I was six or seven when I first saw the ocean. I was a little cowboy used to playing under the wide, open sky of Wyoming. My mother was raised in Grey’s Harbor, Washington and pined vocally often about the beauty of the Great Northwest and its superiority over the sagey expanse where we lived. (Conversely, once my parents moved to Oregon and then Washington subsequently, all she pined for was Wyoming.) She had met my father during the Second World War while she was living and working in Seattle. He was in the Navy, working as a nurse at the Naval hospital in Bremerton. I was seeing the ocean because my parents had taken a road trip to see my mother’s family in Oregon. My mother’s family was very closely knit in those days and sent a round-robin letter circulating to keep up-to-date on all familial news and activities. (A round robin letter went from family to family, each family including a letter to all in one huge envelope. When the envelope came back around the receiving family would remove the previous letter and include a new composition before forwarding the bulging packet to the next family in line.) So it was decided that a family reunion would be held at the beach while we were out visiting.
I cannot explain the feeling I had when I first stood on the beach. I know that I was astonished to see that much water at once. Where I lived water was a phenomenon seen only in steep, dusty creek beds, or the occasional river, though I learned later that what we called a river in Wyoming, was called a creek, or if large enough, a stream in the Northwest. I remember finding sand dollars and the pleasure of showing them to my mother who kept two unbroken sand dollars in her jewelry box. On rare occasions my sister and I would see them while watching her putting on jewelry. We were allowed to see them, if she was in the mood, but not, of course, to touch the fragile objects. More than that, I do not remember, though I was with an abiding awe-love for the edges of the ocean. (I remember a teacher, years later, was it Mrs. Peyton, proposing the idea that so many Wyoming boys joined the navy because the wide expanse of the ocean was inherently similar, to the wide expanse of the high prairie. She may not have been wrong.
We got to Waldport last Monday through a sporadic rain, which held its breath long enough for me to hook up the bus’s utilities without getting soaked. We spent Tuesday settling in and getting comfortable for a week’s stay. Yesterday we walked the beach with Annie, who, nose down, stopped to mark the beach as hers every ten feet or so. Today we spent the morning at a clinic, getting sulfa drugs for the infection developing in my right arm, from a scrape I got from a bathroom stall two weeks ago.
None of us slept well the first three days here. Annie whined each night until I relented and took her out for a walk, so at least Lydia could sleep. Last night she waited until it had stopped raining to whine. In fact, it was clear and still. From the edge of our campground the Alsea Bay Bridge arched over the water. It was well lit, white with red and green lights underneath to mark the height for ships passing under it. Floodlights highlighted the art nouveau columns at each end. No cars crossed. Annie sniffed the bushes; I stared at the silent structure, man made yet seeming natural. For a second, the part became the whole for me. Then, Annie tugged on her lead and we went back inside.
It has been a long journey from that little cowboy’s first visit to the ocean sixty years ago to now. I’ve traveled the road between the prairie and the ocean often, trading one vast expanse for another. They both fit me. One seems to complement the other. They both feel like home.

Posts