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.)

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!)

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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!")

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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!

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Shore Acres hike

One of the best things about going on a trip with lots of ages of children is that you don't have to do EVERYTHING TOGETHER! Ha! I do LIKE to do things together, and it always gives me great satisfaction when the older ones are happy to do things with everyone else, but it is also so nice to not have to drag people along to do something they aren't very interested in!

You know it's going to be a good hike when it starts out like this!

In that spirit, Sam and I went out on a hike by ourselves one morning, and it was lovely to just leave the little ones playing at the house and the big ones sleeping in, and enjoy being together…without them! We were just five minutes down the road from three different state parks. We started on a trail at Sunset Beach State Park and then hiked up onto the cliffs along the ocean and into Shore Acres State Park. It was so beautiful!! The morning was cool and misty, and there were long lines of rocks along the coastline that made the water spray up in huge hundred-foot-high plumes when the waves crashed into them. (I didn't have our zoom lens, but look at this picture, for example!) Sam and I could NOT get enough of it.

I know all these pictures look basically the same, but each wave was so different. Some sprayed up in columns. Some broke across flat rocks and made whirlpools and waterfalls. Some crashed over outcroppings and formed impossibly-located pools and channels lapping back to make new patterns with the oncoming waves.

This was my favorite—a huge waterfall that only formed every so often, when a big enough wave crashed at just the right angle over the rock.

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Our own little beach

One never expects to really do much playing in the water on the beach in Oregon. But we were lucky enough to have some sunny afternoons, and while I didn't get IN the water myself, the children seemed to stay warm enough! They would run in and play and then come out and dry off and warm up, and I mostly held Ziggy and Teddy's hands as they got braver and braver jumping over the waves, and watched everyone laughing and making up games and burying each other in the sand. It was lovely. And this picture above makes me so happy every time I look at it! Look at Seb's smile! I love seeing that smile.

The other great thing is just that we were all by ourselves here, which always makes a place feel like your own. It was great not to have to worry that we might be bothering someone…or to have anyone bothering us! Ha ha. It was such a great little secluded spot.

The bravest among us.

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The Southern Coast

 

Before when we've taken this trip we've always stayed on the upper end of the coast, and we love it there. We love the steam train, and Rockaway Beach, and we love to go to the Tillamook Creamery and get ice cream and cheese. But when I planned this trip I didn't even know if the Tillamook Creamery—or anything—would be open again after the pandemic closures! It was too sad to think of NOT being able to go there, and I found a rental house down on the Southern Coast that looked good, so I figured we'd just find new things to do in a new place!

But there was a general uproar when I said we might head down the coast without going up to Tillamook first. It turned out that the Creamery WAS open, and the coastal drive was just as fast as the other way, with the added bonus that we could eat at our favorite restaurant, The Fish Peddler, if we went up that way first. So that was settled! We took the loveliest route (bypassing Portland on small roads) to Tillamook Bay and then planned to drive all the way down the coast from there to Coos Bay where we were staying.

While we waited for lunch, we played on the rocky beach of the bay. Teddy discovered that when he lifted up any of the rocks, a whole bunch of tiny crabs would scuttle away. They were so cute! Junie managed to catch one in a shell:

And Gus was totally enthralled with them! He made cute squeaky noises at them to show how cute they were.

The daisies were out in full force as well!

Somehow I have driven up the lower part of the Oregon/California Coast (above San Francisco, and through Crescent City etc.) and I have driven the upper part between Netarts and Seaside, nearly up to Washington, but I have never been along the middle part of the coast. It was such a beautiful drive! Sam and I loved it. There are beautiful rocky cliffs and green forests, as on the upper coast, but as you get further south there is also a long stretch of sand dunes right along the beach, which was cool to see. And there are lots of bays and inlets and bridges, many built in the same Art Deco style.

