FRIDAYEXTRA !
The Daily Astorian
Friday, February 26, 2016
Weekend Edition
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
DEATH
AND THE OCEAN
People, like the sea, don’t really
belong to anything linear
By MATT LOVE
Special to The Daily Astorian
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City and died. In June 2015, a 16-year old Salem boy fell to his death at approximately the same
spot, one of the most treacherous places on the Oregon Coast and one where visitors routinely
ignore warnings and climb over fences to get closer to the ocean.
A tragic collection
Over my long years in residency at the
Oregon Coast, I have taken to collecting
newspaper articles that document ocean-re-
lated deaths. Most involve tragic or sense-
less accidents of some predictable kind, but
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suicide attempts. You rarely read accounts
of the successful ones because journalistic
tradition decrees the press not report them,
lest it encourage others.
A couple of years ago, a story from
Chinook, Washington, intrigued me and I
think about it every now and then. An arti-
cle, in part, read:
SEAVIEW — In an apparent suicide
attempt, a 25-year-old man walked fully
clothed into the ocean early in the morn-
ing May 8. Another man, parked at the
Seaview Beach approach, saw him and
called 911. He said he tried to speak to
him, but the man kept walking into the
ocean. The other man stayed and kept an
eye on him until emergency responders
arrived.
)ire District 2ne and the South 3aci¿c
County Technical Rescue Team responded
and sent a rescue swimmer in after the
man. A personal water craft rescue ves-
sel followed, and they pulled him from the
water. The rescue took about half an hour.
This particular story fascinated me
because the man who intervened and
called 911 could have easily been me. I
typically go to the beach in the very early
morning, and in my 19 years of coastal
living have observed several people doing
very strange things at that hour. Very
strange indeed. Nevertheless, I have never
intervened, although I surely know that
day is coming; I will act.
Harrowing tales
Some of the more harrowing stories of
death and the local ocean include:
The groom vanished by a wave off
Cape Kiwanda while his bride took a pho-
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The man in Lincoln City drowned
while trying to rescue his dog from the
waves. The dog survived.
The South Beach woman suffering
from dementia apparently disappeared
into the ocean.
The married couple from Portland
celebrating their anniversary in Newport
knocked off the South Jetty of Yaquina
Bay by a wave.
The Filipino woman visiting her
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dragged away by the Neskowin surf as he
was ready to propose.
The crabber last seen atop the break-
ers of the Alsea Bay bar after his boat cap-
sized. His wife made it ashore.
Two Eugene teenagers on a school
outing swept away off the rocks by a wave
at Yachats.
And many more, every year. They
always keep coming. I’ve clipped three
articles this year and it’s only February.
I have often asked myself: Why com-
pile these stories? My straight answer is:
I don’t know. Over the years, some of
these stories have worked their way into
my writing and teaching, but that doesn’t
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exclaim, “Wow, I’ve got to clip that for
use in a column, book or lesson about the
ocean.” It doesn’t work that way for me.
A desired reunion
Morbid things have never interested
me as a person or a writer. And when I
say I want to end my sentient life by fall-
ing into Hart’s Cove on Cascade Head on
the central Oregon Coast, I see that cer-
tainly not as dark or depressing, but rather
as a culminating celebration of my life and
desired reunion where all life began on
earth — the sea. It also means I’ll return
as rain that much quicker.
Really, I had no idea where I was
going with this meandering meditation
on life and death connected to the ocean
when I composed it entirely in my mind
while walking with Sonny the husky at the
ocean’s edge.
Perhaps that is the point. The ocean
doesn’t really belong to anything linear
anymore; I doubt it ever has. Perhaps peo-
ple don’t either.
Matt Love is the author and editor of
14 books about Oregon. They are avail-
able at all coastal bookstores or through
www.nestuccaspitpress.com.