sw 2 nw by mw

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.