sometimes a place just pulls me in and a linger. sometimes I stay a couple hours, some times days….or years. I’ve met some super nice folks, and I finally got an chance to stay at the lost bouy hostel!
another reason for the linger is I’m trying to process some of the experiences I’ve had the past few days. depoe bay and the shoreline leading up to newport has me thinking even more about the ocean activist sylvia earle and rachel carson. cardon’s first 3 books were about the ocean. not a huge suprise when you find our she was a marine biologist. the sea trilogy was published in the 1950s. 

I’ve only read the first one, the sea around us, and was moved by the poetic way she wrote about the sea, the formations of islands, life that emerges from the ocean. 

in depoe bay, I went to the whale watching center and the folks there talked about why more whales come up and in to this bay. it seems that the shelf there is a superb deep drop off due to the volcanic history of the area, this vulcanic geology changed the whole shoreline down to newport. this geological shift gave the opportunity for life in tide pools along the sandy and pebbled beach. 

so I’ve been walking and thinking about the lessons of sylvia earle and rachel carson as well as the lessons of evolution and earth science. how life on land formed from the muck of the ocean. how, no matter where one lived on this planet, the oxygen you depend on is because of microbes (like plankton) in the sea. how our weather patterns, rain/snow/sleet is mostly due to the water from the ocean. and I ponder all this with the feelings I’m having along this journey so far; how it’s a kind of rebirth. 

I’ve been saying that I decided to start with the coast trail because it’s the only one without snow, but I’m suspecting there is another reason, something I don’t exactly understand yet.