Neahkahnie Viewpoint

Go when the plum-colored salal berries are tight with flavor.

Go when the ocean wind is high and the sun is low.

Go when your heart beats hollow and your bones ache with sorrow.

There is a moon-curved pullout. Park your car.

Approach the low stone wall, right from center.

On your tip-toes, peer over the edge to find

          three stone steps and a narrow track

          plunging downward into scrub.

Follow it. Hop the wall. Other travelers will stare. Go anyway.

The track wriggles down and to the right,

disappears into a narrow canyon of salal bushes

higher than your head.

It is a fairy's labyrinth--

          pull the berries as you go,

          pop them into your mouth,

          suck the warm sweet juices.

They will taste like July in Oregon.

The track emerges from the bushes suddenly,

and you will be on the edge of a precipice.

The wind will whip at you, pull you with chilled fingers.

The sea will roar at you from hundreds of feet below. 

Their tantrums are deafening. Your hollow heart will race.

Go anyway.

Pick your way along--it is okay to crouch low,

holding fast to low-growing shrubs.

In this place, fear is a gift.

There will be a small tree, and a scramble down an eroding slope.

Be careful! It is precarious.

The drop to the right is beautiful but fatal. 

Look upon the savage arch of the sea cave below.

You could not survive there. 

The track ends at a flat promontory, all brown dirt and pocked boulders. 

Before you will be nothing but sky and sea and eternity and infinity.

You will feel small and gigantic simultaneously. 

You will discover that fear is the salt of life.

You will find that here, in the wild and dangerous spaces of the world,

          on the other side of walls,

          down sketchy narrow paths,

          beyond your own skin,

          outside of the bones that weigh you down,

is freedom--

absolute, terrifying, perfect, dangerous

freedom.

It was always here. It is always here.

You can tuck it inside of yourself and take it back to the city with you.

Don't forget about it.

Don't let it be stolen.

It is the greatest thing you will ever have.

It is the greatest thing you could ever be.