I sat in the fort at the South Jetty I constructed a month ago. I commenced a new fort message writing project, this time, right onto the wood with a ballpoint pen.<\/p>\n
Pelicans flew by. I smelled the smoke from a nearby beach fire. All the clammers were gone, spent.<\/p>\n
I looked up and saw, on the dune trail above me, heading toward the parking lot, a shirtless young man carrying, with his upturned, outstretched hands an infant baby in a blanket. Two young women wearing dresses followed behind carrying tablets, sort of filming, I thought. A documentary crew?<\/p>\n
I had never seen anyone carry a baby like that, much less outside, on trail through the dunes.<\/p>\n
What?<\/i><\/p>\n
They disappeared into the dunes.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t make this out…then I made it out.<\/p>\n
They had just returned from the beach, the ocean, and had performed a christening of some kind. It was the only possible rational and superstitious explanation.<\/p>\n
Was this part of their organized religion or a religion of their own devising? Were the Druids back in town? Were they members of The Church of Tom McCall and Oswald West? Could I join? I was a preacher’s kid after all.<\/p>\n
So much goes down on Oregon’s publicly-owned beaches. Death, life and everything in between and everything outside. I feel privileged to have shared some of my Oregon beach observations with my readers, students and friends over the past two decades. I hope to continue until that last moment at Hart’s Cove…<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n I sat in the fort at the South Jetty I constructed a month ago. I commenced a new fort message writing project, this time, right onto the wood with a ballpoint pen. Pelicans flew by. I smelled the smoke from a nearby beach fire. All the clammers were gone, spent. I looked up and saw, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5,32],"tags":[822,36,47,96,48,133,54],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driftwood-forts","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-baby-christening","tag-beaches","tag-driftwood-forts","tag-ocean","tag-oregon-beaches","tag-oswald-west","tag-tom-mccall","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4102,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions\/4102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}