Blue Highways: Agate Beach and Cape Foulweather, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

What a great, descriptive name is Cape Foulweather!  The English explorer James Cook gave it the name after experiencing, you guessed it, foul weather off this coast of Oregon.  The problem of coast access, and the ways in which we connect with nature are the subjects of this post, and they fit together quite nicely.  Take a moment to look at the map to see our oceanfront location, and then sit back and observe what's happening!

Book Quote

"On north to Agate Beach. Shoreline I had camped on fifteen years before was now glassy condominiums and the path to the ocean posted.  Again northward to a pocket of shore between developments near Cape Foulweather. The surf rolled out an unbroken uproar like a waterfall....In the lee of a big tussock of beach grass I ate lunch, as gulls, slipping over the drafts and yawing and tilting in the stiff sea wind, watched me watch them. It's a curious sensation when nature looks back."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 4

View of Cape Foulweather, Oregon from the Devil's Punch Bowl. Photo by "Little Mountain 5" on Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Agate Beach and Cape Foulweather, Oregon

Growing up in Northern California, I never really thought much about beach access.  After all, I never had a problem getting to the coast.  A lot of the coast was open to me.  There were plenty of state parks with beach access, and even those parts of the coast where property went to the edge the bluff, my understanding was that the public had a right to walk on the beach below the bluff.  In preparing for the post today, I see that I was mostly right about that - the public is allowed to walk on the wet sand which is in the highest tide area.  But in my neck of the woods, we really didn't think about that too much.  Beach access was available almost wherever one wanted to go.

Development was not very active, either.  Sure, people built houses near the ocean, and some blocked off access to the water.  This was questionable legally, since under California law if the public has used the property for access to the beach for a long time, the owner may need to live with this established public access.  In my hometown, thankfully, there were no condominium developments or large tracts that blocked beach access.  There was really no issue.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that public beach access wasn't available everywhere.  When I met people from Massachussetts, I learned that the Cape Cod beaches were mostly off limits, and that visitors without connections were limited to crowded public beaches where, I think I remember it being said, people had to pay a fee to get on them.  (Note: I am wrong on this, but one does have to pay a parking fee)  In fact, I get the idea that public access to beaches is more of a rarity than anything.  Even in California, the right to access some beaches is challenged.  In Malibu, some property owners go to great lengths to keep people accessing beaches through their property even though it is legally questionable to do so.

Oregon is even more open to public beach access, and declared in 1961 that the state owns all wet send 16 vertical feet from the low tide line belongs to the state and that public easement, or right of way, exists up to the line of vegetation.  This law was modeled on a 1959 law from a surprising source, Texas!  Texas passed a pioneering open beaches law that allows the public the right to use the wet beaches and access across the dry beach up to the vegetation.

I can only see these problems of when and how the public accesses the beaches getting more pronounced as populations increase, the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the population grows, and people with the resources and means to develop the coastlands continue.  This is unfortunate.  Perhaps because we are all evolved from creatures that inhabited water for millions of years before the first daring being crawled out onto land, and perhaps because the human physiology is around 60% water in a mature adult, and perhaps because we need water to survive, we are attracted to bodies of water.  Ocean beaches are, and should be treated as, a national treasure.  It would be a shame if a majority of the American population wouldn't be able to get there, due to the selfish desires of a few.

I have one more thing to comment on in this post.  LHM mentions how strange it is when one watches nature and nature watches back.  When I am observing nature, I tend to forget that I am part of the scene.  There is a quantum physics principle that, if I paraphrase it correctly, argues that one can never be a truly neutral observer since the act of observation will always change the outcome.  Intuitively I know this, even as I watch wildlife in its "natural" state.

I became aware of this one day while watching seals at a beach in Northern California.  Not content with the observation platform (and young enough to not really think that I might be disturbing the creatures as I crept ever closer to them) I moved out on the rocks very close to the water.  A 20 foot wide channel separated the rock I was on from the rock the seals were sleeping upon.  One looked up, noticed me, and slipped into the water.  A moment later, its head popped up, nearer to me than any seal had ever gotten before.  Clearly curious, it looked me over as I regarded it.  It's eyes were large and as it checked me out, it suddenly gave out a soft "hooooo," almost like an owl.  Surprised, I "hooo"ed back.  It looked at me again swimming side to side, and then with a soft splash it ducked underwater and disappeared.

