Leave the Path

We’ve been in Oregon for a couple days now. We arrived in the afternoon on Saturday following a grueling cross-continent flight which was unfortunately cloudy most of the way. We also had a short layover in Salt Lake City which is , at least from the air, the ugliest city I have ever seen. The salt lake is more like a giant dead mud pit and the city is flat, dingy, and sprawling. Oregon, however, has been treating us well. We explored the streets near our hostel Saturday night, met with my friend Kate and her friend Jarrod for Indian food, and then turned in early. We got rained on about 10 times in 3 hours. I hear that’s about par for Portland.

Sunday we got up super early, rented a car, and headed West. About two hours and one quick tea stop later we reached Cannon Beach, renowned as a cute town and artists’ colony on the coast. I assumed there’d also be a beach. I was so right. The beach at Cannon Beach is broad, flat, and sandy, but with enormous, mountainous rocks just past the water. It was breathtakingly lovely. One of the most interesting features, however, was the piles of dead stuff. Huge chunks of kelp washed up on shore. The huge hollow ropes smelled terribly fishy and resembled alien tenticles.

The town hosted a bevy of quaint wooden cottages and shops. In addition to galleries, cafés, restaurants, and trinket shops, Cannon Beach is home to no less than three kite shops. That fact and the persistent bone-numbing ocean wind convinced us that this might be a good place to fly a kite. We stepped into one of the shops with the goal of finding the cheapest and silliest kites. The winners were dubbed “Space Robot’s Last Stand” and “The Duck – With Realistic Flapping Motion”.

Despite similarly poor construction, The Duck took to the air like, well, a duck whereas Space Robot initially entertained us by spectacularly tumbling and smacking nose-first into the sand. The Duck flew continuously for hours after we released him. We took turns absentmindedly holding the string as we strolled down the beach and the duck, flying hundreds of yards high and dully predictably, got a little boring.

Kati started to reel him in so that we could go get a bite before the low tide and Emre, after getting the lines of the two kites crossed and then untangled, uttered the magic words “my kite is going to knock your kite in the head,” thus beginning a kite battle. He didn’t succeed but we all ran giddily down the beach, staring into the sun to see how our flying champions fared. Emre had gotten much better control of Space Robot, but Duck was really in his element. Finally, Duck’s realistic flapping motion helped to propel him into Robot’s line of flight.  A direct hit caused Robot to split spectacularly in half and tumble to earth. Emre renamed the remaining kite as “The EVIL Duck” and we all went to town for a late lunch.

Low tide was about 3:30 so when we came back to the beach many of the big rocks were exposed, as were the tide pools at their bases. I started finding whole empty shells which I collected in a bag for my mom (sorry mom, some of them are going to reek – I haven’t been able to dry them yet) until we got near the most massive-ist “Haystack Rock” where a park ranger told me it was illegal to take anything. I understand why they have that rule, though. The tidepools around the big rock were incredible in quantity and diversity of exotic sea life.

Barnacles, mussels, and occasionally limpets covered the entire surface of some rocks. Star fish far larger than my hand in lovely crayon colors clung desperately to the under side of many rocks. Huge minty green and smaller pink anemones rested in the open stage, looking like delicate tissue-paper flowers. Little brown fishes darted around the trapped pools. And if you looked really closely there were snails and hermit crabs in lovely little tulip-like shells.

We were not the only ones on the rock. The two park enforcers also kept an eye on the other two dozen visitors, many of whom went around poking the anemones to make them close and trying to pull the star fish off the rocks. The tide pools were incredible. I can only imagine how much many more fascinating creatures must close up completely or swim away when the tide goes out. These places are really rich gardens just out of our site most of the time.

On one side of the giant rock there was a cave visible, probably 15 feet or more in height and depth. We couldn’t get to it because of the slick rocks, park rangers, and 6-ft waves of the Pacific ocean. We speculated on how amazing it must be on the inside, though, walls plastered with sea creatures and entrance rhythmically blocked by a wall of angry sea spray.

Before the tide came back in we chose to go a little north into a national park to see another beach. On our way, we saw something unexpected and magical by the side of the road. We caught a glimpse of one, then two, then six white and ginger baby bunnies. In unison, we all yelled “BUNNIES!” and Emre turned the car around. We didn’t get to touch them and one by one they hopped into the brambles next to them. Only then did we notice a few big rabbits in the same colors hopping about. The bunnies weren’t really afraid of us and one of them was nibbling on what looked like a carrot stick. And then a family walking on the other side of the road said something like “those crazy people are just looking at the bunnies” which makes me think these guys are sort of an institution around here. These baby bunnies were dangerously cute and fluffy. If they’d been a trap of some sort we totally would have fell for it.

The national park was filled with giant fir trees that seemed to have been frosted with sticky moss. Around their bases there were enormous ferns and a hazy mist.

I kept an eye out for dinosaurs, but according to an official post, we needed to be more aware of cougars. We never saw any, but I kept my jacket unzipped in case we had an urgent need to “appear large”.

From the park we got a great view down the beach. We also got to tramp around on a little cliff-side trail and see a lighthouse in the distance. As we headed back to the car, we noticed a guy on a grassy cliff landing with a really huge kite. We looked at each other, then at the huge pointy rocks and crushing waves below and I think I said “is he parasailing?!? that’s such a bad idea” about 20 times. Then he got a good wind and proved me wrong. He lept off the cliff, glided down gently, caught a draft, and when we pried ourselves away several minutes later he was still airborne and higher than the spot he had started. He seemed to be steering quite well and in no danger of hitting the rocks or ocean. I think he could have neatly landed on the same grassy spot if he tried.

The beach at the park wasn’t as good as the one at the town, or maybe we were just too tired to appreciate it. There were some huge beached logs on the shorter beach and a handful of building-size rocks we chose not to walk to.

We drove a little farther north to a beach near SeaSide. Still near low tide, this beach was also very wide and flat. And this beach had cars on it. We were very cautious at first, thinking that it’d be really dumb to get our rental car stuck in the sand, but we saw a half dozen sedans cruising along the shore. The sand was dense, packed, and slightly wet and we had no trouble driving on it. Emre thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of driving on sand. We got out and picked up a few more shells (most of them had been violently snapped in half or smaller by the waves) and then Kati had the great idea of flying the Duck out the window of the car. He did pretty well for a few minutes before crashing into the ground and splitting in two. Jarrod bravely ran barefoot across the freezing sand to retrieve his body. As we got back on the highway we saw a male mallard duck alone in a pond by the road. I like to think that the spirit of the Evil Duck lives on.

As we drove back to Portland, Kati and I talked about all the people we knew so many years ago and what they’ve done since. Back in town we dragged ourselves to Kate’s apartment where we ordered pizza and watched a documentary about jumping sharks (which can be summed up with the single line “Now Dr. Rocky Strong climbs gently onto the floating island of rotting whale meat to get a closer look at the feeding great whites.”)

Yah, so all in all it was the best day I could ever possibly imagine. We were all pretty seriously exhausted by the end of it but I can’t imagine a better way to spend a Sunday.