Cape Disappointment – Pounding waves, surf for miles, Sitka Spruce standing as ramparts against the hurricane force winds. The southwestern tip of Washington State is bordered by the fourth largest river in North America by volume, a river that was surprisingly hidden to explorers until Charles Wilkes of the Ex Ex found the entrance in 1841 at no small price, wrecking the USS Peacock on the sandbar formed by the endless conveyor of the sediment carried by the river that brought the Lewis and Clark expedition to this spot. Now two lighthouses and a mile long jetty protect the river mouth allowing for a safer passage into the interior as container ships ply the waters carrying trade from along the coast and across the largest ocean in the world.
What wonders the setting of the sun brings, silouetting the crashing Pacific with only a hint of the thousands of miles that lay behind it. Wandering out in the dark across the broad expanse of sand deposited as a result of humans interference with the natural flow of the ocean, the blackness filled with the infinite universe of stars in the (occasionally) clear skies. This edge of the continent, anchored by the volcanic and pillow basalts, clashes with the rolling energy – allowing one to recharge the soul as you feel the winds that drive the ocean.
Turning inland the mass of forests provides an instant refuge – quieting the roar and dripping with arrested rain and mist that envelopes the Sitka Spruce. Mosses and ferns growing from the ground up, ever higher reaching into every nook and cranny to insulate the massive limbs. It is in the forest that we can feel the cleansing of the self, reincarnated as we were born, innocent of the outside world.
Cape Disappointment, as has been said many times, is hardly a disappointment. Any antonym will do! JP 11/07/2020