Our progress through the morning is unhurried and orderly and we are astonished to find ourselves leaving at nine thirty. The only distraction is our little black cat Anise, who meows incessantly for our attention and begins a series of mad dashes up and down the front room. When we leave she is stiffly carving furrows in a cardboard panel filled with catnip and staring at us with wide, round pupils.
We drive up Milwaukie to Powell and west across the bridge, stealing a glance at the new pedestrian overpass over I-5. Other than the usual exasperating line of cars merging left at the last minute onto the 405 ramp, the traffic is light and we negotiate the wooded curves over the MAX tunnel with no problems. Over a wetland past Banks we see a kingfisher perched on a power line.
In the Tillamook we see a sign of things to come in the basalt cliffs on the south side of the road, long confusions of icicles like tentacles draped over the trickling seeps there. I notice with irritation that the Tillamook Forest Center is closed for the season; I had planned to stop there and stretch my legs. We drive deeper into the forest and find an obscure trailhead, Keenig Creek, also closed to the public. I turn down the gravel access anyway and cross the old steel bridge. On the other side there is a muddy salient where I park. The Wilson is a green column boiling through its basalt and willow locks. I see a white shape at the bottom of a deep pool. From the bridge the view is unimpeded and I take in the postcard scene of the gorge, the pink alder forest marching down on either side and farther back the jagged slopes of fir and pine.
After an interval of battered steel barriers, yellow and black arrows and glimpses of the angry river through the alders we climb down for the last time into a landscape of flat fields and irrigation ditches. Before long the smell of cowshit fills the cab. The traffic thickens and we pass the familiar farms just to the east of Tillamook. In the thinning sprawl of markets and restaurants on the north side we spot the blue and yellow sign of the association's cheese factory and turn in. Inside the entrance is a modified microbus, foreshortened like a clown car and cut away to fit against a poster promoting their cheddar loaves. A fleet of identical buses has been deployed across the country to stop in various towns and, apparently, dispense free samples.
We sit in the near-empty cafeteria and eat grilled cheese sandwiches. In the gift shop I find a plastic mug with a built-in turbine, activated by a push-button in the mug handle, that whirls your chocolate milk into a pale brown maelstrom. Celeste buys a bag of cheddar curds and garlic cheddar end cuts. She laughs the day after we return when she pulls one out of the bag. It is the approximate size and weight of a street cobble.
We decide to drive the Three Capes Route; Celeste wants to see the Cape Meares Light since two particularly dim-witted thugs shot out the hundred-year-old fresnel lens one night a couple years ago. The damage is heartbreaking, an ugly rectangular hole in the heart of the lens and scattered pinholes all around it. The knowledge that the vandals were caught comforts not at all; the lens is essentially irreplaceable. The sea around the headland, though, is beautiful, made yellow-green by the early afternoon light and grading gently into a light gray haze at the horizon. We take a short walk along the crest of the headland and spot several golden-crowned kinglets, a creeper and a larger bird with a distinctly flycatcher-like bill that we decide, tentatively, might be a vireo.
In Pacific City we turn west to detour off 101 and cruise through the dense spruce forests north of Whalen Island. At the state park sign we turn, drive the causeway to the island and park in the gravel lot there. The island is actually a peninsula nearly surrounded by the bay; the interior is half-covered by a thick growth of spruce and pine barrens and dense rhododendron forest.
We walk the trail that skirts the perimeter of the wood and immediately are closed in by arcing rhododendron branches and manzanita shrubs. Every so often Celeste stops to shoot the mushrooms and brilliantly-colored orange fungus that has appeared all along the trail. There is also a strange, delicate frill of white lichen, itself like a tiny tree, that clings to the stem of a rhododendron. Eventually the sight of grey and green rectangles between the trunks becomes more frequent and the trail climbs a low bluff and onto a ridge covered by a pine barren. In places the moss overwhelms the pale yellow, but overall the sand and the evenly-spaced trunks of pine dominate. Soon a spur of the trail points seaward and we take it to the foredune, then struggle through the deep, loose craters to the wet pack below.
On the beach small congregations of plovers rush back and forth in the surf and drill in the sand. A silent crowd of gulls is taken aback by one of their number, who begins grunting at intervals, then shrieking, while the others look on. I search the margin between dry and wet, but I miss the tiger beetles of summers past. At a clearing in the sword grass we walk through a litter of brown and silver logs and withered bull kelp to the foredune and pine barrens. In the treetops are birds who fly and hawk like sparrows but who are slightly larger; Celeste watches them through her glasses but the lighting is poor and we can only see their outlines against the sky.
