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Mercy on Nestucca Spit

November 18, 2008

By Matt Love

   A November storm raged and I wanted to see 30-foot waves whipped up on the distant ocean meet their end at the landfall of Nestucca Spit. I wanted them to die at my feet and I didn’t want to share their death with anyone else.

   Wind and rain bent the Sitkas and shook the truck on the way to Bob Straub State Park in Pacific City, my favorite place in Oregon, a place I have rambled with the dogs over a thousand times the last decade. Had it not been for Oregon State Treasurer Bob Straub’s heroic efforts to save Nestucca Spit from the desecration of a relocated Highway 101 back in 1967, I wouldn’t be here at all. But a lot of cars and hot dog stands would.

   Gusts of wind loaded with sandy pellets hammered me as I tried to open the hatch to the canopy. I couldn’t pull it open. I swear the dogs put their heads to the glass, pushing to help me. Free at last! They bolted out and ran wild to the west and I sprinted after them, screaming in delight at the very rawness of everything around me. The dogs hit the beach and then abruptly turned south and ran even faster to a giant root wad bobbing in the rushing tide like a cork floating in bathtub. It was the sort of root wad that could crush a small child at play if rolled by a sneaker wave or add a foreground grain to a grandmother’s water color seascape. Fifty yards down the Spit, I watched the dogs approach the driftwood as if it were a monster. It was now stationary for the moment and Sonny jumped on top, Ray pissed on it, and Jo looked to eat barnacles off its sides.

   Sea foam blew in every direction and was piled a foot high at the rack line. The sky was a blanket of gray with only a few pinholes of light poking through. I watched the dogs gallop away from the monster as the tide ripped in and their interest shifted to something else down the beach.

   I turned my view north. Something black and apparently alive was moving awkwardly in the surf about 50 yards away. What the hell? I started walking toward it and stopped. It was a seal on its back. I’ve seen hundreds of seals, both on and off the shore at the Spit in the decade I’ve been rambling here, but I’d never seen anything like this. Something was wrong.

   A wave caught the seal and pushed it ten yards farther ashore. Then another wave came in and dragged it 20 yards back out to sea. Still the creature remained on his back. I moved ten yards closer and stopped. Wave after wave pounded the seal and one rolled it completely over.

   I felt something and asked: Should I put this seal down? The word obligation entered my mind, as in the obligation to the natural world Gary Snyder once wrote about in an essay. But what was my obligation here? It crossed my mind that the seal was either exhausted from riding out the storm or dying a natural death but it also crossed my mind that a fishermen had wounded it with a bullet a few days ago in calmer seas. Whatever the reason, a seal had washed or swam ashore on Nestucca Spit, was obviously in distress, I stood a half a football field away, and no other human was around, nor would one likely appear.

   A closer inspection seemed paramount, but if I did, the dogs would surely follow and discover the seal. I couldn’t predict what they might do to it and didn’t want to find out. I looked again at the seal. It continued to writhe and now began flapping its flippers in a bizarre inconsistent manner. I was unnerved but also compelled to complete my obligation. You either do this thing or end up a literary hypocrite.

   I jogged toward the truck and the dogs followed me. They still hadn’t seen the seal and smelling the creature was out of the question for them with so much storm-tossed salt and dead marine life suffusing the air. I herded the dogs into the bed of the truck, slammed the tailgate shut, and secured the hatch to the canopy.  I unlocked the door to the cab and retrieved a Leatherman stored in the glove department, a gift from a girlfriend a decade ago, that I could recall using twice in recent years-to slice a cheese sandwich on a camping trip and cut a loose cord on a tennis net. A plan to fulfill the obligation had formed in my mind. Its execution was contingent on everything out of my control if I truly believed in Snyder’s definition of obligation.

   Back to the Spit. The dogs saw me leave and barked and whined their disapproval at being left behind. They never got left behind. As I made my way through the dunes to the beach, I thought: One day, when the time comes, will there be someone to put me down? To put us all down? I have thought on these questions a lot in recent years, doubtless because I seem to encounter so much wildlife in the last injured and painful throes of life, mostly deer grotesquely broken on the highways, always rendered that way by humans either hostile or indifferent to the importance of wildlife in the world. Offering an apology doesn’t help me at all to make sense or survive these encounters. Sorry Barry Lopez.

   With the Leathermen in my pocket, I walked onto the beach and looked for the seal in the water and foam and it was gone. I waited for 20 minutes, scanning the ocean, wanting and not wanting to see the seal.

   Nothing.

 

 

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