To Shining Sea
Have you heard much about the Oregon coast? I certainly hadn’t, but it is glorious. If I were to try and equate it to somewhere my fellow Long Islanders might understand I’d probably call it Montauk in the Mountains. Beach town after beach town perched high on the stony cliffs of the Pacific Northwest.
We cruised along the 101 from Lincoln City all the way through Brookings, craning our necks in awe for pretty much the entire stretch. We made a few pitstops to try and capture the grandeur by photograph and mostly failing, but we did manage to see some real live whales. We were standing on a cliff in Lincoln City peering out into the mighty Pacific and there they were, breaching and spraying ocean water, their tremendous tails waving goodbye as they took to the depths once more. Totally unexpected and absolutely wonderful. Whales are magnificent creatures.
We crossed the border into northern California after dark. As we cruised along the 101 through plain little towns and forested mountains, I began to take note of these particular road signs we’d been passing throughout the day. They read “Tsunami Hazard Zone.” Despite our island roots, that’s not a sign either of us had ever seen, and now that night had fallen, they began to really creep me out.
Image via Carleton.edu
Ominous.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew we weren’t in any sort of new danger, but the mere idea was enough to send my imagination spinning. I used to have a lot of dreams about massive waves when I was younger. In one of them a tsunami swept away an entire city while I watched from the new ocean floor and in another a skyscraper sized wave breached the clouds as I looked out from the cockpit of an airplane. These dreams were powerful and terrifying. So there I was cliffside, chugging up this narrow road in the dark, dark night, with visions of a titanic wave crashing down and sweeping Fishtank into the ocean below with us inside. That’s just a ghastly notion. Somehow, I sort of enjoyed it.
That’s my relationship with the ocean, I suppose. Awestruck reverence and abject terror.
When I wasn’t picturing our apocalyptic demise, I was peering out the window at the glittering stars, trying to finally see my Milky Way. It was dark and desolate enough on that strange northern California coast, but I couldn’t get the view I desired while simultaneously keeping the van from sailing off a cliff. Such is life, again…I guess.
We were coming into town late again so we started searching for Air BnBs along our route. Pickings were slim, but we chanced upon one eventually, not too far from the point we wanted to reach before calling it a night. The description explained that it was actually a trailer on the owner’s property, which was up a quarter-mile gravel driveway just outside of town. This sounded a little strange, but we were only staying long enough to get a good night’s sleep and a morning shower, so we booked it.
It was more than a little strange.
The description neglected to mention the long and treacherous road that led to that quarter-mile driveway. We wound up another mountain, through dark trees and past old shabby houses with rusted chicken wire fences. Forsaken pickup trucks on cinder blocks and old farm equipment littered the yards.
Our headlights caught a strange creature skittering across the way as we turned up another steep hill. Neither of us could make out what it was. It ran on all fours and had the general outline of a fox, but its legs were pencil thin and they moved rapidly in a way that looked almost like the brushes on a streetsweeper. Probably a Chupacabra.
When we finally reached the misty gravel drive, Gabby had already grown a little remorseful of the booking. She was getting tense. I had to gun it up one particularly steep portion and she nervously yelled at me to calm the hell down. I was calm, at that point at least.
Pulling up to the trailer in the middle of that strange dark night felt like the opening scene of a slasher film. This thing is owned by an artist and it certainly shows in its…eccentricities. Strange photographs all over the place, odd yellowed books stacked ornately on the shelf, a veil hung around the small chandelier above the bed. Had we arrived in the daytime I think we’d both have found the place quaint and cool, but the night has this way of giving everything a sinister hue.
Gabby was petrified, bulging her eyes at every observation and flinching at every odd sound, of which there were a great many. I was pretty creeped out, too, but mostly I was laughing about the story we’d have to tell if we survived the night. That is until I had to run back out to the van to grab something. Then I turned into every jumpy little kid who has to shut the lights off before they head up the basement steps. I ran like hell.
After throwing together a weird makeshift dinner in the decrepit Jeffrey Dahmer kitchen, it was time for bed. I agreed to leave the light on for Gabby, who was still in a state of terror. Okay, I didn’t mind the light staying on. I awoke at some point before dawn to find her still awake, eyes wide, blanket pulled tightly to her nose.
I couldn’t quite get the shot I wanted, but I felt like I needed to include a visual.
In the morning we threw our stuff together and got the hell out of there, snapping a few photos of the mist-shrouded property for posterity before we left. Down the gravel mountain and out into the world again for our journey down the PCH toward glorious San Francisco.
