Coos Bay reflected the color of the early morning sky: purple. In all my years of living at the Oregon Coast, I have never seen a bay this color.

Not a single vehicle in the parking lot. Elmer and I had the boat ramp and bay beach to ourselves. I relished this silence and solitude.

We hit the beach and Elmer zoomed to the wrack line. I looked south and saw snowy egrets a hundred yards away hunting in the shallow water and mud flats. I counted 15. The nearest one began moving my direction and coming closer to shore. I walked toward it on a parallel course.

I have seen a great many snowy egrets in my life but never one hunting 20 yards away in a purple bay.

The egret stopped. I stopped. I watched it stand motionless for 30 seconds and then its beak stabbed the water, a splash arose, then a purple ripple tinged with orange did its mathematical thing. The egret had speared a tiny fish and gobbled it down. I saw the undulation of the egret’s throat swallowing the fish.

I instantly recognized this as the most beautiful sight I have ever witnessed in nature. It was worthy of a haiku so I began composing one that very moment. I recently had read an engrossing book about the history of haiku and how the immortal haikus from the classic era of Sappho all possessed a subtle urgency and mystery in their 17 syllables.

I counted syllables with my fingers. The words weren’t working.

The bay was losing its purple sheen as more light arrived. It was now or never with the haiku. A deadline that must be met or I would never write the haiku. I knew that. Life comes at you this way sometimes and you had best respond with alacrity. Indifference and procrastination lead nowhere except wild lawns and boats marooned forever in back yards.

I looked for Elmer. He was 15 yards away, staring at something in the dune grass. I went over to investigate.

It was a young homeless couple camped out. They were both standing, pulling up their pants. I said good morning. The woman said good morning. She brought a vaping device to her mouth and inhaled. Did she notice the color of her rising?

I turned around and looked for the egret. It was flying away.

Write goddammit! And don’t put the homeless couple in there!

Snowy egret flies

above Coos Bay purple haze

Homeless woman vapes

Elmer and I walked out of our new home in the Empire district of Coos Bay to take our first morning walk here. Destination: Coos Bay itself, the Empire Boat Ramp, and a walk along the beach if the tide proved favorable.

It was 5:50 and dawn had arrived.

We passed derelict houses with derelict RVs, trailers, boats, vehicles and appliances, abandoned in front, back and side yards. We passed vacant storefronts and the donut shop without a sign. One of the more curious aspects of the Empire district is the significant number of businesses without any signage whatsoever. It baffles me.

In the parking lot, I counted three dilapidated vehicles that were clearly mobile domiciles. I also counted two rigs with boat trailers. Someone had beat me here and had been out fishing in the dark and probably sipping a little Crown Royal in their cup of drip coffee.

The tide proved favorable and after ascending to the beach from the parking lot, I let Elmer off leash and he bolted into the bay and found himself chest deep in water. He looked confused but sprinted out and kept running wild through the mudflats.

I noticed gulls clamming and other shorebirds in the distance.

The previous morning I had walked Elmer in Sellwood for the last time. The contrasts in these two walks were seismic but I wasn’t going to write about them. I was through writing about Portland forever.

Now I was a man of the tides again. This walk to Coos Bay would be our walk every morning to begin our new coastal life together.

I was 30 yards down the sand when I knew my creative mind was going to explode with this new morning routine. I also knew I was going to start running again. Shit, this was Steve Prefontaine’s hometown, I had to start running again!

The clanking, clanging and creaking sounds from a massive timber port across the bay filled the air. All those raw logs going to Asia; all those Coos Bay mill jobs that could have been if a true and collective resistance had been mounted decades ago to defeat the destruction of Oregon’s timber industry wrought by far flung bastions of high finance. Instead, rural Oregon blamed environmentalists from Portland and Eugene and served mock spotted owl omelets for breakfast in their diners.

Elmer and I cruised the beach for 30 minutes. We began our walk home and left the parking lot behind.

