Words.Kew The Pacific Northwest alters minds. From the moment one is born into a rural hospital or the instant a landscape’s magic penetrates a visitor, the rain forest is a special place. Its ocean is coldly indifferent to mankind—deceptive currents, cold salt spray, danger and disorder. Gray sea and sky most days, brilliant and blue some—depressing yet uplifting. Thick weather and thicker waves deter most, yet entice a few. And it is those few who gain solace at the sight of a ribbed sea, and swells stacking in from the Gulf of Alaska. Surfi ng here invigorates the senses, ridding the mind from landlocked fi lth while nourishing the skin.

A day spent out on the point.
Thin overcast, sputters of sunshine, southwest wind chafing the afternoon’s tidal ebb. I surfed the point double-overhead with one friendly, older local. The wave is world class, a mechanical, looping left along a long boulder headland. Not a drop of water misplaced; a looping barrel the entire length of the wave.

Fine, white, hard-packed sand is damp on my soles. Past dusk, the early-season vacationers have retired to their motel rooms, televisions flashing off the walls and windows, the Portlanders oblivious to the glory beyond the big-screen’s trance. I sit on a log and drink beer on the dark beach, at one with the ocean, driftwood, and fragrant mounds of rotting seaweed. As for tourism, Cannon Beach has resurfaced after a long, wet winter, yet at this dim hour, vacant vibes of wintertime remain.

My hands still stink of Dungeness crab, scarfed an hour ago at a seafood market— coleslaw, clam chowder, garlic bread, the entire crab and a cold, incredibly satisfying pint of amber ale. This day started at Short Sands; a ten-minute walk through old-growth rain forest to the white-sand beach, f1anked by vertical, dripping cliffs, thickly spiked with spruce and fir. Pure, gin-clear creeks gurgle out to the beach, lined with neon-green skunk cabbage, salal, and ferns. Drainages of the clouds. The cleanest water, over rock and wood and finally into the sea. A ceaseless cycle.

Vernal rain douses the car’s roof.
with louder, intermittent pops from leaf droplets. Not another sound. Life seems at a stand-still here in the Washington rain forest, though the woods evolve constantly. The ground is awash in green ferns and clovers, crowding the wide tree bases. Above, oldgrowth Sitka spruce limbs twist heavily with beards of clubmoss. A small posse of Olympic elk graze to my left.

No humans. The only thing dry here is the inside of this car, where I lounge with the seat eased back, taking in the ancient tranquillity. The rain intensifi es swiftly, then subsides. Gone. It falls again, over and over,endlessly feeding the two hundred inches of annual rain this area receives.

…Awakened by the hoots of an unseen owl. At dawn I strolled along a trail, snapping photographs in the mist. Salmonberry, once the subsistence of Native Americans, flourishes thick at thigh-level, with herbs, ferns, lichens and fungi…moss everywhere, surviving on moisture and air-borne nutrients, never penetrating the tree bark. Fallen trees are unique nurseries, providing a foothold for saplings, ferns, herbs and… more moss.

Aside from the random bird and gurgling stream, the forest is silent enough to hear the ring in my ears. The thin waterways are pure, healthy, swirling mirrors of the woods above. I took a drink.

Stepped into a grocery store.
at Forks, the regional hub town. Soil-crusted loggers, modern Native Americans, methamphetamine junkies and welfare recipients, all vying for a bigger, better piece of the pie. Where does Forks lead its people? Certainly not into Seattle Ford dealerships
for that shiny new SUV, or into that pinkstuccoed $800,000 cookie-cutter house manicured into the latest Southern California subdivision. Listening to Enya on local radio while driving to the Quileute Indian reservation at La Push (French for la bouche, or “the mouth”, meaning the mouth of the Quileute River): More clear-cuts and hard rain. La Push was, as I last saw it, a damp and depressing
village loaded with garbage, stray dogs, decay, distant-faced Native Americans. One, an elder, asked me for a lift. He even offered me two cans from his Rainier twelve-pack. Nope, sorry, I said. No room— surfboard has priority.

Much later, in Port Angeles, I was the only customer in Destiny Seafood Restaurant, on the waterfront overlooking the fishing boats and Ediz Hook, a natural sandspit. Blonde waitress chatted with me for a while, having nobody else to serve. Nice lady, she was. The crab was good, the beer was cold and the bill stiff for what it was, but they got my cash. From the looks of that place, they’ll need it.

Westport, Washington..
Sunken, gray sky, stiff southwest gale... early evening unravels to night. Fifty shades of gray, forty knots of wind. The climate is depressing and beautiful. Stores are boarded up and/or for sale. Wet, empty streets. Circling seagulls shriek while a foghorn moans. Wind howls through the town, rustling fast-food wrappers and plastic debris across an incredible bleakness found only in coastal Washington.

Flapping, weathered neon signs signal false storefronts, existing perhaps for a sunny August weekend. Not today. Full-size, rusting American trucks line the marina, bumper-stickered with “Supported By Fishing Dollars”, their bearded owners tinkering on large boats down in the harbor. Took a trip to the supermarket. Pasty, overweight single mothers dragging snot-nosed children through the maze of Pepsi, Pop Tarts, and frozen meatloaf. Stubblefaced, baseball-capped men fingering through the cigarette display, dropping eighteenpacks of Pabst into their red shopping carts. Nobody looks healthy to me, not even the produce manager.

Received a weather report from Santa Barbara: seventy-fi ve and sunny. Here it is forty-five degrees, rain clouds looming on the horizon over a whitecapped sea. Walked up to the Totem Drive-In, one of those generic take-out stands littering the beaches of all tourist towns. Seafood on the mind…seafood only. Westport is home to a sizeable fleet, crabbing this time of year.

I ask the fat girl behind the counter if the crab served in the Crab Burger is caught offshore from here. “Actually, it’s one of those imitation crab things.”

In Westport? Where crab pots are stacked high like card decks, “Fresh Crab Sold Here” signs on almost every street corner? I ate the Charter Basket: two oysters, two prawns, three pieces of lingcod, and a mound of lukewarm fries.

Have yet to spot another California license plate. Here I feel like a sterile ambassador of wealth, what with the glossy rental car, freshly shaven face, laptop computer, and Platinum Card. Tourism has failed Westport, at least in May. All the other towns I pass through are relics of the lucrative logging and fishing economies of decades past, reduced now to slaves of the tourist dollar, operating at half-speed from September to June, limping from week to week, month to month, while residents gather for food stamps and welfare checks.

Outside this motel window, on the mirrored surface of the marina, sit the Lady Lee, the Neddie Rose and the Westwind, all primed for better days. The couple next door are sucking on cigarettes, television blaring, the stench slinking beneath the locked door separating our rooms. Two drunk fishermen argue outside. Wind hisses through the window. Fishing boats, buoy bells, gulls, and sea lions will keep me company tonight.