Newport Revisited

A retreat without doing dishes led to a campground with town access.

I did not even bring my coffee press, determined to purchase everything ready made, while I worked on a writing project for my group back in NYC. I was resolved to get a great deal done, with few distractions at my tiny table in Janet’s living space.

And the first morning at the South Shore Marina in Newport, OR, I woke early in the dark, damp and fog. I knew the sun was up, because, well, two reasons: one is that the dark grey fog turned light grey, and the other is that the sound I heard as I walked in the dark to the marina store across the LED lit blacktop was not rusty wheels slightly out of alignment, but rather sea lions barking incessantly. They all stopped for good at once, and I imagine that moment was when the sun had cleared the imaginary horizon.

It was nice to be reminded of how warming and comforting a tiny little neon ‘OPEN’ sign can be in the foggy dark next to the ocean. That feeling of ‘here is safe anchor’ that I described in here after watching a boat coming into a marina at sunset back in Brooklyn in 2018. I got a large paper cup of brown, bitter water and a gallon of fresh water, since I am dry camping here. The orange hoses at the edge of the lot, by the shore, do not inspire trust, though they are supposed to bear potable water. Maybe the stench of the fish cleaning station next to them helps to ward me off. As the air currents shifted in the night I would get a nose full of that stench, and it was the only thing that kept me from a perfect night’s sleep. The sound of traffic on Hwy 101 going up and over the great and beautiful bridge here comes down to the water’s edge only faintly. I had hoped as much, and was not disappointed.

Anyway, after the sea lions became quiet, I watched the fishing boats slowly leave for the Pacific, and a few birds go about their business until they got back. There was a female gull that would make a circle and bank in front of me every so often, probably checking to see that I was still not eating any food, a single crow that purposely frightened a little cluster of small birds off of the top rigging of a sailing yacht and then found a perch near me, and a loon that cased the whole marina and then settled in the water between the boats. I wondered if it were the same loon that I watched yesterday dive for a minute or two at a time, waiting to see where it popped up, as I walked down a dock to look at the boats.

On that walk I saw Dave. He was a running joke that my ex-husband and I used to tell our small children–that the first seagull we saw on a trip to the beach was the same one, named Dave. Seeing him there, as usual, was a pause to acknowledge a life long passed away.

I’m thinking that this flat area where I’m camped, on the south shore of the Yaquina River, might have been the place the Yaquina Indians laid their dead to rest in canoes propped up on tall poles. My dubious history book relates a description of that place just about here, and how some white guy ordered them to tow all the canoes out to sea. Looking up in the dark fog at the main arch of the bridge, and the red and green lights beneath it showing where the channel is, and down at the marina full of parked boats in front of me and a big lot of parked RVs behind me, I imagined the anguish and despair of the earlier inhabitants as they found out their world was going to disappear. To have shown them a picture of what I see this morning would have been so jarring and inconceivable, it seems worse than the descriptions we are being given now of how our world is about to change. Yes, all of this may slowly disappear, but it won’t be as shocking as when it first appeared on the dark forests and meadows of these shores.

 The fishermen and their associates mostly look like a lot of the people I see in Springfield, so perhaps mill workers and loggers and log truck drivers are essentially the same kind of person as fishermen. I’d had some idea that liking boats and water would mean you were somewhat poetic at heart. Erroneous. And the men all looked at me the same way the working men do in Springfield, which I can’t fully interpret, but as if I was a specimen slightly out of place, but not laughably so. With a bit of irony in their faces, almost. And the women are mostly kind, or polite at least, probably because of my status as woman alone, worthy of a little compassion, but no social function. If I get enough writing done, I may get over to the north shore today and see the other types of people around here. People who cater mostly to tourists, who have fled their city lives somewhere inland, and feel the need to enjoy just a bit of culture in the form of dreadful artworks, indifferent food, and maybe one small used bookstore and one small community theater. I wonder at how jaded my attitude has become.