After three days of sea-salt air and playing on the beach, we didn’t know if we could leave this place. We’d stepped out of life for awhile – abandoned our homes, our jobs, our cars, pets, worries, calendars, phones. We’d deserted our own music, in favor of the surf, the eagle’s clever tongue, jokes by friends old and new, the sizzle and pop of damp driftwood on fire.
Kyle and Z had spent the afternoon building a beach shelter about twenty yards from our group’s campfire. It was a lean-to structure, with a solid roof of long, fat trunks of driftwood – held up by two support beams, looking scanty in comparison to the massive roof. I’d decided that I wouldn’t be sitting under Kyle and Z’s shelter that night – not with toothpicks holding up a small forest.
At the same moment, my wife, Anastasia, was up the beach a ways, pointing to the sea and gesturing with her hands – explaining to Kathryn which direction she believed the looming storm was headed.
I looked seaward then, at the black wall sailing toward us. Rain. Lots of rain by the look of it. If it made landfall, it would be the fourth time we’d be hit on this trip. Unlike the day before, we’d be prepared. The day before was our second on the beach, and had started with a morning downpour for all and a hangover for many. In addition, half of our party had not arrived at camp until very early that morning, tired and wanting nothing more than to set up their tents and crawl inside for the last remaining hours of predawn sleep. And since they were the ones who had brought the rain shelters, they’d not been assembled yet.
It was a miserable morning, that second day. Heads pounded, fingers fumbled, wet sand clung to anything not completely wrapped in plastic. All we wanted was some coffee and a moment without sand between our fingers, in our shoes.
No, if it rained this day, as Kyle and Z built their questionable shelter and others played on the beach, it would only be a minor annoyance. The canopies were up and anything out in the open could easily be moved beneath them, including ourselves.
As Anastasia and I both considered the probability of rain from opposite ends of camp, I heard roars of laughter and turned to see that Levi had fallen on his ass for the second time since the start of this day’s Buoy Olympics. He’d had a bit of whiskey and had overzealously spun himself dizzy while launching the buoy for the distance event. Now, the buoy wasn’t really a buoy, so much as it was a float for a fishing net – a large, black, heavy plastic sphere with two eyes on the side, through which a blue and white rope was tied. For ease, we just called it the buoy. From the rope, we’d swing the buoy either as far as we could for distance, or, for the accuracy event, into a tire that had somehow beached itself near our campsite. As there are no roads in the area, we decided the tire must have come from the Pacific somehow. Funny that this made the most sense to us – a tire arriving by sea.
No roads. The trail to Toleak Point is about seven miles with alternating stretches of beach and overland trail. A handful of rope ladders moves people between the two.
Our journey begins on Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, in a dirt parking lot alongside Highway 110, La Push Road. It’s raining and we’re beginning to wonder if this is what we’re in for. Four days of rain? But our packs are on, their waist-belts digging mercilessly into our abdomens, keeping the impossible weight of three nights’ supplies off of our shoulders. It’s Eliza, Z, Kathryn, Albert, Anastasia and me. The other six people in our group will start from this same spot after the sun has set tonight. They will hike in under a New Moon (moon-terminology meaning “dark as hell”), led by Eliza’s husband Levi. They’ll wear headlamps so they can see the trail before them and nothing else. They will think they see things that are not there. They will miss things that are. They will hear things.
As we set forth on the Third Beach trail, our first obstacle arises. Pants. A few within our group are not used to such weight sitting on their hips from these heavy packs, and their pants are falling down. Z notices his jeans have dropped halfway down his ass and says, I feel like a gansta, sagging like this. Like I’ve got a load in my pants. After some adjustments, some rolling up of pant legs so they’re not dragging through mud, we continue.
The trail to Third Beach is pleasant, broad – roomy even. Couples can walk side by side, and they do. It’s a mile and a half of virgin rainforest, a gradual drop in elevation, and there you are. The beach. Most people take this trail simply for this beach – day-hikers, families, picnickers. They look at you, with your massive pack, your look of determination, and they wonder, Where could he be going? The beach is just ahead. But they don’t ask. They nod, smile, say Hi. They look over their shoulder as you disappear around the bend, into the trees.
The sudden sound of the Pacific Ocean meeting the rocks and stumbling onto the shoreline somewhere ahead of us, causes a stir inside. The heart works a bit harder. The lips start to curl up at the corners. Laughter feels imminent. We stop looking at our feet so much and start looking up – expecting, any second now, to greet the infinite gleam of the Pacific.
The sound grows louder, and soon we can see open sky just beyond the last bit of forest separating us from the sea. We round a corner and someone says, There it is, and, God, that’s beautiful.
Before us is the Pacific, with its shimmering horizon and massive sea-stacks launching toward the sky. We stop and take it in for a moment. Z takes some photos.
I ask Anastasia, Where’s my camera?
She squints, smiles, and answers, Um, somewhere about halfway down in my pack.
