They packed up their things and started up the gravel path to a clearing. They came to a sign and Michael read something about a memorial not far up a trail that led up a steep incline and into a phalanx of glistening shrubs.

“Let’s go check it out,” said Michael. “We’re teachers, right?”

“You lead the way.”

Ten minutes later they leaned against a wooden fence that overlooked the beach and out to Cape Falcon. Behind them was a bronze plaque cemented into a two-foot high base of river rock. Jones swept away some conifer needles and lichen and read aloud: “The people of Oregon hereby express their gratitude to Matt Kramer of the Associated Press, whose clear and incisive newspaper articles were instrumental in gaining public support for passing of the 1967 Beach Bill. This landmark legislation guarantees forever the public’s right to the free and uninterrupted use of one of Oregon’s most popular recreation attractions, its ocean beaches.”

“I don’t really know anything about my state, except the Oregon Trail and Lewis and Clark,” said Michael. “Is any other history really taught in schools?”

Jones didn’t respond. He waited and traced the grooves of the text. “I wish I had been a reporter,” he said..

It was a classic non sequitur that only an unfulfilled teacher would construct but never recognize as constructing.

They hardly talked on the hike up Mount Neahkahnie, that is, when they hiked together at all. Jones was surprised when at the halfway point Michael picked up her pace and moved ten, then 20, then 50 yards ahead of him. He watched her, not the horizon, and made no attempt to catch up. When he reached the summit, she was writing in her journal. She looked up at him and said they were notes for a lesson plan. On the hike back down, Michael forged ahead again, and when Jones reached the parking lot, she lay flat on her back on the Subaru’s hood, her t-shirt pulled up to reveal a tattoo of a wavy orange sun around her navel, which at the very moment Jones noticed, was lit up by a sunbeam. He wanted to say something, wanted to go write a haiku on her stomach, but he refrained. Instead, he rapped lightly on the hood of the car, Michael came to life and smiled at him. They got into the Subaru, she turned on Christian radio, and they were off.

Not far from Mount Neahkahnie, Jones stopped in a state park wayside so he could use the restroom. The facility was closed for remodeling but Jones saw a Port-a-let erected 30 yards away near the edge of a cliff. He exited the Subaru and started walking toward the Port-a-let. Michael got out and wandered around.

Jones opened the door with his right hand, clutched his keys in his left, and then held his breath before entering. He eased inside and quickly noticed the toilet was pitched forward a few degrees and it made standing upright difficult. He had no intention of soiling his hand or jeans so he decided to support himself by placing his left hand on the wall over the pit opening. Finally inside, with the increased pitch accelerating the motion, the door swung shut with such force that it shook the car keys from Jones’s grip and they dropped directly into the opening, splashing into the waste.

“Fuck!” said Jones in such a way that he didn’t inhale. He wasn’t the type of man to have another set of keys hidden under the bumper or have any tools in the trunk. In fact he didn’t even have a jack to change flat tires. And he had left his phone back at the apartment on purpose.

A few minutes remained for Jones to devise and commit to a course of action, an action he knew would probably reveal to Michael his authentic self, whatever that was. All he knew was that his keys were buried in feces, he was on a fantastic date with an artist, a teacher, and she was most likely walking toward the Port-a-let at this very moment. It immediately occurred to Jones that all of his old ways of presenting himself to women were useless.

He had been holding his breath since entering the Port-a-let and now felt heat and pressure overtaking his head and ribs. He exhaled forcefully and then sucked in with his mouth as much fetid air as his lungs could hold. He had as much time as he could hold his breath to make a decision.

Jones heard a sound on the roof of the Port-a-let. Something had landed; it could only be a gull. He took another peek through a slit in the Port-a-let and saw a sky one shade of gray, and the ocean tumbling hard in gray scale with tints of forest green. It was the perfect duo-tone image of the Oregon Coast.