The day is finally waning but our timing is good. We see it all from the Yaquina Bay Bridge: the vast lobe of the bay spread out below, the spires on the bridge pillars stabbing into the air and the sunset a spectacular flourish of tall clouds like spun glass lit orange from within. The display is repeated as we cross the Alsea, but the colors have begun to deepen to a rich red and the clouds have lost their buoyancy.
When we emerge from the wood outside the hotel and follow the curve around the landscaping island everything white or tan has turned a dark blue and the greens have become black. We check in and the clerk, who I don't recognize, repeats the breakfast times and directions to the spa. Our shoulders drop perceptibly as we walk in the room; the air is a solid bat of warmth. By the time we walk to the Adobe for dinner the sky is black, but the clouds have blown away to reveal a dense mat of stars. The Pleiades are a fragile pennant in the scattered mess and Jupiter is the brightest object of all, a yellow-orange gem.
I order the crab pot again. There is not a layer of bread at the bottom of the cup as I had supposed. It must be mixed in with the meat, I say. We adjourn to the bar and decide on two extra-dry Stoli vodka martinis. A big woman with an experienced, no-nonsense air addresses herself to the task and mixes the drinks, then pours them into two squat vodka glasses who are set into goblets filled with ice. We are served empty martini glasses with the olive inside. At first all of this seems gratuitous, but when I finish my drink Celeste reminds me I have another still in the shot glass; it's two drinks for the price of one. This means that the Adobe serves four-dollar martinis. Who does that anymore?
In the morning we have biscuits and egg and cheese strata and watch a hummingbird perch on a bunch of heather outside the sliding doors that open on the beach.
We drive down to Cape Perpetua and pass by the turnoff for the long climb to the visitor's center. Our goal is a bit farther south, at the Neptune State Viewpoint. The last time we were there the tidepools were rewarding. The weather is now raw, with bitter wind and a swirling dampness. The sandy beach is fronted by a wide ribbon of blue stones and we stumble and pick our way over it and past an orange-brown bluff to a maze of basalt broken and spread like crust on a cobbler. The rock is black and almost iridescent in places; patches are a rich brick red, as if the long-extinguished volcanic heat had left a stain. I carefully thread my way along the tendrils and skeins of damp sand and suck my breath in sharply when I step on a diamond of what looks like sand but is actually a viscous liquid. The upper reaches of the rocks are covered with a curly black/red algae that has the slickness of wet ice. I climb to the top and pick a route to a certain oval well cut deep in the rock, a narrow crop or sac scoured by two cobbles dim and green at the bottom. I keep my face to the ocean and look for Celeste appearing and reappearing behind the black shoulders of rock. Her voice carries to me, sharp and rapid; she has fallen several times and banged up her knees. Her feet are soaked and these shoes are terrible for walking on the rocks. I offer to take her back to the hotel to change her clothes but she says no, she'll just stay off the rocks. We walk towards the bluffs again and the broad apron of blue cobble and orange/white logs. Back of the delta is a graceful bridge, an arch reaching over a broad gorge and underneath a pair of beachcombers with walking sticks and white five-gallon buckets. We never do decide what they're looking for. Back towards the sea, in the delta, the gulls ride the current into the surf and ride the flow of the wash back again.
We drive over another steep headland and into the dune lowlands of Florence, through the lumberyards, filling stations and box stores, to the tall woods around Woahink Lake, a gigantic octopus of water dotted with modest but trim ranch styles and high-rent developments.
At the north end we turn at a brown sign and park in a wayside fronted by a stone wall. We walk through a pulsing mist that seems forced through an atomiser and find a locked rental shed and an empty rectangle of floats that marks the swim area. The sky is a pale grey belly on the water. Somewhere behind the yellow dune mountains on the other side, whose faces are scarred by a graffiti of tire tracks and footprints, the drones of many motorcycles and dune buggies combine in a cicada-like monotony. If you could silence that, I said, this place would be perfect for a birthday party or picnic.
We walk down the access road to a massive log-and-shake pavilion with its eight-inch-thick pine sink counters and stone chimney. At the lodge Celeste shoots a small wooden plaque that commemorates its CCC construction in the '30s and restoration in the '80s. We drive around the lake and back through Florence. At the south end of Yachats some wealthy burgher is building their dream beach house, a monument to mid-century authoritarianism, all down-sloping, slashing lines and glass curtains. Celeste loves it.
