Coming Home

For some, home is the city where they were born and raised. For others, it is the house they have claimed as their own, and made the improvements and connections to drive that claim into their soul. For the techies, home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically. For me, home is the Oregon Coast.

I first fell in love with Oregon when I was sixteen and out looking at colleges. We had driven straight through the night to get to the Willamette Valley area, and had hit Portland after the morning "I need to get to my job!!!" rush. I was sleeping in the back of the conversion van at the time, because I had played co-pilot during the night shift. I don't know when exactly we hit Seaside; I just remember getting out of the car and losing my breath at the sight.

Now, Oregon is not like the stereotypical coast that gets portrayed on television or in the movies.. It is often 50 degrees F (10 degrees C for those of you outside of the US) for the air temperature, cloudy with the real threat of rain at any second, with a water temperature of 40 degrees F (4.44 degrees C) for most of the year. On the one day that it hits 90 F (32 C), everyone is there to swim and spend time on the beach. Otherwise, there are people, but they are dressed in layers and actual shoes, not swimsuits and barefoot. Only the most intrepid (or the most insane, still not sure which) venture into the water, because hypothermia is a thing.

But... How to explain...

Up until that moment I had never seen a body of water larger than Flathead Lake. I was used to being landlocked and having the land stretch out as far as the eye could see. Here, all I could see was water. And the rush of the tide...

That was eight years ago. It felt like an eternity before I finally moved out here for good, even though it only took two years. In the first years of college I probably drove people nuts with my constant requests to go out to the coast on the weekend and spend the day. It took me a while to realize why I always wanted to go as well.

I go to the coast to re-center and balance myself. This can't be accomplished with a CD track or a video, because it is more than just visual or the feeling of the water. It's the smell of the brine, the coarseness of the sand that has dried on the beach as it crunches under your feet transitioning to the hard packed sand near the water, to the sand that slowly gives way if you stand for too long in reach of the tide. It's the shock as the waves first hit your feet that gradually numbs as you adjust to the temperature (and, in some cases, go slightly numb). It's the mist as it rolls into town and swallows everything up in a gray-scale picture that adds a hint of mystery to what could be seen as mundane. It's the gentle reminder that you are not the biggest thing on the planet, and that while the surface can be tempestuous, the deeper you go the stiller things become, that there can be peace underneath the chaos. On the days when the sun deigns to grace the coast with its presence, it is the warmth of the light on your back as you write in your notebook, feet propped on the log you've chosen as a safe spot to express yourself, or walk on the beach in comfortable silence. And yes, it is the roll of the surf and the picture presented as the tide rolls out and in.

I've had many people ask me when I'm moving back to the town where I grew up, because to them that's where home is. The thing is, that town is not my home, and that town will never be my home. I am not one for the dryness of the area I grew up in, or the ideals that the people there seem to hold dear. I just haven't the heart to tell some of the people who ask that I am home, and have no intentions of leaving it.

My eventual goal is to get a cottage near the coast where I can go to get away for a weekend as needed. To have a place where I'm minutes away from my home instead of an hour. A place where I can lose myself in my writing and my music....

One day...