Ocean sunset | Tales from the Hutt

Monday, 03-Jan-2022

Since New Years Eve fell on a Friday, I had Monday off work!

I know, right? Not a bad start to the New Year… And doubly-so, since the upcoming Friday was a day off too… so three day work week! Absolutely great start to the year!

Okay, enough bragging. I had Monday off.

I figured… Well, I was feeling a bit lazy, and didn’t quite want to deal with the adventure of icy / snowy roads and tire chains. So Mt. Hood was out. And if going East, into the mountains, wasn’t really feeling like a good option… why not a return visit to the beach, hmm?

Well, it turns out that one reason I could cite is the tides – a reason that I learned when I looked down from the staircase at Cannon Beach, straight into the foaming Pacific Ocean. Turns out, I’d timed it just right so that I’d arrived exactly at high tide… strangely, not something that I think I’ve ever seen at Cannon before.

I’m an intrepid adventurer though! No “high tide”, or “lack of beach”, silliness is going to stop me! I forged my way around, hiking over dunes and through the beach grass, making my way down the beach and into a singularly glorious landscape or churning waves and dispersed sunlight.

I walked for ages – I didn’t really track how far, or how long, I was wandering. I stopped in a nice copse of trees for lunch, and rested when I felt tired. I’d brought snacks, water, and warm layers… And since I’d started at high tide, I knew there wasn’t a risk of getting trapped anywhere since the only direction the surf was going was away from me.

It was lovely. Relaxing, quiet, and exactly as calm as I was hoping for on my last day before re-starting the trudge of work.

On my walk, I even found a few ocean-based treasures!

Jaw-dropping views not included, I found:
– A really cute little beach toy, washed up on shore
– A child’s bike helmet, now home to a colony of brightly colored mussels
– A huge hunk of whale blubber!

Yeah, you read that last one right. Whale blubber! It wobbled!

A few days previous, a whale carcass had washed up ashore a few miles down the coast… I hadn’t really thought about it, but that’s the best explanation I could think up for what I found. It’s big, wobbly, and tons of seagulls were feasting on it…

As the sun dipped low, I made my way back to the car and toward the drive home. Beautiful snow-covered trees kept watch as a drove, and a glorious dinner of artichoke, steak, and tortellini awaited me back home…

Friday, 05-Feb-2021

Sometimes, I just need to get out of the house… Usually, I’ll head toward the snow and the cold, but thanks to a whole issue with the Mustang being in the shop for repairs, I wasn’t quite feeling confident enough to brave the snow and ice. As strange as it may sound to some, I trust the rear-wheel drive Mustang in the snow implicitly… partially because I’m used to driving it in Bostonian winters, and partially because it has all my emergency gear in the trunk – chains, self-jumpers, extra food, that sort of thing.

Without that safety net, I didn’t feel up to an artic adventure.

Instead, the coast called out to me. Clean, cool air, salt spray, sunsets, clouds, rain and wind.

The drive out was long… and frankly, pretty boring. The little EcoBoost that the shop had given me did fine, but the drive out to the coast has few views aside from some interesting forest scenes. Thankfully the drive went by fairly quickly with a liberal application of loud singalong music, and soon enough I was scrambling down the muddle slope toward the sea.

I’d never been to Ecola point, and it was actually my second choice for a destination – I was originally targetting Indian Beach, but unfortunately the recent wind storms (I think?) had closed the parking lot off… Or COVID restrictions had closed that parking lot? Or… possibly it’s seasonal?

Meh, doesn’t matter in the end. These days, there’s a thousand and one reasons a place may be closed. After parking, my only concern became how to best descend the slope; soon enough I was scrambling down the muddy trail, hand-over-hand down a climbing rope toward the rocky shore. It was amazing – the views were second to none, and the descent itself was worth the entire drive out there.

There was a trail, of course, but I use the term “trail” very loosely in this regard – it was more of a series of braided pathways leading in the same general direction, with a few trail markers strewn liberally about… possibly by rangers, but also possibly by the sea breeze. I… honestly couldn’t quite tell if they were intentionally place, or just detritus blown in on a storm.

The rope helped things, giving me a singular descent point (and peace of mind that, yes, this was an actual trail) to trend toward, and one place to keep an eye on as the tide came in.

I didn’t go too far offshore on the rocks, but I did spend quite a while sitting on the beach. I read, I watched the sun fly toward the horizon, and I just enjoyed the misty rain and the sound of the surf. It’s amazing and beautifully calming, and I was taken a little aback when I realized just how late in the day it had gotten.

A good day, by any metric.