Back in Gold Bridge

Back in my own bed in Gold Bridge, the sound of a neighbour’s morning weed whacking rouses me from a sweaty half-sleep. I’m home now, although it feels different in the heat of high summer—I move slower, open more windows to let in the quiet with the afternoon breeze, and spend time looking at the reflection of my garden in the pond. I think I will head to one of the nearby lakes at some point today, as it’s finally hot enough to swim in the frigid waters since I can bask in the heat of the sun afterwards for a few moments to chase away the gooseflesh.

The tomato plants and pepper plants that I committed to soil before I left have flushed out like open umbrellas in celebration of the heat and humidity. It has also been raining in the evenings, setting off the decorative weeds at the side of the highway and adorning the mountainsides with flashes of colour. It’s certainly beautiful and relaxing here, but my stay will be short. On Thursday I embark on the three week rafting trip that will take me and a group of nine others from the headwaters of the Fraser River at Mount Robson in the Rockies all the way to where the river meets the ocean in Vancouver. We will be camping all the way, and I am totally looking forward to the lengthy stay on the land.

I ended up staying in Pacific City, Oregon, until this Wednesday. The surf was too tempting, my stay at Darin’s too comfortable, and the soft sand of the beach too welcoming to be rushing back home to live alone in a house in Gold Bridge, population fourty-three folks of retirement age. It’s true that I would have loved staying here for July as well, since I tend to love wherever I am, but I’m sure I would have started to feel lonely and perhaps bored with no steady job to keep me busy, nor people to gallivant around the mountains with during the work week. That said, with the mine shifts the way they are and with a few renegade young people living in Bralorne during their multi-week stints between work shifts up north, I’m sure I would have come up with some sort of workable social routine.

One of the dory boats in the Dory Days parade, as watched from the neighbour's balcony. Dory Days is a yearly festival in Pacific City, and is part of the reason I decided to stay for some extra time.

In my last few days in PC (the local acronym for Pacific City) I befriended Darin’s wonderful neighboour who lives in the apartment upstairs. Such an awesome woman! It was really great to spend some time with a woman who is in a similar situation to me in many respects: artistically-inclined and choosing to live in a small town on her own because of her affinity to the natural landscape. My home is in the mountains, hers borders upon the ocean, and our windowsills attest to our different locales; hers is lined with treasures from the seascape: agate, a clearish rock formed when mineral deposits drip into a crevice of harder rock, sand dollars, various shells and pebbles worn smooth in the pounding surf. My shelves hold rough chunks of rock jaggedly shorn from the hillsides, feathers of owls and other large predatory birds, half a jawbone of a moose, moose teeth, deer antlers, and pieces of wood bleached by the sun and sanded down by the waters of the nearby Lajoie hydro reservoir.

 View of haystack rock, beach and the cape from Darin's backyard.

While Darin was at work she and I went for long walks on the beach with her awesome dog and spoke of the importance a connection with nature has in both of our lives. I always love meeting other down-to-earth women, and it seems that as I get older there are more earthy ladies who come into my life, if only for a few days to share in the marvels of living at the beach. I’m sure she and I will reconnect elsewhere, and the internet, in spite of its flaws, does make reconnecting with like-minded individuals all the more possible.

On this trip I also spent time with a wonderful Alaskan woman who has just moved to Oregon with her boyfriend. Darin connected with the boyfriend through a mutual love of surfing, and then she and I hung out and surfed while the guys were at work. Go chick surfers! There are not too many around, so it was quite an empowering experience to be two women out there on our own with the sea. She is another beautiful person that I am sure I will connect with again in the future.

Darin did have Monday and Tuesday off before I left on Wednesday, and we spent the days getting in surf sessions in the small summer waves. Small waves can be trickier on a long board, because you have to turn the board as soon as you catch the wave to ride down the wall of the wave, otherwise the board is likely to do a nosedive into the ocean. I’m getting better at this, as with all of my wave-riding skills. I had a great teacher, Darin, and daily practice out on the water for three whole weeks!!! Life is great, and I am now completely addicted to surfing and am already surmising how to spend next summer married to the waves.

View from the sand dune in the backyard where I spent a ton of my time.

We also slept out on the cape under the stars one night, which was magical. The sun set in front of our eyes, turning the sandstone rock of the cape orange and pink in the fading light, a sliver of moon glowing brighter above the haystack rock of PC, itself eventually setting like a red flame melting into the horizon. The view of the stars was completely unobstructed by cloud, leaving them bright and sparkling in the moonless black sky. I had a sleep filled with vivid dreams, and then awoke to the pale sunrise smudging the sky in soft pastel, lighting the ocean under the dory boats of early-rising fishermen motoring out into the bay.

 On the short walk from parking lot to cape.

The moon at dusk.

Oregon is just beautiful, and if I ever was going to move to the US, (maybe to do a master’s one day?) I would pick this state to call home. It’s got it all: old forests nestling right up to the surf, mountains and even a high desert. If you have not been here you should go. You will not be disappointed.

Sunrise on the cape.

When we hiked down from the cape the tide way way out, so we spent time looking into tidal pools and trying out the underwater function of my waterproof camera.

Tiny hermit crab that Darin found.

As for Darin and I, we are crazy about each other, and have a ton of fun in each other’s company. He matches my spontaneity and creative, inquisitive mind, and we have a mutual love of the great outdoors. Unfortunately he does have a couple of years of university left to complete down at Oregon State University, and I am settled with my job here in Gold Bridge, about fifteen hours of driving north. So, we will just see where things in our future take us. Perhaps we will meet again, and perhaps not. We are just leaving things open, knowing that any time that we get to spend together will be a gift, although who really knows what will unfurl in the wings of the future. That uncertainty is always present, even though we humans like to trick ourselves into thinking we have things all figured out. You just never really know with life. Even the most anticipated plan could all be turned on its head by the afternoon.

A misty evening at the beach on my last night.