again. But really I needed a long listen to the sound of waves. So I went to Rialto Beach, and had the nicest time in months. Sea stars, anemones, black oystercatchers, gray sky turned blue etc.
I ambled out
toward Hole-in-the-Wall,
beginning an hour before a not-very-low low tide. Maybe there wouldn't be any tidepool critters with the tide at this level, I thought, but yes there were.
Bird nerds will be happy to know I don't only greet cetaceans (and other charismatic megafauna, rivers, or stray sweeps of landscape). I also talk to birds. When I heard oystercatchers whistling and saw a pair circle past, all flappity flap, I too flapped my arms. 'Hi,' I told them, 'Hi darlings.'
Full confession. Later I had this guy nearby on a rock and I started edging closer to get a better picture. Bad me. After a while he squawked indignantly and flew away. No cheerful sounding whistles that time. 'Sorry, sweetie,' I told him.
Eagles in the forest trees behind the beach. On the way home, an eagle sitting in the Quileute River from the pullout behind the beach.
I kept looking back along the beach, unable to understand how it can still be so beautiful when we know we have spoiled the world. It's done. See what we have lost.
Not a single panoramic still in the camera. All the little videos I took for soundscapes have mostly only the sound of the wind blowing across the camera. But they are where the panorama of waves sweeping up the beach are.
Shoutout to @7shores for putting me in mind to go listen to the waves. Thankyou, Olympic National Park.
Expedition to the Outer Coast in vile weather. Actually JL wanted to take me up showshoeing on Hurricane Ridge, but forecast was for weather continuing to be windy and the temperature above freezing days, frozen crust at night. So we went to the ocean instead. I called the elk at all three potential elk spots. "He-e-e-er-r-r-e elky elky elky." No elk. It rained all the way west, sometimes hard. JL tried the technique of speaking optimisitcally about sunshine. Didn't work. I tried being firm, addressed a remark to the sky, "OK, that's enough, just turn it off now." That didn't work either.
So there we were on Rialto Beach in our rainsuits, the wind blowing the rain at us. The beach was clean (JL picked up the only piece of marine debris we saw, a plastic bag), lots of changes in where the logs are and the distribution of sand and gravel on the surface. The camera spent most of the day zipped inside my clothes two layers down. Occasionally I turned my back to the wind and tried to get a picture of, um, not a whole lot. Some people were walking with umbrellas. Should have done.
There was so much rainfall a temporary creek was running across the beach, difficult to behave as it it were real water. Got my boots wet crossing it. We walked as far as Ellen Creek, then turned around. Ellen Creek was running really full, certainly not crossable unless you were going to wet-log-walk at the back of the beach. There were lots of gulls, and we each glimpsed an eagle who emerged from the clouds and then back in again.
We decided to go around to La Push for lunch, but found the restaurant not open; so we sat for a while on the point overlooking First Beach where you can see the whales when the whales are there to see, long about April. Heard sea lions barking, but didn't see them. It was still raining.
The weather slowly lightened as we drove back east. It was still gray and the streets very wet when we got back to Port Angeles, but a couple of hours later it looked like this out the window:
Thank you anyway, Olympic National Park.
Definitely glad to be home. Went to the outer coast yesterday with my beach-buddy JL, and took the hike to Second Beach. Foggy/overcast here in town as it has been for days, cleared up before Lake Crescent. Perfect sunny weather out on the beach, then later fog moving in.
JL was in bliss. Sunshine! Beams of light in the chilly woods on the 30-minute hike to get down to the beach. And sunshine sunshine sunshine by the ocean with the tide retreating, giving us more and more beach to wander on. We shed layers, ambled, had a picnic.
While we picniced, the fog began to drift ashore. The sunshine went, and came back, went and came back, over and over.
Not a lot of wildlife. Some really distant elk off the highway at Beaver Prairie, raccoon footprints on the beach, flitty chirpy birds (that we never saw clearly) in the woods, and hardly any critters in the tidepools. I kept joking that the sea stars and anemones, and the mussels on the rocks that the sea stars eat, had all gone south for the winter; but really, where were they? On the way back to the trailhead, in a sunny interval we saw a nice show of the garnet sand Rau tells about. (Washington Coastal Geology between the Hoh and Quillayute Rivers, about 2/3 down the page.)
I had Philip Whalen's voice in my head all day, as he wandered the main path at Tassajara more than thirty years ago, coffee mug in hand on a spectacular sunny February day and offering his very best T.-S.-Eliot-as-an-old-man impersonation. "Midwinter spring is its own season," he creaked, passing by.
Thank you, Phil; and thank you, Olympic National Park.
The floating dock which came ashore in the Marine Sanctuary last month, presumed to have been set loose from Japan by the tsunami in 2011, remains in the news. (1)(2)(3)(4).
There's another story I saw earlier, with a closeup image of the concrete-with- rebar-encasing-foam material of the dock. Sounds like the same sort of stuff that PG and I found a piece of on Second Beach in October. Can't relocate the story now, and am on my way down the street to the airport. May add link if I find it.
Ah. Here. And photos galore, thank you Washington Department of Ecology.
On Sunday, did went west. It was gray here in town all day apparently, but by golly there was sun at the ocean. It began opening up at Lake Crescent, and just kept getting better.
Pretty much all I wanted to do was to sit on the beach and read, but it was high tide. No beach. I found a log to sit on that seemed likely to be above sneaker-wave range, and watched the occasional extra-high waves wash salt water right into the forest edge among the ghost trees for a whole hour after the high-tide time marked on the tide tables.
Where I was sitting I could see to the north, and my body shaded the book. Almost right away I fell into it— Louise Erdrich's The Round House, wow— and would be gone away; and when I'd come back each time, there it was, the sunny ocean, the sound of the waves:
The closest a wave came, it only caught my attention because I was taking a picture of two hikers as they came along the beach, and it washed them up to their thighs. I did a quick assessment: do I need to grab my stuff and scramble further back? No. But just in case I was wrong, I picked up the book and held it above my head.
There were a few eagles in the day, one in the tree on the point along Lake Crescent (where one often is); another at a turn in the shore along the Quileute River (ditto), one along the highway somewhere past Bear Creek. Not much of gulls, or ravens, or little flitty birds in the woods, or sea ducks.
To look south I'd have to be squinting into the sun, so I didn't, hardly at all.
The web doesn't yet have a way to grant @vcmcguire what she wants, "Wish I could get a few deep breaths of salty Pacific air." But probably Cee is willing to share her soundscape, which might gratify a different sense:
Thank you, Olympic National Park.
