We took a trip to Pacific City. Hanging out with the brother-in-law, his wife, and the three nieces. 6th, 9th, 11th grades, three amazing different flavors of sass and joy. The sort of tridirectional female relationships that I as the older of two boys would never understand, nor would my only son.
The boy's joy in the water. Shrieking with delight when a wave would come and swamp his entirely beach-inappropriate western-shirt-and-sweatpants ensemble.
Night walk in Pacific City to get some sleep medicine after a rough night before. Various off-road yahoos whistling their diesels off the beach** back to their respective rentals. A very bored grocery clerk at closing time. Walking past a noisy party, I hear Cher's "Believe" start up. A woman's voice singing "Believe." A woman says "They always give me this song!" It pauses and another woman's voice continues to sing "Believe" while someone fumbles to get Pandora to play a different song.
(The previous night, I had been repeating the phrase BLING WOLF over again for some reason,
thinking of different words that begun with those letters, trying to get
to sleep.)
The cool flat river. Insect sounds louder than the surf. A deer with a limp in its back leg. The Pere Ubu lyric "My baby says/We can live in the empty spaces of this life."
**Don't get me started
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8/26/24: We drove down the always awe-inspiring Oregon coast to North Bend. It is crazy that we live a couple hours from this. Magnificent vistas at every turn. Places we marked to return to someday.
We're in an Airbeeandbee near the delightfully named Pony Village Mall, near the Pony Slough. I mean how cute is that. Said slough is totally beautiful - and - totally obscured from view by dumb things like car washes, defunct restaurants, an airport. Million dollar views with a roaring highway in the way and no real way to see the magnificent vista of the bridge short of sneaking into an urgent care parking lot.
The typography on the sign for this funeral home:
It feels like only crazy people walk here (NB: I've done a lot of walking). A guy with wild hair walked past me in a restaurant parking lot next to Pony Slough.
Guy: (raises fist and says "woo woo"). I miss when people used to do that.
Me: (raises fist and says "woop woop")
Guy: No, "woop woop" is so cringe.
The family went out to Coquille to do a rail bike ride through Joy Rails and - free plug - there was indeed much joy to be had. I was happy to ride bikes. My kid was happy to be on the rails. And my wife was happy to look at hawks and deer and dragonflies, of which there were many. Totally great.
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Lake Marie, in Umpqua Lighthouse State Park. Super peaceful even with the occasional roar of dune buggies over a distant hill.
Oh yeah, the boy found a cowboy hat in a coastal thrift store (going down the coast, that has historically been our thing) and basically kept it on his head the rest of the journey.
A dude with a p*rcupine followed us down the coast. Two blocks away from the house in Pacific City to two blocks from the house in North Bend at a traffic island near Pony Village. Not sure if his MO was to get spare change, find love, or just interact with other human beings. All valid, I guess. The p*rcupine seemed cool.
A day earlier I had seen someone playing wild fiddle on said traffic island with her case open. I appreciated the madness of this particular endeavor, playing an instrument against the roar of a thousand lifted trucks next to a moribund mall across the street from an unseen million dollar coastal vista. There's a weird beating heart like that in the Coos Bay area, the same beating heart that animates the quite good vegan restaurant, the hippies and wonderful earnest weirdos who haven't gone sour and jaded in this lumber town.
I meant to put a dollar in her violin case, but doing so would have meant crossing a lot of unpredictable mall traffic lanes on foot. I walked on. She was gone half an hour later when I came back.