I told a friend about this experience, and she told me that I was very lucky.  She went on to explain that it is rare for a wild animal not only to recognize that you are there, but actually acknowledge you.  When it acknowledges you, she said, it is a gift.  Since then, I have in many ways felt kindred with seals, as if for a brief moment, I was welcomed into their club or society, even if it came after I was being nosy and intrusive on them.  I've since discovered the wonderful legends of the Selkies, an Irish myth of seals that can become human and can be kept human if one steals their pelt.  I've wondered in the past if people I knew were Selkies. 

It clearly is strange, as LHM says, when nature looks back at you.  But I would add that it is also wonderful.  If we all experienced nature watching us, perhaps we wouldn't take nature for granted, or worse.  Perhaps we would be mindful of how we build, what we destroy and take greater measures to preserve and protect.  And perhaps we would have less fighting about whether people should have access to natural treasures, and more strategizing about how to maximize people's access to them.

Musical Interlude

I don't know much about this band, Ivy, but I have one single of theirs on a compilation CD, and this is it.  The song is called Edge of the Ocean.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Agate Beach and Cape Foulweather

BeachConnection: Cape Foulweather and Cliffs
Cape Foulweather Lookout and Observatory
Community of Agate Beach
Wikipedia: Agate Beach
Wikipedia: Cape Foulweather

Next up: Depoe Bay, Oregon

Blue Highways: Newport, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

This is the first time that we see the Pacific with LHM.  Aahhh...for me, smelling the ocean, hearing the crash of the waves and the crying of the gulls and terns, and being able to sit on the beach in the late afternoon sun, well, there's nothing like it.  Of course, LHM doesn't stop here - it's too touristy.  We'll explore the idea of coastal tourist towns in this post.  To get your elegeomental bearings, try the map.

Book Quote

"Newport has been a tourist town for more than a century and it showed: a four-lane runway of beef-and-bun joints and seashell shops; city blocks where beach bungalows jammed in salty shingle to shiplap."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 4

Harbor and bridge in Newport, Oregon. Photo at the newportoregon.com website. Click on photo to go to host page.Newport, Oregon

In terms of being a tourist town, it sounds like Newport has the advantage on my hometown.  With a over a century of practice, it most likely knows what it needs to do to attract and keep tourists occupied.

You see such towns all over the U.S.  The Eastern seaboard has many of them.  From the founding of our country onward, people began identifying places where they wanted to go to escape the crowded towns and cities.  Usually, if they were close enough, they flocked to beaches.  Cape Cod and Long Island are classic places where people got away to beat the heat and get out of the metropolitan areas.

My wife's parents live in Sarasota, Florida.  It is a beach destination, but it is now becoming somewhat more metropolitan itself.  However, one can drive to the east coast of Florida and find little beach communities with the classic bungalows and surf motels that LHM writes about.  These cater to tourists with beachfront bars that generate an ocean and surf feel, restaurants that serve seafood (whether it's locally caught and fresh seafood is another matter) and maintain their attraction simply because of the beach itself.  We found this type of atmosphere when we visited New Smyrna Beach on Florida's east coast.

Many of these communities, probably a lot like Newport, have large and stately houses that were the beach getaways and retirement homes of some of America's wealthy, and the towns sprung up around not only tourism, but the infrastructure needed to provide services to those wealthy families.  The attraction of such coastal places to America's elite also attracted people from lower classes, who for a while might dream that they too were beachfront dwellers with unlimited resources to enjoy some of our country's natural wonders.  Newport itself had a number of seaside hotels, according to Wikipedia, and regular ferry service even before it was reached by its first permanent road in the 1920s.

Some communities have made a practice of touting their beaches and their nightlife to draw visitors in certain demographics.  Daytona Beach in Florida and South Padre Island in Texas are places that play hosts to thousands of college students on spring break each year.  Other places prefer a more sedate clientele and focus on local history and culture.  The Outer Banks, which LHM visited earlier on this journey, tout their historical connections to England and their accent as the last bit of spoken Renaissance English in the world.

