One Seacoast Mile
One
Seacoast Mile
One mile: an elite runner
covers the distance in about four minutes; cars going at freeway speeds travel it
in less than 60 seconds. Many people think of a mile only in terms of how fast
they can traverse it. As a naturalist, I don’t always view a mile as something
to put behind me quickly. While hiking over captivating terrain, I consider one
mile to be a distance to tarry over, to investigate, to savor – especially if it’s
a seacoast mile.
The Oregon Coast, one of the most geologically complex and biologically diverse coastlines on the planet, spans more than 360 miles of beaches, capes, dunes and sea cliffs hugging the North Pacific. My chosen mile lies on the southern coast, not far from the California border. Bookended by meadow-covered capes, my little stretch of shoreline follows an irregular path between the two promontories. From Cape Tolowa at its southern end, the ribbon of shore curls around a jumble of dark rocks, caresses a small sandy beach, slides by an eroded sea stack still connected to the shore and crimps the rough edge of three bouldery coves, each backed by a tangle of driftwood logs. From there it traces the curving crescent of another tiny beach to arrive at the foot of Cape Sitka, where each wave rasps its erosive tongue against a rocky cliff.
My mile is part of a
coastal stretch that owes its ruggedness to an ancient geological past. The
rock formations in this area were once part of the ocean floor in a subtropical
sea. Back then, as North America began to move westward, it slowly collided with
the oceanic crustal plate, pushing up the mountain range known today as the
Klamath Mountains. The collision between the plates folded and faulted the
seafloor slab, then pushed it underneath the continental plate. Over time a
succession of slabs descended below the edge of the continent, one under the
other, like tilted slices of bread. Heat and pressure transformed these layers
into rocks of varying hardness. Millions of years of wave and wind action removed
the softer rock to reveal the resistant headlands, scoured inlets and ragged
shore visible today.
This dramatic topography
forms the setting in which coastal organisms of all kinds conduct the business
of survival. Windblown thickets hugging the capes’ lower slopes shelter
songbirds and black-tailed deer. Flattened headland summits support grasses and
wildflowers that feed wary rodents who sustain raptorial hunters patrolling
overhead. Seabirds nest on cliff-face ledges while seals and sea lions haul out
to rest on nearshore rocks rising above the water. Where the ocean deepens,
gray whales navigate by the sound of the waves hitting the shore as they swim
by twice a year in the longest mammal migration on Earth, a round-trip journey
of 10,000 miles.
Though no longer than a quarter mile, each pocket beach within my chosen reach of shoreline hides countless invertebrates who spend their entire lives buried in the sand. Clumps of kelp and eelgrass stranded on the beach provide food and shelter to beach hoppers, tiny crustaceans resembling fleas. Shorebirds probe the sand and seaweed with long beaks in search of tasty morsels. Meanwhile, tidepools protected by erosion-resistant boulders harbor sea stars, anemones, crabs, sea slugs and numerous other creatures inhabiting the intertidal zone, a place where the ocean’s ebb and flow blur the boundary between terrestrial and marine habitats.
This single mile will
keep me occupied a long while. I’ll explore it at an easy pace, investigating
slowly and deeply. It’s only one mile, but it holds much that is measureless
and vast.
Note: Cape Tolowa and Cape Sitka are fictitious names that I created to protect these infrequently visited sites from increased human impacts. Readers may recognize these places from photos, but I won't reveal any more about their actual locations.
