sw 2 nw by mw

I don’t like to think this way, but sometimes the holidays are just an unwelcome break in the routine. And the last two years they’ve been a depressing reminder of my current social state. Last year I was freshly dumped and could not enjoy myself no matter what. I was irritable with my family, found no joy in travel, I even purchased the newly released Rock Band and hated it for the first couple days after thinking it was going to be the solution to all my problems.

This year for Thanksgiving I didn’t have turkey and yams and watch football. My mom and stepdad were in Scotland for their 10th wedding anniversary, which approximately coincided with my 9th divorce-iversary. My dad and stepmom were at home in Scottsdale and my grandparents and aunts and uncles were at Lake Tahoe. I was too far away to drive, not wanting to deal with the busiest travel weekend of the year, and mainly unwilling to foist my dog upon strangers for 4 days again and vice versa.

So I took Petunia for a nice romantic trip to the Oregon coast. I packed for beach camping, having read that the entire coast was public land and you could drive and camp nearly anywhere on it thanks to a benevolent governor a hundred years ago. Turns out in the places I went, beach camping is frowned upon but probably not prosecuted, and I didn’t see a way to reasonably drive a car onto or along the beach with all the people out for their post-turkey dinner walk. The weather was the final decider. It was cold, foggy, windy and raining or, as it does up here, misting. Mist is not as intrusive as rain, but not nearly as nice as sunshine. And besides, I camped less than a week before on that beach near Forks where they have all those vampires.

So after driving from Seattle and arriving in Manzanita about 2 hours before sundown which comes at 4pm, and seeing the inhospitality of the beach, I made the executive decision to get us a hotel. But not just any hotel. I had to try to ignore the irony or patheticness or whatever you want to call it, but I took us to the same beachfront hotel about 20 miles north in Seaside where I stayed with January a year and a half ago. It was an oceanside room that time, with a kitchen and fireplace. This room for half the price was a tenth as nice. Just a bed, a table and a tv. It was fine though. At night with all that fog you couldn’t see the beach anyway, and during the day we would be out on it in person.

After putting off dinner later and later, hoping for some inspiration that would make for a nice Thanksgiving after all, I settled for a so-so burger and fries in the hotel bar and proceeded to get unintentionally really drunk on spanish coffees while talking with the bartender and one of the waitresses. She didn’t have what you’d call classic good looks, but they were compelling nonetheless. So close to ugly that she was hot, if that makes sense. Tiny, about 95 pounds, with teeth that pushed her lips out. Pale cheeks, sharp nose and red lips with no lipstick, a head full of puerto rican hair under a chef’s hat, and a formal chef’s coat that was way too big for her, standing at the prime rib carving station for the Thanksgiving buffet that was more than I wanted to pay. I got her to save the fatty end piece of the roast for Petunia. It was the name Petunia that clinched it – ‘oh she’s a girl’. Pretty soon there appeared an older lady in the seat next to me, then a younger blonde, pretty, trashy and loud on the other side of me who I got to talk about all her problems. She lost custody of her son to her baby-daddy because his family has money. So now she’s a barfly. Now. The last thing I remember was going up to the room to get a cigarette to smoke outside with her – because I like menthols and she only had regulars. I can’t remember her name. I could tell the next morning that I had smoked a cigarette but I hoped it wasn’t with her, because I don’t remember and I always fear the worst in that situation.

In the morning I was pretty hung over. I had a moment of realization that every hangover I’ve had this year, surprisingly few as there have been, came from drinking liquor, never from beer. There may be a lesson in that, but I’ll surely ignore it since tequila is the nectar of the gods. I had planned to actually do some work-work on the laptop I had brought all the way from Seattle and made sure to get a hotel with internet for the purpose of using. It wasn’t going to happen that day. I have to use my brain for this job, and hangovers kind of make that impossible. So I slept all day and didn’t even turn on the tv. Finally around 3 I got up and took Petunia for a long walk on the beach before it got dark. It was much better than being in the room. It got dark while we were out and little fires popped up on the beach with people sitting around them. Closer to the water flashlights danced from people clamming. We came across a couple older ladies shining their flashlight at something on the ground and Petunia ran up on them but they weren’t startled. They told me they were trying to figure out what this dead thing was. I looked and whatever it was had decomposed pretty well. It was completely flat as if it had been crushed under the weight of burial, and you could see the demure vertebrae laid out in a curve. It had skin intact but spread out like a spilt milkshake. They pointed with the light and said look at the size of this bone. It looked like a hip bone, the upper end of a femur. Clearly this was a mammal, and a pretty big one by the size of that bone. It was as thick but not as long as an adult human’s. Maybe this was a dog? We couldn’t figure it out, it was so far gone. But it didn’t smell at all, and damn if there was any fur on that skin.