This lies in contrast to those places that relied on industry and therefore did not need to cater to tourists.  My hometown of Fort Bragg, California is one of those places.  Almost completely dependent on the lumber industry and fishing, when both of those industries began to slow and die, Fort Bragg was left to tourism as a replacement.  Unfortunately, it did not have much experience as a tourist town, and it is further hindered by the fact that the defunct lumber mill property occupies all of what would be oceanfront property.  Still, it has made an admirable go of it, partly through the resourcefulness of a new generation of natives and the influence of some newer residents who have brought their entrepreneurship in arts, crafts, culinary arts and other fields to the town.  In contrast, Mendocino, it's neighbor to the south, embraced artists, crafters and culinary artists early and made a name for itself in those areas.  I feel for my hometown.  It is difficult to take what was essentially a blue collar town and remake it into something else.  But I am really impressed that it has survived.  The landscape of America is littered with the remains of towns that died soon after their main industries died, but Fort Bragg lives on and each time I go back, I am heartened to see another new shop, or a new hotel.  And even though my mom complains about the traffic each summer, I am heartened by the tourists who come to partake of sport fishing, camping, beachcombing and sightseeing, thereby keeping things alive in the corner of the world that I hold close to my heart.

I have never been to Newport, and probably my idea of what it is (or should be) would clash with the reality.  I would predict a quiet community, with some small local shops and restaurants that cater to the tourist community.  Aloof from the tourist part of the town, there would be large houses belonging to families that have held the town together since its founding.  Newer residences would be occupied by those more recent arrivals, who would also have created their own social structure.  Their interests might sometimes clash with the old-time families.  The town would have some sort of special celebration or two during the year, when everyone - older residents, newer residents, and tourists - comes together.  Tourists sprinkle the town in the winter, but flock there in the summer.  Because it is on the coast, it rains a lot.  The rain and weather adds character to the town, which given its site on Oregon's rocky coast, is surrounded by beautiful coves and lonely beaches. 

The reality seems a little different.  On reading about Newport, I find that it has over 80 local restaurants, and 1500 rooms ranging from inexpensive to upscale.  LHM writes that a four lane highway (U.S. 101) runs through town, and that was 30 years ago that it had that many lanes.  However, no matter what the town looks like now, ultimately, the natural wonders in the area plus the unique things that Newport itself has to offer will keep people coming to what would otherwise be an isolated coastal town.

There will always be complaints from those who remember the town as it was, and frustration by those who envision what the town could be.  For those towns that rely on tourism, however, all depends on how visitors experience these places in the present.

Musical Interlude

LHM has regained new purpose, as I explained in my last post.  However, he is still struggling the things that brought him on the journey in the first place.  Bob Schneider's Big Blue Sea conjures up some of that struggle, as well as acknowledges that with this post, we touch the Pacific with LHM for the first time.  If you want to see the lyrics of this song, find them here.

If you want to know more about Newport

Discover Newport
Essential Links: Newport
Historic Nye Beach in Newport
Newport Chamber of Commerce visitor page
Newport News-Times (newspaper)
Oregon Coast Aquarium
Wikipedia: Newport

Next up: Agate Beach and Cape Foulweather, Oregon

Blue Highways: Philomath and Burnt Woods, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

Well, you almost didn't get this post.  I had already completed the Newport post, when I realized that I had missed William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) mention of Philomath and Burnt Woods.  But this actually works, because LHM has been going through a tough time by this point in the book, and turns a corner.  I actually changed the map marker on Corvallis to red to signify that there was something to his time spent there, and now, he has a new purpose.  Read on to learn what, at least in my estimation.  And check the map if you want to place Philomath and Burnt Woods on your mental geography!

Book Quote

"The wind came in over the Coastal Range in the night and blew the sky so clean it looked distilled.  As the sun cast long morning shadows, I went west into the mountains toward Philomath and Burnt Woods.  Either the return of sun or a piece of cornpone etiology from a California cafe gave the feeling I'd begun the journey again."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 4

Welcome sign in Philomath, Oregon. Photo from the Oregon MacPioneers Users Group. Click on photo to go to host page.

