IX. Sunset and Fire

I think I mentioned that Sebastian had been hoping and hoping just to see a single pretty sunset over the beach while we were in Oregon. And, while of course the grey sky has its own beauty, he had not gotten his wish. So we felt almost guilty sending him pictures of one of the most beautiful and amazing sunsets we'd ever seen, the night after he went home! (But we DID send him pictures. We couldn't help it.)

1

VII. Old-growth cedars

In Rockaway Beach there is an old forest area with a huge cedar tree. It has changed a lot over the years. We have had to hunt for a trailhead in the middle of a neighborhood where you feel like you're walking through someone's yard, and then bushwhack our way through dense forest to find the right place. Understandably, someone decided that wasn't a good idea, and now finally they've made an official trail and entrance and parking lot and everything. It's nice, but it was also really crowded every time we drove by it, and has definitely lost the "we-just-discovered-this-place" feel it used to have, so that's a little sad. Still a fun area to stop by, though! And the new boardwalk trails are nice.

0

VI. Clams and Cannon Beach

Have you ever considered clams? Truly considered them? We have already established that I consider them from time to time. I considered what it would be like to dig them up, last time we visited Netarts Bay. I considered, at great length, the way they squirt out water as you run across their beds, like spouts as you run across a splash pad. I considered the weird way they burrow down into the sand. (Your life will never be the same after you watch that video.) 

After all that considering, on this trip I finally felt it was time to try cooking some. I like clam chowder! And I like fried clams. But cooking them yourself is a whole different story. Still, I was ready. So (not being able to dig our own easily, with the tides being what they were)—I went to the fish store and bought some.

This was a Saturday, and I wanted to cook them on Sunday, and the first thing I learned was that the clams are alive till you cook them!! !! You want them alive. That is weird. You tap the shell and if it doesn't close tighter,  the clam is dead and you should throw it out!And they don't have to be in water to stay alive, but they do have to be in ice…or in the fridge. The girl at the store did not seem concerned, as if there were a chance they might die by my negligence, when she told me this. She just said to leave them in the fridge till ready to cook, and then put them in a salt water bath for a few hours so they could spit out any remaining sand inside them.

1

V. Hikes, walks, sunsets, and hummus

Some pretty sights near Netarts Bay, Oregon. The bay beach in early morning. Herons and pelicans and gulls everywhere!

2

IV(a). Hug Point

There are some great tide pools at Hug Point, and even though the tide wasn't super low when we went, it was low enough to see a lot of cool animals! (Last time we were there we saw a bunny! Although not, it must be admitted, in the tide pools. Either way, no such luck this time. But Gus does look a little like Ky in this picture!)

1

IV. Birthday at the beach

Clementine turned four while we were staying by Netarts Bay. It was a weird house with the kitchen on the top floor, a beautiful living room and dining room view, and a lower-level bunkroom with towering three-high bunk beds. The outer corridors smelled so strongly of Dog that Daisy and Junie couldn't even sleep in the bunk room and had to move upstairs to couches! But it was a lovely place to stay all the same. We stayed in this same neighborhood in a house with Sam's parents when we came to Oregon in 2017, and we loved watching the tides come in and out of the bay so much that I looked for a place nearby so we could do it again. If you want to play in the waves, you have to walk out past the waters of the bay to the real ocean, but the bay beach is peaceful and beautiful in its own right.

Clementine was up early on her birthday, and promptly put on her new strawberry dress, which I'd gotten for her at the strawberry farm we'd picked berries at near Hubbard. (Smart of them to sell cute little dresses there. I certainly couldn't resist them, not when Clementine had already proclaimed, "I'm a strawberry girl!")

0

III: Wings, Waves, and out to the coast

We celebrated two birthdays on this trip, Sebastian's and Clementine's. For Seb's, we had crêpes and strawberries, of course, which even by itself is the best birthday meal ever. Seb also requested that we go to a waterpark he had heard of called "Wings and Waves." It wasn't far from where we were staying and it was on the way to the coast, so we thought we could fit it in on the day we changed houses!

The main attraction of this waterpark (definitely for Seb, but presumably for everyone else too) is that the waterslides come out of a real 747 which is parked up on the roof! It is quite a sight to see when you drive up!

0

Oregon Part I: Berries from Heaven

 

I think I have said before that my brain seems to categorize words by sound and rhythm. If I am searching for a particular word, I will almost always think of two or three other words—not right in meaning, but right in syllable and rhythm—as I feel toward the correct one. I can hear in my head the outlines of the word I want, sometimes well before I can see its details.

Today before I sat down to write, I had two verses running together in my head, and it took me some time to realize what they were because all I had was the rhythm and shape of them (no words):

It was many and many a year ago,

    in a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;…

I was a child and she was a child

    In the kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

    I and my Annabel Lee—

……

'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed

   As if it could not be;

And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed

   Of sailing that beautiful sea

But I will name you the fisherman three,

    Wynken, Blyken, and Nod…

Why both those poems? Why together? (Google tells me, helpfully, that they "were written by different authors and have very different tones." Gee, thanks.) Only my subconscious knows for sure, but that doesn't stop my conscious self having a go at it…

We've been traveling to Oregon together since the children were small, when it was a sort of fairyland to us. We could contentedly go back every year. It's not quite like revisiting one's childhood home—it's just foreign enough to be interesting, but familiar enough to be comfortable—and the more often we go the more we love it. We don't do quite the same trip every time, but we revisit our favorite activities and places, even as our family composition changes. 

It carries very distinct feelings, this layering of time and space, full of nostalgia and almost dreamlike in experience. I sometimes feel like I'm a double-self, experiencing the past and present simultaneously. Hard to capture in words, but those lines from the poems aren't a bad start, those galloping rhythms that feel like the race of time—from "many and many a year ago" when "I was a child" and so were my now-adult children—to now when the names and faces are different, but the experiences are somehow the same. Which one is reality and which the echo?

Those are the questions my brain is dredging up for me (accompanied by poetry soundtrack) as I look at these pictures and sort through the layers of memory that go with them.

So, humor me while I post about our trip, for the blog books that will simultaneously record these new memories and reinforce old ones. Skip on by if it's too much. I don't know what these books will mean to the kids, once they are all grown. But they are beyond price to me!

3

II: Silver Falls in August

 

A place we love near Hubbard is Silver Falls State Park. It was so hot (we have had VERY hot weather on our trips to this area almost every time, so it must be more normal than I thought. I guess it's only on the coast that it's nearly always cool) that we decided to go in the evening so we'd be a little cooler. We have never been there at that time of day before and it was cool! Sebastian struck off on his own for a while and got some really cool pictures of the falls before the sun got too low.

1