Walking Down the Beach at Sunset

A cozy essay about the extraordinary hidden inside the common

Hello, Wanderers!

Welcome to my first Wonderwalk post! Today, we’re walking along the Oregon coast for a spell. This is a place I expect we will return to often because every time you come to the ocean, you are coming to a new place.

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Usually, these Sunday posts will be behind the paywall. But today’s post is free for everyone. This newsletter and the free Thursday posts are only possible because of the generosity of paid subscribers.

The Miraculous Diversity of Daily Occurrences

I have never seen this sunset before.

This is the thought that bursts into my mind with such explosive force that it momentarily mutes all the thoughts, voices, and conversations that are otherwise always bouncing around in my brain—like when a server drops a tray of dishes in a restaurant and in the moments after the echoes of the crashing and smashing have faded; all conversations remain in suspended animation a beat longer.

I’m standing on Lincoln Beach on a windy, crisp, and unusually clear fall day at low tide, partaking in my most sacred beach ritual, the sunset walk. I’m about a half mile away from the Fishing Rock State Park, a bluff that juts into the Pacific, that happens to be the perfect place to watch a sunset or to spot migrating humpback whales.

The wind is tugging at my hood, stinging my cheeks with cold salt water and sand—sea tears.

Geologically speaking, the North Oregon coast is much younger than beaches in Southern California or Florida. The sand is coarser, closer to the rocky outcrops that still dot the coast here than the smooth sand that has been beaten and refined by the relentless ocean in those warmer locales. I’m wearing my water socks—waterproof shoes with rubber soles that protect me against sharp rocks and coarse sand but not the bitter cold of the water.

I head north, towards what our family calls “the cliffs,” fixing Fishing Rock in my sights, putting the ocean and sunset to my right shoulder.

It hits me again.

I’ve never seen this sunset before.

I realize that this thought is neither novel nor profound.

Of course I have never lived today before. Of course each day, and everything it contains, is a new experience. A twist on a trope, a variation on a theme.

I remember staying here with my family and some of our friends a few winters ago. It was a clear day then, too. All of us went out on the deck of the beach house to watch the sunset. After less than a minute, the son-in-law, married to their oldest daughter, proclaimed, with an arrogance peculiar to young men, that he was going inside because he’d already seen plenty of sunsets.

That connects me to a line from the movie Moneyball, adapted from the book by Michael Lewis about my beloved, and now relocated, Oakland A’s. Brad Pitt’s character, Billy Beane, finishes watching a film of a minor league baseball game that shows a heartwarming tale and says, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

How can you not be romantic about sunsets?

I’ve never seen this sunset before.

Partly to keep the wind out of my eyes and partly out of a deep-rooted, crow-like compulsion, I keep my head down and scan the sand as I walk, searching for agates, shells, or other beach treasures.

I keep the ocean in my peripheral view, as sneaker waves, even at low tide, have the potential to knock over the unwary.

I catch sight of a possible agate near a retreating wave and dash to grab it before it disappears below the sand. It’s not an agate this time, but a smooth piece of polished shell. In our family, we call these shell bits shark teeth because I used to tell the kids that’s what they were.

The sea brings out the liar in me.

This one has curves and looks like a tiny pale model of a southwestern desert hoodoo. I pocket it.

Back home, back where my family is enjoying the warmth that a house and furnace provide in late autumn, we have a large jar full of agates and shark teeth. Whenever one of us goes to the coast, we bring back one or two offerings for the jar. Nobody else knows this, but that jar is my favorite thing our family has. I love it even more than all the wonderful pictures that spread out over the walls in our hall of frame, or even more than the paintings I inherited from my grandma.

From a distance, it looks like a big, plain glass container filled with bits of white rock. But when you get up close, you can see the different textures, sizes, and shades. There are amber agates and countless shades of white shells and sea stones. Each thing in the jar is one-of-a-kind—all shaped by the same or similar processes between the ocean and sand, but each shaped by totally unique circumstances.

Each agate, each shell fragment, has a history. Each one has arrived in that jar through a series of statistically unlikely events so improbable that the existence of everything in that jar is an individual miracle.

I stop and face the ocean.

The sun is at the beginning of its melting phase in its nightly performance. Like a magic trick, each evening, the fireball in the sky melts as it hits the horizon, scattering across the water until it disappears.

I have never seen this sunset before.

God, how can you not be romantic about sunsets?

Distracted by the show, a frigid, ankle-deep wave hits me and pulls me back into the present. Nobody hears me cackle with the joy of being right here in this moment, alone but not lonely.

I’m near the bluff now. It’s decision time. Do I walk up to get the elevated view and miss a few minutes of the sunset, or do I stay on the beach and soak up every last shard of sunshine?

Faux shark teeth are nice, but an agate is the real prize.

I stay on the beach and turn south so the sunset is on my left shoulder, and the wind pushes my hood further on my head instead of trying to rip it off. I keep scanning for agates while also keeping track of the sun and the ocean.

The sun is most of the way gone now. It looks like a radioactive ooze on the horizon. The sky is still in the middle of its transformation. The blue darkened at its highest reaches while it has become a watercolor mixture of red and purple near the ocean.

I spot another potential treasure and scramble to grab it before the incoming wave pulls it back into the ocean.

This time, it is an agate. This one is a translucent light amber, forged in some underwater volcano millions of years ago and just now surfacing on the beach I happen to be combing.

A miracle just for me.

I pocket the agate and stare at the disappearing sun. This same celestial body I couldn’t bear to look at a few hours ago without risking permanent injury, I can now gaze on fondly as the Pacific swallows its last sliver.

The red sky puts in my mind both an old saying from my grandma and the closing lines of the 1963 Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn film, Charade. Grant’s character reassures Hepburn’s character that the red sunset is a good omen and repeats the old rhyme, “Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, the sailor takes warning.”

I will head home tomorrow. But at least the weather will be good.

That is when I have another thought-clearing notion.

This is the last and only time I will ever see this sunset.

While I have seen plenty of sunsets, and if fate will have it, I will yet see even more sunsets in the future, this sunset before me right now is a once-in-a-lifetime event, never seen before and never to be seen again. Not in human history. Not in geological history. Not in the past or future of the universe. Only right here and right now.

I’m standing on the edge of the continent, witnessing the inexorable results of geology, physics, and cosmology in the world that I am a part of.

Sunsets may happen every day, but each sunset is a rarity—and impossible to duplicate event—and here I am watching this one from open to close.

Sunsets like tears, snowflakes, agates, and grains of sand can either be seen as ordinary, everyday occurrences, or if you’re daring, can be seen as the culmination of a myriad of complex processes, producing an almost impossibly unique miracle that you are fortunate to be a part of.

I have never seen this sunset before. This is the last and only time I will ever see this sunset.

How can you not be romantic about sunsets?

Be the poetry you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Jason