Great. We’re at the ocean, this spectacular view before us, and my camera is inaccessible. She reminds me we’ll have plenty of time and plenty of pictures to take. Plus, she’s sure Z and the others would gladly share their photos. She’s right, of course.
We move on, down the semi-steep trail to Third Beach. The rain has stopped. We’ve removed our jackets and strapped them to the sides, tops and fronts of our packs. The sun warms us and I can’t believe how beautiful this place is.
Geography and the tides make it impossible to reach Toleak Point without making a couple climbs up and away from the beach. As we head toward the first overland trail, our boots slide a bit with every step in the loose sand. Before long, our group stands at the base of a steep bluff, looking up at a rope ladder tied to the trees above. The ladder itself isn’t actually rope, but a pair of steel cables fitted with large wooden rungs for stepping. From the same trees above, a heavy rope sags alongside the ladder for additional support, as the climber makes his or her way up the steep, loose earth.
We decide to send a guy up there first, in case any of the girls need a hand at the top. Albert volunteers and starts the climb, and we watch and study the difficulty he does or doesn’t have. For fun, we cheer him on as he journeys upward. Go Albert, it’s your birthday, someone sings. We applaud him as he releases the rope and smiles back to us from his little summit.
Once we’ve all scrambled up the first rope ladder, we continue our steep, zigzag accent through trees and thick groundcover, eventually stopping at the base of yet another ladder. This one is a bit steeper than the last and places its climbers another thirty or forty feet up.
The trek goes on, through dense rainforest – up, then down, then up again. Around this corner and that one, and Hey, watch out for that rock. It’s loose. And that puddle. It’s deeper than it looks. At one point, a narrow wooden stairway helps us down a hillside too steep to otherwise navigate. Near the bottom of the stairs, off to the left, sits a wooden platform to get us back onto the trail.
Talk about a stairway to nowhere, Z says. Look at that thing!
I look and notice that the stairway actually continues its descent for a few steps past the platform. The stairway really does lead nowhere, or rather, it ends abruptly, hanging over a washed out part of the hillside. I picture Wile E. Coyote unwittingly continuing down the steps and falling to the rocks below.
I think about the rest of our group hiking in tonight, in the dark, and I feel for them. I can’t imagine making my way through here with only a beam of light from my forehead.
The next day, the night group will recount tales of nocturnal jumping spiders. Accounts vary as to how big they really were, but all agree that they had freakish hind legs, like a grasshopper, and that, They fucking jumped.
Elyse, Levi’s sister, does not like spiders. In point of fact, she is mortally terrified of them. While others at camp argue over the true size of the jumping things, Elyse stares into the sand, lips tight, brows furrowed, arms crossed rigidly across her chest. She is lost, somewhere else, until her boyfriend, J.P., changes the subject. She looks at him and smiles.
Another stretch of beach, another overland trail – this one not so intense as the first. There is no ladder this time, but a pair of ropes hangs from above to help negotiate the unstable dirt. One rope is weather-worn, crusty and hurts the hands. The other stretches too much and is awkward to use. Both make for a difficult climb.
Following this overland trail is the final stretch of beach that will bring us to Toleak Point, our home for the next three nights.
The point itself is a widow’s peak of hard-packed sand, cutting into the Pacific. It is marked by a magnificent rock formation – an immense, whimsical fortress of pointed spires thrusting skyward.
Piles of bone-white driftwood adorn the pale body of this beach. The wood serves as windbreaker, as furniture, as fuel for fire. Beyond this, amongst the trees, are our tents.
There are certain precautions that must be taken when camping in these wild places. Since we are as far downstream as one could get from any freshwater source, water must be filtered and treated with chlorine to kill the bacteria; flavored powders such as Crystal Light are then added to kill the chlorine taste. Bear canisters must be packed in and all food stored within them, to prevent black bears and raccoons from making a mess of camp. In this regard, scented items like toothpaste, lip balm and deodorant must also be locked up, kept away from the tents. Attention must be paid to the tide charts, so as not to find yourself trapped on a rock you’d been exploring at a low tide.
Anastasia or Z or someone else would sometimes ask about the time. On the first and second days, I had the answers. About three-thirty, I’d say, or, Nine o’clock – the sun will be setting soon. On the third and fourth days, I didn’t have the time. I left my watch in the tent because I didn’t care what time it was. It didn’t really matter. Also, no one was asking about the time anymore. The only place we had to be was here. Our only appointment was with each other, on this beach.
Time had danced off into the night with the smoke of our campfire. We learned to nap when we wanted, eat when we wanted, play when we wanted, sip whiskey when we wanted.
It didn’t rain as much as we’d feared on that third day. And I did end up sitting under Kyle and Z’s impressive beach shelter. It would have been rude not to.
* * *
It’s the first night I’ve ever spent on an ocean beach. I’d imagined being lulled to sleep by the waves making landfall, the way a stream or river soothes when sleeping in the mountains.
But the ocean at night is deafening.
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