Meditations on a Dying Sea Lion

Elmer and I were walking north on Horsefall Beach, a marvelous and deserted stretch of sand spit that ends at the north jetty of Coos Bay. It was 6:45 on a sunny morning and approaching high tide. No other human was around.

I ran for a mile and Elmer did his sniffing routine at the wrack line. Then, as he always does sooner or later when he sees me running, attacks! I stopped running after noticing a large mass in the wet sand approximately a hundred yards away. It was not a piece of driftwood—three decades and thousands of visits to Oregon Coast’s socialist ocean beaches had taught me the mass the represented a beached sea lion, either dead or dying.

I steered Elmer toward the dunes. There was no smell of death and no vultures about.

From a distance, I saw the seal lion did not move. He was probably dead, perhaps not long after he beached himself. He was a mammal after all, and maybe he wanted to die on land.

I don’t.

Elmer and I kept rambling. I was feeling better in mind and body than I have since my caretaker days on a national wildlife refuge.

On our return leg, I looked at the sea lion. A flipper moved. His huge head rolled back. Alive!

Not for long.

I’d seen sea lions die on the beach several times, but it always rips me up.

What are they thinking?

What a perfect way to die, as opposed to how my father died.

The sea lion’s body would feed the food chain and return to the ocean tens of thousands of years before my father’s cremated remains would.

One day. Dad would return to he ocean, where all life began on this planet. It was inevitable.

But I wish it was sooner. It will be for me. Otter Point or Hart’s Cove or maybe even Horsefall.