Nothing Gold Beach Can Stay

Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.

He was right in perhaps the truest line of American poetry ever written.

I visited Gold Beach not to long ago and camped in a tent with Elmer the husky in the same RV park where I lived for three years, a special disheveled place populated with interesting (mostly Trumpian characters) and dilapidated RVs, including one of them mine, a 1978 Minnie Winnie.

I became somewhat of an expert on RV living in disheveled RV parks and often surprised myself by how much my experience drifted into my writing. I loved the minimalist life in my RV and residing a block from the ocean didn’t hurt either.

But that time is over. I live in the big city now and help care for my dad. Also over is the wonderfully sublime scene of the RV park. The owner and manager died a year ago, and well, the new manager isn’t as vigilant keeping out the meth miscreants. In fact, I camped not too far away from several in much the same way Marlon Perkins camped not far away from wild game on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. There was no story in it, just irritation.

I’ve often wondered if I’ll return to the RV life after my Portland days have concluded. I am beginning to think not. I did it and did it with unique improvisational style when my very existence seemed very much in doubt. There is no going back to that time. Those circumstances are long gone.

Other Gold Beach gold that didn’t stay:

My good Gold Beach friend Earl, a wonderful and original poet is also gone. He died a few weeks ago.

Turkey’s, the tavern up the Rogue River, is also gone, although it’s still there. I stopped by for a beer in a tiny joint that I have described in print as the greatest tavern in Oregon and probably the last one that serves only beer and wine, and not even beer on tap anymore. All the great storytellers I met there are dead or gone. There is nothing but NASCAR, a building on the verge of collapse, and mental decrepitude in the form of support for Donald Trump. The man really has killed off so many great attributes of American life in rural areas. They are never coming back. Gold turned to lead.

The Free Pool Sunday event at the Sea Star lounge in Gold Beach, one the great storytelling venues I’ve ever come across is also gone. No, the event still goes on, I attended, but the heyday as I knew it vanished a few years ago. Now it’s just gambling and Trump bullshit. I must have written a half million words at the corner table, the one near the library and boasting a sliver of an ocean view. When I sat there recently, nothing. No inspiration. No crazy locals or weird tourists or addled homeless people.

The point is: these glory days came and went. I have let them all go. There’s no need to ever to return to the RV park to camp or to drink a beer in the Sea Star or hope someone tells an osprey story in Turkey’s.

What remains golden about this area is the remote beaches and how I have new memories of them with Elmer. We are creating new gold. Such as:

Nesika Beach at 4:50 a.m. and discovered one of the greatest driftwood forts of all time.

Pistol River Beach at 7 and beheld the most mysterious and interchanging mouth of river in Oregon, or the whole country for that matter.

The beach at the South Jetty of the Rogue River at 10:30 and saw strange young men vaping dank weed as ospreys dived into the river a few feet away.

Bailey Beach at dawn and saw shades of purple, red, and blue reflected on the sand.

Oh, and I almost forgot, nine holes of golf in the early morning on a socialist golf course in the middle of beautiful Southern Oregon Coast nowhere. I played damn well! A damn fine new golden memory.

Nothing gold can stay, but you can make new gold.