Weekend Update: Coastal Craving Edition

Having as of late been missing the salty smell and endless views of the ocean more than I could bear, this past Saturday I packed myself, a large iced coffee, an old school Nike bag (thanks, Grandpa!), and one very enthusiastic pug into my car and then pointed it (north by) northwest, to Cannon Beach.

Thirteen miles outside of my Haystack Rock-laden destination traffic came to a sudden and perpetual halt. I sat patiently for thirty minutes (Iggy sat less patiently) before being told by a lovely woman who had walked a mile up the road to investigate on foot that the last stretch of Highway 26 was officially closed due to an accident, and that it wasn’t slated to reopen for two hours.

I had previously told myself I was prepared to wait thirty more minutes, but two hours in my car with beach-combing legs and an anxious pug was out of the question, and so I set off back down 26 until I came to the Tillamook turn-off, a road I’ve never taken, but one I was sure would eventually lead me back to the coast, and the 101.

(Storytelling aside: Have you ever played telephone down a line of gridlocked traffic? It was actually sort of amusing: being flagged down by car after car as drove slowly back down the 26, stopping briefly to tell people that they might want to turn around too, unless they had two hours and a good book to read.)

Thus, a drive that was originally slated to look like this:

Actually ended up looking like this:

The detour ensured I didn’t make it to the coast until about an hour later than originally planned (and that I wouldn’t make it to Cannon Beach until much later), but the quiet windy drive down Highway 53 was lovely and relaxing, laden with trailhead turn-offs and river views, everything proudly green and damp and smelling of spring.

I reached the sleepy river town of Nehalem and instantly knew where I was, and smiled as the sun came out just as I pulled into Manzanita, one of my favorite coastal cities I don’t visit often enough.

The scenic detour was worth it in and of itself, but the views waiting for me in Manzanita were even more breathtaking than I had remembered.

After moseying on the beach with Iggy until all six of our legs were soaking wet, and visiting my favorite coastal store (hi, Unfurl!), and having watched ominous clouds grumbling up the coastline, I decided to race the impending storm to Cannon Beach, and managed to secure some quality beach time before some impressively strong wind started pelting rain into my ears.

Coastal craving: Satisfied. For a few weeks, anyway.

Hiking Into Green Valleys

I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.

I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...

Rivers And Roads

[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]

It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...

Story, The First: The Pug Who Moved To California

Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.

Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.

I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?

(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)

(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...

Found

This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.

Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...