Cannon Beach, Oregon
These past few weeks, I have explored and written about our own beaches here on Amelia Island, but this past week, I had a different experience: Cannon Beach in Oregon. Bucko and I once lived in northern California, and the beaches there are similar, but so long ago in my memories. What fun to refresh them!
The cottage my gal friends and I rented was on Cannon Beach: four miles of wide sand bordered by forested bluffs and topped with a tourist town of shops, restaurants and art galleries. But heck with the shops -- we have similar ones here. It was the natural experience I gravitated to. This part of the world was formed by volcanic activity and giant basalt sea stacks lined the beach, and volcanic cobblestones were found in pockets along the shore. And best of all, at low tides, the magical tidepools are open for discovery. It was heaven.
Each day I set out down only 10 steps from our cottage to an uncrowded stretch of beach. Large logs lay along the rising bluffs, perfect places to rest my hip when I needed to, and to watch the passersby. And, in my true form, I talked to almost everyone I encountered. Although the beach was primarily sand, at low tide, one particular area was remarkable for its collection of thousands of rounded black collectible rocks -- volcanic cobblestones. An older woman collecting treasures there told me that her family had come here for generations and had named one of the sea stacks Harriet, in honor of her grandmother who settled here long ago. Each year the extended family arrives from all over to give her homage. I, too, became a fan of Harriet’s rock.
Harriet’s Rock is smaller than the nearby famous Haystack Rock, but had all the charms without the people and was right outside my door. I explored the tidepools revealed here at the negative low tides that I happened to hit (lucky me!). And there they were, my California tidepool old friends: green anemones, ochre sea stars, mussels, barnacles, and all the rest. I was intrigued by the masses of gooseneck barnacles encrusting the up levels at low tide, mixed with the mussels. Had I known, and had this place not been protected, I could have harvested my own gourmet dinner. Edible mussels I knew about, but gooseneck barnacles? It turns out they are actually crustaceans like shrimps and crabs and have a fleshy stalk invisible at low tide that attaches to the substrate. Gooseneck barnacles are a delicacy, it seems, up to $100 a pound and are rumored to taste like another crustacean, lobster.
Haystack Rock was amazing not only for its tidepools, which are protected and interpreted by volunteers at low tide, but also for the colonies of seabirds that nest at the top of it, where it is covered with vegetation. The largest onshore population of tufted puffins in the continental U.S. nests here, considered onshore since they are connected to the mainland at low tide. They share their breeding turf with common murres, and volunteers were on hand to share their telescopes for better viewing.
Along my beach walks, I saw no one swimming, of course, since the water temperature was 56 degrees. But wow, there were lots of ways to use the sand. Since it clumps better than the sand on Amelia Island beaches, people were digging all kinds of holes for fun. I saw a group of kids that had created a system of roads for their toy trucks, and another ambitious “sunken living room” created for an entire family to hide below the reach of the wind. People were letting their dogs run free chasing balls and combing the sand for agates, which are sometimes found here but are getting as rare as fossilized shark teeth are on our beaches. At night there were wood fires surrounded by people of all ages, enjoying the cool temperatures and perfect scenery.
Although I stayed in the same beach cottage for three days, every day on the beach revealed more. In one spot at low tide, I could walk through a passageway between two giant boulders. Each exposed sea stack at low tide had its own unique composite of marine life, and more I would surely discover if I were there even longer. And the great long stretch of sandy beach with the sea lapping in was its own changing landscape by the hour.
It was a magical place. If you want to see more, click on the photos at the top of this story for a photo slide show. I hope you might find it as wonderful as I did, those three days on the Oregon beach.
Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations.
