You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The Oregon Ship Wreck.
It’s a blustery March morning as we head toward the state park nestled on the Pacific Ocean.
The sky is grey with wisps of blue peeking through occasionally. The horizon is full of tumultuous angst, like a teenager caught drinking at the prom.
The wind is powerful, pushing seagulls to unusual heights, forcing the four by four I’m driving all over the 2 lane road.
It’s been a wild 24 hours of weather where we’ve seen lightning, thunder and hail. And that was just in the 1st 30 minutes.
Just a few hours ago, the wind was so savage, it was pushing sand down the beach, lifting each granule and hurtling it like microscopic bullets against my skin.
We were at Cannon Beach looking at an amazing natural phenomenon known as Haystack Rock.
It’s an ancient geological formation in the surf, just off the beach. It is 235 feet tall, thought to be the 3rd tallest intertidal structure in the world.
The tide was out, and we could have walked into the deep cavernous ravines that invite tourists to explore.
But the wind was so ferocious, with 50 and 60 mile an hour gusts, just walking was on the sand was perilous. At one point, I put my hands out like an airplane and suddenly the wind grabbed my jacket and began to propel me forward like I was attached to a parachute behind a jet car. That doesn’t make for good haystack exploring.
So we are walking on the boardwalk having just had some morning coffee.
“Why don’t you visit the shipwreck,” a motel handyman recommends. “Its on the beach, crashed there in 1906.”
The visual of a ship wreck wedged in the sand for more than 100 years is intriguing.
“We’re headed to Washington anyway,” I say. “is it on the way?”
“Indeed” the large man with the beard made of brillo retorts. “Tourists seem to like it,” he says holding a small hammer he was using to repair a fence post near the beach access.
Now we are headed north on the 101 at Fort Stevens in Warrenton, a seaside town just a few miles south of Washington State.
We follow the signs up the coast.
Cannon Beach to Seaside to Gearhart.
These are blue-collar beach towns along the Oregon Coast.
The drive is rustic, almost primitive.
We cross wild rivers and drive through redwood trees that stretch up to the swirling sky.
The beauty is evident, but it is somehow understated. It is obscured by the terrible weather that covers it like a space suit covers a super model.
The weather is dark and dreary and rain splatters my windshield in cold clumps.
Though the highway is along the ocean, the usual beach motif does not apply here.
when I think beach, I think sunshine and the inviting warmth of Southern California where piers and surfers and thong wearing roller bladers are the norm.
Here, a thong would be scoffed at with all the sensitivity of a jail house riot.
These beach towns seem harder, simpler, more austere.
The gray in the architecture is the color of depression.
It’s as if the buildings blend into the foreboding sky that swirls and challenges you to draw in every breath.
Why is everyone so sad, I wonder as I drive through.
It’s as if the town was built with the tears and sweat of early pioneers who crash landed here ions ago. They crawled onto the beach like tadpoles evolving in a Darwinian Jamboree. They were happy to be alive, to have not drown. The color of their home was inconsequential.
Now their landing spot is a cold isolated beach town that simply lives on the edge of the wind and battles with the sea in a non stop territorial tug of war.
It is with this foreboding feeling, that I pull into the only gas station I can find along the way.
I notice a huge plastic gorilla on the pavilion over the gas pumps.
Seems to make sense since the name on the façade is GORILLA GAS.
I was hoping for the 76 station down the block, but it is vacant.
There is no recognizable brand name like Chevron, or Exxon. Not in this lost seaside burg.
As soon as we pull in, there is an awful sound.
It is disorienting, like a an axle breaking on a semi at highway speed.
What is that awful wail I wonder, my head on a swivel, my eyes darting back and forth from mirror to mirror.
I pause to listen. It is a siren, blaring at me, no screaming at me.
The windows in the Toyota are rolled up, still the sound is so strident, it is reverberating in the cockpit of the vehicle.
I look up in my rear view mirror wondering if the police SWAT team has pulled in behind me.
I roll down my window and the blaring voice from over head becomes more recognizable.
It is a warning that is being broadcast from speakers hanging above the Gorilla Gas pumps.
“TSUNAMI WARNING. TSUNAMI WARNING!”
The voice says these unmistakable words over and over.
Then a man’s voice tells me what to do if the threat was real.
Abandon my car and walk to higher ground is the recommendation.
I stare at the angry sea in the distance.
What if, I wonder.
Could an Earthquake under the ocean force the sea to rise up so high here and inhale this desolate town?
Suddenly a toothless local appears at my window.
“Filler up?”
I stare at the man with the grey shirt and Gorilla logo on his coat.