By the time we return to the room we are hungry and chilled and ready to be indoors. We open the insulated shopping bag and have some of the salami and cheese we bought at Edelweiss, along with a couple German bocks. I look through the picture windows and see the surf netted in a lace of foam, behind a curtain of silver beads-- a memory in present time, a snow globe that you live inside.
Before we succumb to the pleasantly stuffy warmth of the room we pack our knapsacks and walk out again, this time to take the beach path to the center of Yachats and possibly visit the new garden there. The chill is profound, especially on the bluff trail that threads along the mats of sea thrift and grass in front of the Adobe. After a short detour through the neighborhood of modest ranch styles to the south of the hotel we enter a wetland dotted with tall spruces and dominated by reeds and willows. The swamp is covered by a network of broad, solid boardwalks with frequent bays built in where the walker can step aside and contemplate the black water and broken brown stalks. Kinglets forage for insects in the stubble, and among them a winter wren, perched so close to the water and moving so rapidly he seems to be swimming. He calls to us a short, abbreviated call, as if he were greeting us but too busy to stay and chat. On the other side we exit on a path between the Yachats Library and sewage treatment plant.
We pass the fire department and find Yachats Underground Pub & Grub. Inside, a large flatscreen is airing a football game and all the regulars are staring at it. One red-faced man with white hair lifts a remote and turns up the sound until it's blaring. We muddle through our beers over the explosive shouts and laughter and decide to walk back to the hotel when we realize that it's still hours to dinner and we're still working on lunch anyway.
We walk down to the ocean road again and see a long section of fence hastily repaired with fir two-by-eights and festooned with yellow caution tape. The posts on either side of the repair are buried on three sides only; the fourth side is exposed to the salt air again, in a freshly-exposed face of bluff whose missing portion has long since been washed away by the surf. Farther down the trail, just a hundred yards from the Adobe Hotel, another fence runs at the cliff and juts out comically, the rails cut off to point seaward.
Back in the room I drift in and out of consciousness while reading the passages about the Eastern Front 1914 in The Guns of August.
The restaurant is one I must have seen several times and not known for what it was. It shares a wedge-shaped parking lot with a grocery and is one of those low, tan coastal properties that seem to become anonymous almost the instant they're built, losing their identity and sense of optimism along with their paint and galvanized coatings. The inside is cheerful enough though, with loud vinyl tablecloths decorated with tropical birds and tiny colored bulbs strung inside the window frames. The name of the place is Luna Sea, after the F/V Luna Sea II, Captain Anthony. He is the owner and the fisherman who brings in the main ingredient: salmon, tuna, halibut, crab. We have fish and chips and it is good, with a few more pieces than you're given by the restaurants inland. The captain stumps in while we're finishing our plates and cheerfully greets us and inquires about our meal. We tell him it is good and he smiles and disappears into the kitchen. When we leave he is standing on the walk in front of the restaurant and breaking down cardboard boxes. He asks us where we're from and we tell him we wish there were more places like his in Portland. He admits he had thought of moving, but to Maui. But he says that if we find him a space he would take it and put us to work in exchange.
The night is long. The last thing I read is a description of General Samsonov's retreat through the forest outside Willenberg and the sound of his suicide in the pines.
I awake unrefreshed. The weather matches my mood; clouds press down unnecessarily close to the ocean and the shorebirds cast back and forth on the rocks as if they were trying to get out of the way. A mirage has been replaced by a familiar ache across the shoulders and behind the head and I seek to fix my gaze on whatever is squarely in front of me. After the usual taxiing back and forth between the beds and the harshly-lit sinks we walk down the breezeway to the heavy stairway door. The sweet warmth of the kitchen has filled the stairway, mingling with columns of heavily-scented hotel soaps, shampoos and colognes. We pad through it and find the dining room half-empty; still too full for me.
Behind our table a woman's cell phone intrudes, driving a wedge into the muted voices and sounds of silverware. The ring tone is some godawful pop tune, all ugly electronic false emotion and half-digested references to older, better originals. To compound the error the woman is amused; she laughs a loud, satisfied, cud-chewing laugh as the device chatters on. She never does answer the call; I don't look around but I can imagine her gazing raptly at the little piece of plastic with her mouth open, enjoying, child-like, the fruits of human progress. I imagine now a man much like myself except that he thrives on violent confrontation, a man such as this rising from his seat, politely interjecting as he picks up the phone, quickly hurrying across the lobby and through the sliding doors and hurling the offensive object far into the ocean.