For dinner that night I went to a seafood restaurant I had checked the menu of earlier and got the Willapa Bay oysters, sauteed with mushrooms. They were good. I have a little connection to Willapa Bay oysters from buying some at the source back in July during my first trip to the coast about 50 miles north of there. The coast here is pretty remarkable. Changing always. When it’s foggy you can hear further than you can see, which is spooky. When it’s clear it’s fantastic.

I don’t mean to keep sounding like Oh everything is so much better up here. I miss lots of things about Phoenix and Arizona and the southwest. My friends and family, my house, the sun, the sunsets, not being cold and wet all the time. But most everything else does seem better up here. Not the mexican food. But the seafood. The one thing that drives it all is water. Instead of constant drought, it’s constant overabundance of water. It causes plants to grow everywhere unaided by man. Moss drapes from trees like green phantoms reaching out at you. After a rainy day in the city, you find moss growing over the sidewalks. Rivers run wide and fast year-round, animals flourish in size and number. Nature is almost too plentiful.

The next day, Saturday, around noon we went to the beach and played fetch in the surf one more time and then got in the car and drove east across the hills to Portland. I went straight to Brad and PeeWee’s and hung out and played rock band for a little while. I don’t know what to think about rock band anymore… all I know are songs from the years I was in college. Is that sad? That was a long time ago, but that’s most of what they put out. I called up our other friend from Phoenix, Drew, who I had plans to fish with the next day before heading back to Seattle. I wound up staying in his guest room that night and we headed out for the river just after 7am Sunday.

Seven a.m. seems really early to be leaving the house. I’m always up then but never ready to go. But I did it and by 9 we were fishing. Maybe 30 miles north of Portland, toward Mt. St. Helens. On the way we picked up Drew’s friend Shawn, who is a pretty experienced local angler and hunter. I didn’t know what to expect before I met him because he does all that rednecky stuff and lives in the hills, but I instantly felt at ease when we met. He’s just a real happy fun talkin guy with no negative rural traits that I saw. He lives on this hilltop, up a gravel road, a beautiful little spot with grass that keeps itself and trees that turn colors and a tidy garage and house and one of the biggest quietest dogs I’ve ever seen. Several vehicles and a drift boat for the river. One of his cars is a subaru like mine, the sedan version. He came out through the garage and the first thing he said was We got another subie!

Shawn led us to a fishing spot on the Lewis River near Woodland, WA. The drive was along one of the most beautiful country roads I’ve ever seen, really. That early light I don’t usually see, glistening the dew that covers everything. There are country roads that are spooky, like the one to the coast on Thursday. In the fog and mist and tall thick dark forest it was real creepy. But this road went down into a little valley with tall grass on the right and an squat berry orchard with burnt burgundy leaves on the left. Through a covered bridge shaped like a barn, then down to a gravel parking lot by the river.

I brought all my fishing gear, but it was not going to be of use because it was light tackle. Most of it came from my grandfather who fished for trout on the Truckee River flowing out of Lake Tahoe down through Reno. Today we were fishing for salmon and steelhead. I did have a few spinners that were extra-large versions of trout lures. I bought them 2 summers ago in Red Bluff, CA for an outing on the shores of the Sacramento River, which also has salmon. I showed them to Shawn and he looked closely at both lures and pointed out one as being a real good choice that I might want to use first. But then a few minutes later they had me set up with Drew’s spare pole. It was about the same length but 2 or 4 times as thick as the one I brought. It looked like the steelhead rods I’d seen at some outdoor store. And I don’t know the real term for the rig but it had a heavy 3 oz. lead ball on about a 3 foot leader, separated from another 4 foot leader with a spinner at the end of it. I thought that was kind of cool because I always like the spinner type lures. They move like little fish in the current or when you pull them through slower water. I use those pretty much exclusively for trout and they work well.