Philomath and Burnt Woods, Oregon

This is a short post.  Why?  Because I f***ed up!  I jumped ahead to Newport, Oregon and totally missed that LHM passed through Philomath and Burnt Woods.  So I'm essentially pulling this post out of my a** after working on Newport's.  However, I think there's a couple of things that are important to understand about Blue Highways and LHM's journey at this point.

LHM, by the time he gets to Corvallis, is going through a hard time.  All through California and into Oregon he has been questioning himself and the purpose of his journey.  When he gets to Corvallis, it rains for two days and he stays there, in a sad and morose mood.  He calls his girlfriend, the "Cherokee," only to be rebuffed.  It is in Corvallis, the "heart of the valley," that he seriously thinks about giving up the trip.  He says in Part 6, Chapter 3:

"In darkness and rain I left the library.  I began fighting the fear that I was about to lose heart utterly and head back.  Oh, god, I could feel it coming.  The old Navajos, praying for renewal of mental strength, chant, 'In the ways of the past, may I walk,' but my chant went the other way around." 

He's questioning everything.  He is trying to decide what he hopes to accomplish - why he is even making the trip at all when it seems so difficult:

"'Nothing,' Homer sings, 'is harder on mortal man than wandering.'  That's why the words travel and travail have a common origin."

But, as the quote says above, he has a change of heart.  He finds a purpose in the trip, and takes inspiration from Whitman's lines:

"What I needed was to continue, to have another go at reading the hieroglyphics, to examine (as Whitman says) the 'objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape.'"

I find it interesting that when he resumes his journey, along the way he passes through Philomath and Burnt Woods.  There is some symbolism here, yes.  A philomath is a person who loves learning.  We know that LHM is an academic and a writer, and as such, I would assume a lover of learning.  So the symbolism I see here is that LHM, to find purpose in his trip, has to go back to that love of learning, that excitement about seeing what comes around the next bend, and putting it all into the context of the America he lives in, the life he inhabits and the sum of his knowledge of self and others.

Of course, what's around the bend but Burnt Woods.  Again, I see symbolism.  Burnt Woods was named after the scars of a number of forest fires that can be seen in the area.  A forest fire is destructive.  It kills trees, plants and animals.  But it is also regenerative.  In many conifer forests, a cone can only properly germinate if it is opened in the intense heat of a fire.  It takes a forest fire to clear out the dead underbrush, allowing the newly germinated seeds to take root and grow.  In a sense, LHM's trip is about clearing out the brush in the forest of his life, and germinating something new in his ideas, his outlook, and his life.

LHM states it best:

"I had been a man who walks into a strange dark room, turns on the light, sees himself in an unexpected mirror, and jumps back.  Now it was time to get on, time to see WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT."

Musical Interlude

I can't think of a better song for this post than Alanis Morissette's You Learn.  Because we do.

If you want to know more about Philomath and Burnt Woods

Benton County Historical Society and Museum
Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon
Philomath Chamber of Commerce: About Philomath
Wikipedia: Burnt Woods
Wikipedia: Philomath

Next up: Newport, Oregon

Blue Highways: Corvallis, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

It's raining, it's pouring.  And our driver and guide is feeling downright depressed as he waits out the rain in Corvallis, Oregon.  Let's explore the symbolism of rain to the human condition, shall we, as we drink a few beers in Ghost Dancing with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  Here's the map to locate Corvallis on our journey.

Book Quote(s)

"In western Oregon it can rain a hundred and thirty inches a year, making weather so dismal that even a seadog like Sir Francis Drake complained about it four centuries ago when he sailed here on the Golden Hind in search of the Northwest Passage.  Those two days I wandered around Corvallis more dispirited than edified by the blue-road perception.  I walked and walked.  'Nothing,' Homer sings, 'is harder on mortal man than wandering.'  That's why the words travel and travail have a common origin.

