It was time, I hoped, for the annual Gary February Expression Session. I asked Curt in mid August if he thought if he might be doing it this year. He wasn't sure. It seems that he and Gary, for whom the annual surf session at Neah Bay was named, had fallen upon philosophical differences. And to bring them that don't know up to speed, Gary is a character that exists out there in the salty brine of mystic surf ether. Gary has a medium, and his name is Curt. When we first encounter Gary, he seems heroic. He drives an old pickup with a surfboard on the roof of the cab and a bed full of salt water, in which, a seal named Sully swims. Gary plies the back roads and secret breaks of the Peninsula, often cutting barb wired fences in the dead of night to access off the grid spots that may only break once a decade under a full moon. He's been known to be seen revving a Zodiac across the waves, his head ensconced in a storm cloud; the occasional lightening bolt striking out, and Sully riding on the front; flippers bracing him side to side. If I had to guess, and Curt will correct me here if necessary, Gary would ride a 7' to 8' egg shape. He'd drop into foggy barrels in which kelp is suspended for the briefest of moments. Or he'd dapple across cold water walls with the evening sun filtering through the clear lip; his wooden fin just holding him in the pocket and his trailing hand drifting across the face. In short, Gary was in all of us, if we just took the time to properly search for him.
Well, 2017 has been a hell of a crazy year. That sack of shit Trump has made it seem like 100 years of outrage and setback. Just when things seem like they can't get more disappointing, they do. It seems that this year has also revealed more about the man that we have perceived to be the feel good NW surf legend of our generation. It turns out that Gary enjoys killing bald eagles and nailing them to posts about his property. He's more Ted Nugent than Mr Natural. Report has it that he wanders his land mumbling about how the poor and the immigrants are tearing this country down. He thinks that Mitch McConnell and his ilk don't go nearly far enough. He says "Don't tread on me", and then he shoots another eagle. And he doesn't say this in the deep dulcet voice you'd expect a mysto to posses, but in a high pitched whine that makes you wish you'd jammed wax in your ears prior to him opening his mouth. And the whole bit with Sully? It was all about optics. It wasn't clear to me at last telling whether Sully escaped or was reluctantly released, but what is clear is that their relationship was less that of a faithful friend and his caretaker than that of a conscripted Sea World dolphin and its leathery hardened trainer.
But Brothers and Sisters, I'd rather light a candle than curse the darkness. Along came the Anti Depression Session. We are bold Pacific Northwesterners, not consciousness avoiding reptiles! The Session was on- and as you can see it right there in the excellent illustration by Stevie D, not only is Sully a free seal, but he has a girlfriend, and her name is Umami! And their home is not the sloshing bed of a pickup but the deep blue wine of the Pacific! The positivity returns to the waves. Let Gary curse about the landscape like Gollum, and hope he'll come back to his senses someday.
In usual fashion, I got to Neah Bay late, but this time just before sundown. Just enough time to paddle out in the twilight and catch four waves before a squall came up. It was joyous dropping in on chest high waves and gliding over their gray faces as they crumbled to foam. When the rain came, it felt like weeks of forest fires and the smoke would end for the season. The next morning I got up and everything smelled fresh. I'm not a huge proponent of rain, but it felt well overdue.
Chris filling the air with the magic of bacon.
Beach Logs Kill! is Curt's surf brand, and this is one of his longboard beauties. I totally staged this shot with the Expo '74, but it seemed appropriate to have multiple levels of "if you have to ask..." in play in one photo. Beach Logs Kill is derived from a sign that you'll find near Northwest beaches that has this exclamation next to a illustration of an old growth log suspended in the lip of a close out wave with beachcombers looking up in time to see their lives flash before their eyes in imminent log crush status. And of course Expo '74, I mean c'mon, need you ask?!
Bold members of an elite force. Defenders of the Realm.
Seeing as how I came out on the tail end of the Anti Depression Session, I bid farewell to my friends as they headed back to Sea Town, and I began the second part of my Peninsula journey. The first thing I did was suit up and paddle back out- not here, sakes no, this is far beyond my comprehension of the craft. Just a few more Hobuck waves and one really good pounding in an epic pearling nose dive. A fog rolled in though and the tide was ebbing, so it made the waves erratic and cross grained. I paddled back in with my happy share and peeled off the wetsuit. I had a few hours to kill before making my trip east to meet up with another group of friends for more camping, so I drifted around Neah Bay. This shot is taken just down at the south end of Hobuck Beach, where the Sooes River empties into the ocean. It's a mesmerizing spot for the trippy rock formations and the whelp and thock of the waves upon them. If one listens to the wind and waves hard enough, they just might hear...
I spent a couple of hours at this magical place, the Makah Nation Museum. They are the beginning of the world, the Makah, the Cape People. This is a really really great museum and well worth making a long visit.
