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Published: September 4th 2009
<<...Continued La Push, Washington is at the edge of the universe. It’s out there…
way out there. And La Push is one of the finest surfing and camping destinations in the state. When the waves are good, it is intense. Big beautiful busty bountiful crests pitch over onto the neoprene heads of surfers. And when the waves are not on, when the sea is blown out—winds howling, rains horizontal, tree trunks slamming the rocky shores—then plenty of hiking, exploring and camping infuses the experience. Either way, it is a stunning part of the Pacific Northwest coastline.
I pull up late at night. I hear the ocean. I smell the sea. I see nothing but bonfires dotting the beach amidst a deep blackness found at this very edge. I’m exhausted from my travels. I need rest, rejuvenation and recovery. Crawling into the rear cabin of the Saab, I tuck under the blankets and disappear into a world of dreamy imagination.
I’m not alone. In a state of deep subconsciousness, I meet a lion—large, playful, standing 10 feet tall. He prances around me, he stalks me, observes me and tricks me—hiding-and-seeking, dashing and diving. I cannot catch him.
I can’t find him. And when I give up, he emerges once more. As I get to know his trickery, I see he has no face. It’s dark, indiscernible and possibly deformed. He is a defaced lion walking upright on his hind legs as if in a magician’s showcase, and throughout the entire dream his appearance continues to be elusive. Soon, his games turn to annoyance and quickly begin to peeve me. I try to chase him away, but he’s relentless.
Then, as I sleep, tossing and turning under the folds, he appears outside the car peering in with two stuffed paws on the window. In fright, in anger, in complete surprise, I Kung-fu kick the window with my foot. He vanishes. I wake. My right foot is throbbing. I rub it before shivering back into oblivion.
The morning is luscious—warm and sunny as I set up camp on the round flat-stone beach. Surf is off. It’s small, minuscule, weak and spread out across the beach. Now, I like my surf big and powerful. I like the adrenaline of seeing a wall of water hurling towards me as I flounder like a dying seal in an ocean loaded
with sharks. To be honest, I like the pummeling and I like being forced underwater by a breaking barrel. I’m not a small wave surfer. So I hike to Beach 2, just southeast of La Push’s main strip. Inside, the forest is enchanting. It’s a massive rainforest guarded by characteristic trees drooping with stringy lichen and bushy mosses. I photograph. I stop and breath in this air—the life of the forest—and I wander out onto the beach.
Sea stacks litter the coastline. They are sharp teeth of stone rising out of the ocean, biting the sky as currents stir around their roots. Atop, pines linger on their orthodontic precipices and birds such as gulls, pelicans and crows leave white streaks of shat along its carnal ridges.
The beach is thriving with day-hikers and overnight campers. Kids splash through the water. Parents, lovers and singles comb the sand. I mix among them and find myself at the far end of the beach alone, tucking into the darkness of a cave. Inside, it smells of sea salt. Small crustaceans climb the red algae walls and barnacles cling to its dampness like frozen pieces of time revealed during the stillness
of low tide. I sit in the hollow silence. I can see the stacks outside the cave’s opening.
Literally, there is nothing to do, and this is exactly why I have embarked on my journey—to do everything adventurous and nothing “important” at the same time. It is my time—Cam Time—to wander, ingest, digest, let go and take on a new day.
Back out in the sunlight, I cruise toward camp, but keep truckin’ into
La Push’s community. It is a place I’ve been before. It’s the tribal center of the Quileute Indians; a fishing civilization founded by the indigenous peoples long before any motorized white settlers appeared. In fact, the Quileutes first experienced the white peoples’ industrialization some 100 years ago. They were living traditionally, catching salmon, steelhead, seals, shellfish and whales out of handcrafted materials. Then came the noise of modernity.
Today, La Push (sad to say) is dismal. It is an unattractive impoverished town of fisherpersons strewn with sea-tattered boats, buoys, cars, houses, shingles and trailers. The most attractive building is the white painted church with blue trim…
Among reading, writing, grubbing, observing, exploring and nothingness, evening comes and I light
a fire at my feet. Being that
MacGyver is one of my all-time favorite fictional heroes, I create a blazing conflagration out of anything. I have lighter. Check. I collect driftwood, which is fantastic for burning after floating in the sea for days. Water seeps into its cells, bloats them to bursting, and then washes the dead wood ashore to dry under the sun and blowing winds. I have driftwood. Check. And as I scour the beach for some sort of kindling, I discover a cigarette butt. Its cottony insides are dry, so I tear it open like a pistachio nut and tuck it between my teepee of wood. I light it. I protect it from the breeze and blow into its simmering embers. With patience and huge lungs, my fire cracks and I sit back to divulge in the coloring eve.
