Ch-ch-changes, Part III

     And now in our fourth day of travel and on our way up the coast, we entered Oregon and kept bumping into friendly people.  When I stepped out of my car to get gas, an attendant was right there straight out of Andy of Mayberry.  How much do you want?, he asked.  Uh, you fill up my gas?, I stammered.  He smiled; it's what we do here, he said, then proceeded to clean my windshield.  Wait a minute.  What exactly happened here?  Did I somehow travel back in time to another era? (I would find out later that in Oregon it is unlawful for you to fill up your own gas tank; but hey, it was sure nice to see...and all done with a smile).

    On this our fourth night of "winging it" (traveling without making reservations), we were again lucky to score a room facing the ocean; to both hear and see its wild roughness just out of reach, we felt like zookeepers certain that the cages were all locked.  We're mostly water, my wife reminded me, even as I stared at tsunami warning signs decorating the streets no matter how many hours or how far inland we drove.  And indeed we were, nearly 70% water, much as the oceans themselves which covered 70% of the planet.  We were staring at the Pacific, a massive body of water that was larger than all of the continents combined, said National Geographic.  The ocean was patient, very patient, and I kept recounting the earlier story by Peter Brannen about Earth's history that told of primordial forests that were now buried deep enough in ocean water that reaching them would give you the bends (less than 5% of the original redwoods remain, said Bay Nature).  Even as I slept, I couldn't help but feel that Siren call of the waves, that lyrical challenge for me to step just a bit closer, to touch and feel the cold under my toes, to taste the salt, to come back to the womb, to ignore the large enveloping wave slowly heading back in to claim its chlld and bring him back to life as it should be.  

     At my feet, amphipods (and not sand fleas, as so engagingly explained by The Bug Chicks) scampered ahead of my toes in an endless procession, jumping and lurching in front of my every step and yet ignoring the water coming ever closer.  What were they looking for?  What sort of food were they after and why were they so much more courageous than me in this daring game with the ocean, their life  just a flicker in time compared to mine? (they feed on dead matter in the sand)  Perhaps this was exactly how the ocean would view me, making me think of the early travelers who tried to make their way up the coast long before roads appeared, judging the tides and braving the brief pause the ocean gave them when the waters were low,  charging their horses and wagons across the sands before the tides came back to claim their prey.  What did the horses think, and how many were lost in this daring and perhaps foolish endeavor?  And yet, the lighthouses scattered up and down the coast were built, their blinking and timed colored lights giving knowledgeable sailors guidance and foolhardy ones an early thrashing.  At Heceta, the Fresnel lens* in the structure was not the typical French one but rather an English one, and the largest such lens in the US to come out of that country.  The light at this particular lighthouse, as if proud of its British uniqueness, is still the brightest such light in Oregon.

     Under our feet the continental shelves continued their slow roll, far too slow for us to feel, even as our planet moved counter-clockwise to fool us into thinking we watched a setting sun each evening.  Our planet was just a small part of an entire range of planets that were also caught in a counter-clockwise rotation, orbiting around a star that heated us like hatching chicks, our sun.  But below our feet another source of heat waited, an equally patient swirl of melted rock that waited as its own ocean ("nearby" lies the super-volcano of Yellowstone).  We took no notice of it, no more than we did the tsunami warnings; for if either happened there was nowhere to go, the molten ash and rock would claim us as quickly as the ice cold water that would drench and slow our muscles.  What little would be left of us would be  deposited on the shores as easily as the white-washed skeletons of tree trunks that had earlier dared to give challenge.

     No, we could only stare from the lookouts and trails, to look with another perspec-tive and to simply admire all of this for what it was, to bask in a different form of beauty.  This was a gift that was being presented to us not as something to fear but as something to treasure.  It was the ocean's and the planet's way of reminding us just how surrounded we were with such marvels and that we should not take any of it for granted or to think that it was endless.  We were here for this brief moment, a period of time as fleeting as the scenery that whizzed by outside our car's window, a mere blink for a species that still threw away plastic cups and foam containers without a thought.  It was a beauty that was telling us that it was time to stop, for as large as it was, the ocean and our planet had its own limits, not in what is could absorb but in its patience.  Keep it up, it seemed to tell us, and we would be among the last to view such beauty.  Standing ever so safely on the sandy ground, oblivious of the many creatures below and in front of me, creatures whose home I was now trespassing, I needed only to step a bit closer to water to be shaken awake, just in case I needed another reminder...

*The unique cut pattern of the Fresnel lens (pronounced Frey-nel) steers the light directly out in one direction instead of scattering it in all angles.  As the National Park Service wrote: Fresnel lenses may be fixed, showing a steady light all around the horizon, or revolving, producing a flash.  The number of flashes per minute is determined by the number of flash panels and the speed at which the lens revolves.  A unique flash pattern for each light is produced by varying the amount of light and dark periods.  For example, a light can send out a flash regularly every five seconds.  Alternatively, it might have a ten second period of darkness and a three second period of brightness, or any number of other combinations.  The individual flashing pattern of each light is called its characteristic.  Mariners consult a light list or a maritime chart that told what light flashes that particular characteristic, and what color the light is.  This allowed them to determine their position at sea in relation to the land.