Caves
Not too long ago, on a crisp and bright morning, 7:15 a.m. to be precise, I stood near the ocean and came upon two young women, one a red head, the other sporting rainbow-colored hair, both in their late teens or early 20s, smoking cigarettes and wearing blankets. They stumbled down a path to the beach and saw a cave carved into a sandy cliff some 20 feet high above ground. The red-haired woman pointed to the cave and exclaimed to her companion, “What the FUCK!?” and started running toward the cave with giddy abandon. Her companion followed. They skipped across a rivulet, scrambled over some driftwood and began climbing up the cliff to presumably reach the cave and then do something inside it.
A chainsaw roared somewhere near the cave, perhaps on the road, at the entrance to the path. I took the path up from the beach and the roar of the chainsaw grew louder. This confused me because there was no earthly reason for the sound of a chainsaw to emanate from this place. On the road, I observed the official vehicle of the New American Diaspora, a sagging Japanese sedan from the early 90s, battered, duct taped, parked in such a place and at a particular moment in the morning that suggested its occupants had spent the night in the vehicle, and were now just rousting.
But the chainsaw?
I watched the sedan and then saw a young bearded man in pajama-like clothing, emerge from behind it wielding a chainsaw. He had apparently been using it to cut branches from various stunted shore pines that lined one side of the road.
But why? It made no sense. Was he cutting firewood for a morning beach fire? What was he even doing with a chainsaw? What about the women? Had the reached the cave yet? Would they smoke cigarettes there, dangle their feet over the edge, giggle and stare at ocean?
It was clear from all the stuff packed into the sedan that the trio were living out of it. But how? I see similar sedans everywhere in Oregon.
I pondered the scene and the odd behavior. As I walked away, I looked back at the sedan and heard the revved up and sustained grind of the chainsaw. It sounded like the man was felling a tree, which of course made no sense.
Had the women reached the cave yet? What was going on with them? I tried imagining their conversation. It was impossible. I tried imagining how these people lived. Impossible. I wondered how they came together and created this life. I wondered why the cave had made the two women so excited. I guess caves are like that. I was excited when I first saw it. I climbed up to check it out, too. Other visitors to this beach had as well. In fact, one morning I saw someone sleeping in the cave. They used the cave as shelter for a couple of days before moving on.
Yes, caves as shelter—in 2021. People are hacking them out of coastal cliffs with sticks, rocks and their bare hands and just sitting in them or spending the night or whatever the new cave dwellers do.
There is a word to describe this cave sheltering in modern Oregon: atavistic (relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral).
Is that's what's going on in America with many people? Are they reverting by choice or coercion?
Near this cave, carved into the sand by some true daredevils, were all manner of statements and equations of love and being and also some lines that made no sense whatsoever and weren't even written in a language I am familiar with.
The sentence “I Love Meth” I read here a year ago has always stayed with me and I used it in a recent novel.
Something else I read here has also stayed with me. It was one word: erosion. Was it speaking to the cliff or the country as a whole? If it was the latter, then it was the most plain and devastatingly accurate one-word metaphor of graffiti I've ever read. In fact, it's not even a metaphor. It's our reality.