Beyond, sunset surfers catch a row of ridiculously clean, glossy waves.
Why aren’t I out there? In fact, there is a suitable reason. I’m itching to surf, but I must wait. I must test my patience to preserve my new ink. But damn it’s hard as a wave rises, peaks and breaks. A black
silhouette paddles, jumps to the feet and slices into the wave’s face, carving out a set of deep lustrous turns. Beautiful.
The Hall of Mosses to The Trail of Spruces. Welcome to the
Hoh Rainforest. Into its entanglement, I turn left off Highway 101 and pull into the
Olympic National Park. Set aside as a national monument in 1909 and protected as a National Park in 1938, the Olympic is impressive. As stated by Park Superintendent Karen Gustin:
is home to over 3,500 miles of rivers and streams that provide habitat for 29 species of native freshwater fish. Three hundred bird and 70 mammal species call this place home. Ninety-five percent of Olympic is designated as wilderness. This diverse national park, with its complex ebb and flow of life, is globally recognized as an International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site.
Tall trees loom over the road for miles. Their deep shadows contrast a fully exposed sun and create layers of myopic blindspots in which my vision is sustained at 45mph. Yet there are meadows, which open up like Moby Dick’s mouth, swallowing the darkness to reveal open expanses of daylight, brush, mountains, blue sky and deer. The Hoh River runs along off to my right where wild salmon berries and groves of red bark alder barricade its banks in a fortress of protection. I notice the tributary is low, exposing gravel, mountainside boulders, and leftover tree trunks that washed down from up high. It’s a glacier river, running off Mount Olympus, rising and falling with the melt-off of summer and
the torrential rains of the remaining seasons.
Having paid my dues, I arrive at the Visitor’s Center and head for the stalls. Inside the fluorescent bathrooms an essential white adorns the walls, alight with drab bulbs installed by a dentist’s electrician. The smell is classic; the stink of antiseptic fluids found within a wayside’s HoneyBucket left unkempt for months. But there’s a breadth of fresh air. Inside my stall and etched upon its walls, Herculean calligraphy straight out of a truckstop saloon reads:
I Love our National Parks. A small Christmas tree sketch with a peace sign emblem hovers over the phrase followed by the statement:
Viva la Nature! I haven’t even stepped onto the trail, but here it is… the inspiration, the belief and beauty in part of humanity’s relationship with itself, with Mother Earth.
I’m stoked. Flushed and gone, The Hall of Mosses is a one-mile stroll through an established forest rooted with heavy Sitka Spruces, Western Hemlock and rugged Douglas Fir. I shoot and photograph. I look solely for lighting, color that moves me—an expression of intimacy and sensuality. And thus I compose, tweaking my eye, stretching my mind and moving my
body into the appropriate angles. I don’t look hard or struggle the resistance. If it’s not there, it’s not to be found. I let it go and move on.
In many respects, this is my life’s philosophy: I just go, moving with the energy I find myself in, retaining an open mind, heart & Soul. And with two eyes that make a sharp pair, the beauty within the subtle things of existence inspires me. I stop, breathe, observe, shoot and continue upward. This is my method.
Surrounding me, huge wiry big leaf maples carry the heaviest burden of lichen and moss. These tropical growths hang from deciduous monsters and suck moisture and nutrients from air-borne particles brought on by winds and rains. Their hosts are unharmed by their lacksidaisical presence, yet as the storms plunder the valley, blown in off the Pacific by Westerly winds, these living beards of Old Man Tree often snap under the growths’ expanding weight. Recycling begins as new decomposition for an already abundant forest floor feeds aplenty.
Nurse logs are also an essential part of Nature’s cycle. With a fallen tree, new Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock seedlings thrive,
struggling for the most light until their roots push through the rotting log and dig into the rich soils beneath.
I pass a Canadian on trail pointing out this revelry to his son. “Now that nurse log has gone and dried up, don’tcha know.”
(I’m not sure if this is a question or a statement of fact…) The son sticks his hand in a hole between a fir’s thick roots and emerges with a handful of rich red soil that tumbles from his grip.
At this, I stop and admire. “I imagine that old trunk has seen a lot of Time & Space pass.”
