Candice LandauLast Updated on October 17, 2024 by Candice Landau
This essay was originally published in Wild Hope’s magazine. You can find a link to the digital version here (page 6-7). Though the magazine is no longer, you can still access digital copies online. It’s a truly beautiful magazine so please consider doing so! I’ve added pictures to this version to better illustrate the text. It’s also my original text. In order to copyfit, the original was somewhat truncated.
In winter, Oregon’s coastal communities circle briefly like a bear and curl in on themselves ready to ride out months of wind, rain and raging seas.
Although the elements conspire to keep most people indoors, there are still strips of coastline that retain a magnetic pull, drawing tourists and locals away from buttery steamer clams and pints of Rogue ale.
This afternoon I am one of these rambling tourists and I find myself at Seal Rock State Park, a beach I am drawn to time and time again. I stand on the lookout platform above the beach. Like the captain of a ship I survey the horizon before me. The churning sea. The volcanic sea stack just offshore, jutting sideways, a jawline of black teeth. Closer in, tidepools lick the shoreline.
The sky is gray and thick with the question of a storm, and the wind, sandpaper-rough against my face, has me tuck my chin into my jacket as I lean forward into it.
This short strip of beach recalls an explosive geologic history in a time when nature was the primary force responsible for shaping the earth. The rocky formations that remain and enchant are the product of lava flows and magma extrusions as well as the tireless scratch and scrabble of the wind. To the north, Elephant Rock bookmarks one end of the site, and to the south another vicious jaw of lava teeth.
On a three-foot low tide only a few of Seal Rock’s tide pools are exposed. During a minus tide, however, this beach is a naturalist’s wonderland, an impenetrable carpet of rock stretching as far out at the offshore sea stack that gives this area its name.
Only a couple of other people have ventured onto the beach and like me, they tip forward into the wind.
From where I stand, high above, I can absorb all of it. In contrast to other nearby beaches, Seal Rock State Park is a miniature Galápagos. The wave protection provided by the abundant rocky structures has likely contributed to the profusion of life, and the various cracks and fissures in the lava make for excellent shelters from heavier tidal action.
Eager to begin my explorations, I pick my way down an unpaved path, past vertical walls of compressed sandstone, past basalt columns not unlike those at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. Unlike the open beach, the columns are not accessible to the public; they have been roped off and designated a sanctuary for the seabirds. I am happy about this as it seems to have resulted in a profusion of winged life, so much so that various cliff faces gleam white with bird excrement. The compressed sandstone walls I pass have not enjoyed this same cordoned-off respect, and despite, perhaps even because of, signposts that warn about erosion and slides, the human touch is evident. Names, words, hearts and curses have been graffitied into the sand walls. There is no escaping our destructive presence, our unnecessary additions.
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” – Baba Dioum
When I reach the beach, my melancholy thoughts are pushed aside. I spend the next minute carefully making my way through piles of driftwood. A storm has likely passed through. This untidy version of nature is my favorite; it raises from the depths all manner of life: things I understand and have read about, and things that are alien. Stranded seaweeds guide me closer to the ocean—bunched up sea lettuce, long bull kelp stipes, and the occasional sea palm that looks like a character straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, a mop of slimy pond-green hair with a slim stalk ending in a root system flecked with bright pink coralline algae.
As I make my way along the path of seaweed, I notice several opaque tubes. They have the texture of jelly, are shaped like fingers, and come bunched like grapes. These I can name. Squid egg casings with tiny unhatched squid embryos dotted inside. I have seen them underwater scuba diving. I have seen them in books. Now, I touch one. Just as I expected, jelly. As much as I would love to take one home, carefully cut it up, and study it under a microscope, I will not. I have watched videos about squid intelligence. How could I remove an embryo if it has a chance of becoming something possibly sentient? I contemplate collecting them and placing them back in the ocean but decide against it. I do not know enough. Perhaps, later, covered again in water they will be fine. I move on.