“Fuck!” he said again. He felt ready to pass out and couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He moved his face as close to the slit as he could without touching the wall. He exhaled and then smelled fresh sea air. He inhaled deeply and then charged out of the Port-a-let. He saw Michael edge closer, now 20 yards away, walking near the cliff lazily his direction, staring right to the ocean. She tossed a rock. Her coat was gone, her cords were slung so low on her hips he could see her black underwear. He watched her watch the ocean and thought of the Grateful Dead’s song “Sugar Magnolia” and noticed for the first time she wore a diver’s watch. She kept coming straight at him, leisurely in trippy right angles, but still hadn’t turned her head away from the sea. He felt a draft into his groin and realized he had forgotten to zip up his pants and buckle his belt.

Jones fastened himself, moved forward to Michael, and saw her flash him another James Cain smile. The first thing he would do was ask her a question: did she have a phone? He didn’t know because he hadn’t seen her use one all day.

His education had begun. It would involve a type of collaboration heretofore unknown to him, but that everyone unknowingly desires.

It was a good 40 miles to Mount Neahkahnie and Jones and Michael talked about teaching as they headed south on Highway 101. They passed Seaside, Cannon Beach, and then climbed Arch Cape, bored through the tunnel, and entered a foggy haze of one hue of gray that disallowed any views beyond 500 feet. On the descent into Oswald West State Park, the sun’s rays pulverized the fog into a bright day with vistas of towering green conifers and limitless dreams floating in from the ocean. The weather had instantly changed and if it was sunny like this every day on the Oregon Coast, there’d be millions of residents, no wildlife, and espresso stands on the beaches. The perpetual gray and rain and mold and rust ended any developer or Chamber of Commerce booster’s hope for that future. But they never stopped trying and thankfully a vacation house or condo built on sand overlooking the ocean would occasionally slide into the sea, reminding everyone what always ran the show at the Oregon Coast.

“Pull over!” Michael yelled. “There’s a something moving in the ditch!”

Jones didn’t want to stop, this was a date after all, but he complied and brought the Subaru to a halt some 30 yards past a brown writhing mass off the road.

It was a deer.

They got out of the vehicle and walked wordlessly over to the creature. Michael led the way. Jones had never been this close to an animal in the wild before. He smelled something strange, something sweet and acrid. Michael knelt down by the deer and Jones saw the left side of its body caved in by the impact of a high-speed vehicle. He also noticed a creamy velvet fuzz on stubs that would never be antlers. Jones heard the rumble of a creek below. The deer gave up a huge gasp and died right there, its eyes going still and black. Michael sat down in the shoulder and put her hands into her hair. They still hadn’t said anything to each other.

A log truck blew by and honked its horn. Michael stood up and went to the Subaru. She retrieved the Polaroid camera and walked to within inches of the deer. She shot away, kneeling, crouching, circling the body, emptying a cartridge and then loading another out of her coat pocket. She emptied that one too and never bothered to separate the prints as they churned out of the camera.

Jones watched all of this and didn’t say a word. He’d never witnessed this kind of attention to detail. He’d never done anything with this kind of attention to detail. Back in the car, Jones asked Michael what she was going to do with the photographs.

“Give this deer some dignity.”

“How will you do that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

They resumed their journey to Mount Neahkahnie and didn’t say anything else about the deer. They were quiet for a while until Jones started in about school. Michael interrupted and insisted on a moratorium on “teacher talk.” Instead, she tuned into a station broadcasting a histrionic evangelist and began perfectly mimicking his mellifluous voice conferring salvation on some heathen who had called in, expecting a flogging, then redemption. Jones barely got in a word during her performance and couldn’t stop laughing.

They drove along for 15 minutes and Jones saw a trailhead down the highway, and it headed west into the trees and presumably ended at the ocean.

“Let’s go to the beach before we hike,” Jones said. “What do you think about that?”

“That sounds perfect. We should eat something there.”

Jones turned the Subaru off Highway 101, into a small parking lot.

“I’ve been here before,” he said. “On a youth group outing in grade school. Christian. We took a bus here. This trail leads to Short Sands Beach.”

“You were in a Christian youth group?” said Michael. “You don’t seem like someone who was in youth group.”

“Remind me when we get to the beach to tell you about the girl I made out with on that trip. It was pretty sexy for grade school. Her name was Shelley and she wore a sea shell necklace.”