"....Another etymology:  Corvallis, a Latin combination meaning 'in the heart of the valley.'  For me, it was more a valley of the heart.  No wonder Pascal believed man's inability to stay quietly in his room is the cause of his unhappiness."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 3

Downtown Corvallis, Oregon. Photo by Paul Bausch on his On Focus blog. Click on photo to go to host page. 

Corvallis, Oregon

Rain.  One man's surplus is another man's headache, and I have definitely noticed it this year with the lack of rain that has plagued New Mexico.  Here, we get an average of ten inches of rainfall per year in this desert climate, but as I write here in mid-September, we've only received one inch.  Contrast that with LHM's situation, where he is holed up in Corvallis with a case of blues, and where he is still trying to understand what his trip means to him.  While there, it rained constantly on him for two days straight, and he makes the point in this chapter that on average it rains 130 inches per year in that part of Oregon.

When I lived in Northern California, I wasn't a big fan of the rain.  Our springs and summers were generally beautiful.  Around May, the wildflowers started coming out, and the rivers still ran higher because of continued runoff from the winter rains.  The air was cool and crisp in the mornings while the sun shone over the bright blue ocean.  It might warm up a bit in the afternoon, but warming up generally meant temperatures in the 60s Fahrenheit (15.6 - 20.6 C).  A hot day in the summer might get to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (23.9 C).  Lows might get into the 50s Fahrenheit at night (10 - 15 C).  Life in those types of temperatures on the coast usually felt pretty good.

Winters were another story.  Temperatures were usually in the 50s Fahrenheit during the day, and cold because of the humidity in the air due to the ocean.  At night, temperatures would drop into the 30s Fahrenheit (-1.1 - 3.9 C).  The sky was often gray, and it rained a lot.  When it didn't rain, it was foggy - a thick gray fog that was hard to drive in.  And the rain.  It would just keep coming, and coming.  My town was only accessible by two-lane highways running through mountains and along rivers.  Often, landslides caused by rain turning the hillsides unstable, or floods caused by swollen rivers, would close the roads in and out of my town and we would be cut off, at least by road, from the outside world for a while until the waters receded or the roads could be cleared.  Even after I moved away and came back for holidays, my wife and I spent a couple of trying times wondering if we'd be able to get to our plane to get back to our jobs as the rain pounded and roads were impassable.

As I write this now, my house is under a beautiful canopy of clear blue skies.  Sometimes the sunlight here, all 310 days a year on average, can seem oppressive in itself, especially when one is nine inches of rain behind schedule in a desert climate.  When it rains here, rather than run inside, I often take a moment to stand out in it and let the drops patter down on my bare head, soak my t-shirt a little, and wet my skin.  In the Pacific Northwest, it was easy to take the rain for granted.  In the dry Southwest, one sees the rain for the precious resource it actually is.  In Northern California, the rain was often a hindrance and an annoyance.  In New Mexico right now, even a few drops is a cause for dancing and celebration.

We often associate the rain with sadness, as if by personifying the world to match our own mood, we can imagine that as we hurt, the skies cry with us.  Writers of music have often made reference to the weather to describe feeling lonely, down, depressed and sad:

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
stormy weather
since my man and I ain't together
keeps raining all the time

Stormy Weather by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler

or...

I can't stand the rain
against my window
bringing back sweet memories. 
Hey window pane
do you remember
how sweet it used to be.

I Can't Stand the Rain by Don Bryant, Bernard Miller and Ann Peebles

Rain is very symbolic and is an easy way to express signs that our inward lives are stormy, tumultuous, and often sad.  But reality is much more complex than that.

For example, when the rains don't come and the crops fail, humans often sang to the skies to relieve their suffering and misery, and performed dances thought to attract the rains.  It has been known throughout history, predating our scientific age and the facts about weather patterns, that the real reason the rains didn't come were because the gods were angry.  It was also true that when we faced terribly inclement weather such as tropical storms, hurricanes, floods and the like, it was also because the gods were angry.  Even today, at times of need, we hedge our bets and appeal to the supernatural.  In New Orleans, during hurricane season, the chants of voodoo practitioners to their spirits might race Judeo-Christian prayers in a metaphysical attempt to send the hurricanes in other directions and blunt their strength.  Obviously, that failed with Katrina.