It took a while to get the hang of this reel, and how to work that rig in the water. Probably an hour until I felt I had a groove going. I moved upstream to work the close edge of a shelf that Shawn had pointed out. I was looking for ripples and changes of current. That’s where trout hang out, and if nothing else I knew salmon and steelhead are the trout’s closest cousins so maybe they like the same water. Every few minutes you’d hear a splash and whip your head around to see a wake spreading in a circle. Sometimes a fish would jump in your sight, and you’d be astounded at its size, and then turn to your buddy and laugh or shake your head like can you believe this?!

Two men fishing on a rock outcropping upstream of me quit for the day so I made my way to their spot. It was at the confluence of the smaller Cedar Creek with this north fork of the Lewis. Cedar Creek looked like an endless flow of Coca Cola spilling into the clear water of the Lewis. The only fish I saw in Cedar Creek was a 3-foot long algae-covered salmon that floated by dead. It’s spawning season for Chinook, which is the only reason for them to be this far inland, and of course they die soon after.

A sea gull swooped down in slow motion crying like an eagle and snatched some sort of fish from the water. It looked like half a fish, and not a very fresh one. The gull dropped it a foot above the water and flew away disgusted. This was near a little sand bar just across the confluence from me. I had been seeing a bunch of fish flops for an hour in one spot a few feet off the sandbar. It was too far to cast, and I couldn’t cross to it without getting wet and cold. It was more than waist deep in the middle and I was only waterproof to the ankles. A half dozen gulls had been hanging out on the sand bar but they were being hassled now by a couple blue heron. One heron took off with a racket so loud and disruptive that people on the shores stopped their casting to watch it.

By now I felt my line was ineffective. I had gotten the hang of slinging it out there, but I was still in the learning curve as far as the reeling goes. I didn’t feel like I was getting close to or appealing to the fish. They were jumping all over the place, huge black bodied salmon with bright red sides, and some smaller silver-tan steelhead. I was casting to those areas as soon as I could after seeing a flop, playing it along the bottom and getting snagged half the time, until I figured the fish just weren’t seeing it cuz that’s not where they were. I mean, they were jumping, they were at the surface. This rig was 3 feet off the bottom.

I took the spinner out of my pocket, the one Shawn liked. It’s a 1 oz Mepps, an oversized version of a 1/8 oz lure you use for trout. It has a spoon hinged loosely at one end of a metal rod ornamented with red and yellow balls, and a big treble hook at the end. In the water, with the spoon flapping and banging against the rod, it’s like a big dragonfly buzzing underwater.

I threw that dragonfly all over the place. It casts a lot further than the trout lures I’m used to. Downstream, upstream, through that coca cola syrup. Over by the sandbar, way out in the middle where the water was fast and deep. It sinks a lot more than a 1/8 oz lure, but nowhere near as much as that 3 oz lead ball. So it was always in the top half of the water, flashing in the sunlight, swimming from low to high just like a dragonfly would. I sped up or down on the reeling, trying to find a natural pace through each different speed of water.

At some point I made a prayer to catch a fish. A little later I got that feeling of ‘this isn’t working’, I should change lures or move to another spot or take a break. But I gave it more time, and said to myself gosh you’re good at keeping on with something longer than it seems like you should.

