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CLOSE TO HOME
WATER
when an unexpected storm tosses 50-ton
ships to and fro like so much flotsam?
Growing up on the Long Beach Pen-
insula in the 1950s, many of my school-
mates were fatherless, the victims of the
raging storms of the Pacific Ocean. Safety
standards were minimal. GPS was not yet
a dream, certainly not a reality. Sailing de-
pended more on intuitive skill, experience,
as well as luck or fate. The Coast Guard
was frequently outmatched, as on the
night when four Coast Guard vessels (two
of which were 54 feet long and deemed
unsinkable) and one crab boat were over-
come by 40-foot seas. In that same decade,
several ships sank or were forced aground,
total losses.
AND THE SOUL
By DAVID CAMPICHE
FOR COAST WEEKEND
I
n a churning fury, ocean waves race to
shore, swollen into spume, into white-
crowned foam, into blankets of sea
spray. These currents can crush a fishing
boat, or even a mighty steel-hulled ship.
Storm waves will rip up a headland or
erode beaches in nibbles or huge mouthfuls
like a powerful untamed beast, sometimes
in a matter of hours.
Even on a bluebird day, water can drown
a man without the slightest effort. Some
might think of this power as indifferent,
petulant or uncaring, or simply a force onto
itself. A force to be reckoned with. One
might imagine water as the power of God.
Indeed, the Greeks gave that God a name:
Poseidon, and prayed for deliverance from
its bad moods.
Sea vistas
Observing water
I stand on the edge of land, and for
hours contemplate the sound and fury of
the liquid force before me. It’s February,
though the weather has turned mild as a
bowl of milk.
But miles at sea, the storm of yesterday
still brews up combers that race westerly
like a cavalry charge toward a landmass we
call home, the Oregon Coast.
Leonardo da Vinci spent a lifetime
studying the movement of water, the cata-
clysm of currents and eddies, and all that
was shaped and altered by flood in his 15th
century seascape. At times, he wished to
control it, to harness the force of falling and
surging water — of uncontrolled violence,
as he noted, when floods overrode the river-
banks that laced his beloved Italy:
The ancients called man a lesser world,
and certainly the use of this name is well
bestowed, because his body is an analog
for world. As man has in him bones that
support his flesh, the world has its rocks
that support the earth. As man has a pool
of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in
breathing, so the body of the earth has its
ocean tide which likewise rises and falls
every six hours, as if the world breathed. As
the blood veins originate in that pool and
spread all over the human body, so likewise
the ocean sea fills the body of the earth
DAVID CAMPICHE PHOTO
The Oregon Coast on a calm winter morning
with infinite springs of water.
Long before the Italian Renaissance,
Lao Tsu weighed in:
The highest good is like water. / Water
gives life to the ten thousand things and
does not strive. / It flows in places men
reject and so is like the Tao.
Let it be said, these geniuses were not
alone in their observations, only ahead of
their time. Ask your friend the fisherman.
He knows storm. Ask a pastor or priest
about how and when Jesus calmed the
waters and walked upon the Sea of Galilee.
What might we say about the force of spir-
ituality versus the power of the sea? Ask
mariners: Where does the love of God go,
And now I stand at the edge of this great
unpredictable Pacific Ocean and meditate
on a lovely seascape — meditate on crowns
of silver and the pure white mountains of
spume, on the translucent and emerald-blue
underbelly of the rushing combers, or the
flush of metallic colors, flashing like a
hummingbird named Tinker Bell darting
through thick salty air.
Below me are a scattering of water-worn
boulders, appearing somehow like Humpty
Dumpty on the wall, many still attached to
terra firma but reshaped by eons — by tide
and currents and storm.
My wife, Laurie, and I spent three days
on the Oregon Coast, parked mostly in
Depoe Bay. We walked and talked and
confided, ate local seafood and held hands
while moving like a younger couple, awe-
struck by some latter-day form of infatua-
tion. Love, of course, is often shaped like
beaches at the edge of the tide. Did those
waves shape us? What magic or spell did
the sea press upon our dreams or aspira-
tions? And just as important: How do they
impact you?
I offer this: Get into your car and head
south. Trade one paradise (our Colum-
bia-Pacific homeland) for another (the
south Oregon Coast), just a couple of hours
south of Astoria. From sublime to sublime.
From ferocious to wild. Foggy, misty or
rain-saturated — choose for yourself, or
simply take a chance. For a few days, be-
come a beachcombing vagabond.
Or travel to the edge of the known
world. Pretend you are launching a wooden
dory named “Looks Far” with a painted
Haida eye on the prow. Drift far under the
starry night illuminated by a full moon and
brilliant white caps. Drift with the currents
of your imagination, each dream surging
like the mighty ocean under the hull of your
cedar vessel.
Be free as the water. CW