Of course, there are songs about fair weather and how nice days reflect our moods as well:

Blue skies, shining on me
nothing but blue skies
do I see. 
Bluebirds, singing their song
nothing but bluebirds
all day long.

Blue Skies by Irving Berlin

The wonderful and problematic thing about humans is that we, unlike other species, have the capability to look into the past and worry about the future.  Therefore, we can always be blue about what went wrong, or worried about what might go wrong later.  How long will the blue skies last?  In fact, we know that blue skies will most likely end, and we'll be back to stormy weather and rainy days for awhile in our lives.  We know that we'll be just like LHM, sitting Corvallis, the heart of the valley, heartsick and in an emotional valley because our woman doesn't seem to love or want us anymore, and we don't really know where we are going to go or what we are going to do.  But, for most us, just as we wait out the rain, we can wait out our own blues.  Eventually, the rain will end, a sliver of sunlight will poke through the clouds signaling better days ahead, and we'll enjoy a springtime until the rain comes again.

Musical Interlude

I quoted this song above...but I figure that LHM might have been thinking about it as he sat in Corvallis.  I Can't Stand the Rain was recorded originally by Ann Peebles, and I first heard an amazing rendition by Angeline Ball in the movie The Commitments.  The song really evokes how nature and our emotions often seem to work in concert.

If you want to know more about Corvallis

The Alchemist (alternative newspaper)
Corvallis Gazette-Times (newspaper)
Corvallis Tidbits (community newspaper)
Essential Links: Corvallis
Oregon State University
Visit Corvallis and Benton County
Wikipedia: Corvallis

Next up: Philomath and Burnt Woods, Oregon

Blue Highways: Somewhere on Muir and Salt Creeks, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

This post is a fun one, mostly about banana slugs!  Slimy, ugly and utterly fascinating, these creatures are.  I grew up with them.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) comes face to face with one, and then lets it get away from him.  Somewhere in his van crawls a banana slug, making sleep difficult.  Who wants to wake up with a slug on their face?  I don't!

I made some guesses for this post, picking spots on Muir Creek and on Salt Creek to represent where LHM might have stopped.  To see these two places, navigate to the map!

Book Quote(s)

"Oregon 230 followed a broad mountain stream called Muir Creek. When the morning warmed, I stopped along the banks to fill a basin and wash....

"Big yellow-hooded blossoms of the Western skunk cabbage spread over the margins....Looking nothing like cabbage, the leaves were used by Indians to wrap food for cooking; they pulverized the hot peppery roots into a flour that helped save them (and the Lewis and Clark expedition) from starvation in the early spring before other edible plants sprouted."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 2

"I crossed the Cascades on Oregon 58....

"At noon, the journey began a kind of sea change that started when I drove up an old logging road into the recesses of Salt Creek....

"After a sandwich, I poked about the woods and turned up a piece of crawling yellow jelly nearly the length of my hand. It was a banana slug, so named because the mollusk looks like a wet, squirming banana. I wanted to photograph it, but a drizzle came on, so I bedded it down in damp leaf litter in a pail. I could drive out of the rain to take its picture."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 2

Salt Creek, below the Falls. Image by "miatasailor" at Flickr. Click on image to go to host page.

Somewhere on Muir and Salt Creeks, Oregon

Why so many quotes today?  These passages of LHM's make me a little homesick.  I've written in many posts that I am from the north coast of California, and the climate, animal and plant life of that area is very similar to what you find in Oregon.  The forests are made up of tall trees - in my home area the trees are predominantly redwood and fir, and in this part of Oregon you have pretty much the same type of coniferous forest, minus the redwoods.  At all times of year, especially in valley's and gulches near streams, the land is wet and lush.  Coniferous forests often create their own weather by holding and trapping the moisture that they need to survive underneath the forest canopy.  In winter, regardless of whether it is raining or not, one can often walk beneath the boughs of the trees and get bombarded by water condensing and rolling off the needly leaves in heavy drops.

