A Note on the Road

Texas. New York. Utah. Louisiana. Just some of the many out-of-state plates I’ve seen on all manner of vehicles at beach waysides on the Oregon Coast. Vans. Buses. Sedans. RVS. Trucks. More than a few come complete with makeshift living quarters mounted on the rigs. I even saw a hearse retrofitted as a a camping vessel of some kind.

I wonder when it will let up. I wonder if rain is the cure, real hard core November rain that makes it difficult and uncomfortable to do anything outside. I have felt like talking to some of these travelers, and then I don’t.

It is morning. I am writing this from a picnic table overlooking the ocean. Some pelicans just undulated over the waves. In the sky, contrails and smoke from the California fires.

I started another fort today, just after dawn. On my walk back from the beach, I picked up a handwritten note on yellow legal paper along the road and read it. Someone was making a budget for how they might survive for the rest of 2020 and a list of where they might live. It seems like they are bouncing around. It was a remarkable historical document of the diaspora going on. I normally retain these kind of writing artifacts, but not this one. I unfolded it and left the note flat on the ground in the shoulder where others might choose to read it and reflect.