“I can’t wait. I’ll mimic the preacher after I hear it and condemn you to hell.”

They entered a cathedral of Western red cedar, Western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and walked single file down a dirt path with a creek rushing by on their right. Water dripped from the branches of the trees. If you listened closely, you could hear it.

Michael led the way and brought along her backpack and cooler. The trees were enormous, explosively green, some towering straight to the sky, some bent at bizarre angles, a few with their tops blown off and cauterized by lightning. Some of the biggest trees rested on the ground, their massive and gnarly root wads still intact, with dangling fibrous tentacles poised to ensnare an unsuspecting child. The trees may have been rotting on the ground but they weren’t really dead. Hundreds of ferns and seedlings grew from their trunks. These logs nursed new life in sporadic ways that didn’t conform to any pattern. This was not a plantation that most Oregonians identified as a forest.

“God I Jones when things are asymmetrical!” said Michael. “I want a crooked bumper sticker that reads Down With Symmetry!”

Jones realized he’d never heard anyone use the word asymmetrical in a sentence before.

“This light is perfect for painting. I’ve got to bring the kids here,” she said. “And by the way, never use the word ‘dappled’ in my presence. It’s at the top of my shit list of words and things I hate.”

“You have a shit list of words and things you hate?”

“Yes, at home on a chalkboard.”

“What’s another word?”

“Resonate.”

“I hate ‘component.’”

“I loathe ‘plethora.’”

“Myriad is worse. What are some of the things on the list?”

“McDonald’s. Monsanto. Budweiser. Advertising.”

They kept walking down the path exchanging words and things they despised and Jones could see how Michael might have clashed with administrators. She had opinions and an aesthetic. Jones had never met a principal with the latter.

Every 30 seconds or so, they passed drenched mutts and surfers returning from the ocean, carrying boards and discussing the waves. Everyone sort of nodded a greeting.

The path ended at a clearing overlooking a beach with thousands of pieces of bleached driftwood interlocked together. It was a raft of driftwood waiting to launch with the next big gale. Children could build a thousand forts here and their parents would never have to pay a cent for the privilege of using this beach because this was Oregon.

In the distance, a couple hundred surfers bobbed in the sea. The foreground held more surfers and their entourages lounged about playing hackey sack, football, drinking beer, tending fires. At that moment, they were pretty much the most beautiful people in Oregon.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here. This is 90 minutes from Portland,” said Michael. “This is incredible. It makes me want to learn to surf. Should we learn to surf?”

“I’ll watch you,” Jones said.

“C’mon! Isn’t the ocean calling you? We’re at the beach, you know.”

He didn’t want to surf; it held absolutely no interest for him, although he did like watching surfers. He didn’t tell her that, but she was right about the ocean.

Michael started jogging down a gravel path to the beach. Jones watched her leave the path, leap onto a makeshift driftwood bridge, and tiptoe across it while simultaneously extricating the Polaroid camera from her backpack. It was all performed in an undulating motion that was more of a dance than practical human movement.

They played on the beach for an hour and ate lunch from the cooler. She asked him about his family. Her family was all gone, a Dad she never met killed at the tail end of the Vietnam War and an indifferent, medicated mother lost to the New Age. She had no siblings. Jones had an older sister, also a teacher, science, or was it math? Everyone in his family was a teacher; it was all he had ever known growing up.

“When are you going to tell me the story about the girl and the youth group?” said Michael as she petted a misshapen cattle dog that had come over to them.

“How about the next time we visit?” he said.

“That sounds fine.”

Jones drove slowly into Warrenton, sandwiched between RVs, and he and Michael talked about yet another round of new curriculum mandates from the state, including a requirement that all U.S. history teachers cover the Irish potato famine. They laughed about that mandate until a disorganized legislature of Western gulls appeared in the sky, now four shades of gray and no longer neatly stacked upon one another, but rather in jagged parallel. One of the gulls landed on a silver and maroon RV, the Arctic Trekker, and Michael let out a shriek of delight. The gull looked right at her and she had it rendered in less than a minute. “He’s got a nick over his left eye, did you see that?” she said.