“Huh?” I say with the intelligence of forest moss.
“State law in Oregon. We pump gas for you. Oregon and New Jersey,” he says smiling. “Job security.”
“Sure.”
The man begins to pump gas.
“Where you heading?” he shouts from the rear of the car.
“Some shipwreck up the road.”
“Oh the Iredale,” he says. “You can’t miss it.”
I smile.
“Hey what was that blaring alarm when I pulled up?”
“Tsunami Warning. They were testing the system. Pretty loud huh?”
“scary loud.”
“Never know around here,” he says wiping my windshield.
I pay the gas station attendant and give him a tip like he’s a waiter at a fine restaurant.
“Oh, thank you,” he responds. “enjoy the shipwreck.”
I pull back onto the highway lined by non-descript businesses and ominous sky.
I get to Fort Stevens State Park and pull onto Peter Iredale Road.
I head west through a dark forest. The trees are tall and they block out the grey angry light that has been guiding my way.
I press forward, rain spitting on the windshield.
Slowly, the trees decrease and the light emerges.
I pull through a clearing and the ocean is before me.
I see the horizon; a bright white line dividing a dark stormy sea and a turbulent sky.
I drive forward into what appears to be a parking spot.
Immediately the front tires of the Toyota Forerunner bog down.
“huh?”
The sand is dark and gooey, like the Exxon Valdez secreted a bowel movement into the sand.
I feel the front tires skid as the tread fills with muck and sea grime from a 1000 high tides.
The back-end fish tails slightly as the truck powers ahead toward the shore.
In my rear view mirror I see sand and gunk being spun out from each grinding tire.
It looks like a gritty spider web of dirt being vomited into the abyss.
I head toward the ocean, following the badly identified path.
The storm front that looms on the horizon is a churning cauldron of power.
I drive as far as I can.
The beach is divided by a series of railroad ties.
As I park the truck, I see the remnants of the ship.
It looks like a rusty skeleton, made of steel beams, protruding from the sand.
The boat is a shell of its former self. Any wood or siding has long ago been devoured by the carnivorous sea.
The exoskeleton of the ship is forged in rusting steel and like bones on the prairie, they show me the outline of what once was.
Why is it still here, I wonder.
Wouldn’t someone have removed this tragedy from visibility in the last 110 years?
Oregonians don’t even use plastic bags at the supermarket.
And they leave this here?
Isn’t a ton of rusting metal dripping slime and toxins on the pristine Oregon coast over a century cause for some type of tree hugger alarm?
Apparently not.
I will later come to learn this rusty hull, that looks like a petrified Brontosaurus, is all that’s left of the Peter Iredale, a four masted steel sailing vessel that ran aground in October of 1906.
According to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of changeable facts; “The ship was named after Peter Iredale, who not only owned the vessel as part of his shipping fleet, but was also a well-known figure in Liverpool, England, where his business was headquartered.”
I get out of the truck and I’m immediately blasted by the salt spray whipping off the Pacific.
My sandals sink into the sandy sludge
WTF?
I look at the terrain leading from the parking lot to the ship.
There is a parking lot underneath me somewhere, but it is covered with inches of sand and detritus blown inward over time.
I move forward and feel my sandal sink into the wet, unstable goo.
I am unsteady, unsure, not exactly compelled to risk injury for that thing rising from the sand a few hundred yards away.
I take another step and feel my sandal slip again.
I am about to fall into the quagmire of churning frothy drek.
“F this!” I say aloud.
I feel a gust of 50 mph cold salt slap my face.
I stare at the shipwreck, holding my spot in the slippery stew.
I think about how it is 110 years old, how it has weathered time, and how it would be cool to go touch history.
But I also see the churning sea splashing the rusty bones, pounding each girter angrily. It looks like a 1000 paces away through an unsettled path. I wonder just how much petroleum laced quick sand my Jesus sandals are designed to handle.
I see a small Asian woman walking near the shipwreck.
How the hell did she get there?, I wonder as I begin to back up slowly, maintaining my balance.
I wonder if the ship or the woman would survive a Tsunami?
I don’t care.
I get to the side of the Toyota and bang my sandles forcefully against the tires.
Exxon Valdez slime and sludge fall to the ground in charcoal like lumps.
I get in the vehicle and head back through the dark forest away from the angry sea, diminishing light, and rusty Brontosaurus bones on the beach.
The hell with the Peter Iredale Ship Wreck.
If they wanted me to pay homage to their calamity they should have crashed it in a nicer spot, Like Southern California.
Had that happened, it would be a theme restaurant on the pier by now.
Life’s Crazy™