Then I felt the hit. It was stronger than a trout. A burst of little tugs – bam. bam bam bam bam. I not so much remembered as repeated to myself the words Drew had given me the night before: You have to let it hit three times, then set the hook. That was one. Another set came a second later – bam bam bam. tuug tuug tuug. I waited and just held onto the pole, not breathing. Bam bam bam bam – and without thinking I gave a monumental yank and started reeling fast. It was on there, I could feel the weight. The line was taut and driving all over the place. Halfway in I saw the fish for the first time and it was big – long and thick, greenish tan on the top. It looked like a gigantic trout, and I thought it must be a steelhead. I started scrambling down from my position on the outcropping 3 feet above the water. Carefully – the rock was wet and my boots had no kind of traction for it. I finally got down to the water and saw the line angled straight down and under the big flat rock I was standing on. The fish was taking evasive action, trying to cut the line, doing barrel-rolls, but somehow I wasn’t worried. It was thick line and there weren’t many snags or cover in the water and this rock had smooth edges. I pulled him out from under the rock and he broke straight back toward the middle of the river, then in a slashing circle, then finally onto the rock. I saw the hook just inside the corner of his jaw. Not deep or difficult to remove, but also not escapable. I let him back in the water just to keep him calm and alive while I figured out what to do. I let out a whoop like I had heard twice that morning across the river. I waved at Drew and Shawn a hundred yards downstream. They looked up and I gave some kind of frantic hand signal. They seemed to understand.

I turned back to the fish and he was alright – in the water trying to get away. A lot of chatter went through my head, none of it comprehensible. Adrenaline was pumping. I needed to figure out if the fish was wild or hatchery, which is the difference between mandatory catch and release or fisherman’s choice. The way to tell is by the adipose fin, a little apparently unneeded fin halfway between the big dorsal fin and the tail. If it’s a hatchery fish, there should be a little nub where they clipped it off. That’s what it had – almost nothing, just a bump along its back. The skin was green fading to tan with a pale pink streak down the sides – the markings of a rainbow trout. But the mouth was trademark salmon – two big beaks opposing each other, so curved they don’t seem like they can close together. I thought I remembered seeing a picture of a steelhead and it had those same jaws. By the size too, it wasn’t as big as the black and red salmon that were jumping all over the place.

Drew and Shawn finally arrived. Shawn was happy for me and very approving of the fish and they way I’d hooked it. ‘You got him fair and square’ – I think meaning he wasn’t just snagged, nor hooked too deep. I showed them the clipped fin and they agreed, it was legal and a keeper for sure. I said, So what now? I’m no beginner but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else to do first. I pretty much wanted to keep it and eat it like I usually do with trout. But then I started thinking about it being a steelhead. They’re sort of the mythical symbol of western stream fishing. It would be like eating a unicorn.

‘You hit him on the head with a rock, that’s what now.’

I looked at the ground and there were no loose rocks, just little pools of water and one pool of dark blood where the previous fishermen had killed their catch.

‘I don’t know if I really wanna do that.’

‘Well you can put him back.’

‘Yeah, I guess I could do that.’ I didn’t really want to do that either, but I had to make a decision and it just seemed right.

Drew was quick enough to remember to take some pictures. Shawn got the hook out with his pliers while I held the fish with a finger through its gills. They were a little sharp. And there were 2 teeth on the lower jaw.

I laid the fish back in the water and gave it a little nudge toward the current. It floated lifelessly for a minute the way fish do when you let them go. The guys talked him through it. ‘Yeah get out to the current, get some oxygen running through those gills’. And it worked, after a minute the fish seemed to wake up, right itself, point its head down and disappear.

‘Yep. that was a real nice Chinook you caught there.’

Wait wait, a what? A chinook? I thought it was a – errrrrgh. I just let a salmon go? I was still full of adrenaline. Man, I thought it was a steelhead! Looking back now, I was confused by the markings, but I should have known better. The justification is, a salmon’s gonna die in a few days anyway. A steelhead returns from sea to stream year after year.

But I didn’t regret it too much. Until a few minutes later. And more a few minutes after that. That’s a lot of fresh delicious fish! I didn’t let any of this out of my head, I felt so stupid. I know plenty of people practice catch and release, but not me so much. I catch and eat if I can think of any excuse to. It’s the freshest meat you can get, and this one would have fed a bunch of people. We had him at 15 pounds.

