I had lived in Florida for close to seventeen years and could drive five or ten minutes to the Atlantic. But the Pacific was the ocean of my childhood and I had not seen the Pacific Ocean for twenty-one years or so.
In 2011, Fru and I went out to Oregon, to Bend, which is inland over the Cascades. We were there--Fru was there--for a job possibility. I convinced her, before we left, flying out of Portland, to drive to the coast for one night.
And so we did.
I chose Lincoln City and picked out a place called the Coho Lodge. I didn't know either place. As a kid, we used to drive down from Vancouver, WA to Tillamook and other spots in Oregon, and had been along most of its coast and a lot of California's coast and, of course, Washington's, but that was so long ago and, as I said, i was just a kid.
So we went over the Cascades, through Corvallis, through the costal range and into Newport. And there was the ocean, the Pacific. And I drove us upwards--north--through Depot Bay and into Lincoln City.
Lincoln City was a crowded town, a bit haphazard, but I didn't care. Our room at the Lodge, which was small, in elegant yet pleasant enough, looked out upon the ocean I'd come to see.
We went down to the water. We went out to eat at a place along the water. The next morning I wanted to go back down to the beach and the water.
"You're like a little kid," Fru said about my impatience as I waited for her to come with me that morning, waited to get down the bluff to the beach with its dark cold sand and wave-carved rocks.
Yes. I guess I was.
I don't know. It was just nice to see it. Smell it. Touch it. It's just a name--The Pacific Ocean--but it was a name, a huge body of water, that meant something to me nonetheless.
It was, you know, just good to see it again after all that time away.
No comments:
Post a Comment