One Seacoast Mile

Winter

January along the Oregon Coast can be brutal. High winds slam storm after storm against the shore; pelting raindrops sting one’s face like tiny projectiles launched from afar. Calmer days bring chilly fingers of fog that reach through layers of clothing to grip one’s bones. This miserable weather torments the length of Oregon’s coastline – except for the one location where a jumble of peaks (the Klamath Mountains) stretches from 80 miles inland to meet the sea.

Here, mild spring-like weather occurs anytime high pressure builds east of the Klamaths and low pressure settles off the coast. Winds from the east blow over the mountains, where the peaks funnel them into the deep gorge holding the Chetco River. As the narrow canyon walls compress the air mass, the molecules of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide bounce off each other, creating heat. Arriving at the sea, the balmy wind pushes cooler marine air offshore and bathes the local coastline, including my chosen mile, with warmth.

Leaving the car, I hike north along an elevated trail in shirtsleeves and jeans, happy to be free of confining sweaters and raingear. A wall of close-growing Sitka spruce trees borders the uphill side of the trail. Spiky needles brush my arm as I step on reddish-colored cones littering the ground. Below me, a moorland cloaked in low shrubs and coarse grasses sweeps 300 yards down to the shore. To the south, Cape Tolowa’s mesa-like profile stretches seaward to dip and then rise again to a rounded hump hunching above the surf. 

At the north end of my chosen mile, Cape Sitka towers above a narrow strip of dark sand. Just offshore, jagged sea stacks rise from the water like a giant carnivore’s canine teeth; gentle waves break around them.

One hundred yards beyond the outermost sea stack, a heart-shaped plume of steam rises a dozen feet above the ocean’s surface, the tell-tale silhouette of a gray whale’s spout. As the whale exhales air through twin blowholes on its head, its warm breath condenses to create a misty heart that vanishes almost immediately. I glance at my watch, timing the rhythm of its breathing. It disappears underwater for 30 seconds, then surfaces to exhale and quickly draw in its next breath. The whale repeats the pattern three times before arching its knuckled back and thrusting its tail flukes above water to propel it into a deeper dive.

This huge creature, 45 feet long at maturity, is taking part in the longest mammal migration on Earth. Each winter, thousands of its kind swim from Alaska to Baja, Mexico, to mate or give birth in lagoons along the peninsula’s Pacific shore. Come spring, gray whales return to their nutrient-rich Arctic feeding grounds, completing a 10,000-mile round trip. Thrilled by my luck in witnessing the whale’s brief appearance, I hike on.

An unmarked side path leads me down the open slope toward a tiny beach curving below Cape Tolowa. I wade through waist-high grasses crowding the path; coyote bush, an evergreen shrub with gray-green leaves above a skeleton of bare branches, dots the open hillside. One of the bushes erupts in a rattling chirrrr as I pass by. I freeze in my tracks, scanning the twiggy maze for the call’s source. Chirrrr – a second call emanates from a neighboring bush. Standing perfectly still for several minutes, I finally spot a pair of Wrentits – tiny gray-brown birds with rounded wings and upturned tails. They hop from branch to branch, foraging for insects and spiders, while concealed from the view of hungry raptors by the cover of leaves crowning each bush.

Wrentit pairs stay together year-round, uncommon behavior for songbirds. Mates for life, they pair up shortly after learning to fly and establish their territory within 1200 feet of the nests from which each bird fledged.

Standing motionless in the birds’ tiny world, I can’t help but compare them with the gray whale that I saw just a few minutes ago. One creature fits in a teacup, the other is as long as a school bus. One spends its entire life within a territory no larger than a city block, the other travels 10,000 miles every year. Despite vast differences between coastal bird and marine mammal, each must do two things to survive: eat and reproduce. Eating ensures survival as an individual, reproducing ensures survival as a species. I leave the little birds to their thicket and scramble down to the beach.

A weathered 20-foot western red cedar log rests on cobbles covering the landward side of the beach. Two feet in diameter at its widest, this stranded tree once graced the banks of a coastal stream. Likely toppled in a storm, it began its tortuous journey downstream to the sea, where waves bashed it against boulders, fuzzing its fibrous bark and splintering its brick-colored heartwood. I lean down and sniff the moist log; the spice of cedar and the tang of saltwater mix in a rich distillation of forest and sea.

Boulders exposed by low tide shelter bunches of red and green seaweed in small pools. I linger near a knotted heap of slimy vegetation on the sand. Ripped from seafloor rocks by powerful waves, these thick strands of kelp bring to mind a giant helping of briny spaghetti. Until very recently they were part of the vast underwater kelp forest growing just offshore. Beach-bound humans can only glimpse its canopy; hidden below the surface, countless creatures seek food and shelter in this undersea jungle.

Continuing south on the beach, I find a white finger-sized tube lying on the sand; one end of the tube is open and the other closed. Called a sea pickle, it’s a bizarre lifeform normally found off tropical shores in the South Pacific. Dozens of  bumps cover its rubbery surface, each a small organism in a tightly joined colony of multiple individuals. Free floaters, these colonies, also called pyrosomes, feed by filtering plankton in deep water of the open ocean. Southern storms occasionally push them thousands of miles north to wash up along the west coast of North America.

As I study this strange pickle-shaped creature in my hand, I think about where I am. I’m not just standing on a small beach on the Oregon Coast; I’m at the edge of a biome that covers 70% of our planet. Geographers recognize five distinct oceans on Earth: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic. In reality there are no rigid boundaries: strong currents swirl, stir and share the waters between all oceans, creating a continuous body of water across the globe. The liquid connectedness of the ocean biome makes neighbors of all of its inhabitants, each residing in a worldwide saltwater community. The seemingly alien sea pickle washed ashore on my tiny beach is really no foreigner at all, but rather just another resident in a constantly moving global ocean.

Reaching the foot of Cape Tolowa, I scramble up an embankment and follow a deer trail that joins the main trail at the top. There, a wooden post lets hikers know they’re on the long-distance route called the Oregon Coast Trail, which traces the entire length of our coastline. I’ll leave a trek like that to more ambitious hikers and be content to explore my single mile slowly, one intimate step at a time, witnessing the wonders of everything from Wrentits to whales along the way.