We’ve been talking about moving. To be candid, we’ve talked about moving on and off ever since we moved to my family’s home on the Oregon coast in 1979. We missed family and friends. Now it’s the non-stop stream of tourists in a residential neighborhood that used to house people who actually lived here. The truth is, however, that we like the climate, the weather, and our permanent neighbors. We raised our children here, wetsuits dripping over the tub. They moved off but we stayed. We love our daily walks on the shore, even when our fingers and toes go numb in winter. We are accustomed to the continual roar of ocean and water shifting stone. We are used to silence.

We are used to seeing sky, to watching the storms roll in, the sea go high, the gulls and black oystercatchers and broken shells in the rocks. We enjoy finding the shoreline changed every day. This past year has not been easy for most people. The weather alone has been, as they say, interesting.

This past September, the wind, in a single monstrous gust, blew leaves off trees and shrubs that hadn’t even begun to turn a seasonal yellow. Entire alders were stripped bare, while a couple hundred yards away, trees were untouched. Then in December and January there was rain. Serious rain. Rain every day and all day. Ten to fifteen inches in a couple of days in some places. Like here. The construction site south of us continues to shed tar paper off roof and walls when the wind picks up. (I have never known an experienced contractor to tear off a roof without immediately replacing it—but then, the contractor only visits occasionally and the roof has been spotty tar paper for over 3 weeks. The new windows are handsome, but the planned deck will buck in gusty wind. Sixty-five and seventy mph gusts are typical here. Window glass visibly bows in such winds. It can be disconcerting to see at first.)

The very earth itself has been moving.

A few weeks ago, a chunk of hillside fell off into the ocean less than a mile up the beach. Storm-driven tides swept drift logs into our neighbors’ yards on both sides. No telling quite why we were spared. A wave came up to the gate but not into the yard. There is that 70-foot tree just down the beach, and every beach path showed a clutter of debris and drift, erosion and damage. Some paths to the beach were entirely impassable.

We still manage our walks.

The highway was closed for a few hours the other day right at my old three-mile turn marker on highway 101. It’s happened in the past that a dribble of stone periodically drops. This recent fall is something else, and it’s closed the highway briefly a few times now. ODOT bring heavy equipment, scoops up the rubble, and dumps it over the other side of the highway. It’s only parkland?

And now it’s cold. Snow all over in parts of the Pacific NW that really do not do snow very well.

And we’re only a smidge past mid-winter.

I used to run in all weather, but generally drew the line at hail. Lately we have gotten wet on most walks. There’s been hail we did not expect and could not avoid. Though we do wait to go out between heavy downpours, during our hour or two or three the weather changes.

So does the beach. Sand moves out into a bar offshore in winter, exposing the basalt beneath. As we beachcomb in the dark stone, we find sandstone, jasper, quartz, chalcedony, the rare bit of glass, which is mostly chipped this season due to the heavy seas.

New raw translucent rocks we call agates show in raw crystals or buffed lumps or smoothed into what I call “flat-smooths.” I am most fond of the unusual flat-smooths I label “Easter eggs” because they show a spotted or striped mix of translucence and opacity, caramel, amber, and white. Flat smooth green and red are rare too, and less likely to be symmetrical in outline.

When I was a child, the sand would sweep in high enough in the summer to completely cover the basalt on this beach. Probably due to coastal constructions, this never happens anymore. The basalt is sea-washed year around with the sand line moving only partway in during the summer. But in the winter, waves can lift and toss a hundred-weight stone, and the clatter of rocks over one another during high tide can be quite loud. The result is larger stones moved about, and the basalt itself is rounding. I used to have to walk a mile south to another beach to find rounded basalt. Recently I found an egg-shaped basalt as I walked up from the beach.

As I write this post, there is no rain, no rattle of rocks onshore. Whatever woke both of us at 3am has not repeated that scream. It’s cold and perhaps we will even have snow. I made pistachio biscotti with lemon and olive oil the other day. There are eggs in the fridge. The sourdough start is happy on the counter.

And a last laugh: I ordered milk chocolate for Gary from an excellent organic Seattle company—great chocolates for Valentine’s Day. The package was shipped “2-day delivery” on the 5th, but has been in transit now for over a week. To be fair, there was a weekend. (I was trying not to order from Amazon which was cheaper and would have shipped USPS to my post office box. I’d have had the order early this week. Alas. No good deed…)

The second tracking notice that my order was “on vehicle for delivery” was the day before yesterday. Evidently it traveled to the coast and then went back to Portland. Twice. As best I can tell, it’s spent most of the week since Monday at 4:41am sitting on one truck or another in Portland. Now delivery date is “pending.” I am unhopeful it will arrive before next Tuesday. The chocolate company has generously refunded my shipping costs and sent a replacement via a different shipper yesterday evening, arrived in Portland an hour ago, and is supposed to arrive today? Maybe. Or maybe next Tuesday.

It’s good for a laugh and makes an excuse for me to bake a cake instead. Or we could have the biscotti. Gary has not eaten all of them yet.

In an hour, there will be enough light for our walk.