1000 WORDS

I was planning to ride to a state park in Brookings just north of the California state line for the ease and convenience of the hiker/biker camp but I have mixed feelings about it. The last two nights I have camped in hiker/biker camps, first at Cape Argo and then at Humbug Mountain, with the same crowd of cyclists – all travelling south – and although they are nice people, I find that the atmosphere creates something of the feeling of being at a backpacker’s hostel. Call me fussy but I don’t particularly care for being in audible range of people snoring through the night or hawking, coughing and spitting at dawn.

So when I am riding along a cliffy section of the coast an hour or so before sunset and I see a narrow path leading over a grassy hill and across a meadow towards the cliff half a mile away I am easily lured onto it. I push the bike through clinging grass still wet from a recent squall. Clouds are looming again out to sea and the weather looks uncertain but I am drawn to the cliff’s edge where a sheltering cave is formed by the curving arms of a windswept spruce. Waves crash far below, rocks rise out of the sea. A large sandstone stack towering above the water just to the left of my eyrie could almost be considered an island with its spiky top knot of trees.

Ocean stack with a top knot of trees.

Clouds out to sea in the evening.

I love the feeling of camping by myself in a wild place – of being alone hidden from the eyes of the world. The sun sets over the sea into the bank of clouds still hanging there and I watch the stars come out, one by one, overhead. Later in the night it rains and I wake, listening to raindrops falling on the thin membrane which protects me from the elements.

The rugged coastline of the Pacific Northwest is heart-achingly beautiful.

My little tree cave hanging above the ocean...

... and you would never even know that I was there.