A purple and orange haze of sunrise in December greeted Elmer and me as we walked south along a stretch of Coos Bay beach adjacent to the Empire Boat Ramp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Placid water mirrored purple and orange. Elmer and I reflected purple and orange in the mudflats. Have you ever seen a purple and orange reflection of yourself in a mudflat? It is something cosmic to behold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the distance, across a creek that emptied into the bay, I saw the familiar blue tent pitched on riprap three feet away from a barbed wire fence. It was the most inhospitable place to camp but had a $5 million dollar view of the estuary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tent appeared every other week or so, but hadn’t stood when a recent king tide walloped the riprap and flooded the nearby encampment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who was this camper? I occasionally saw him standing outside the tent, urinating and perhaps mediating. It is possible to both at the same time, particularly in nature, particularly when nature is purple and orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This particular morning, the man had climbed down the 20 feet of riprap and was standing on the beach near the creek. I watched him for a spell. He moved in a strange nodding manner reminiscent of someone high on fentanyl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus!<\/em> Not this Impressionist morning. You can’t have a homeless fentanyl user in the foreground of an Impressionist landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or can you? I should ask a painter. I know a few good ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elmer and I moved closer to the man. It didn’t appear he noticed us. We were now 30 yards away from one another, separated by the creek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The man was not high on fentanyl. He was fishing! Yeah, put that in Impressionist landscape!<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was wielding a kid’s fishing pole and casting into the creek. He knew how to cast, that was for certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey!\u201d I called out. \u201cGood morning! What are your fishing for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGood morning to you,\u201d he said. \u201cI don’t know. I’m just fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you catch something, do you cook it up at your camp.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo, I always catch and release. I want to give back to the bay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A homeless man in Coos Bay with nothing said that to me. I’ll remember that line and this sunrise for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We discussed the beauty of the moment. He spoke in unconscious haiku about it. Then it was time to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHave a great day,\u201d I said. \u201cMy name is Matt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou too!\u201d he said. \u201cMy name is Herschel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elmer and I walked away. The sunrise was fading into a soft blue. I took a quick glance backward. Herschel was was on the move, casting upstream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A purple and orange haze of sunrise in December greeted Elmer and me as we walked south along a stretch of Coos Bay beach adjacent to the Empire Boat Ramp. Placid water mirrored purple and orange. Elmer and I reflected purple and orange in the mudflats. Have you ever seen a purple and orange reflection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1264,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coos-bay","category-meditations","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\/9674","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=9674"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9677,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions\/9677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}