The Oregon Trail

Cape Falcon Trail, Oregon. Image by Gwynne Middleton.

I pulled off Highway 101 into the parking lot for Oswald West State Park and nosed the car into a spot pressed against thick ferns and old-growth Sitka. The driver seat headrest gave an impromptu neck massage as I turned my head from one side to the other. The plop-plop-plop of water smacked against the windshield, a metronome I hadn’t realized I’d missed.

I wasn’t born in Oregon, and I hadn’t lived there in years. But when I visited old friends in Portland, I set aside one day for a trip to the state’s rugged northern coast. That afternoon, I was on a mission to return to the spot on a high, grassy bluff overlooking the ocean where I once leaned into wind so fierce I could have sworn I’d momentarily taken flight.

Nearing 40 with a marriage, a mortgage, a child, and a desk job, I was not who I’d planned to be, but here I was. I shrugged into a raincoat and double-knotted my shoelaces as the occasional car or truck zoomed by, Their tires glided over the wet asphalt like a record player’s needle crackling along the grooves in vinyl. The parking lot was otherwise abandoned. Even the most intrepid day hikers and surfers had opted out that rain-soaked winter day. A wool hat was pulled over my ears, and a camera dangled from my neck and lay hidden inside my coat. I shouldered my backpack and slid into the mouth of the temperate rainforest.

In southern Alabama where I grew up, any number of creatures could end your life. Cottonmouths and eastern diamondbacks rattling in the brush, black widows and brown recluses galore, stealthy bobcats, charging wild boars, snapping gators. The South’s heat and humidity brewed ideal conditions for life-threatening encounters with wildlife. There were animal run-ins in Oregon, too, but I had convinced myself I’d more likely collide with a Sasquatch than a black bear this time of year.

That day, Cape Falcon was my destination. Located about two and a half miles from the entrance, the trail wound through old-growth forests and Jurassic Park-size ferns and offered, on clear days, expansive views of the coast. Days like today, the path promised the experience of rambling blindly through fog that clung possessively to anything in its wake.

Within minutes of starting the hike, the echo of road traffic was replaced by Western hemlock and red cedar branches rustling against each other the breeze. I paused long enough to catch the distant roar of the ocean. Dodging puddles, I hurried along to catch my first glimpse of the Pacific as it walloped the shore of Short Sand beach. When the weather was more hospitable, surfers rode frigid waves and then relaxed by fires with friends.

I turned off for the trail leading up to Cape Falcon and scrambled through dense forest, righting myself each time I slipped on slick tree roots twisting up from the muddy path. A couple of miles in, the trail broke from the forest. I followed what looked like a bushwhacked path through open-air salal and salmonberry patches. The wind whipped wilder as I closed in on the cliff overlooking the ocean that I thought of over the years as the one place where I could die happy and free.

Then, I was there, standing in the spot where I always stood, facing the faceless ocean. Its existence was a persistent reminder of my glorious insignificance. From that high up, I watched the shape of waves as they crashed against rocky coves, the gauzy drizzle and knitted clouds blown off, without preamble, by a prevailing wind. Left in its wake was the sun shearing the land into sharp relief.

I have lived many lives in many places across the globe. I tried to find my way alone through the packed streets of Shanghai with barely a lick of Mandarin at the ready. I'd stood at the front of classrooms professing English as a foreign language and hobnobbed with dignitaries in banquet halls in Malaysia. I'd bounced along in a rented car as it sped through the impossible fjords of west Iceland. I'd pushed myself on a long-distance run through the endless green of the Irish countryside as the wild Atlantic thundered and local sheep dared me to part their flock. Still, it was always here in the deep mystery of the Oregon forest, scrambling along overgrown trails, with the roar of the north Pacific beckoning me onward into the void, that I finally felt at home.

A familiar sensation started in my jaw and seeped down my throat until it settled just south of the clavicle, a warmth pooling under my skin despite the cold. This place allowed me to bear witness to what lived inside me, that roar of life that every man who ever made the mistake of loving me believed they could possess. All but one had left eventually, cheated by their ill-begotten belief I should have ceded.

The clouds poured in again. Every angle–cliffs, trees, the Pacific’s horizon–softened under the gray. I snapped a quick photo, certain it would be blurred. Sliding the camera back into my jacket, it pressed against my ribs with each breath I took and gave away. Some things can’t be captured, caged, framed, reproduced, and sold to the highest bidder. That’s what made them wild and beautiful.

I squinted against the rain as it spit in my face. I was soaked through, possessed by something that could care less about possession. It just was. The rain, the ocean, the wind, the cliffs. I should have turned back. My hands were cold. My socks were damp. The wind lashed my cheeks with icy rain.

Something rustled behind me. I turned as a falcon took flight from its roost on a nearby evergreen. Its wings were a dark silhouette against the misty sky. Then it pierced the clouds, and like that, it was gone.