I love those types of forests.  In the winter, the lushness and dampness brings to one's nose a heavy smell of vegetation.  The forest loam, made up of fallen needles that have accumulated over years, provides a soft, spongy ground to walk upon.  Rivers, swollen by the rains, run high and rapid, looking very different than the dark green, brownish streams that are their summer guises.  Sometimes, large fish negotiate the rapids, occasionally leaping out of the water - these are salmon returning to their birthplaces to spawn at the end of one of the most fascinating circular journeys of our world.  Born upstream, if they survive various dangers after they hatch they swim downriver to the ocean.  There they become saltwater fish for the majority of their lives, anywhere from one to five years.  At some point, they heed the call to reproduce and find their way back to the stream that they left so long before.  They swim against the stream, negotiating all kinds of obstacles and dangers both natural and man-made.  If they make it to their spawning ground, then depending on their gender they lay eggs or release sperm to fertilize the eggs.  And then, after a glorious moment of reproduction, they die.

This type of environment is like where I grew up, and I still get a thrill walking through the chill of a dripping coniferous forest, the smell of the rotting vegetation, the smell of newly fallen or cut wood from these areas, and the smell of the clean, and I mean really clean, air.  My pants might get wet from walking through living and large vegetation such as the skunk cabbage LHM mentions.  A walk in such areas is usually followed by warming my backside against the heat of a warm indoor fire.  There's nothing like it.

A face to face view with a banana slug. Photo at The Murky Fringe blog. Click on photo to go to host page.In this world lives one of the most fascinating creatures.  I used to run across them as a boy.  LHM is entranced enough by one to revert to a boy himself and put it in a pail to take with him.  I'm writing about the banana slug.  On wet days, it was not uncommon to find one, slowly sliming its way across the leaves, leaving a trail of sticky goo behind it.  These creatures are related to snails, and have the same type of movements, sans shell.  Their antennae slowly move back and forth, with what appear to be little eyes on them.  They look like a banana.  If I touched one or picked it up, it was always slimy.

A pair of bananas. Image at the Magickcanoe blog. Click on photo to go to host page.

If a banana slug fears, it should fear little boys.  Little boys are the bane of pretty much every slow-moving and slow-witted creature.  For banana slugs in particular, every type of torture could be devised.  Slice them, dice them.  Put firecrackers under them or around them.  Throw them at other kids.  Put salt on them and watch them horribly shrivel up and die.  I partook in some of these activities, usually because of peer pressure.  Secretly, I was delighted by banana slugs.  They were just so, harmless.  They seemed like manatees or cows of the mollusk world.  They did their own thing, not really caring about anything else, paying attention only to their own world.

The UC Santa Cruz mascot, Sammy the Banana Slug! Image at World's Best Information. Click on photo to go to host page.

I was very happy when I learned some years ago that the University of California at Santa Cruz had taken the banana slug as its unofficial mascot.  The students chose the name as a statement against the hyper-competitiveness of college athletics, since UC-Santa Cruz didn't have organized athletics at the time, but when the university decided to join the NCAA Division III in five sports, the chancellor wanted to give the teams a more dignified name.  However, the Sea Lions didn't catch on, and in 1986 the university bowed to student pressure and officially changed its name to the banana slugs.  The lowly banana slug went from a regional nobody that little boys tortured to the rarified heights of university mascot, symbolized by Sammy the Slug!

Back to LHM, who put the slug in a pail and put it in Ghost Dancing in order to drive out the rain and photograph it.  What happened?  He forgot about it, then later found the pail empty.  Somewhere in his truck, a banana slug was marauding around and haunting his dreams that night.  Maybe he was right to fear...after all, a banana slug has no known predators (except little boys)!

Musical Interlude

You don't know how hard it is, sometimes, to come up with a decent tune for the musical interlude, especially when you are writing about banana slugs or skunk cabbage.  However, I found a band from Northern California called the Banana Slug String Band, whose musicians write and play educational songs for kids about the environment.  A few that were really cool weren't available, but here's one about redwood trees called Big Red.  Since I came from the redwood region, I enjoy looking at the trees.

If you want to know more about Muir and Salt Creeks

Muir Creek Falls
Muir Creek Trail
Wikipedia: Salt Creek Falls
World of Waterfalls: Salt Creek Falls

Next up: Corvallis, Oregon