Ah but it’s good fishing karma I figured. You let your first go, another comes to you. Drew has been up here 2 years and has yet to catch anything. There were 20 or 30 people in sight at that bend in the river that morning, and only 3 of us caught anything. I told the story the other day to someone who grew up fishing here, and he’s never caught a salmon. He was mad I let it go. I don’t know… beginner’s luck? That prayer? Maybe. But I also think I’ve learned a lot from all the times I got skunked fishing in Arizona. In places like Minnesota, you go out on a lake and you’re assured of catching dozens of fish without even trying. Arizona, you’re lucky to catch anything more than a buzz. That adversity makes you experiment and think and try to figure out what the fish want and where they hide. Both other times I’ve caught fish up here, they were hiding out in eddies behind big rocks. Different rivers – Skate Creek south of Mt Rainier, and the Deschutes River in the Oregon desert. Both times I had been trying for hours and was about to give up. Then I got silly and decided to cast right at a big rock, bouncing the lure off it and letting it splash into the water. Both times the fish took it the instant it hit the water, and wound up being the biggest trout I’ve ever caught.

A couple weekends ago I went camping with Fred on the coast near La Push, on the Quillaiute indian reservation a few dozen miles from the northwest corner of the state and, actually, the continental US. I know you’re thinking ‘You’re crazy, it’s almost Thanksgiving, who goes camping in the rain and cold?’ And you’re pretty much right. It was cold but not rainy. There were big blue skies and sunshine during the day, and at night more stars than I can ever remember seeing. The Milky Way dominated the sky directly overhead. The Big Dipper came out for a while on the horizon and I realized I hadn’t seen it in years.

If you’re from a cold place or into snowsports you know that when it’s a clear sky, it’s colder. Petunia’s breath was visible most of the time. Fred and I were prepared with proper layers of waterproof clothes and good sleeping bags, and despite the damp we managed to build a satisfactory fire that night.

That part of the state is home to all three of our nation’s rainforests, which represent most of the temperate rainforests in the world. All three are just different sections of the western slope of the Olympic mountains. The trees are covered with moss like something from Lord of the Rings. Everything is wet all the time whether it’s raining or not. We set our backpacks down and in 5 minutes they were coated with dew. It didn’t rain a drop – the moisture just gathers out of the air onto every surface. It’s so very opposite from everything Arizona taught me about nature.

The nearest town of any size is Forks, and if you googled it you would learn they’re enjoying a recent tourism phenomenon because it’s the filming location for the new movie (and bestselling book series) ‘Twilight’, which if I were a teenage girl I could tell you is about love between teenage humans and vampires. This was of some concern to me because it meant we might have to deal with crowds when camping. To Fred, it was a source of stress that nearly ruined the weekend. He believes in vampires, you see. He believes in lots of things I don’t. In his words, ‘I believe in anything that can hurt me.’

That’s not new. So many people I know are afraid of so many things. Psychopaths, rapists, muggers, bears, mountain lions, germs, earthquakes, tsunamis, global warming, terrorist attacks, economic recession. What they all have in common is they are outside our individual control. I just can’t let myself worry about things like that. If something big and terrible is going to happen, then we’re all equally screwed and what good did all the fear and worry do? My mom is a big worrier and it really messed up my life as a teenager. Like, she didn’t let me go out at night during high school because I would be killed by a drunk driver. And in my 20s when I wanted to move to San Francisco all she could talk about was earthquakes. Shit like that. Consequently I snuck out at night when I was a kid, and once I was on my own really went overboard, to this day. But I don’t blame things on my mom anymore. I’ve had long enough to direct my own life. In fact, I’d say that’s the definition of growing up – when you stop blaming the way you are on your parents and take responsibility for how you will be from now on.

But I digress. I am afraid of heights though. Or at least falling from them. Not emotionally afraid so much as physically, like vertigo. A few months ago when Josh was visiting we went to Deception Pass and walked on this bridge that’s oh about a hundred miles above a narrow waterway. I couldn’t bring myself to go all the way across, or get too close to the edge. That handrail couldn’t be high enough. It was only about waist high and my heart was racing and legs shaking and I got a little dizzy. Petunia pulling on the leash didn’t help either. Even here in the apartment, on the 14th floor I can’t open the windows and stick my head out without getting freaked out. About a month ago they put up a flier that the window washers were coming and to take our screens off for them. So I did. It was scary as fuck. I was all crouched down braced against the wall, trying to pull on those plastic tabs to get the screen out of the window frame, and damn if all of them weren’t stuck. On the last one I just said fuck it that window can stay dirty. And the hell if I’m putting those screens back on. And for the past month I’ve been watching window washers crawling all over every tall building in the city. They don’t even use platforms, just ropes. They must all be rock climbers, and how cool a job would that be if you were?