We ended up driving back north a little ways (on another day) to find the sand dunes. It was a little tricky because everywhere seemed geared completely toward ATV's and not just people playing in the dunes, but we did finally find a spot where ATV's weren't allowed. (We actually looked into renting one for the big boys, and they were excited about that, but it turned out Abe couldn't drive anyone except himself, and Sam and I didn't want to have to leave the little kids behind and drive one, so that didn't work out either. The big boys were SUCH good sports about it! Even though they were disappointed.) We had a good time anyway, jumping around and digging in the sand.

Gus blundered around falling down every two seconds, and laughing about it. Sometimes he would just stay down and start rolling rather than try to get up again. He was THE DIRTIEST by the end. But he enjoyed every second of it!

Another fun thing on the southern coast, south of Coos Bay in Bannon, was this little wild animal park/zoo. They had quite a few cool animals like tigers and lions and gorillas, and the kids even got to pet a baby cheetah. There were lots of goats and deer to pet too. Gus and Ziggy and Teddy loved it!

A fox with his nose tucked under his tail—I didn't know they really slept like that!

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Strawberries and Hazelnuts

Earlier this summer we took a family trip to Oregon. We'd planned to go last summer, but luckily didn't have anything non-cancellable scheduled when the pandemic began. And then we ended up selling our house and moving, so it was all for the best anyway!

But this year…I knew it might be THE LAST YEAR our whole family could all take a trip together! Which is almost too sad to think about, and I tried NOT to think much about it, but it did feel important to make sure we had something planned so the summer wouldn't just slip away in a moment the way it always feels like it does. Thankfully Sam and the older boys were able to arrange time off work so we could go!

It is always a long drive, but we have trip bags and trip toys that the kids look forward to, and by some providence even the youngest kids are pretty good travelers! The drive was almost miraculous this time—our oldest boys sat up front and we talked and talked and talked for hours while the younger kids played semi-quietly together in back. It was amazing. When in normal life do you ever have time for those kinds of long conversations with your teenagers? I wanted it to last forever.

We stopped and got donuts for breakfast and Gus was very pleased to sit and eat his own donut in the parking lot. And then we found a nice tree-shaded rest stop to have our picnic lunch (it was SO HOT everywhere—Oregon was having record 110-degree heat, so the shade felt essential!). Ziggy said as we drove up, matter-of-factly, "This is the worst pwace in the wo-wold." We were quite taken aback and asked him what was so bad about it, and all we could get out of him was that there were "so many long, long twees." Well! It was worth taking a picture of the worst place in the world, so we did:

(He's taking it pretty well, I think).And here we all are later that night at a Mexican restaurant in Woodburn. We remembered eating here last time we came, and how there were places for us all to sit without taking up the entire restaurant (no mean feat in some of these little towns!). Sam and I sat at our own table and let the kids fend for themselves. (In this picture Seb and Ziggy are watching a train go by, and Gus is attempting to spill his water.) Poor Malachi had his food forgotten, but other than that it was a great dinner!

This time, and last time

Oh look, I was pregnant last time too. With Ziggy, it must have been. (Nice snarl, Seb.)

And then we were finally "home" to our Hazelnut House! It's funny that it really does almost feel like home. This is our third time staying there! We love it. Ziggy was SO happy to find "another baby Ikea" to go with his own dog, Baby Ikea. Look how much alike they are! (The dog he brought from home on his right; the dog we found at this house on his left.) I was worried that he wouldn't want to leave the other dog at the house when we left, but it was fine—he does remember it fondly when I show him these pictures, though!

And Gus discovered/adopted this big brown bear. I remember little Abe playing with this same bear the first time we stayed here! Gus loved it, but couldn't really carry it very well, which made for some very sad and whiny bouts of him trying to walk around with the bear and falling down and tripping over it repeatedly. 

I should explain that—basically—the whole reason we come and stay at this house is to eat fresh Oregon strawberries. They are the best strawberries ever, and there are several berry farms nearby. We talk about them repeatedly and longingly in between our visits here. But this time, because of the heat wave, we were worried that the strawberries might be adversely affected. The first day we went to pick, they were a little dry and shriveled, but thankfully by the next day and then even more the next (we picked strawberries every day!) the heat was less intense and they had recovered and were perfect and red and sweet again! Thank goodness!

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