August 1, 2018

Forts and the Beauty of Beaverwood

A muggy afternoon at the fort. The ocean is the color of an olive—green or black—take your pick. I sit on a driftwood stump and compose this.

I added decorative flourishes to the fort and read new messages—almost a dozen. All of them expressed gratitude to the builder. One said her boyfriend had brought her here to see the fort and leave a message. They were on a date and the date was to visit a fort and leave a message. Must be love!

I love knowing that I built something with my hands that didn’t cost a cent that compelled someone to bring a date to experience it.

Pelicans dive into the ocean. Gulls do their gull thing. Sandpipers snooze at the wrack line. There might be a few humans in the surf but I am oblivious to their presence.

On my way to the fort, I found a stick of beaverwood and plan to add it to my collection. I have conceived of of an art show where I display my beaverwood collection in a pop-up gallery and offer the sculptures for sale. I’ll split the profits with my collaborators. I see the bleached wood mounted on white walls with an artist statement from me and the beavers. The emphasis of the show is the aesthetic qualities of the gnawed wood—not so much the wondrous ecology of beaverwood and beavers in general. This is art, not science! This is mystery, not gravity, although the gravity inherent in watersheds is the reason I find beaverwood on the beach.

I want to call the show: The Beauty of Beaverwood: An Artistic Collaboration Between an Oregonian and Oregon Coast Beavers.

Have I lost my mind with this idea? Or have I entered a new stage of my creative life?

Question? What do I charge for the sculptures?

Support Meditations Blog

The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.