But my advice to anyone who lives in fear is turn off the news. I used to work in tv news and I pretty much stopped watching it when I left the industry. I left it for moral reasons, among others. It’s evil. It only exists to keep you interested until the next commercial, and what is of more interest than scary things? ‘Coming up next: What YOU need to know about your kitchen sponge.’ Yeah, it’s full of bacteria. And it will never hurt you. But if you want to make sure you just microwave it for a minute. And the comforter in every hotel room? Spattered with jizz if you look at it with a black light. That was my favorite. So turn down that cover and get to fuckin!

I don’t know, you can live with fear or you can live without fear and the same things happen. Actually, I believe you unconsciously make things happen. So if you worry about being mugged you act different, walk around like a victim and have a better chance of actually becoming one. I met a girl recently who lives downtown and won’t leave her apartment at night unless someone’s picking her up. To me that’s crazy. I walk a mile or two every night, even when I could drive instead. Out to dinner, out to bars, walking the dog. Yes, I know, I’m a man but still. Does being a woman really mean you have to fear things and limit your life?

My grandparents don’t lock their doors – house or car – and they’ve never been made to regret it. Just think of all the hours they haven’t spent looking for keys. When Fred and Wilma and I went camping a couple months before in Olympic National Park, we made a last minute group decision to stick to an established campground rather than venture into the back country. Why? Because we saw one too many posters about bears and mountain lions. I talked to the ranger and he kind of laughed it off and said he’s never heard of anyone even seeing a mountain lion around there, and the only bear activity was occasionally robbing trashcans. Another ranger another time told me all the ‘bear-proof canisters’ they recommend are really for raccoons. I’ve seen raccoons right outside the apartment, they ain’t shit. I made a mental note to try not to let wildlife warnings deter me again.

This was the view from the camping spot on the beach near La Push. I’ve been dreaming about and searching for a beach to camp on for years. The problem is most beaches on the west coast seem to be privately owned, or if they are public then overnight camping isn’t allowed except in campgrounds which are generally full of RVs, families, asphalt, garbage, and located across the highway from the beach. Of course I know people sleep on the beaches of southern California every night, but I’m always erring on the side of caution when out by myself. But this time, it was a park service ranger who told us how to find the one spot where we could legally camp on a beach. It’s on an Indian reservation, but non-Indians are allowed there unlike some of the other reservations nearby. This reservation is just a small town – a few square miles with about a mile of very natural beach. We had to park and hike in about a quarter mile through some moss-covered trees and slick rocks. The beach has a bunch of fallen trees providing a windbreak and protection from the surf. There’s one of those tsunami escape route signs that you see all over the coast up here. You even see them miles inland, and they look relatively new – probably posted after the 2006 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. At any rate our camp was between the sign and the ocean, so that would have been one more thing to be afraid of it you’re the worrying type. (I read later that sand evidence in the rivers showed there had been a 100-foot wave at some point in the past and several 50+ foot waves. Imagine seeing that.) Fred was in all seriousness far more concerned about these Twilight vampires. I couldn’t even joke about it without him getting all disturbed. We’d be around the campfire and I’d point back up to the road and ask how many leaps it would take for one to get to us. He’d be like ‘Two or three – man cut that out!’

These guys had the juevos to surf the next morning. It was about 35 degrees out.

Dude looks like the old sea captain from Jaws.

