Let Your Mind Ponder.

 I have learned, in the close to 5 years I have lived here at the Oregon Coast, that there is rarely (if ever) a bad day at the beach, 

I can remember one day I was 2 miles from the car, and a lapse in attention allowed me to get hit by a wave taller than my rubber boots! I was able to drain the water out of them, but have you ever walked 2 miles in cold soaking wet socks?

Another, it was raining, windy and cold, I was soaked through and down right frozen! I got in the car without shucking the rain gear or boots so I could turn on the engine and get warm enough use my fingers again.

Know what? On both these days, and so many others, I enjoyed the hell out being out there, and looked forward to my next trip!

After the first story above though, it took a better part of a week for the rubber boots to dry...  The next trip was a bit delayed.

But this is NOT a story of a bad day at the beach, quite the contrary! Saturday was an excellent beach day! 

It was a full moon weekend

So the tides were high. Not king tide high but respectable none the less. I went out early in the day to see the waves crashing at high tide at Fishing Rock.

I love big waves, the spray and the crashing sounds. Fishing Rock is a little known park between, Lincoln City and Depoe Bay. It is overshadowed by the much more popular Fogarty State park just south of it. 

Hands down, though, for epic waves and the the highest intensity splash index, I choose Fishing Rock every time! 

Now, just heading out there for high tide woulda kept a smile on this face all day.

However, what some forget, is that days with huge high tides are coupled with negative low tides (the best for tide pooling! ) 

Later that after noon I was at Roads End beach heading north to the base of this cliff, known for the best Tidepools around! 

It did NOT disappoint! Using camera, cell phone and the GoPro I got some amazing shots! 

Every where I looked there was something else to see! 

However, as the days have past, and I think back on Saturday, of everything I saw, this small rock has started me to pondering.

Well small is relative. It is almost a square, 4 feet on all sides. At the Oregon Coast where we have free standing rocks with caves large enough to walk through.

this it is not a big rock...

But when you look closer, it is a memorable one! Look at the life on this rock! and this was just the sides I could get close to! 

Just from looking at the photos again I spot:

• Starfish
• Anemones 
• Mussels 
• Limpets 
• Two kinds of barnacles
• Gooseneck
• Acorn
• Assorted Kelps I don't know 
• Green spongy cushion

A quick aside, until this weekend I had never seen green spongy cushion, there is a bigger photo below. It is also a kind of seaweed. I learned something new this week! 

So as I stopped to check out the rock, and take the photos I shared, my thoughts were simply (cuz as we know, I am simple man!) "What a cool rock!"

I even made sure to point it out to a family as I was walking back. Little kids (ok big kids like me too) love star fish! 

But today I had a bit of down time and and my mind drifted back to this rock. I was inspired to Haiku! 

My 9th grade English teacher Mr, Masters would be so happy!  I HATED the poetry section!! Fought it tooth and nail. But somehow, some way he learned me how to Haiku! It doesn't happen often, but when inspired it does happen! (I still have to use my fingers to get the 5-7-5 required by Haiku)

A Beach Haiku from Tide Pool Tony:

There's a single rock

Sea creatures abound on it

An island of life

One would think just being inspired to do a poem would be enough. 

Nope, and this surprised me a bit, but I kept pondering....

This is a single rock full of life in a vast ocean. It's a stretch, I'll admit, but there is another island of life we all know.

In the vastness of space 

The only island of life we know about is this one! 

Exactly, our Earth is an island of life in space!  Now I will fully admit the scale is WAY off. In the universe, our island would be smaller than a grain of sand on the beach I was walking on.

But for the thinking part of this, it's perfect. 

That small rock teems with life. But it's delicate. 10 years ago the Oregon Coast starfish were dying off form a virus! Lucky for us, they are coming back strong now. But as strong as that rock appears, it's fragile. As is our planet.

If anything happens to that rock, there is no way the life on it can move. It's too far away for those, like the starfish, to move to another rock. Barnavcle, anemones, and sponges can't move at all! 

This is the only island we have! I have my hopes that in the future we will get to the stars and find more. But that aint anytime soon. If we ruin this planet, we are out of luck! There is nowhere close enough to move to. 

So this brings me to end of my ponder....  

If more people could see the things I do, and realize how beautiful, intriguing, yet  fragile intertidal life really is, they may do more to protect out island of life in order to protect these smaller ones! 

Could it be something as simple as a beach walk that could get more people be more careful, pollute less, and by making this small island of life safer, we can make ours as well! 

These are the thoughts of your favorite coast kid!