Walk Around
Walk Around
31 - Nehalem
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31 - Nehalem

A walk along the river and coastal estuary

Transcript begins after images

Coastal dunes on the ocean side of Bayocean Spit
Woods along the Wilson
Nehalem Army Corps Road
Forest floor near the Wilson River

All images © Hudson Gardner, 2024

Transcript - includes errors and run-on sentences

Walkaround #18 - Nehalem - 10:29:24, 10.28 AM

Hello

Here I am on the banks of the Nahalem River, which is kind of a medium-sized coastal river that flows into the ocean from the mountains of Oregon

And it's cold

It was 36, 35 last night, almost freezing

And the kind of cold here is damp and misty

There's mist along the bottom of the river

I'm standing right on the shore, on the rocks, below a big alder tree, looking upriver at a dipper, counting the birds this morning

I took a little trip to the coast yesterday

I needed some time to think and be alone and some time to walk

And certain parts of the Oregon coast are often totally deserted, even though they have these massive sandy beaches that seem to go on forever

There's just not much to look at, so there's nobody really there

And so I parked my car at a county park and headed off towards this big hill of pine trees

In the distance, in between me, there were dunes

And on one side, a big area of open water in the bay

And on the far side, that I couldn't see, was the ocean

But I could hear it, and it was windy

It was a little cold, but it was sunny

There were lots of birds in the bay, some owks, which kind of look like puffins, and some eiders and grebes, a loon or two

I looked at them with my binoculars

And it was a nice, quiet place

I saw a few people, but I didn't say much to any of them

I got the sense that, most of the men that I passed who were walking alone were really nervous

They seemed really wrought up with something

It seemed like all of them were dealing with something difficult

And I smiled and waved and said hello

But they didn't seem to be able to pull themselves out of whatever internal world they were deliberating about

It hasn't been the easiest year, it seems

Maybe for a lot of people

I was trying to decide if I wanted to turn around and go back to the bay

I was trying to decide if I wanted to turn around and just walk back the way I'd come

I pulled up onyx and saw that there was a trail that cut through the forest, right through the dunes, over a hill and through some pines, and to the ocean, to the beach

And so I thought, whoa, what a perfect loop

I'll just walk over that

And then by the time I get to the other side and start heading south, the wind will be at my back because it was getting to be pretty cold at that point

The wind had picked up and the sun was getting covered over by fog and mist

And in the distance I could see storm clouds far off into the ocean, probably 30 miles, 40 miles away

And so it seems like a good plan

So I picked up the tiny little trail, which is no wider than a foot or two because the coastal vegetation grows so intensively that there's very little space that remains clear unless you walk on it or cut it often

And I took probably 10 or 20 steps down the trail and I was just in the middle of stepping over a log and having a thought when I saw a bright red, perfectly fresh, speckled, white amanita mushroom

And it stopped me in my tracks just to run into such a spectacular sight, such a striking example of what can just grow out of the soil or the sand, out of tiny spores, always amazing

But the amanita itself, the fly agaric they call it, has a historic and cultural background that resonates with me being someone from the Scandinavian countries and the Finnish archipelago where most of my genetics come from up there

And so being as I am at a massive inflection point in my life from the last year or so, coming across this mushroom, which was used by my ancestors for sure, was meaningful

And I knew when I first saw it that I probably wasn't going to use it

I definitely wasn't going to save it for later

For some reason that seemed disrespectful to me

That was just my feeling

For some reason I would never take that mushroom and dry it and use it for later

I don't know why

But that doesn't seem like how I would ever want to use it

So I thought, well, what should I do with this experience? So I just kind of stood in the presence of that mushroom, which it's fascinating to be able to stand in front of a plant and know some of them could just straight up kill you and another one could alter your mind and life forever, potentially

It's just something that's growing on the earth and it's quite a striking experience

So I just took that in and experienced the presence of that mushroom

And then I ended up harvesting it with my knife

And as I walked down the trail with it in my hand, I saw more and more

In fact, I was walking through almost a forest of them

And it was the most I've ever seen in my whole life

And there were yellow ones, red ones, everything in between

Orange ones

All Amanita fly agaric

And I thought, well, maybe I should chew on this a little bit

Maybe I should just take a taste

I smelled it and I was surprised

It smelled amazing

Mushrooms generally all kind of smell the same

Many of them smell just sort of sweet and damp

But this one had a totally different scent that I can't describe

And so that alone was an experience

And I thought, what should I do with this experience? What is this offering to me right now? What kind of lesson or whatever could I learn from this? And I just walked along with it through the dunes, kind of up this steep, narrow little path

And then I thought, I don't really know if this is a thing, but if it is, I'd like to talk to my ancestors

I don't really know what that means

But I guess I would like to have some wisdom

I would like to have some help

I would like to know how to live

Because I think it's hard to live these days

But the fact is, human beings haven't really changed that much

So maybe there's something from the past that can be helpful in understanding how to live in the modern world

I think I have a lot of it figured out, but..