I’ll tell you though what was disturbing was the dead sea lion. When we first got there and were scouting out a camping spot, I saw something that I couldn’t tell if it was a rock or a sea lion. Because remember I saw that one sleeping on the beach in Santa Barbara back in June. It looked like it had flippers, so I started walking toward it. As I got closer I became certain it was a sea lion, and when I got within 20 feet I realized its massive chest was not rising and falling with breath like that one before. When I got within 5 feet the story started telling itself. It was facing away from me, so first I only saw the flipper feet. I got right up close and inspected. There were patches on its hide where the fur and skin were missing and fatty flesh was exposed, having been pecked at by fish I guessed. There were not the gouges of bird beaks, and no birds were near it now so it must be freshly washed ashore, or somehow just not appealing to birds. I slowly walked around to the front and was confused. I couldn’t make out the head. But there were things there. The absence of a head, or some of it missing. The lower jaw was exposed clean to the bone, and it looked like some teeth were missing. I’m not familiar with sea lion skeleton, so it was hard to figure out. There was no blood or gore, it looked like a clay sculpture that wasn’t quite finished. It was grotesque, disturbing, yet somehow beautiful. Not pleasing to the eye, but fascinating. I couldn’t take my eyes off it at first. Beautiful in the way it revealed the ruthlessness of nature. Whoever had been eating on it, they wanted the face and mouth more than the hulking mass of flesh and blubber and muscle. Maybe they had gone inside. What creatures did this? For all the protein it offered, the giant mammal had been untouched on land. Why was that? Was it so new that animals and even birds hadn’t found it yet? It bore no stench. Petunia walked right by like it was a rock. But I couldn’t make sense of that jawbone, fully exposed and dry amid the wet flesh. It looked headless, but not decapitated. Melted by water, not fire. I couldn’t bring myself to look very closely, but no matter how much I looked I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on.

Fred had seen me walking toward it and when I looked up to see where he was now, he was striding quickly back toward the woods with one hand shielding his eyes. He hadn’t gotten close enough to see much, but he definitely did not want to be near it. When I caught up to him he said he has a real phobia about fish, and dead animals, and most of all dead fish. So what else is new? He has more phobias than there are names for them – he’s afraid of things that don’t even exist. But he made me promise not to make fun of him. I said okay and hoped he wouldn’t insist on us going back home. He said let’s please go camp in the woods, but I pointed to the sun now almost on the horizon out at sea, and he understood we had to stay there. Just not near that dead fish.

We found a perfect spot that had been used before, built the fire and cooked up some bratwurst and polish sausage, most of which went to Petunia. I had semi-intentionally neglected to bring beer or a flask of tequila like I normally would. Somewhat out of laziness, somewhat out of not wanting to have too much to carry, somewhat out of time, somewhat out of thinking I ought to just be out in nature in a natural state for once.

I tried not to bring alcohol, so someone put it there for me. I was tending the fire when Fred walks up holding an open 12 pack. He says look what someone left. There were 6 cans of Miller High Gravity 8.2% beer in there, unopened and cold. I said sheeeeeeit. I mean, I tried, right? I did try. But you’re gonna make me drink all the same. Okay then. I said I’ll have one and leave the rest for the drunken Indian who forgot them there. The first sip was nasty, cold or not. How the hell you gonna make 8.2% Miller High Life? 8.2% is typical of, say, an Imperial IPA. A deliciously rich hoppy microbrewed IPA hand crafted with love and care bordering – no, crossing well into – obsession. The second one washed down the fatty polish sausage pretty well. The third one, after Fred had turned in for the night, is when I got all philosophical. Sitting on my heels over the glowing embers. I had some marijuana too, so it was like old times. Old? Try normal times. The dog, a fire, some weed and beer. A beach. Does it get any better than that? Not much. I thought it would be even better to have a girlfriend with me but really, not so much. She’d be in the tent struggling to get comfortable, feeling too cold, worrying about bears, wishing she’d never let me drag her out there. I know some girls are into camping, but none that I’ve ever dated. To me though, this is what I work a 9 to 5 for, to be able to drive out of the cities and be out in nature, exposed to whatever is out there, sleeping on the ground, making fire for food and warmth. They call a campfire ‘caveman television’ and that’s pretty accurate – endless entertainment when there’s nothing else. I caught myself staring into the fire for half an hour at a time without remembering to look up at the stars, or listen to the muted roar of the surf in the distance. There was another sound there – the buoys a few hundred yards out at sea that warned of the sea stacks. They flashed red or white lights at regular intervals, and at irregular intervals they howled a soft eerie ‘whooooooo’ due to the wind passing through their metal frames. I think it’s by design. Nonetheless, a fairly creepy sound to have around you all night, not really knowing what it was.

