I went back to La Push, my favorite coastal backpacking trek. The transition from the beach sounds of the tide to the overland trail, how the sound of the tide vanishes and is replaced by the quiet of the forest. I come here to revel in the beauty of it, the way some tall trees curl around each other like kin. The thunderous clap of the waves sometimes jarring. Possibly bear prints in the sand where it’s wet, and recent. An elderly Mexican woman with a full-length winter’s coat and not good boots walking alone on the beach. And if this were a Castaneda novel he’d make her a spirit, a non-physical entity. When I look back she’s gone.

First time Charlotte discovers the use of disposable baby wipes as a means to remove grains of sand from between her toes. We should have flagged the neurodivergence then but didn’t, figured it was just a quirk. I wanted to be away from my camp for when the ranger came and checked for the backcountry wilderness permit I did not have. I’d pitched my tent in the most defiant spot to camp without a permit, at the bottom of the trail by the mouth of a stream that fed into the ocean. At the base of a thin trail to the privy with great access to drinking water I could filter with a gravity bladder I hung from a toppled tree. But I lived in fear of being shamed by the ranger and meeting one on the trail. They’d be compelled to repeat their narrative and I’d be forced to listen.

I was too attached to my memories because I could not experience things fully in the moment, my mind was elsewhere. Even now I was doing more of a reconnaissance for a future trip I’d make with Dawn or the girls, to be their guide. The trails hadn’t been brushed yet so it was overgrown in places, at times gnarly. It was rugged but accessible for most able-bodied people. The trail alternated between beach hiking and overland trails accessed by ladders hung from cables braced to trees on the bluffs. On the ladders you just had to go one step at a time, hold onto the rope, and not lose your head. Also maintain balance if the ladder tilted or the weight of your pack pulled you over. Core strength. But the ladders wobbled sometimes and that could be distressing.

The forest was so dense it seemed to swallow all surrounding sound and narrow it down to the trickle of water or a distant bird’s tweets. Sometimes I’d stop and just relinquish myself to the stillness. It was the perfect salve for our media-addled minds. It was no-mind but not mindless. Still you didn’t need to drive several hours for this, that was its own excess: me hurrying away from work on a Friday to beat the traffic and then getting stuck in it, rushing to let go.

Driving the southern route to the coast you have to go through Grays Harbor and Aberdeen, Kurt Cobain’s hometown, and each time I do I play 90s grunge—this time a lesser-known artist with some longing in his voice when he sang about the circus, you imagined he was there with a date or his family; maybe you could put yourself in his shoes, let him draw you in. He sang “take a ride, the ride’s on me – the rides are free.” And there was something so joyful but sad about that because there was a distance between him and the song’s subject, that was maybe the sadness I heard and identified with. Maybe an intimacy to touch something you can’t hold. 

Some of the fallen logs were moss covered or cross-hatched with a saw to prevent slipping when crossing. Some were curled or knotted, the shapes fantastic. They were like pieces of a child’s log game. Nature was all perfection. The shiny banana slug easing across the moss the color of butterscotch, gumming the tips of a small pine sapling grown from a fallen log.

In the town of Elma the Subway has a sign out front saying no bills larger than $20, restrooms are for customers only. In the half hour I was there no one came for anything and I got a glimpse into the sustained tedium the two workers had to endure looking blankly out the window beside the corner liquor/vape joint and across the street from the dollar discount store while the classic radio station played a popular song from the 80s, “oh yeah life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”

It is often socked in with clouds in the morning, the marine layer, but when it burns off and the blue comes out it’s perfect. Or when wisps of clouds or fog cling to the highest trees and maybe you can spy an eagle in the distance. Or the far-off clumps of rock sticking out of the ocean like teeth. Sea stacks, remnants of another time.

The thing about missing the old times is you can never fully take it all in anyways (life). There’s only so much room. I remember a time we went to Morocco and the first night we stayed in this place in Marrakech. It was so perfect I felt overjoyed first seeing it but then sad knowing there was no way I could hold onto it, I’d just get a taste. The fact it was multi-storied with a rooftop terrace overlooking the souk. And open-roofed in the center so when it rained the water drained out of the bottom floor where it was tiled in the center like the inside of a shower. That’s where our host set up the barbecue so the smoke floated up and out of the house when he grilled. We stuffed the car full of brass handmade lanterns and Berber scarves and jars of olives when we left, two chameleons (they died), and still had not much to show from it. You get the moment and memories, is all.

This was truly my favorite place and yet for all of it I longed to be home with Dawn. I took a last look south, checked the time, and turned around. There was nothing but memories heading south; the last time I came with Lily we had to leave early because she’d cut her hand on a steel cable coming up the ladders and worried it would get infected. That and I think her boyfriend didn’t want her gone too long. (He was the wrong boyfriend.)

The color of this water was not a pristine ocean blue but decidedly gray, foamy around the lips and irregular the way it encroached on the shore. If you timed it right you could beat the tide as it came in and short cut the overland routes. But if your timing was bad your boots would get wet or you’d have to rock hop lichen-covered boulders more inland.

I quickened my stride back to camp against a north wind. Imagined myself taking the northern loop around the peninsula home, the ferry, getting a Red Bull and putting on some music. In fact I heard it already; the tune was calling me home.

And as I came down the path there was a gap in the forest where you could see the ocean and with the sun out it was that deep proper blue now, no longer gray, some greens and turquoise too, and I forced myself to sit and linger for a time, to eat some nuts and put on a jacket since it was cool, to try for once to really be there and enjoy it. The color of the water reminded me of the Mediterranean.

Driving home names like Storm King and Sol Duc. In the parking lot my feet were veiny and pink-purple and I sat with the lift gate open on the back of the CRV. When I got back I’d driven four hours straight from Forks, I told Dawn.

The town of La Push is not much of a town, more of a place where a few people live. But on the far edges of the Pacific Northwest, right on the coast, in just a few minutes from the parking lot you can be in the most beautiful place…and I just was.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: field notes from the pacific coast, mindfulness, pacific northwest