Cam rentsch

Right now I’m in Seaside, Oregon, hiding out from 50mph winds and sideways rain in a Starbucks – turns out there’s a reason tourists don’t come here in December. But this is when I did, when I had the time, and so I’m in this Starbucks and I’m the only one wearing a raincoat and seeming to take exception to this weather.

I’ve been wanting to go to the coast for a while now and putting it off, mostly because I’m broke and have vague fears about the police and the state of my car. But I had some time and miscalculated my budget and thought I had the money – so I went. Along with my budget misadventures, I didn’t check the weather, so after a first snowstorm going over Lookout Pass and waiting out another in Ritzville, Washington, I was ready for the fifty degree, drizzly and indolent times I thought I had been promised. Instead I crossed the Coast Range into the storm that now has me indoors, drinking a chai latte I didn’t really want or want to pay for and considering using my Best Western points to go indoors and dry out.

When I was a kid one of my mother’s favorite things to do, besides manipulating her children, was to go to the beach or talk about the beach or pretend that the beach was the only place she could be happy. Maybe that wasn’t pretending. My favorite place to go was to the one room hunting cabin in western Pennsylvania my grandparents owned a share of that had no running water. The outhouse was always full of dead ladybugs. But because of my mother, if the family had money for a vacation, or even if we didn’t, we would got to Myrtle Beach. She’d make my dad drive, usually overnight across the winding mountain roads of West Virginia, all just to go sit in a chair in the sand. I barely remember her even getting in the water. She didn’t read, hell most of the time she didn’t even drink. She just sat and didn’t seem to understand why we were all so confused by it.

I never liked it – the beach seemed to me like a grand arena to be gawked at by strangers and compared unfavorably to my brother by my parents. We were never allowed to go somewhere else or even stop somewhere along the way for something that would interest me – hiking, fishing, just a nice place to take in the view. I think my love for road trips now might come from there – from the power you gain as an adult to be in charge of things, to stop at the roadside historic signs and marked viewpoints and linger a bit, look without feeling hurried, without feeling like others are there to watch you.

Maybe I just like being alone.

I decide to get the hotel, and at some point in the night the power goes out. Maybe not the best choice on my part – I could’ve driven back over the Coast Range and gotten out of the storm all the same. In the morning I’m slow to get my life started and even slower getting out the door to run, annoyed because I lost two pieces of writing when the files went off to Neverland, or I accidentally deleted them in a rush while doing something else at the same time. When I finally do get out the door, it turns out to be a lovely day – light rain, some clouds, but loud surf and salt smell and – surprisingly to me – lots of woodsmoke. I run up the road towards what is called the “Tillamook Head”, ducking off the promenade and down onto the beach. The sand is grey and dense and the Pacific looks curious beyond the breaking waves – there’s a part of me that wants to push a canoe out to sea over their tops, just to see what’s on the other side. That’s not a good idea – I don’t even know how to swim.

I’m brought out of my little seafaring daydream by the surf creeping up much closer than it had been to me and pushing me off the sand and onto the rocks. I start laughing, because the whole thing is quite silly. I’m headed towards a forested trail in the northwest and yet on the way I’m trying my best to keep my feet dry, something I know from experience just won’t happen. My therapist has asked me when and where I feel safe in my body – and on this beach right now I do. Trail running is silly, it’s childlike, and, when it’s good – just plain fun. If you’d told me on one of those Myrtle Beach vacations as a kid that in about fifteen years I’d be running on the beach in Oregon and the main thing I would be thinking about is how much fun I was having, I’d never have believed you. The world did not exist to me then like it does now, and not just because beyond aging comes freedom. I was always a kid that people said had an “old soul” – which was a nice way to say that I seemed depressed and myopic when they thought I shouldn’t have been. But over the last couple of years something has changed – and I have a lot more fun than I ever remember having as a kid, and that can’t all be blamed on Ohio and on my parents.

Once I’m onto the actual trail leading up to Tillamook Head, things change. There isn’t a spot of good footing; slick rocks, tall roots, and ankle-deep mud slow my pace to crawl. Switchbacks are covered in fresh blowdowns – who could have expected that after a huge storm? But the trail is a revelation – the dirt here is different, and after a long drive from Missoula watching Rocky Mountain forest slowly turn to Columbia Plateau Sagebrush and plain and then into rich coastal rain forest, I’m ready to play in it. But with the trail itself I’m not taking in the view unless I stop – my eyes are on my feet, on the ground, focusing on staying upright. But the rest of my senses are bringing in much more – water from the ferns and moss on the trees transfers to my shirt and the hair on my arms becomes wet with something resembling dew. Everything smells so deeply and in a frantic way I’m trying to take it all in piecemeal – like trying to smell just the eggs in a cake baking in the oven. The humidity is in my nostrils and big breaths bring moisture into me and this seems like a lovely place to lay down forever and slowly become moss. I don’t really mind that I’m running so slowly – and when I get to something resembling a summit, about 5 miles from the hotel, I stop and take a breath and feel my heart thumping away inwardly. There’s cedars and moss and fog and ferns and the ever-present sound of the surf beyond the canopy unseen – everything I wanted from this trip. The run back down is much the same – except I’m smiling all the while. And even if now I’m writing while stuck in a hotel room where the power still isn’t on – which includes having no hot water to shower in – that’s okay. I went to the beach, and I had fun. I think I got what I came for.