Crouched over the fire, feeling the booze and weed and nature all around, I did get philosophical. I thought of the sea lion and that unexplained jawbone burned into memory. Not its grotesqueness but its secrets. The carcass wet and cold under the stars, lying defenseless in death on the black pebbles only a hundred yards away from this fire, exposed to everything. Touched by nothing. The uncaring of nature, the animals not feeding from it, not even knowing of it. I thought of life and death. I looked up at the stars, listened to the waves, smelled the fire’s smoke, felt the cold on my back and the heat on my face, knees and hands. Life and death surrounding. And thought out loud ‘There is something at work here. And I surely do not understand it.’

In the morning the fire was dead, though I kept thinking I saw its shadows flicker on the tent wall all night. It was almost cold in the sleeping bag, but not quite. Petunia, I thought, must be cold with nothing but her coat and a sleeping pad to keep her off the cold ground. But she is made for this climate. She stopped shedding a month ago when the weather turned. Her fur got thicker, and she still runs into every body of water she can, and with no more than shaking off she’s already dry, her skin never having been wet, like a duck. She rolled over in the tent for me to scratch her belly and it was warm. Emerging from the tent, I saw the tide was high, the white foam crawling to within 30 feet of the logs protecting our tents. Petunia had found a tennis ball near the camp and we went to play fetch in the surf. She lost it on the 2nd throw – there was a wicked rip tide. A wave caught her by surprise one time and she leapt like a deer to get away from it.

I wanted another look at the sea lion. I wanted to take a long look at it to clear up the mystery of the jawbone, to try and understand what was happening to it. I don’t like gory scenes, things wrought from violence. This wasn’t violence, it was nature at work. Life returning to earth, bringing more life. If these damn ravens and racoons would hurry up and find it. Walking up to it from the opposite direction today, it was somehow the same view as before: flippers first. I got closer and examined. The tide had turned it around and flipped it over on its belly. The massive back was beginning to sag down from the high shoulder bones. In front, the jawbone was now hidden out of view. I could see the head clearly. Skull intact, with just the top layer of skin missing. Melted by water. The eyes were gone, leaving smooth hollows. Nothing left of the big fleshy nose, and no sign it had been there. The whiskers laid smooth down the jawline. On the flippers some of the bones were exposed at what would be our knuckles, probably from its journey up the pebbly beach.

I tried to judge the size of the creature. Much bigger than a bear, maybe twice that size. Six hundred pounds? A thousand? It could feed every bird, mammal and insect for a mile, so where were they? Why didn’t it stink? Why was it still here a day later? On a state beach, it would have been hauled away by now. On this reservation, nature takes its course without interference. There was a small amount of trash everywhere up-beach. Beer cans among the driftwood, a pink baby stroller dumped in the creek, plastic bottles along the trail. I wouldn’t call it dirty, just unkempt. Nobody is picking up the trash here. We picked up ours and left the rest of the 12 pack in a driftwood shelter that had a bed of straw.

It was a clear day, very unusual for any time of year, especially fall. I’ve been to the area 3 times in 5 months and never actually saw Mt Olympus before.

Back through Forks, stopping at the diner that had cars in front. Not the other one across the street with no cars. Chicken fried steak and eggs, hash browns, buttered toast, coffee – no espresso here. Football was on the tv and the waitress was fat but young so we chatted with her from the advantageous position of ones who aren’t from around here but the big city, which might as well be a thousand miles away. Forks is as about far west as you can go from Seattle and still be on land. There were ads on the corkboard in the diner’s entryway for homes for sale: $115,000 marked down from $125,000. 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 acres. In Seattle you could multiply the price by 10 and divide the acreage by the same and that might be about right.