Elmer the husky and I hit Area B of Fort Stevens State Park at roughly ten in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was to be our first time together on the beach and I still hadn’t decided if I was going to let him off leash. I hadn’t yet, certainly not in the city, but I had the ocean on one side, sandy cliffs on the other. Still, I felt nervous. My previous husky, Sonny, was a mad bolter on beaches and would sometimes disappear into the dunes and shore pines for an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weather cooperated: dry and bright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We stood atop the sandy cliff. Forty feet below, a stretch of beach and teal waves rolling with a gentle roar. Perfect surfing waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tidal gods cooperated as well. High tide, so high the asshole drivers wouldn’t dare take a joyride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We slid down the cliff. We hit the beach but I kept Elmer on the leash. I talked to him about behavior. I’d brought along a ball although he’s not much of a ball dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 30 yards of him going mad, tugging on the leash, I said, \u201cFuck it!\u201d and released my dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He exploded ahead of me. He zigged and zagged. He galloped to the water and met the waves. He seemed confused by their movement and that made me laugh. I jogged behind him and called out. He came to me. We played a little ball to focus his energy. The strategy worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elmer ran ahead and when I called out, I started running the opposite direction and he chased me and then circled and circled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I felt happier than I have in years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We romped for 30 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A half mile down the beach I saw some surfers holding boards and dogs bounding around. I wasn’t ready to meet that scene with Elmer yet. All had gone well. Don’t press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turned him around and we headed to the base of the cliff where we had descended. I leashed him up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We started clambering up the cliff. Elmer kept sitting down. The trail was nearly vertical. I got ahead of him and tried pulling and coaxing him up. The sand was so soft we both kept sinking into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five minutes later I abandoned the attempt, exhausted. I was going to half to walk roughly five miles to the South Jetty and then on the road back to the parking lot of Area B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, we were going to scale the cliff. I walked with Elmer looking for a better route. I saw it. There was some erosion that had built some semi stairs. It might work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We took the new route and got half way up. Then I bogged down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elmer got in full Husky mode and started pulling me up the route. I fell down a couple of time and told him to keep pulling you \u201cdamn husky!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pulled me up to the top of the cliff. It was entirely new experience for me with a dog at one of Oregon’s socialist beaches and I have rambled beaches with dogs in Oregon about 3000 times in my lifetime. It’s the never the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We rested on the dune. We watched the ocean. I thought about where I was in 2024, where I am going, where I traveled from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, Elmer and I will hit an Oregon ocean beach every morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elmer the husky and I hit Area B of Fort Stevens State Park at roughly ten in the morning. This was to be our first time together on the beach and I still hadn’t decided if I was going to let him off leash. I hadn’t yet, certainly not in the city, but I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[36,13],"class_list":["post-8758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-beaches","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\/8758","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=8758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8760,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8758\/revisions\/8760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}