another Sunday...

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“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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aaah... sunshine. It has been a rare commodity these days. Foggy and cold is what it has been. Up in the hills and over on the coast the weather has been sunny and (winter)warm. Some days it is like living in the San Joaquin Valley again. If you have never experienced the Valley's tule fog... well... you are only missing impenetrable gray. In fact I remember days when the temperature would get below 32º and the fog would be a frozen mist. When you step outside on the worst of those days it is essential to carry an ice-pick just so you can chisel a tunnel through the fog. I swear...
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I took the kids up to their mom's place in Portland last weekend. When I went back on Sunday to pick them up I took my camera and drove up Hiway 99E which , when heading north from Eugene goes through Junction City, Harrisburg, Halsey, Shedd and Tangent before getting to Albany (which is where I jump over to I-5). I love the drive. It is a 55 MPH speed limit and runs through the rural part of the Willamette (Will-am-ette dammit) Valley.

So as I was driving I would come to spots I've noted before and just aim my camera out the window and shoot. Here are a few of those photos:













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BTW... I've added a link to my friend Bill Moore's blog on my list in the left hand column. Bill and I are political opposites but we find common ground in our photography. Check it out: Looking through my eyes ~ ~ photos by Bmoore3

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And speaking of photography...

I went over to the coast Monday. I responded to a Craig'sList ad looking for folks to display their photography in a new restaurant in Mapleton. I didn't get the first shot at displaying but I am #2! My photos will be there until about the middle of March. Stop in, say "hi" to Jesse and Marcy, and buy a cup of coffee. Oh yeah... and buy a photo.

So... if you happen to be in Oregon, along the coast anywhere near Florence or Mapleton stop in and see what I do in a larger format than I display here. Framed and matted even!

The photos are hanging in the Mapleton Caffeination Station, located in Mapleton, along Hwy 126 and sits between Frank's and the Alpha Bit Restaurant. The owners, Jesse and Marcy serve Cafe Mam, an organic, fair trade, shade grown coffee from Chiapas, Mexico. They serve fresh homemade baked goods, have comfortable seating and a deck out back. Tell 'em Allan sent you!



Caffeination Station



Jesse (the owner) and Marty



inside





and the back deck


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“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.”

~ Edward Steichen

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Ancestral grounds...

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say -- and to feel -- ''Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.''

~ John Steinbeck
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Took another trip to the coast on Monday with Marty. A rainy morning, cold, windy at the ocean...

Another visit to Heceta Head's north side Hobbit Beach. We first hiked up to the top of the ridge -- without the cameras because the rain was still falling pretty good -- along the lighthouse trail, a walk we hadn't done. What a nice trail. Uphill but with enough switchbacks that the slope wasn't too bad. Some great views through the trees, the ocean a constant sound as it crashed against the rocks, we found the ridge to be a wonderful place, a quiet place with an ancient grove of twisted and forked Sitka Spruce giving the place a timeless feel.

We had a great conversation about these kinds of places, how they give the sense of being out of time, of being in a place that has been as it is for millenia, of seeing it as hundreds of generations before us have seen it. And that sense of the ancient is very real, as we are ancient beings as well. As I said in the previous Perfix post, we all share a history of being indigenous -- native to some place -- that is special and revered. And standing among those old, old Spruce trees we knew that at one time, probably dating back to the days before the Europeans brought their boots stomping to this continent, that these trees were mere sprouts.

And when we got to the beach, we had it to ourselves. And that was no wonder as it was windy, a cold, biting north wind...

And being alone allowed that sense of seeing a place, especially a place as primordial as a beach, as it has been seen since... well... forever. The great sci-fi writer Piers Anthony covered the issue of ancestral memory (which I do believe in and suspect might be where that feeling of reincarnation arises from) in his books Orn, Chthon and others.

Here are a few pics from yesterday's hike. Enjoy!

































































As aways, any of MY images posted here are for sale as prints, or use commercially. NPOs can use fee-free, with permission. All images © Allan Erickson

The BIG water...

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

~ Saint Augustine



I remember as a kid up in Washington, going to the beach with my family to dig razor clams. I'm sure being a little one I didn't do a whole lot of digging. I don't remember much except that it was always cloudy. I do remember how good those fried clams were (and still are... although my mom's have always been the best, I won't be having those anymore... sigh...). Nothing like fresh fried clams.

When we left Washington we moved to Bakersfield, CA. A city far from the ocean. But it is a city that exists in a place that once was covered by salt water. We used to go to a place called Shark Tooth Mountain and dig around for shark's teeth. And funny how things are in life... back then we didn't know that it wasn't the shark's bite that could do damage to a person's health but the digging in the soil. That site is notorious for containing the spores that cause Valley Fever. My mother conracted VF and I suspect that her getting sick played a big part in our moving down to the LA Harbor.

When we finally settled down in San Pedro we lived just below Rolling Hills Estates on the east slope of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and we had a pretty nice view of the LA basin... Long Beach and the harbor area all the way over to Orange County. My dad was friends with one of the Harbor Masters and I remember us going with him on his boat. We also used to go to the Long Beach Naval Shipyards and tour the Navy vessels when they'd come in and dock there.

My dad loved that stuff, being a WWII vet and all. But it was the ocean... almost always nearby in my life.

When I was discharged from the Air Force in 1974 I moved to Santa Maria where most of my family was living. Moving to Santa Maria got me back close to the ocean. While kind of a sucky town, Santa Maria has a great location only 15 miles from the Pacific and the Guadalupe Dunes and Perfix Beach. Its a wondrous place... one of these days(/years) I'll get my old Kodachrome® slides scanned... those images are probably some of the best photography I've ever done and I'd love to share them here. Many of you may know those dunes not knowing you know those dunes... ya know. Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments was filmed there. And for those of you not as old as Moses (The Ten Commandments is an old movie...) a more contemporary view could have been had if you have seen Johnny Depp in the 3rd installment of Pirates of the Caribbean:

Of course I was Pirating around those Dunes long before Depp! It was a favorite spot for that crew of troublemakers I hung around with in college at Santa Maria's Allan Hancock College, which is truly one of that town's saving graces... Even after bro' Bagley had gone on back to Texas and bro' Jim had drifted north brother Marty and I would go with Lance the wonder dog and hike the dunes a lot. Many times I would have Marty or someone drop me off and I'd spend a few days with my dog, camped up on top of the Dunes, hiking and fishing, taking photographs... aaah... such was the life, splendid isolation. In fact that area has been the focus of a few of the most intense dreams in all of my life... and some of the most intense awake moments of my life. I can't say enough (not here anyway, watch for the book!) about the Dunes and my experiences on the central coast.

But... now that I'm living here in Orgon I'm a bit further from the ocean and I miss it. But it is only 60 miles away. Last week Marty and I went over to the coast two seperate days. I've driven the coast highway many times since living here but my actual trips to go the beach have been few in all my years here. I love the ocean, the beaches, and I see it with my own unique perspective. The first trip was just a day to go hiking and I took my camera. The second trip was specifically taken as a photo trip. I watched the tide table and the time and planned for a day when low tide was at sunset. As luck would have it there was also a bit of weather hanging off the coast so there were some clouds in the sky too...

So, here you go. Enjoy a day (well... actually two days) at the beach. These were all taken at Hobbit Beach, just north of the Heceta Head Lighthouse (the rocky point you see in my pics is Heceta Head's north side):











As always I love selling my photos, contact me ( allan_e@efn.org ). Non-Profit Orgs can use my images w/o charge, with permission and photo credit. All images copyright Allan Erickson, 2007