Elmer and I were walking north on Horsefall Beach, a marvelous and deserted stretch of sand spit that ends at the north jetty of Coos Bay. It was 6:45 on a sunny morning and approaching high tide. No other human was around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ran for a mile and Elmer did his sniffing routine at the wrack line. Then, as he always does sooner or later when he sees me running, attacks! I stopped running after noticing a large mass in the wet sand approximately a hundred yards away. It was not a piece of driftwood\u2014three decades and thousands of visits to Oregon Coast’s socialist ocean beaches had taught me the mass the represented a beached sea lion, either dead or dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I steered Elmer toward the dunes. There was no smell of death and no vultures about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a distance, I saw the seal lion did not move. He was probably dead, perhaps not long after he beached himself. He was a mammal after all, and maybe he wanted to die on land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elmer and I kept rambling. I was feeling better in mind and body than I have since my caretaker days on a national wildlife refuge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On our return leg, I looked at the sea lion. A flipper moved. His huge head rolled back. Alive!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not for long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d seen sea lions die on the beach several times, but it always rips me up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are they thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What a perfect way to die, as opposed to how my father died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sea lion’s body would feed the food chain and return to the ocean tens of thousands of years before my father’s cremated remains would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day. Dad would return to he ocean, where all life began on this planet. It was inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I wish it was sooner. It will be for me. Otter Point or Hart’s Cove or maybe even Horsefall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elmer and I were walking north on Horsefall Beach, a marvelous and deserted stretch of sand spit that ends at the north jetty of Coos Bay. It was 6:45 on a sunny morning and approaching high tide. No other human was around. I ran for a mile and Elmer did his sniffing routine at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","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\/9460","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=9460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9462,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9460\/revisions\/9462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}