I knew I was going clear to the other side of the country — a day-long flight proved that but I had no idea I was going to end up literary 50 yards from the Pacific Ocean! My hosts decided to put me up at a casino (!) resort hotel that is smack on the Oregon coast. If I open the window (as I did overnight), I can hear the breaking waves down below on the beach.
The light and weather here are dramatic: one minute the sun is out; the next, it is sleeting or raining or grauple is landing on the ground. The weather is more variable than even that of my dear New England.
Since there is this huge casino (Chinook Winds Resort), the town has become a tourist destination. The locals don’t go to the beach so I guess I am enjoying it on their behalf. I have spent a lot of time looking at the waves and marvelling, perhaps foolishly, that this is the same ocean that I see when I go to the beach in El Salvador, only miles and miles away. What a difference in water temperature, however.
So my time here has been more gentle than anticipated. This reconnecting with the ocean has been restorative.
My host is the rector of the Episcopal congregation in town, so I actually went to their vestry meeting last night — as I told them, I flew all the way across the United States to attend a vestry meeting. I was fascinated to listen in on another church’s daily life, see their financials and realise that while the particulars of their struggles differ from ours, they still have their concerns.
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