A short, gray-bearded man holding a cup of coffee materialized out of the shore pine forest. I quickly leashed up Elmer on a windy weekday morning at Bastendorff Beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man asked me if Elmer was aggressive. I said no and then he said it was fine to release him. I did and Elmer bolted over to the man, who called him a \u201cfine pup\u201d as he smiled and horsed around with my husky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I put the man in his late 40s or early 50s. His face appeared haggard, his cheeks swollen, his attire rumpled, mismatched. I’d never seen him before. Despite the appearance, I didn’t think he was homeless. The vibe simply wasn’t there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He seemed as if he wanted to talk, so we talked, as waves broke white and wild over the South Jetty of Coos Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually he did most of the talking. I mostly listened, asked a couple of questions, and declared something at the end of our conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His wife had died three days ago, a Sunday, from complications of kidney disease. He had driven her several times to the parking lot of Bastendorff Beach in the days before her death, to walk upon the beach a final time, but she couldn’t make it out of the vehicle. They’d never seen this particular beach before and had lived in the area for two years. Since she didn’t get to see it, he wanted to see it for her. He had just dropped his nine-year-old off at the school bus stop, and here he was. He thought he’d probably spread her ashes at Shore Acres State Park when the time was right. He didn’t know when that would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the course of the last 30 years, I have walked alone with dogs, friends, students and lovers along Oregon’s ocean beaches approximately 10,000 times, and met hundreds if not thousands of people, but had never encountered anyone with this kind of story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As he concluded his narrative, he was fighting hard not to cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I made my declaration: you’ll figure it out, you’re at the ocean, the best and cheapest counselor in the world<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We said our goodbyes and Elmer and I sprinted away. Occasionally, I would turn around to observe the man. He meandered in front of the jetty. He touched the rocks. He stared at the ocean. At one point I waved to him and I think he waved back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A short, gray-bearded man holding a cup of coffee materialized out of the shore pine forest. I quickly leashed up Elmer on a windy weekday morning at Bastendorff Beach. The man asked me if Elmer was aggressive. I said no and then he said it was fine to release him. I did and Elmer bolted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9846","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\/9846","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=9846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9849,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9846\/revisions\/9849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}