Driftwood Forts

One of the great vexing mysteries of Oregon Coast beach life is: why do some people who have beach fires roast up their empty cans and bottles of beer, liquor or energy drinks in the fire?

I encountered such a sight the other day on one of my meanderings. I saw a magnificent fort, went to investigate, ducked inside a real spacious beauty with a roof, windows, and a sleeping/make out/pass out/sex alcove, and found a fire pit with five or six roasted cans of beer. Why? Why? Why? It makes no sense. I love that these people, most certainly locals, are outlaw partying in unique Oregon style on their socialist beaches in the midst of a quarantine. But why burn up the cans and bottles? There is certainly no aesthetic effect. It can’t smell good and actually ruins the soothing smell of wood smoke. Do they get some kind of weird kick from it? Is it fun? Is this primarily a dumb dude thing? What the hell is going on?

Surfers surfed in the roiling river, between the north and south jetties. The incoming tide sent up perfect waves. It seemed insane to be out there, but probably was necessary to preserve a semblance of sanity.

The seals were right there with them. They were just having fun and munching fish at the same time.

Rain fell. The ocean was green and white, churning and churning. It would outlast us all. As the poet Richard Hugo wrote, “We are absurd.”

Never is that more obvious than now. What’s that saying about a trained seal…? Well, they could run the federal government better than it’s being run now, and they wouldn’t try to enrich themselves, either.

A man built a fort, a solid hangout fort. He decorated it with an empty can of Mickey’s found in the wood. Fort Mickey! Oh the goodness of the fortified green of Mickey’s malt liquor, but really, you need the short, squat, wide-mouth jar for the best effect. The tall can seems classless, more like a Miller Lite.

An old rock hound approached the fort building man. They met. The rock hound sported an orange mustache out of the Civil War. He gave an instant lesson in rock hounding, agates and jasper and such. He laughed at the can and wanted it for future cash. The fort man told him he needed it for art’s sake! They both laughed at that.

Rock hound left to go tumble and polish. Fort man kept on fortifying. The seals came in closer to watch.

I felt energized on a weekday morning and went to a remote beach to build driftwood forts and sculptures.

As I built, my mind flooded with questions. Sometimes I empty my mind when I build forts, but sometimes it fills up. This morning, it filled up, filled up with inquiry.

Some questions, posed in the second person:

How long since you’ve read a book for an hour in one sitting?

When was the last time you admitted error in relationship to judging a human being?

When did you last experience solitude?

When did you last truly follow through in something that required concentration, time and effort?

When did you last support an artist, musician or writer from your community?

When did you last abandon an assumption?

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and it wasn’t about your physical appearance?

When did you last reach out to help someone? Or check in?

When was the last time you wrote a card or letter to someone?

When was the last time you used a cliché to deflect an opportunity to live an authentic life? Like using a cliché such as “I’m putting this on the back burner.”

When did you last experience unbridled joy?

When is the last time you sat around a fire?

When was the last time your practiced forgiveness?

When did you last kick out the jams?

When was the time you experienced wonder?

When was the last time you told someone you loved them?

When was the last time you walked somewhere without a destination in mind?

When was the last time you said something to a member of the homeless population?

When was the last time you talked to an animal?

When was the last time you took the high road?

Why do so many people want to traffic in the gutter?

When was the last time you swung on a swing set?

When was the last time you played tetherball?

The questions kept coming as I moved down the beach building, shoring up, creating.

I meandered a narrow strip of beach north of Newport at high tide. The last time I’d here I was a teacher with my students and we were making some kind of weird Oregon history with the most visits to separate Oregon beaches by high school students in a single day—nine. That record will never be broken. That was quite a day and fine memories of it gave me a pleasant vertigo.

Not long into my meandering, I saw what appeared to be a log jam at the entrance of a large culvert. I decided to investigate because there was nothing better to do.

It was not a log jam. It was a fort, one of the largest driftwood forts I’d ever encountered. (No photograph could do it justice because of the lighting and its behemoth size.)

Before entering I came across a fire pit with blackened wood and cans of fancy ice tea strewn about. That struck me as odd. Typically I find containers of alcohol of one kind or the other.

I also discovered a round of wood with writing on top in multiple colors of Sharpie. I read the writing. It was the serenity prayer from AA. That was a first in all my driftwood fort days.

The fort beckoned so I entered it. It was almost like a human beaver lodge in its construction, spacious beyond belief, 20 feet in length, three rooms, roofed, sturdy on sides, benches, shelving. It occurred to me that people may have been using it for a home.

Its makers left behind their names—Travis and Ashley—and the date of their creation. This was their third fort built on this beach. Travis and Ashley also decorated the fort with other colorful signage lettered in groovy typography.

I sat down on a bench inside the fort and wondered about its provenance. An instant creative writing lesson for students formed in my mind. I would show them a brief slide show of what I had seen and let them riff away.

Who were Travis and Ashley and how had they come to building incredible driftwood forts, drinking tea, and fighting for an announcing/affirming their sobriety? I truly wish I could meet them. I wanted to know everything and not just imagine their story.

My initial thought about Fort Sober was that Travis and Ashley had taken fort building in a direction entirely alien to me. A few minutes later, I didn’t think that. I think we are both doing the same sort of thing: healing, expression, creativity and activity for mental and physical fitness, and mind expansion/contraction through building, building, building something that won’t last, can’t last, but then building again and again, and understanding and accepting the Zen nature of driftwood fort building, and by extension, daily life.

And, of course, it’s damn fun to build! Joy is god. (That’s no typo.)