We live in a temporary society doing temporary jobs in a temporary world, so when I get a chance to see something permanent and timeless, I stand in awe. We went out to the coast on valentine's day to get away from the concrete jungle and wallow in the immensity of the ocean. It had been too long since either of us had been there, and the beauty with which we were assaulted was amazing. The sky was littered with cottonballs, and the vast blueness of the pacific was like a riffling bedsheet. The swells could be seen from far away as we crested the coast mountains and began our descent into Cannon Beach for our day of rest, relaxation and fun in the sun.
At Oswaldt state park we left the subaru and with truman and abby began the walk thru the old growth cedar forest to the beach. Oswaldt is a big bay, framed by Cape Falcon (cheers dane) on the one side, an anonymous point on the other. The deep swells from the far reaches of the pacific filter in here, growing taller as the seafloor rises up the closer it gets to the continent. At high tide the beach was fairly nonexistent, but there was still plenty of room to roam and to listen to the thunder of the gods coming to rest against the oregon coast. It was loud, discombobulated, and chaotic, frothy whitewater everywhere with breakers screaming against gravity from one end of the bay to the other.
What I love most about the ocean is its vastness. It has an empty quality to it that stands in direct contrast to the amount of life that depends on it...for sustenance, for mental clarity, for spiritual healing, for global cooling (:) ). The ocean is always there, an eternal friend and while sitting on a driftwood log, I realized that I dont ever want to live far from the ocean again. We live two hours away, but it is WORLDS away in my opinion, a distinct class of people live in the city while another entirely different race lives out there on the edge, near the bubbling, gurgling, breathing, violent, roiling, frothy continental edge. I like it out there, love it, and cant believe I'm not out there right now.
There is the timelessness that I need. The permanence in this world, the permanence of change is what the ocean represents and to leave the world of buildings, cars, people, hustlebustle is as healing to the mind body and soul as a soothing full body massage and a glass of wine. What it is is finding your place, finding your place where it all comes together in one point of the compass. I know where my place is, have always known, but it takes living away from that point to realize it.
