A Christening

I sat in the fort at the South Jetty I constructed a month ago. I commenced a new fort message writing project, this time, right onto the wood with a ballpoint pen.

Pelicans flew by. I smelled the smoke from a nearby beach fire. All the clammers were gone, spent.

I looked up and saw, on the dune trail above me, heading toward the parking lot, a shirtless young man carrying, with his upturned, outstretched hands an infant baby in a blanket. Two young women wearing dresses followed behind carrying tablets, sort of filming, I thought. A documentary crew?

I had never seen anyone carry a baby like that, much less outside, on trail through the dunes.

What?

They disappeared into the dunes.

I couldn’t make this out…then I made it out.

They had just returned from the beach, the ocean, and had performed a christening of some kind. It was the only possible rational and superstitious explanation.

Was this part of their organized religion or a religion of their own devising? Were the Druids back in town? Were they members of The Church of Tom McCall and Oswald West? Could I join? I was a preacher’s kid after all.

So much goes down on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches. Death, life and everything in between and everything outside. I feel privileged to have shared some of my Oregon beach observations with my readers, students and friends over the past two decades. I hope to continue until that last moment at Hart’s Cove…

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