Herschel and the Impressionist Sunrise

A purple and orange haze of sunrise in December greeted Elmer and me as we walked south along a stretch of Coos Bay beach adjacent to the Empire Boat Ramp.

Placid water mirrored purple and orange. Elmer and I reflected purple and orange in the mudflats. Have you ever seen a purple and orange reflection of yourself in a mudflat? It is something cosmic to behold.

In the distance, across a creek that emptied into the bay, I saw the familiar blue tent pitched on riprap three feet away from a barbed wire fence. It was the most inhospitable place to camp but had a $5 million dollar view of the estuary.

The tent appeared every other week or so, but hadn’t stood when a recent king tide walloped the riprap and flooded the nearby encampment.

Who was this camper? I occasionally saw him standing outside the tent, urinating and perhaps mediating. It is possible to both at the same time, particularly in nature, particularly when nature is purple and orange.

This particular morning, the man had climbed down the 20 feet of riprap and was standing on the beach near the creek. I watched him for a spell. He moved in a strange nodding manner reminiscent of someone high on fentanyl.

Jesus! Not this Impressionist morning. You can’t have a homeless fentanyl user in the foreground of an Impressionist landscape.

Or can you? I should ask a painter. I know a few good ones.

Elmer and I moved closer to the man. It didn’t appear he noticed us. We were now 30 yards away from one another, separated by the creek.

The man was not high on fentanyl. He was fishing! Yeah, put that in Impressionist landscape!

He was wielding a kid’s fishing pole and casting into the creek. He knew how to cast, that was for certain.

“Hey!” I called out. “Good morning! What are your fishing for?”

“Good morning to you,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m just fishing.”

“If you catch something, do you cook it up at your camp.”

“No, I always catch and release. I want to give back to the bay.”

A homeless man in Coos Bay with nothing said that to me. I’ll remember that line and this sunrise for the rest of my life.

We discussed the beauty of the moment. He spoke in unconscious haiku about it. Then it was time to leave.

“Have a great day,” I said. “My name is Matt.”

“You too!” he said. “My name is Herschel.”

Elmer and I walked away. The sunrise was fading into a soft blue. I took a quick glance backward. Herschel was was on the move, casting upstream.