Heading eastward now along Highway 112, I was settling into a fun poking around solo mission. I love those times that are in between planning to be in two different places and there is plenty of space to explore. I had downloaded The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, because it had been ages since I read it and it seemed like the perfect book for the Olympic Peninsula: part beautiful journey, part dark underbelly. This book is such a flawed masterpiece. One must view it through this lens of historical perspective. And yet it is jaw dropping how harshly treated poor Jim is even by the supposed benevolent and kind attitude of Mark Twain's outlook and politics. Jim is bandied about like a willing and complacent play toy throughout the book, and in the end still hasn't reached his family. But the reader of the day was to pride himself for seeing and feeling the glimmer of humanity Twain affords him. Mercy how slowly the gears of justice grind. So reading this book is much like traveling through the Olympic Peninsula. One must constantly be adjusting their vision to see the beauty amongst all of the clearcuts and environmental degradation. When one does, they can still see beautiful stretches of beach with tide pools full of sea anemones, shadowy, cool, slowly winding rivers; late summer leaves floating on their surfaces and small stands of timber that hint of the majesty once found here. But then BAM! it's directly through the middle of a land stripped of all living plants; huge slash piles everywhere and greasy logging equipment leaking oil into the groundwater. And Huck, suddenly empowered to do so, constantly battles with himself whether or not to turn his loyal friend Jim in as a runaway slave. And even more frustrating, as soon as Huck decides that he is whole hog in with Jim and committed to his freedom; it's on the terms that he's just gotta go to Hell as a result of his choice. What the actual fuck Huck? You think you're making a sort of Faustian bargain to feel okay about another human's freedom? Dayum. But as I pass through this land, it reminds me of the choice that is in all of us whether or not to protect what is important to us. And I look around at the ravaged landscape here, and the ragged hard hit economy that drives so much of the local conversation, it makes me think that maybe we're all just Huck empowered with a decision about protecting the planet or bowing to the beliefs of others.
But back to the present. The book is wonderfully narrated and once Huck gets clear of his terrible father, he sets out on a well laid out plan set to elude discovery and winds up upon converging paths with Jim. And so this broad section of the book where Jim and Huck spin on their raft down the Mississippi River evading them that might question their arrangement, encountering wonders and beauty on every turn, is where I find myself ambling east through a slowly descending twilight, and it is sublime; a fine mix of literature and landscape. And though even a clearcut might have a certain beauty twice a day, there is real beauty here. It is after Labor Day, there are few people on the road and the air still carries the scent and weight of summer on it.
Even a ravaged landscape can be beautiful twice a day.
This shot is looking up at the spot where the Glines Canyon Dam once was. In 2011 they began removing it to allow the Elwha River to run freely. Here I reflect that the river is the wily one. I hear the voice of Tom Sawyer admonishing Huck to not do a thing halfway- "It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the RIGHT way—and it's the regular way". But instead of a child who desires to manipulate them around him to serve his own pleasures, the Elwha River did do it right, and upon the terms that nature demands. The river has rebounded with amazing speed; the salmon returned nearly immediately. It was a strange feeling to stand down in the bottom of what used to be the reservoir and look up at all that sweet air above it. And I, the direct beneficiary of a hydropower economy, knowing that we cannot let go completely, sure was able to feel firsthand that it does the soul a lot of good to see a river run wild again.
a little bit 'o time on your hands
An old friend we really just met. This is a mule I named, for our time together, Dolly. She kind of ran the roost. She vacillated between allowing me to take her photo and folding her ears back to show disapproval. She didn't seem to hold a grudge though, and I was really wishing that I'd had a big juicy apple to give her.
The sunset at Doobie Cove. This is a beloved campsite for the men of Mancamp- a group of friends who meet yearly to celebrate the absurd. I won't varnish it for you; it's Glamping of the highest order. But it is high performance glamping, and that makes all the difference. Highlights include but are not limited to: snorkeling the Lyre River, storming the summit of Storm King, next level tarpitecture, thespian-isms, late night photography, short wave radio, firing the potato cannon into the territorial waters of Canada, stirring up wasp nests, slicing a foot nearly in half and other royal nonesuch.
Who loves having to go home after the party's done? The following day, I had to leave early from Mancamp, to make it back to Seattle, for duty did beckon. I'm told the Men bravely pointed the ship into the fog bank of Doobie Cove and many a treasure did they find. As for myself, I coffee'd up in Port Angeles, hit Swain's and then the road with Huck and Jim. By the time I was east of PA, they taken on the Duke and the King, and Huck was well on his way to having to confront more decisions that would reveal to himself who he was. It is interesting that Twain implores the reader, to READ nothing into the book. Of course this is bullshit. But I wonder just what Twain thought of his creation in Huck. It seems that just about every time Huck arrives at the moment of thinking for himself, Tom Sawyer re-enters his life and does all the thinking for him. If Huck is essentially the everyman, what does it say about Twain's outlook on humanity? Regardless, it felt appropriate that the period of unbroken adventure for Huck and Jim was nearing its completion as I rolled across Agate Passage and down towards the ferry line on Bainbridge Island, back into my own urban structure. But I hope that Twain contained in his heart an earnest wish that Huck and Jim were a vision of a better future; equals on a raft, always out there seeking adventure together. Both of them always feeling the pull of the Road and the freedom it affords. A microcosm of how things need to be.
Sitting in the ferry line always brings to mind that I have a pickup full stinky wetsuits, sand filled everything, board bags that need drying and coolers that need scrubbing. All that needs to happen before anything else, because that truck needs to be filled with tools and heading off to the jobsite in the morning. Upon arrival home, it is appealing to give in to the lazier instinct and just lock the whole mess up in the alley and head off to the house. But it is in our labors that we spin up the cheddar for more adventure. It is the effort that makes the sweet release, all the sweeter- and that for me, is the point. Ride on!