Celeste picks up a paper, determined not to lose touch with any of the loud idiocy of the world outside, and grimly recaps the latest about the capsized Italian cruise liner. I stare out the fogged glass of the sliding doors and the grey/green wilderness beyond and am astounded that anyone could be casual in such a setting of sudden ruin. It must be the size of those things, I think. You forget that mere scale will not protect you. Because no matter how big your boat is, the ocean is bigger.
After the second cup of coffee I settle down a bit and I'm even a little wistful when we leave the room. I feel the same pang of something like grief when we take a last look around and check once more on the floor around the beds. Shortly, and in a very complete and traceless way, we will be gone from here.
Once we're in the truck a lot of these sharp points are smoothed and the hum of the tires and solid push of the wind against the cab act like a balm. I concentrate on the task of driving and maintaining my calm against all the usual irritations of the public roads. I even have a kind thought for the Yaquina Bay Bridge, a bastion of good sense and proportion and the willingness to recognize the beauty of what is; and the Bay is beautiful, a creamy desert of mud and sand decorated by a tracery of bird, human and clam tracks.
Incredibly, we enter the courtyard of the aquarium at ten of ten, their opening hour. A compact man in grey with a chunky camera is there with us; he glances at the closed doors and walks the other way. We follow his lead and visit a viewpoint framed by arching willows and a reflecting pool filled with grasses and fescues; the morning light paints the bay a pale blue/grey and I study the tips of the rotten pilings for kingfishers.
The sounds of a noisy group of eight-year-old girls are suddenly muffled and we walk back to the entrance. One door stands open and we walk in. The room contracts in the quiet and for the first time in a long time I study the exquisitely-detailed models of salmon and shark that hang from the ceiling. While I wait for Celeste outside the bathrooms I study an exhibit about the importance of the local shrimp fishery. The main panel is decorated by a pretty line drawing of a trawler.
The exhibits are not silent for long; the visitors trickle in and eventually the usual sounds of slapping sneakers and reedy demands to "Look at this!" fill the space. Celeste earns the bemused attention of two volunteers when she makes baby talk at an abalone that takes a kelp ring from her hand. We both are delighted by the surprise of a cluster of young grunt sculpin clustered on top a barnacle where we expected to see the usual pair or trio of adults. In the hallway that contains the Japanese Spider Crab exhibit we watch them sit back on their shells, legs in long Ms and Ns. They look out at us from the blue darkness. Celeste says they seem to be silently challenging you to approach them so that they can "kick your ass."
In the aviary the growls and shrieks of the warm mating season are absent and the birds content themselves with noisy, splashing flight displays over their ponds. One seems to go berserk and rockets around the enclosure like an out-of-control windup toy, finally splashing to a stop to shake its head and stare at us with one tiny, grey-green eye. We brave the cold a bit longer to visit the seals and otters. Hastily-made signs strung across the thick plexi that forms the side of the pond warn us that the otters are in mating season and "unusually agressive"; interaction is to be limited to viewing from a safe distance. We watch one float on his back in the black/green water and obsessively gnaw on his coat. Suddenly he seems dangerous and fearsome, no longer the clever jester beloved by the summer visitors. We remember another visit and the softball-sized crater of milky cracks and pulverized plastic that marked the place one of them had bashed a heavy shell against the enclosure.
Celeste wants to visit the gift shop and we tour the glass shelves filled with plush wolf eels, aquarium mugs and expensive paperweights. I'm weary of the experience and hurry through the circuit of the store, pausing only to examine an inexpensive but well-produced paperback edition of Moby Dick.
We forsake the turn to the noisy and fashionably industrial Rogue Brewing Company and drive instead across the bridge and into the strip of banks and restaurants on the north side. At a brown sign we turn and turn again, rounding a bank of tangled blackberry canes to find SE Bay Road, the main street of the Port of Newport. It is still early and parking is plentiful; I find a public lot across the street from a gigantic fish processor whose warehouse wall is decorated by a mural of fishboats riding a dark and stormy sea. We walk past the darkened portholes in the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum and into the light again as the walls of the processor move aside to reveal the port, a tangle of masts, rigging, winches and radio antennae. Across the bay we see the vast white rectangles of the newly-installed NOAA Fleet, duly welcomed by several commercially-produced posters that appeared in some of the local storefronts. And near the orange-and-blue ball of a 76 fueling station, the trim, white and red USCGC Cuttyhunk visits from Port Angeles.
