The color green has always surrounded my life. From the clothes I wear to the aurora I emit. Living in "Upstate" New York has allowed me to explore different shades and fall in love with it even more. Being wrapped in nature breaks down the bricks in me and allows me to breathe in what I was missing. One summer I got to explore the Oregon coast and my heart's still there - scattered along its cliffs and forests.
When my dad and step-mom told me we were going to Oregon, I couldn’t help but think: out of all places... Oregon? Out of all the fifty states, a place that’s known for its rain and for being “The state above California”. If I could, I would take those thoughts and throw them in a blender and set it to turbo speed. We traveled to my future summer home in a Chevy Cruze rental car stacked with suitcases. After a six hour flight crammed in between a lady who wanted to know what my book was about, and my uninterested brother, we landed in Portland. We didn’t spend much time there, just enough to get our fifty-pound luggage and the keys to our chariot.
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Our first stop was supposed to be Newport, but after stopping at a multitude of vista points it was really our sixth. There were rickety signs every couple of miles that said “Ocean access” or “Vista view”, and it was hard not to pull over every half hour. The first one we went to had a skinny trail descending to the sand. I was in Old Navy flip-flops, walking down sideways and trying not to fall. When we made it to the bottom, I kicked off my sandals and ran straight for the ocean. There were three windsurfers, evenly distanced apart, riding the waves from the source I wanted to get lost in. It stung as the water ran over my ankles. The wind blew my dire need of a haircut-hair into my face, but I refused to pull it back into a hair tie because it would have pulled me out of this awareness. At that moment, with my eyes closed, my heart felt heavy with Oregon air.
On the third morning, we were staying at The Lighthouse Cove Inn along the Bandon coast. I crawled out of bed before the sun shone through the dated floral curtains and tiptoed through the room to the door. I brought nothing but my raincoat to explore. The shores are different than any I’ve been to before. Over time, the glaciers tore through the coast and left a trail of boulders marking their masterpiece. The bottom of the rocks are covered in hundreds of purple and orange starfish holding on for their life. The waves are pulled far away from the sea. They spread like a thin layer of butter, tucking the sand into bed. The air and fog produced a grey film that engulfed all that it touched. Less than a half a mile to the side there are forests with massive trees that forgot how to stop growing. There are ferns that belong in a Jurassic Park movie and moss on every non-leaf surface. The woods are tinged with every shade and hue of green. It’s a painting that should never be finished, not even by the softest touch.
I picked out the tallest rock and climbed to the top. I sat down and let my surroundings invade my thinking. I felt so small enveloped by no one but everything at the same time. Civilization felt so far, but I felt so close to what us humans take advantage of. It was a high created by love, inhaled by the eyes. There was you and then there was this massive body of water that could pull you in with its unforgiving arm and make you part of it. I was nothing and I felt content feeling as if a truck had hit me. My insides spewed across the wet rock, because at that moment I was exactly where I was meant to be.
