A November Morning

There’s a cold stickiness to the air and the ever present roar of layered breakers far off shore. The rich ochre sand under my bare feet is fine and chilled. There are houses here, but the graying texture of their weathered facades prevents any kind of dating. It’s a blended existence along this rustic coastline. The large metropolitan centers are a hundred miles to the east, across a spine of rolling coastal mountains. It could be 1940, or 1850, or, looking south along sea grass bluffs devoid of humanity to a faint point of land extending out into the ocean, it could be the receding Pleistocene. A short faced bear ambles down to the surfline, the smell of desiccated whale flesh attracts predators long since extinct. This is the western coast of Oregon.

I’ve been visiting this coastline my entire life and throughout that time whether it was searching for childhood amongst driftwood forts, walking hand in hand with my future wife, or photographing it’s many seastacks, it’s been a source of contentment and blissful reprieve. In 1967 governor Tom McCall signed into law House Bill 1601, The Oregon Beach Bill, that established public ownership of this coastline. It was a landmark conservation legislation that has had profound cultural effects. Long dead are the entrepreneurs, legislators and land developers that lobbied to privatize and open this vast ecological wonderland to ownership for the few. It’s a beautiful example that illustrates the power of protection over the transient greed of a few individuals or a few corporations.

The struggle with long term protection of our shared landscapes is it requires action that extends beyond a single lifetime; it’s generational. Collectively, as a society, there are no regrets over past protections. I’m not talking about the immediate backlash from landowners or politicians, but a generational regret. I have never read a regret for protecting land from several generations past. Time erases greed and builds a protectiveness around our shared spaces. Yosemite is a prime example. It is a national treasure, visited by over four million people a year. The idea of damming its entrance for a simple reservoir is akin to a sacrilegious attack on us all. And yet, that’s exactly what happened to its sister canyon Hetch Hetchy, just twelve miles north of Yosemite Valley when it was dammed in 1913, 23 years after its supposed protection within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. The dam was proposed and built during the same generation that protected the space as a national park. The place had yet to cement itself into a national consciousness. Historical distance is the true arbiter of conservation. The same can be said for the very beach I'm standing on. Oregonians as a whole fiercely defend the public ownership of her coastline. There is something unique about this coastline, a feeling evoked by a removal from time. I lived a mile from the ocean in San Francisco for a decade and it never had the same feeling of remoteness and separation, of being somewhere apart.

And yet, there’s contradiction here. Head inland just a mile and as this protected coastline gives way to the dense coastal forests the lack of protection is quickly evidenced by the patchwork of clearcuts. With a twist of mockery, the road corridors are often lined with a thick canopy of mature cedars, madrones and red alders left purposely untouched to shield unsuspecting drivers of these clearcuts. Protect this, but not that, for that is a commodity and is required, or so it goes. Is compromise generationally sustainable. Economic growth is what our system depends on and yet that same growth appears unsustainable. Compromise seems to be the mechanic for the foreseeable future. Within these compromises, where does defense of the natural world live. Step out of the way or help. And if we decide to help, as many have dedicated their lives, at what boundary does that help stop.   

One early morning I watch a broken, struggling sea gull being hunted by two bald eagles. Its wing is bent out of alignment and it struggles to defend itself on the sand of its grave. I stand apart, watching, having no desire to help it, the eagles have to eat, too. Two weeks after this morning a lone rare sea otter is brought into the aquarium in the town of Newport, 57 miles to the south. The sea otter is extinct along the Oregon Coast, except for the rare individuals who roam south from Washington or north from California. It was brought to the aquarium after beaching itself, emaciated and full of puncture wounds. A shark tried, but failed, to get its meal. Sharks need to eat, too. I think it should have been brought back out to sea and left to the order of its nature. But after that, there should be a full scale repopulation program of the sea otter along this coast. Opponents of this will decry that its reintroduction will decimate the shellfish population; so it goes. It's only been two generations since we hunted the sea otter to extinction along this coastline. That forced removal brought on waves of destructive sea urchins, which in turn decimated the rich kelp beds that are required for a healthy ecosystem for a plethora of flora and fauna. That’s living in recognition of the moral consequences of our choices. 

These are profoundly complicated questions with many layers and voices: conservationists, economics, human interests and unfortunately, politics. What’s the right answer, not for this generation, nor the next, but for the following twenty? I’m not a scientist or an environmentalist, fisherman or legislator, I’m an artist who is obsessed with landscape and nature. 

It’s marvelous here today, standing on a cold November morning with the breeze softly blowing from the north. I can see my ghosted father a ways off, walking alone, his distinctive gray parka and square shoulders, a slight bend, looking down at the scattered patches of rocks at his feet, searching. I turn south, looking away for a moment, and watch my young daughter sprinting in and out of the frothy surf. It’s foamy tendrils lapping at her bare legs, a purity of joy painted on her face. I turn back and my father has gone on, farther than I can see or follow. Looking down at my own feet I see a small black stone, smoothed by countless years of grinding between sand and water. I pocket it, and walk on.