On the way, we encountered:

A young woman screaming and dancing in a meth-induced frenzy.

A middle-aged woman asleep in the cab of a 90s mini pickup and nearly swallowed by her possessions.

A man in his 70s riding a BMX bike with some kind of knapsack strapped across his back.

An older man living out of his sedan. The radio was on. I heard the voice of a news broadcaster.

These encounters all occurred withing five block of my house. These were the homeless of Empire, my new neighborhood.

Who are they?

I thought after leaving Portland, my writing about homelessness would end. I had a novel to work on. It was time to move on from the subject. There was nowhere else to go with it.

My first morning walk in Empire set me straight.

Meet Danny. I did, on my first afternoon residing in Coos Bay. Elmer and I were walking the bay beach near the Empire Boat Ramp, six blocks from our home, when the meeting occurred. Danny is homeless and lives in a driftwood fort (pictured here). He was born and raised in Coos Bay and graduated from Marshfield High School in 1979. He’s 65. His fort is protected by a stuffed dragon he discovered in a garbage can. Danny said no stuffed animal should ever be thrown away. I agree.

Danny became homeless only recently. He was caring for his uncle who suffers partial dementia. The uncle kicked Danny out for some unknown reason (drinking was involved). He was broke. No, he didn’t know of any places in the area that might provide temporary shelter (there is no such place unless you convert to Christianity). No, he didn’t have any friends who could put him up. Danny was extremely confident that he wouldn’t remain homeless very long. This was his first time.

I gave him five bucks. He thanked me and said he was going to buy a beer, maybe two.

Danny said someone left behind a jar of coconut oil in the fort. (What?) He used it to fry up eggs when he could afford them after scrounging up a few bucks collecting cans. More people should cook with coconut oil said Danny. A pair of tennis shoes washed up ashore. They fit him!

And finally, Danny said he had sort of become friends with an otter who lived in a creek a hundred yards away. He liked watching the otter at dawn and dusk race out to the beach and dig for clams.

I wanted to see that, too!

At eight in the morning on a drizzling Tuesday, I became a burn pile man again.

For some reason, I was holding off firing up a five-foot pile I had built in my new back yard.

Elmer and I had returned from a glorious outing at Horsefall Beach and I looked out my back door, saw the pile, saw the drizzle, noticed the absence of any wind, and knew it was time.

Back on the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge where I served as caretaker for a decade, I was a burn pile master and lit hundreds of them, mostly from dead blackberries and rotten fences. I spent many a long hour tending piles and wrote many thousands and thousands of words in my mind. I also shared some of those burn piles with some special people.

Never once in my life have I used gasoline to ignite a pile and this one was no exception. I kindled fires on opposite side of the pile and lit them with matches. They immediately took.

The pile caught fire much faster than I thought. I hosed it down every now and then.

Elmer the husky was indifferent to the spectacle.

An hour later, the heat was intense and I was using the shovel to hoist wood, branches and brush into the center. If a pile is built correctly, it will collapse upon itself and continue to lessen its footprint.

That’s exactly what happened.

Muscle memory kicked in as I labored. I thought of my dad, not almost two months gone. He would be so pleased where I landed and how I have handled the estate.

I felt great that I could perform this kind of physical labor. So many American and men my age (and a lot younger) cannot or will not given the opportunity.

My dad taught me how to work hard and work well at manual labor. It must be taught on the ground. You can’t learn how on YouTube. You’ll never learn watching Latino men mow your yard.

The new house requires a lot more manual labor. I relish this mandate.

At ten thirty, the sun emerged and burned away the drizzle. I drank a big glass or red wine admiring the fire, then reclined on the grass and…fell asleep! A burn pile, wine-induced morning nap.

I slept for 15 minutes and awakened with smoke blowing my direction. It smelled absolutely wonderful, invigorating, spiritual.

It also smelled like a victory in the existential war I’ve waged the last decade.