Several blocks down we spot our goal: Local Ocean Seafoods, a restaurant and retailer that has earned the recognition of several reputable and/or fashionable reviewers. It's in the kind of square, ugly container that seems to be the kind of building everyone wants to see and be in these days, with immense curtains of glass set into dull grey steel pillars and one wall a fire department-sized garage door that opens in the summer months. While we're sitting next to it I can feel one of the ribs pushing into my knee whenever someone opens the entry.
The customers are all dressed in various shades of black, olive or brown and the place has a stuffy, expensive smell. The back of the space is dominated by an immense, stainless-steel hood and the open kitchen, with a bar surrounding. I look around at the plates on other tables: great square white things, the sorts of dishes a more modest place or home would use to serve several guests. Across from me a man lounges in his seat with his feet in the aisle. His shoes are expensive top-stitched leather, with the paper-thin sole and square toe that is the uniform of every successful urbanite. He is absorbed in some kind of smart phone, some small, glossy, rounded piece of electronics, the mere shape of which I have learned to detest in the last five years. I imagine his wife, who is attractive and seems absorbed in her food and not at all starved for attention, brought him here.
Our waitress is prompt and polite and has a heavy accent, Australia or New Zealand, I can't decide which. I try to stop myself thinking that the place somehow contrived to hire this woman for her accent. The thought is ridiculous but I come back to it, just like my unreasonable resentment of the guy with the shoes. I order the grilled rockfish sandwich. It is good, spicy, very tasty, with an interesting topping of coleslaw, but the bun seems gratuitously small and the fries in a cute, stingy pile hard by, instead of overwhelming the sandwich as in a less-fashionable place. Still, I am satisfied, and it is pleasant to sit there over hot coffee and watch the wind play with the forest of masts across the road.
We walk back to the truck on the other side of the street and listen to an immense bull sea lion shouting in one of the lanes, hidden by the Cuttyhunk and some big fishboats tied there. Celeste sees him and is appalled by his size. I imagine he owns whatever falls into the water, if his size is commensurate with the booming echo of his barks.
Until we reach Philomath the thought of dangerous weather is academic, a chance to tut-tut about the way the local news services have built an institution of weather-based hysteria based on a faulty understanding of modern satellite-based technology and a willingness to use it to whip up local residents and school districts.
But on a hill outside the town I am reminded that the weather is not great, in fact, downright bad, as the right lane is suddenly covered with grey-brown slush and my attempt to keep right and shed some of the traffic behind me turns out to be a bad bet and I enter a hundred-fifty-yard skid. Luckily the road is uncrowded and I manage to steer out of the sickening back-and-forth into a region of slush that is more liquid than ice, instead of the reverse. Incredibly, not a few minutes later a newish compact angrily passes on the left and rockets down the road, some bluff meathead trying to prove to his passengers how timid and silly we are and how rugged and competent he is. Apparently there is no room in his cramped brain pan for anything but this.
The mood lightens as we reach Corvallis but celebrations are short-lived. Out of Yamhill some drifting flakes become a blizzard and I can barely see the road. Celeste goes so far as to suggest stopping in McMinnville and waiting for a break in the weather. I contend that the weather would just worsen and we would be truly stuck; I press on and eventually we come out the other side. We pass Linfield and I react sourly to the sight of the new sign by the entrance drive. It is expensive, obviously so, marked up in a modern font made to suggest an old-fashioned one. There is a smooth, corporate pictogram of an acorn, and the whole thing fairly screams "business school." I hate it on sight.
King City is the usual nest of unaccountable tie-ups and frantic last-minute lane changes, but after the slush and shoulder tension of the coast range there's something almost nostalgic about it. We hiss down Barbur to the Ross Island ramp without incident and it is good to see the chain of brakelights like a bead necklace flung out the southbound ramp.
When we pull up in front of the house Anise is framed in the bottom center pane of the front entry, standing like a yard statue with her paws resting on the door. When we open the door she repeats the performance of the morning of our departure, running wildly between the back and front doors and savagely scratching on her catnip pad, her back arched. I miss my little tan lion and his calm trot towards us after a long trip and I suppose Anise is trying to make up for it by putting on a show, anyway I read it that way and it seems to make sense. Now she is sitting on the chair next to me with her eyes slit and her front paws folded underneath her. Perhaps she is agreeing with me.
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