The Canadian looks over at me and continues, “Well gosh, that one standing fir must be 200 feet tall and at least 200 years old, making this nurser round ‘boot 500 years and some.”
The two of us were enamored by the ages and eons, the storms and seasons an old beast of an arbor could witness. Meanwhile, the young lad proceeds to sample the soil, swab his teeth with the grit and then spit it out with a disgusted smirk. I’d offer him some
bacon if I had any.
Taking off down The Trail of Spruces, I come to a lower land that rests in the valley of the Hoh. Each spring this terrain floods and thus morphs into a new geographic setting. Low-lying shrubbery and herbs carpet a mossy flooring where those red bark alders chime fan-like leaves. I walk the mile and a quarter trail, which leads me into a faerie land of imagination where gnomes, trolls, entes and those Little People shyly dash behind skittish chipmunks. And herein I emerge, renewed and refreshed from the beauty of Mother Earth, from the representation of our humanity found within the depths of silent awareness and enigmatic appreciation.
Back on the beach I fill up my water jugs from a faucet. On my way I pass a group of camping surfers who gaze out at the water’s edge.
“Dude, where’d he go?” one of them asks.
“I don’t know. I just lost him.”
“Wait,” a woman perks up. “He’s just in line with the buoy.”
Looking out into the distant horizon, there is nothing, but one lone surfer approximately 50 yards off shore. He’s in
plain view at the breakwater, paddling to beat the oncoming swell. I think nothing of it, but question the surfers’ eyesights. Too many hours over too many years looking at the sun’s ocean-glare.
On my way back, loaded with a gallon of liquids, they’re still there anticipating something out of the blue. Hearing them talk excitedly, I stop and observe the horizon at the edge of the universe. Guiding my pair of eyes to their focal range, something stirs. Just beyond the surfer, the sea breaks and a huge head shoots into the air like a mastiff rising from the earth. It floats, stalls for a spilt second, and then comes crashing down with the most intense cannonball splash. It’s a whale and for twenty more minutes it plays and frolics, launching its humungous cockpit-sized head out into the air before slamming back down. All I can think about is this Nature, this universe, Mother Earth and Her reflection found within each of us, especially within that sole (
that soul) surfer. How unreal, yet how terrifying and utterly awesome to be a mere 20 feet from a whale; floating in its element, putting an ear to the water’s
sonic vibrations and listening for the broken silence. It’s the end of summertime in the Pacific Northwest and gray whales migrate south for warmer seas where they’ll rest and give birth to young.
I light another fire with whales, rainforests, nature, surf and the inevitable MacGyver on my mind:
There is the choice we have to surround ourselves with nothing but beauty. That night I drift back into a state of deep sleep and emerge into a land of mystery. The dream is familiar. I’m in Africa among old faces and characters known in my past. They’re of little importance in my dream, only there to symbolize a part of me—who I’ve become and who I will be.
Inside a playground mixed with an international race of youth, I play games with the children. It’s hot. The sun is beating down on us and I begin to sweat. Eventually, I return to the lodging; a communal living space where my friends have created a home. They welcome me and we have a chat, play games, cook foods and laugh. Then, I smell smoke. Coming to the window, I see an expanse of a dirty city skyline.
Flat roof tops with raw rebar and satellite wiring hang off concrete boxes. The smoke is rising from next door. The building is on fire.
With my MacGyver skills, I shimmy onto the awning and swing into the adjacent building where smoke pours from the windows. I crash through the glass, discover the flames to be overtaking a set of curtains and quickly extinguish them with unknown tools. A woman arrives. She is a huge bewitching African dressed in raiment of color akin to tradition. She is raging. I explain to her about the fire and my actions, and then she takes my hand to escort me downstairs. Inside a new room, the light is bright and before me on a rustic table she throws out an assortment of cards. It’s a tarot deck. She begins reading them and flips over the first one. Her eyes are alight. She’s in between fright and astonishment. There, facing me in the clear crisp daylight my beast, my messenger, my power animal. The lion returns, this time in a land far away, walking on all fours with a beautiful ruffling mane. I see its face. Massive. Majestic. Realer than the Discovery
Channel. Suddenly the lion comes to life and sounds an ear-piercing roar. The African witchdoctor turns and runs in ecstatic fear. I remain standing, staring deep into the throat of my friend and foe until a showering of purples, reds, blues and yellows overtake my vision. My journey has something to say as the universe infuses my nights with a series of potent communications.
To be continued...>>>
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