Salmonberry Man

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , , ,

The boughs of hemlocks and Sitka spruces seesawed in the breeze. Ripe salmonberries hung in the brush, tiny tangerines in a vast field of green. I remembered when I used to pick salmonberries, eat them along abandoned logging roads with the dogs, mush them into a compote for ling cod on the barbecue. I once picked salmonberries along coastal streams and tossed them into slack pools. Seconds later, a rearing salmon would gobble the bounty. I would never see the fish, only the ripple.

I was once a salmonberry-gathering man, but then I got away from that habit. I got away from so many good habits when I left the refuge in 2008. I long to become a salmonberry man again. To do that, I need to place a big bet, a bet on myself, on my abilities to invent and reinvent. I have no idea what the odds are on this bet.

It was a gray morning. I sat in the car drinking cheap cold brew, waiting for an extraordinary friend to join me for a hike in the woods.

My friend arrived even though I was waiting in the wrong parking lot. He intuited that I would be in the wrong parking lot and went there instead. Such is the unique nature of our friendship.

We hiked the trail and conversed. It was a trail through a mixed hardwood and conifer forest that seemed to have naturally seeded itself, a rarity in an Oregon forest. We saw a rabbit and a squirrel. We saw a majestic big leaf maple and a twisted spruce. We saw a dead tree with nothing but mushrooms for branches.

The salmonberries were prolific and I was hungry and dragging. Here and there we stopped to eat them. I hadn’t tasted salmonberries in ten years. It all came back to me. I was instantly revived and refreshed by eating salmonberries. There was a new pop in my step and energy in my talk.

I’ve got to find a new home where I can harvest salmonberries around the edges of the property or trespass through a few fallow fields to find them. Those homes are out there, waiting to be reclaimed by salmonberry-gathering people.

Withholding Judgment

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , ,

One tries not to judge such sights as a young man unleashing his two big dogs on the beach; the dogs go wild, run, jump, dash, dig, swim, tussle and try to engage the man in play; he is on his phone the whole time and not taking pictures of his dogs; he ignores the dogs and the ocean.

But he was there, the ocean was there, and he did bring his dogs and let them run free. He did take off his socks and shoes (something I never do).

There is skepticism in my skepticism of this man. There is curiosity and empathy. I’m beginning to see anew at the beach and in life. How many of us get to say that?

His walk lasted 20 minutes. He leashed his mutts and they made their way through the crumbling jetty and back to his big truck in the parking lot. (I had followed them from there.)

That 20 minutes might have saved the man. Perhaps it wasn’t about the dogs. Perhaps he was in crisis and needed the ocean to survive.

I know something about that.

A greater power lies in observation and questioning than generalization and judgment. It’s how I want to live and write these days.

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A Christening

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , , ,

I sat in the fort at the South Jetty I constructed a month ago. I commenced a new fort message writing project, this time, right onto the wood with a ballpoint pen.

Pelicans flew by. I smelled the smoke from a nearby beach fire. All the clammers were gone, spent.

I looked up and saw, on the dune trail above me, heading toward the parking lot, a shirtless young man carrying, with his upturned, outstretched hands an infant baby in a blanket. Two young women wearing dresses followed behind carrying tablets, sort of filming, I thought. A documentary crew?

I had never seen anyone carry a baby like that, much less outside, on trail through the dunes.

What?

They disappeared into the dunes.

I couldn’t make this out…then I made it out.

They had just returned from the beach, the ocean, and had performed a christening of some kind. It was the only possible rational and superstitious explanation.

Was this part of their organized religion or a religion of their own devising? Were the Druids back in town? Were they members of The Church of Tom McCall and Oswald West? Could I join? I was a preacher’s kid after all.

So much goes down on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches. Death, life and everything in between and everything outside. I feel privileged to have shared some of my Oregon beach observations with my readers, students and friends over the past two decades. I hope to continue until that last moment at Hart’s Cove…

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

A Pile of Broken Wood and Americans Gone to Seed

NSP Meditations , ,

In a forlorn field, a pile of broken barnwood rose twenty feet into the sky. Rain and indifference had collapsed the barn decades ago and only chunks of the foundation remained. Those who had stacked the wood, once-great planks and beams of spruce, had long since moved away from the river, and were now dead or dead inside from work that was invisible and meant nothing. What a terrible way to die.

Before they left, they never burned the pile. Why? Why leave that behind? They had stacked it after all. I almost have half a mind to trespass and burn the pile on my own. I’d put a call out to the hummingbird I saw fly through fire not far from here and request an encore performance.

I want to know why they didn’t have a final burning of the pile, of a life, and settle the account with the land. A final six-pack in the smoke. I want to know why the only thing left in the field was a bullet-ridden metal chair covered in the most beautiful rust imaginable.

Why are there boats covered in blackberries? Why are there swing sets tilted in overgrown yards? Why are there Cadillacs in the weeds? Why are there RVs sunk to their axles in mud?

There are humans around us like this. We can see them if we look closely. They are beyond regrowth, let alone reconditioning or repurposing. They have gone to seed and the seeds are sterile and will do nothing later notch themselves into the earth.

Why are so many Americans going to seed?

Ode to the Wonder Dog

NSP Meditations , ,

Kali, aka the Wonder Dog, is gone.

A heart attack felled a mighty oak of a dog.

She died at home, on her driveway, in the early morning. She was still investigating to the end.

I came over and helped carry her to her cremation in a similar way that she carried me away from my cremation two years ago.

Jennifer and Holt’s fine Rottweiler, a stoic for the ages. Much wiser than most. Certainly more accepting. Unflappable in these terrible times, storms whipped up by terrible Americans who are dogless in their lives.

I write this ode from the beach where the Wonder Dog and I occasionally rambled. I eat pumpkin pie, her favorite, in her honor. She will always be pumpkin pie to me.

I will never forget the night she bounded into my house on perhaps the most dispiriting night of my life. We went to the carpet together and spirit filled the room. There, our love affair began.

Kali will rest upon the ocean soon and I will build a fort to free mind to remember her. As soon as I write this, I will begin. 

Drizzle at the Sanctuary

NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

Gray clings to the landscape. The river trickles below me. I can hear it but the the blackberries shield it from my eyes.

Traces of drizzle fall. The farmed mowed the tall grass in the fields. Baling will commence soon.

Clyde trots into my mind I have part of his ashes in an envelope at home. They await a spreading on the river, the sanctuary, but the time has not arrived. I will know.

I am writing this in longhand from an iron chair. I use a stolen pen. Seven dogs around me conspire for treats.

I don’t have a burn pile to ignite, and thus I won’t have the opportunity to see another hummingbird fly through fire. That was once in a lifetime. The hummingbird image continues to obsess me. I started a story about it in my head. I have no idea where it will fly, although it feels like an ancient tale.

Writing outside always relaxes me. I particularly enjoy writing when it drizzles. The pen makes arresting indentations in the paper after the paper has been softened by drizzle’s unique application of moisture. A love note written with drizzle would be especially romantic.

I look up. I see a swallow dart through drizzle. The image fascinates me, although not on the magnitude as a hummingbird flying through fire. Perhaps both can be worked into the story.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

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