There's still a lot of things I haven't figured out

There's still a lot of work to do, and there's still a lot of honesty and parts of myself to kind of work through

So I took a little bite out of the amanita, and I found this rock cairn that someone had made, and I put it there and just left it there as an offering of some kind, I suppose

I didn't really think of any of this

No one's ever told me about doing anything like this, but it just seemed like the right thing to do was to leave it somewhere respectfully, not to cut it up, not to just throw it in the sand

And I don't think I experienced anything, really

Maybe the world looked a little bit more beautiful, but maybe that's just because I was being brought into presence by my own experience

But there were a couple things that came to me as I started walking after that

One of them was..

I realized that I live my life based on desires and fears, which is something that is fundamentally true for pretty much anybody

But I've never really sat down and investigated exactly what those desires and fears are

It's actually a very difficult thing to do because it's a type of honesty that's painful, actually

Because it shows maybe what I'm ignoring and the assumptions that I'm making about everything, every day

For example, I thought to myself, well, I could eat this whole mushroom, I could eat two or three, and I could kindle a fire and sit here all night

And the first objection that came to mind was the spot that my car is parked is a county lot and somebody will tow it

I don't even know if somebody ever checks that lot

There's a sign that says no camping

But there's a chance that the person who checks it just didn't make it all the way out there last night

Or they saw my car and just put a ticket on it instead

In any case, it was a risk to leave my car there

It was a risk to take the mushroom

But it was interesting to me that my first objection was something that I couldn't even prove to myself

It wasn't even something that was certain

And I think that that's really important to be aware of are the things that I believe that aren't even necessarily true, that might not even necessarily happen

And if they do, maybe it will be okay

Maybe if they happen, maybe if my car got towed, it would become an amazing story

Maybe nothing would have happened from the mushroom all night long and I would have just sat by the fire and stayed up stoking it and staying warm and really had nothing, no kind of experience

Who knows what could have happened? But I think I got a lesson from it anyway

Maybe the lesson that I needed, which was assumptions are dangerous, and so is dishonesty

And assumptions, dishonesty, desire, and fear have been running my life for pretty much the entirety of my life

But the fact is, honesty is hard

I feel like a human being is like an onion

There's many layers

Because we live so long, and we have so many experiences, and those layers are hard to be cognizant of all the time

And some layers are totally hidden for years

And that's okay

It's really okay

But I intend to work through all the layers that I can

Why? Because I want to show up for other people in the best way that I can, because I think it's important and meaningful to me to be someone who offers things to others

I think that gives my life a lot of meaning

And I think that it benefits the world

A friend of mine recently told me that one person who truly becomes himself saves a million lives

And I think that another friend of mine told her that

And I think the person who told him that was someone named Lu Ming

That's L-I-U-M-I-N-G

Wow, I just saw a huge trout jump

It was so comical, it didn't even look like it was alive

It literally looked like somebody just threw it out of the water

It's 9 o'clock

I guess the trout are biting right now

I'll have to come back here when there's a salmon run

Probably in a couple weeks

Anyway, not to be disrailed, but not to be derailed

That's kind of what's been on my mind, and I've been trying to figure out what's been on my mind, and will I speak to my ancestors? Some of them may have been Sami people

But what is an ancestor anyway? Does that even exist? I don't know

How would I be in touch with someone who died who's genetically connected to me? What does that even mean? I don't know

Genetics seem to be mysterious, though

It's interesting that they're a spiral, or a helix

Is it a spiral? I guess you could say it's a spiral

How in the world did that shape even form? I guess the Chinese mind would see that as chi that informs the formation of things

I've been having really, really bad insomnia recently

Probably the worst it's ever been

I don't know

I don't know what to do

Over the last year I've been having it I don't know if I've slept a whole night for nine months? Ten months? Maybe there was one night

It really kind of gets hard

But it's also interesting how adaptable it seems I am

I wouldn't really choose it but it seems like I can kind of manage living this way at this point

But it also occurred to me when I had the mushroom while I could take this and ask for my insomnia to go away I could ask for my anxiety to go away I've been thinking a lot about anxiety recently and realizing how much that runs my life as well and how I get into these spirals of thought that just go down and down and down and really it's a compulsive ideation type thing and it just can't shut it off

But I've recently learned to veer away from it and to not have it occur anymore

It's just spectacular

And so I thought well the mushroom maybe could just take away my anxiety my insomnia, maybe it will reset my nervous system or something

But then I thought I've learned so many things through this process of battling myself about anxiety and having sleepless nights and having to figure out how to regulate myself through some of the hardest experiences of my life

And I didn't think I would just want that to end and so I thought I'm not going to ask for that actually I'm just going to keep working

There's a really thick layer of fog hanging over the valley today

I have no idea if it will dissipate

It's still really cold

It's like everything is sleeping

I'm going to have to get going here either that or make a fire

It's getting too cold to just stand even though it's moving towards 930

Well thank you for listening and I hope you have a beautiful fall.

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