Dispatch from Kalaloch Beach, Washington Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger
One way to give our hectic lives a big sigh is to just stand there by the tidepool rocks and look. It will be difficult, but not impossible, to find something new.
When you grow up landlocked, you have no tidepools from which to examine your natural world. You have only your swamps and, frozen, your lakes through which unfolds a magnificent natural aquarium, if only until the first snow wrecks that sheet of glass. The frozen lake or the bog; they both contain a universe. Frogs, water bugs, meat-eating plants. If you're lucky, a three-foot long snapping turtle.
The tidepool is the midwesterner child's dream, for in it contains the possibility of the endless ocean – not the safe constraint of a Midwestern bog. A shark's egg sac, a stranded jellyfish. The offspring of exotic fish.
Kalaloch, Washington The Barnacles of Kalaloch This narrative explores the role of that ancient animal, the barnacle in the tidepool waters of Kalaloch beach on the Olympic Peninsula.
Neah Bay, Washington The Artist and the Whale Hunter forever shrouded in a thick fog and a light drizzle, as if from a plane you could never know it was there.
Portland, Oregon Bluegrass in Cascadia An adventure through Portland and its rapidly changing view of itself and the outside world.
Cental Coast, Oregon Umpqua Dunes Genesis Part III of the Oregon Testament. My attempts to learn about Oregon's native prehistory begins with an explosion, and some success. We discuss the origins of Native Americans in Oregon, and why the coast is the perfect place to begin this project.
Coastal Ranges, Oregon Foraging Nehalem Valley Part IV of the Oregon Testament. Glowing Mushrooms, deer-meat, stone and a Portland underworld creating a world based on old ways.
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