A cloudy Sunday morning greeted Elmer and me as we ascended to the Coos Bay beach after walking six blocks from our home. On the way, we crossed a street to avoid a meth-crazed homeless woman throwing her cans here and there while screaming profanities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the lowest tide I’d observed since moving here and we decided to take advantage and explore as far as we could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The beach was littered with shells. On the bay, a lone fishing boat bobbed and various gulls darted around. I kept wondering when I would see a freighter come this way. I supposed it must be at high tide when that happens. It occurred to me that almost all my great beach stories are a low tide, not high. Is there a metaphor in there somewhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first hairy triton, Oregon’s official state sea shell, appeared a quarter mile into our walk. I picked it up for examination. If it was intact and had a chamber that looked like the valve of a heart, and you could thread some cord or twine through it, it was a keeper. Over the years, I’ve been more of a limpet man, but that was in the past, and I decided a week ago that now I would collect only hairy tritons that met my criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found another. Then another! Giddiness mounted inside me. Elmer bounded over to attack me but I threw him a stick as a distraction and kept hunting. Two more!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was my hairy triton record in one beach comb? I had no idea. I’d never established one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another! Then another!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Half an hour and several miles later, I had scored nine\u2014now certified as my new record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we were ready to leave the beach, I noticed a garment of some kind washed up in the rocks. I pulled it out for examination. It was seemingly a brand new, albeit soaked Gruden brand brown hoodie, a real fishermen hoodie, probably retailing for $50 or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted it, but it was far too unwieldy to carry back home with a leashed husky. I stashed it in the rocks and covered it with driftwood. Later, I would drive Elmer and me back to the beach for retrieval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gifts from the sea!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A cloudy Sunday morning greeted Elmer and me as we ascended to the Coos Bay beach after walking six blocks from our home. On the way, we crossed a street to avoid a meth-crazed homeless woman throwing her cans here and there while screaming profanities. It was the lowest tide I’d observed since moving here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1264,5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coos-bay","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","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\/9413","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=9413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9416,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions\/9416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}