First Morning Walk in Empire

Elmer and I walked out of our new home in the Empire district of Coos Bay to take our first morning walk here. Destination: Coos Bay itself, the Empire Boat Ramp, and a walk along the beach if the tide proved favorable.

It was 5:50 and dawn had arrived.

We passed derelict houses with derelict RVs, trailers, boats, vehicles and appliances, abandoned in front, back and side yards. We passed vacant storefronts and the donut shop without a sign. One of the more curious aspects of the Empire district is the significant number of businesses without any signage whatsoever. It baffles me.

In the parking lot, I counted three dilapidated vehicles that were clearly mobile domiciles. I also counted two rigs with boat trailers. Someone had beat me here and had been out fishing in the dark and probably sipping a little Crown Royal in their cup of drip coffee.

The tide proved favorable and after ascending to the beach from the parking lot, I let Elmer off leash and he bolted into the bay and found himself chest deep in water. He looked confused but sprinted out and kept running wild through the mudflats.

I noticed gulls clamming and other shorebirds in the distance.

The previous morning I had walked Elmer in Sellwood for the last time. The contrasts in these two walks were seismic but I wasn't going to write about them. I was through writing about Portland forever.

Now I was a man of the tides again. This walk to Coos Bay would be our walk every morning to begin our new coastal life together.

I was 30 yards down the sand when I knew my creative mind was going to explode with this new morning routine. I also knew I was going to start running again. Shit, this was Steve Prefontaine's hometown, I had to start running again!

The clanking, clanging and creaking sounds from a massive timber port across the bay filled the air. All those raw logs going to Asia; all those Coos Bay mill jobs that could have been if a true and collective resistance had been mounted decades ago to defeat the destruction of Oregon's timber industry wrought by far flung bastions of high finance. Instead, rural Oregon blamed environmentalists from Portland and Eugene and served mock spotted owl omelets for breakfast in their diners.

Elmer and I cruised the beach for 30 minutes. We began our walk home and left the parking lot behind.

On the way, we encountered:

A young woman screaming and dancing in a meth-induced frenzy.

A middle-aged woman asleep in the cab of a 90s mini pickup and nearly swallowed by her possessions.

A man in his 70s riding a BMX bike with some kind of knapsack strapped across his back.

An older man living out of his sedan. The radio was on. I heard the voice of a news broadcaster.

These encounters all occurred withing five block of my house. These were the homeless of Empire, my new neighborhood.

Who are they? Why Coos Bay?

I thought after leaving Portland my writing about homelessness would end. I had a novel to work on. It was time to move on from the subject. There was nowhere else to go with it. I’d peaked with the Old Crow Book Club crew.

My first morning walk in Empire set me straight.