Beach donuts and my gull, Mildred

What a wonderful weekend! They've been having a very dry winter in Oregon, but we were promised rain and snow from arrival to departure. This was the rare weekend designated for  snow on the beach. 

Somehow, though we managed to be in the donut hole between storms virtually the whole time. To our great pleasure, this meant lots of beach time with spectacular sunsets along with lovely, precipitation-free visits around the Oregon coast. These included spotting whale spouts from the observation tower and eating actual fresh seafood. And all the while, storms were visible in every direction but overhead.

This lucky whim of the weather goddess created  many opportunities for me to try out my new phone/camera. A photo travel log: 

En route to visit my sister outside Portland, we spotted this old (very old!), falling-down house. Amazingly, it seemed to be kept from tipping over by a single, scrawny tree.

So this was interesting itself, but around it were other trees that got me pondering: 

Trees would make a great projective test, sort of like a Rorschach inkblot test. Consider this: if you were to describe your relationship to your family in terms of trees, which of these would you pick and what would it mean: 

the scrawny one holding up the house, the wide-branching one standing nearby but apart from the house, or the double-trunk one across the driveway? Talk about this amongst yourself. No need to offer a public reply. Unless you want to, of course.

On to the coast to spend time walking the beach and discussing important matters with friends. Like which beach to walk on, how much home-made apple pie can we eat tonight and still have some for tomorrow, whether it’s legal to use pop abbreviations in the game of “Boggle” (e.g., lib as in ‘women’s lib,’ or rad as in ‘that’s rad!’). That, and matters of life and meaning and assorted endeavors that each of us is pursuing, conversations as satisfying as the food and surf.

That donut hole phenomenon made for some brilliant sunsets. Each evening, there were storms to the north and south of us, but we had a clear, brilliant view of the setting sun. I got caught in that serial photography thing. I took the “perfect” picture only to look up and see another view even more gorgeous. So I took that picture, only to look up … I imagine everyone has been there. 

            

Throughout the weekend, I was followed by this lone gull. I am certain it was the same one and that she was following me specifically. She spoke to me. I named her Mildred. Here are a few shots of her …honestly, she was around wherever I went!

So, now that I have mastered (hah!) the camera on my supersmart phone, my next goal is to figure out why I keep losing contact with my email. Maybe it has something to do with the time the camera froze because it (and my hands) had gotten so cold in the wind and sea spray (and the 26° weather) that neither hands nor phone worked. Or maybe it was the time I dropped it in the damp sand. But I don’t think so. I think I just screwed up some setting. I’m just overconfident enough to get in trouble with this thing.

More camera tales to come, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, what do you think about that tree question?