I visited Oswald West State Park on the northern Oregon coast yesterday. It was spectacular. Nothing i saw in my visits to the Columbia River Gorge with coworkers and my dad prepared me for the grandeur and timelessness of the pacific ocean meeting the temperate coastal rainforest landscape.
I drove out starting at around 0800 and got on the trail by 1000. I arrived, drank my thermos of coffee, studied the trail map, and dropped a tab of LSD. i assessed the conditions and left some warm clothing and my boots behind. I could have left my book, selfie stick, and some other items as well since i did not use them. But overall i packed pretty light.
I started just south of short sand beach. The parking lot was about half a mile from this beach and required no pass or payment. The beach was beautiful. I continued hiking and as the sun shone more directly the forest and coast seemed to light up with greater and greater intensity.
I stopped constantly to take photos. The acid peaked and troughed and peaked. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the physical effects because i was more accustomed to it (this was my third time with LSD) and i was more focused on the rugged trail, the incredible sights and keeping myself fed and hydrated and free of injury.
I came to a spectacular lookout called Cape Falcon and checked out the rocks and waves and trees and cliffs and gulls and cormorants. I made frequent use of my binoculars. I marvelled at the bright and clear colors and contours. An example is the frothy white of the waves upon the dark brown and gray rocks and the trickles and waterfalls that ensue after the rock is submerged under a wave and then surfaces again. Another example is the green waters near shore that give way to deep blue. There were also red and orange cliff faces. There were white gulls descending from great heights to land on the water and on the rocks. There were windswept conifers clinging to the cliffs for life.
At one point i experienced the common theme on acid trips of grasping the connectedness of things. With my binoculars i scanned from the top of a coastal cliff, where the trees met the sky, and looked from there to the exposed cliff below it (with distinct rock strata) and then to the waves hitting the rock. And then to the small bay with gulls flying about and to the ocean itself with unseen whales and seals moving about below the surface. While i did this i thought, “atmospheric science, ecology, erosion, plate tectonics, oceanography, ornithology, coastal navigation, paleontology, geography, geology, etc.”
I felt acutely the desire that has always been with me to know as much as possible about what i observed. I wanted to know the name of the cape i was marvelling at. I wanted to identify each gull and know its foraging habits. I wanted to picture the avian dinosaur lineage that led to those gulls. I wanted to understand the coastal ecosystem and the weather and climate of the region. I also wanted to be attuned to my physical needs and give myself the water and simple carbs i would need to power myself through the hike (i had candy bars, grape drink, water and mixed nuts that perfectly did the job). I wanted to prepare for my next hike with the right exercises and rest and nutrition. I paid attention to my reaction to the LSD and once again, i noticed no ill effects beyond a slightly flushed face and a slight metallic taste in my mouth. To drink a single beer would be riskier and more of a hindrance than this safe and well-characterized psychedelic.
I stood there observing and thought that the main unifying thing i wanted to understand was ecology, which as i see it is the interaction of living things with their surroundings and with each other. It is a science of complex connections and dynamism and endless personal fascination.
But i observed longer and realized i wanted to know the whole history. Not just ecology but paleoecology and the formation of the landscape and the formation of the earth and the history of the discovery and parsing out and debating of all these things. At one point while hiking i wondered if i would live forever through a mind-uploading option near the end of biological life and thereby get an eternity to learn and know.
I ran into very few hikers once i was beyond the beach area. One was a man who was an experienced hiker. He said today’s journey of about 15 miles was short for him. He told me about a risky but rewarding way of getting down to the rocks near where the waves were crashing. With his help i scoped it out visually for next time.
I saw waterfalls where creeks emptied into the ocean. I crossed log bridges and passed through enchanted trails where the sun shone through the trees to illuminate hanging lichen and moss. I brushed past huge sword ferns and other lush native plants.
I once halted in my tracks at what sounded like rain only to realize it was pine needles showering down on the leaves of the forest floor. They looked like rain and made gentle sounds all around me as they landed.
I observed huge fallen logs in various states of decay. The more decay, the more life sprung up opportunistically to replace the dead tree. Seeing all of these revealed the progression of life, the stages of succession. I saw one tree that must have fallen long ago that provided the substrate for a row of newer trees that looked to be 10 or so years old. I saw how fungus moves in to feed on dead rotting wood. I saw the ferns that grow in clumps of earth formed where rotting wood turned to soil. I saw native banana slugs feeding on the fungus.
At one point i saw a new bird for me. I made sure to mark its features. And i think it was a varied thrush, a bird you will only see in western north america except for rare vagrants to the east.
I looked out northward at the coast and saw the town of Cannon Beach and the great rocky outcroppings on the beach there. There was so much to take in.
I continued for as long as was safe considering the sun sets at a little after 1800 nowadays. since i had no flashlight i headed back with enough time to spare. I made good time on the return because i did not stop constantly to observe and photograph.
I got to short sand beach in time for sunset and watched it from atop a driftwood log. It was clear and beautiful and a perfect end to the hike. I saw that a few other people had set up campfires and were well appointed for a few more hours of enjoyment before heading back home. I decided i would propose a plan like that to my coworker for next time. She is the one who convinced me to come here after i shared my original plan, which was to visit Nehelem State Park and camp. This was a much better choice and i am thankful to her for that info.
I marked how this moment of watching the sunset over the pacific horizon marked a waypost in my life. I worked hard to get here. And this is why i came. I could visit the coast every weekend and never tire of it. Then there is the mount hood national forest, mount hood itself, mount saint helens, the high desert, the plains of southeastern washington, and so on. The landscape is inexhaustible. I can drive to all these places and camp and hike. I can also do bikepacking adventures closer to the city, requiring no driving at all.
I am so glad about the choices i made that led me here. I have much more to do and my imagination is on fire with what to do next. My lust for life and for experiences in the natural world are as insatiable as ever and they insist on being fed.
I can only end with a passage from The Call of the Wild:
“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”
pseudoisaac 