North Head Lighthouse...

The mouth of the Columbia and the waters around Long Beach Peninsula were, and still are, deadly. Commercial ships plying these waters must take on local pilots to guide them past the dangers. Two lighthouses were built on the southern end of the Peninsula back in the late 1800's: the Cape Disappointment lighthouse and the North Head lighthouse. I walked, yesterday, the trail to the North Head lighthouse. It stands on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, pummeled by strong winds. It is late May and they are still brisk, chill even, but I feel so alive in them, my hair and shirt whipped all about. I have had to remove my hat, lest the winds steal it away and bestow it on some ocean-going creature at the base of the cliffs below. There is grass growing here, at the top of the cliffs - no trees are so bold - and a few coast paintbrush provide bits of bright color amongst the green. Almost at my feet, a gap in the cliffs, a gully of sorts, gives a view of rocks and pounding surf. Pelagic cormorants - in the midst of breeding, according to the guidebook and telltale white patches on their flanks - wheel about, just above the water. A little farther out, other seabirds (cormorants? I think so, but I'm no expert) are passing to-and-fro on business, in vees twenty or thirty strong, like wings of fighter planes over the English Channel.

This is a lonely spot, and certainly a wild one, a little outpost of humanity buffeted constantly by wind and surf. No doubt, someday in the future, this place will fall into the Pacific, though not in my lifetime or my children's. And it was a hard life, being a lighthouse keeper. But I love it - I feel so alive there (I guess I'm a creature of the winds) - and wish I could have stayed...