Three seals submarine into the river. Their heads pop up like periscopes. They are watching me. I wish they would launch torpedoes into the ships of American acquisition and consumption. They are paper-thin vessels. They’d sink fast and divers would find nothing to salvage. <\/p>\n
Two geese honk overhead. <\/p>\n
Low tide. Mud everywhere. The mud reveals. <\/p>\n
I walk over an acre of driftwood and find a tiny light blue glass float, my first such find in 22 years of Oregon Coast beach combing. But, alas, it’s not from Japan. It’s a local bauble, but I like it, hold it aloft, and consider it a new orb.<\/p>\n
The amount of beaverwood I encounter is astonishing. I start gathering it up. I’ll need a mule train to get it back to the car, three miles away, straight uphill. <\/p>\n
I’m a middle aged man carrying around beaverwood. Have I lost my mind. No, I have rediscovered it. <\/p>\n
I find a black Sharpie. I pull off the cap and find a plank. It works! This gives me an idea…<\/p>\n
I build a fort over a massive chainsawed round of an unknown hardwood. I count the rings. At least 150. <\/p>\n
As I build, a basset hound appears and noses through my backpack and then plops down in front of the fort and begins to bay. I think he’s talking to the fort!<\/p>\n
I laugh so hard I feel it through my chest. <\/p>\n
The dog’s owner comes up and introduces me to Hickory. They move on. I keep building and building. This thing is going to god. <\/p>\n
I think about taking a photograph of the fort with my phone, but the cloud is full and I don’t know how to empty it because I never use the cloud. Hey, you, get off my cloud!<\/p>\n
I loathe how the word \u201ccloud\u201d has been usurped. It’s Wordsworth’s word, not Steve Jobs! <\/p>\n
Who cares I can’t document my fort with a photograph? I don’t need to show it to the world and enrich a tech giant. It will be seen by people and dogs who visit this secret beach that I won’t possibly reveal. Mystery over journalism. <\/p>\n
I write on the round: \u201cLeave a message.\u201d I leave the marker behind and anchor it with a river rock.<\/p>\n
I’ve got 60 pounds of beaverwood on my back. I start hiking for the car. <\/p>\n\n
Three seals submarine into the river. Their heads pop up like periscopes. They are watching me. I wish they would launch torpedoes into the ships of American acquisition and consumption. They are paper-thin vessels. They’d sink fast and divers would find nothing to salvage. Two geese honk overhead. Low tide. Mud everywhere. The mud reveals. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5,32],"tags":[11,862,47,6,13],"class_list":["post-4789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driftwood-forts","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-beavers","tag-beaverwood","tag-driftwood-forts","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon-coast","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\/4789","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=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4791,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions\/4791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}