Jones saw it. It seemed like all the gulls on the Oregon Coast had a nick here or a ding there. More than a few had only one pink leg and apparent scorch marks on their feathers. They had survived by adjusting, adapting, and they knew how to ride the wind.

A thrift store came into view and Michael suggested they stop and investigate. Who knows what golden kitsch they might discover inside she said. Just to discover a new variation of Oregon Coast mold excited her even more. As Michael delineated the various mold smells she’d encountered since moving to Astoria, it occurred to Jones that for the first time in his life he was in the company of someone who perceived life through all the senses.

They entered the thrift store’s wine cellar doors and sleigh bells jingled. They walked into one cavernous room, a hangar really, packed to the rafters with more merchandise than Jones had ever seen in any thrift store in Oregon. No one was there, not even a stoned proprietor. A few feet inside, Michael stopped Jones short, palming his chest with her left hand, and made an exaggerated gesture like she was taking a drag off a joint, smoking a new strain of mold.

“Let’s find each other something indigenous coastal,” she said. We’ve got 15 minutes. What do you think?”

It was about the best collaborative idea Jones had heard in his life.

For a minute they walked silently together, past the tables of ancient farm implements, around decrepit wardrobes full of forlorn holiday decorations. They stopped at the threshold of the book department. All bibliophiles had to do was step across a tiny meandering trench in the floor and they could avail themselves of the most heaving, mismatched, misfit, beguiling, obscure collection of books, pamphlets, government documents, and historical ephemera in Oregon, if not the world. Most of everything had no price and speckles of mold somewhere. Long ago, some fisher poet with writer’s block had jackhammered a trench from the floor to channel the rivulet that coursed through the hangar whether it rained or not. At times, during high flows, even tiny fish and crustaceans might float their way through the store.

Fifteen seconds after crossing the rivulet, Jones and Michael parted without saying a word. He hustled to the novels and Michael followed the water to the poetry.

An hour later they met at the front counter, each with a book. The proprietor still hadn’t materialized and probably wouldn’t for days. They plopped down a couple bucks, some vermiculated pennies, and walked into drizzle.

In the Subaru, Jones handed Michael a tattered paperback copy of Ken Kesey’s fat novel Sometimes a Great Notion with a groovy black and white cover.

“I’ve heard of this book,” she said.

“Well, if you live on the Oregon Coast you pretty much have to read it. It’s set here and has some incredible writing on nature. I read it back in Portland but I’m not sure I really grasped what was going on at times. It’s so dense and biblical in parts.”

She thumbed the pages and then opened the book and read a sentence: “Give me a dark smeary shiny night full of rain. That’s when the fear starts. That’s when you sell the juice.”

“Shit!” she said. “Everyone here says we won’t be able to handle the rain. They wear rain like a scarlet letter.”

“Or badge of honor,” he said.

“I’m ready for it.”

Michael produced a thin book from a pocket of her trench coat. She handed him Seal Rock by John Haislip, a collection of poems.

“It’s about the Oregon Coast,” she said. “I’ve never heard of the poet. Maybe you can use it in English.”

Jones turned to the last poem, a routine he had when reading unknown collections of poetry. Could the poet finish? Would he end with his best lines?

The poem didn’t look like a poem. It was arranged in blocks of prose. Jones landed on the last paragraph, somewhere in the middle: “…it happens when I begin my little ritual of naming the colors. That’s grey, I say. That is not grey, I say. But more than grey, a white grey, green grey, blue grey, rose grey—my little ritual—and then, and then it overtakes me.”

Ten minutes later they hit Fort Stevens and a wispy fog shrouded the grounds. Michael scrambled over the stone fortifications taking Polaroids of the artillery pieces while Jones imagined what a cannonade might have sounded like. At times they lost sight of each other, but eventually regrouped at a picnic table where Michael laid out the prints she had just taken; they were all black and white and the only subject was rust.

“Neil Young was right,” said Jones and Michael smiled. He wanted to say more but didn’t know how because he’d previously never thought rust could be so beautiful or alive. It never slept at the Oregon Coast. It was the official texture.