The daily Astorian., March 24, 2016, Page 4, Image 14

su n
In search of the
Coastal Life
Story and photos by LYNETTE RAE McADAMS
(Or: How I spent my winter vacation)
I
I have long been skeptical of snowbirds.
Mind you, not the actual feathered kind
(which are, in every respect, quite fascinating);
but rather, the bourgeois human version that
packs up every year and skips town just when
things are getting tough. You know the type:
They bask in the beauty of late spring, then the
long days of summer, extolling the pleasures
of our oceanside paradise all through July and
August; when the dry, crowdless days of Sep-
tember arrive, they practically swoon. October’s
okay — it still offers a clarity that keeps them
content — but come 1ovember, there’s a À urry
of forwarding addresses and a brutal ousting of
the houseplants, then it’s ta-ta till tax-time, when
they’ll return audaciously, without apology,
sporting sun-kissed faces and unnaturally high
levels of serotonin.
Of winter, they know
nothing! Nothing of the real
coastal rains; nothing of the
soul-drenching sogginess
that the rest of us embrace.
Nothing of what it means to
walk the dog in gale force
winds through torturous tor-
rents of precipitation (which
is, as we all know, the truest
road to Northwest virtue).
At worst, their fair-weather
lifestyle reveals a genuine
weakness of overall character; at best — at very
best — it smacks of solid hedonism.
So naturally, the ¿ rst time I had the chance, I
immediately followed suit and headed south.
It’s a mark of maturity to recognize when
your own moral judgments are grounded in
things like, you know, actual principles, rather
than, as I’m ashamed to say is more often the
case with me, a few of the more base human
qualities, like jealousy, arrogance and vanity. For
15 winters I’d stayed the coastal course, sure in
my wet and hearty superiority, romanced by the
sense of coolness that we love to attach to our
suffering.
But on the day I left the beach, it was 43 de-
grees outside and raining so hard, that from the
middle of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, neither
Washington nor Oregon was visible. By my cal-
culations, it had been like this since long before
Thanksgiving — three months at least — and I
I was tired
of getting
my vitamin
D from the
drugstore.
4 | March 24, 2016 | coastweekend.com
was tired of getting my vitamin D from the drug-
store. I drove through that watery no man’s land
and emerged, wanting, without shame, only this
from the world: a little warmth to the wind, a soft
touch of sun on my face.
I didn’t have to wait long.
In no time, my small tribe and I were barrel-
ing down the interstate, zig-zagging our 21-foot
motorhome (I know, I know, it’s totally un-cool
to have a motorhome) in and out of truck-stops
like seasoned pros. When we reached the bottom
of the Willamette Valley, the rain was mostly in
our rear-view mirror; by just the other side of
Mt. Shasta, we were sipping milkshakes out-
side a Burger-Barn, tugging off our sweatshirts
and looking for our sunglasses. In Sacramento,
&alifornia, I traded in my romeos for À ip-À ops,
thinking to myself: You might not be cool any-
more, but at least, for just a little while, you’re
going to be warm.
We were headed for the desert, but didn’t
make it that far. A false spring throughout the
San Joaquin Valley saw steady temperatures in
the low-to-mid 70s, which was just exactly hot
enough for a couple of unacclimated Washingto-
nians. We quickly ditched the speed of the inter-
state for the backroads of Gold Country, where
we À irted with the edges of the Sierra Nevada,
dropping in on the wealth of campgrounds that
surround the rivers and lakes that drain those
great mountains. To our surprise, we even found
another Columbia — with just as rich (though
considerably less watery) a history as the one
we’d left behind.
All in all, it was a marvelous trip, and I was
happy.
And then, as is the way of all good things, it
was suddenly over, time to turn around.
In the end, that’s just as well. As it happens,
the best lesson of my short stint at snow-birding
came entirely at the end. Crossing back over the
river that de¿ nes this region I so dearly love, I
saw with fresh eyes all that I had wearied of —
the rain-drenched hills, the swollen streams, yet
another storm passing onto land — my beautiful
life, super-saturated. And I realized, it’s only in
leaving that we give any meaning to the com-
ing home, and to my surprise, in that moment, I
found myself wanting only this from the world: a
clean chill from an ocean breeze, the rain falling
softly on my face.
The warm shores of Lake McSwain, in Mariposa County, California.
A ghost building from 1850 stands on the outskirts of
town in Columbia, California — the “gem of the south-
ern mines” — located in the Gold Country foothills of
the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Setting up “camp” at New Melones Lake in Tuolumne
County, California.
A fi eld of oaks near New Melones Lake in Tuolumne County, California.