Finally, I come to the tide pools. They are so encrusted with barnacles and seaweeds, hydrocorals and sponges, it’s hard to tell where they end and the organisms begin. Dogwinkles and sea snails wend between Gooseneck and Acorn Barnacles, and, as I look closely, I can see their sunflower-yellow eggs dotting the rocks. There, those closed-up jelly-like balls are anemones. They have retracted their tentacles, forced water out of their body and folded inwards. When the tide rises and covers them they will bloom like flowers, and their luminous green and pink tentacles will seek pray: unsuspecting crabs, or perhaps a muscle.
I look up and over into another pool and start when I see a shock of orange. I cross the rocks, move closer to the ocean and peer down into a larger tidepool. Could it be an Ochre Sea Star? There are so few of them since the sea star wasting disease hit the Pacific Northwest. I am surprised when I see something that looks not like a star but like a neuron from a human brain—a long cucumber-shaped body with a bright orange mess of tentacles. It’s an Orange Sea Cucumber. These too I have seen scuba diving. I was unaware they could be found in tidepools though. Upon closer inspection I see its tiny brown tube feet moving, feet not unlike those on a starfish or a sea urchin, hundreds of probing limbs that tickle and stick.
Higher on the rock a long fissure is crammed with a line of Sea Slaters, the woodlouse of the littoral zone. These cockroach-like isopods keep themselves tucked just above the high water mark, and as far into dark spaces as they can go. They are wedged into every crevice that meets these criteria, lined up like dominoes, subsisting in the damp.
The longer I look, the more these creatures reveal about themselves. The bottom-dwelling fish, usually the Tidepool Sculpin, begin moving about when I am still. I enjoy watching. They are as still, and then as erratic as lizards. Their large head tapers into a slim body. I see one dart almost out of the water. Now I am witnessing evolution—aquatic becoming terrestrial. The sculpin is an extraordinary creature. In an attempt to avoid predation, often by birds, it can leave the water and wriggle into a crevice, even breathe the same air we breathe. I am mesmerized by them.
I return to inspecting the Sea Slaters, wanting to look closer, see more. I am not disappointed. This purposeful inspection reveals the smaller woodlouse-like bugs next to them are not juvenile slaters as I had assumed, but rather, Stubby Isopods that, like their wood-dwelling brethren, roll into pill-sized balls when disturbed. Peering into crevices in the rock walls, I can add crabs to the list. The crabs here are so small it takes a while before I notice they are all varying shades of purple and have claws often patterned with dark spots. The Purple Shore Crab. And so it goes, never ending, time the only constraint to continued discovery. It is a long while before I am to pull back.
Because I have spent a good deal of time scouring Andy Lamb’s “Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest,” I have become familiar with the names of many of the creatures I see in the tide pools—sculpin, anemones, barnacles and urchins. Being able to attach names to organisms has a way of making me think more about them, their mode of living, their sentience, their daily lives. It stokes my curiosity. It brings them closer to home. It makes me want to protect and preserve them.
When I feel a cold chill in my shoes, I look down. Water is seeping in. Indeed, some of the pools further out are already covered. I wonder how long I have been here. This feeling of timelessness is just that, a feeling. Now, like the visitor I am, the tide presses me out. I heed the warning and clamber over the rocks, back to shore. As I scrabble for purchase, I hear the crunching sound of the barnacles and I wince. In spite of the pervading feeling of peace brought on by my explorations and contemplation, a creeping sense of sorrow and discomfort sets in. I don’t know much about barnacles, but I can’t imagine that my standing on them is doing any good. Do they feel pain? When I am gone, how long will they have to suffer my short bout of “wonder”?
I am glad for these realizations, unpleasant as they are. They prompt me to consider what I had not considered before. They push me to change, to do more, to learn more, and then to share what I have learned. How do I personally relate to each living creature in this world? What impact do I have on its life, suffering and death? How can I minimize the harm I cause? How can I work toward doing no harm?
In failing to consider non-human life as equally deserving of respect as human life, I am complicit in the damage and destruction of the natural world I love to admire. I recall vividly a quote a friend once shared with me, words spoken by a Senagalese forestry engineer named Baba Dioum in 1968 at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”
This is my lesson. Amidst my crunching return to shore and my new observations that flesh out the characters I have seen, I make a silent vow. I will spend my life focused on learning. This will be my drive. I will not stop until I love the things I see. If I do not love what I see, I do not understand it. I will need to learn more.
