THE Trip - Day 7 (Many Walks In Life)

When most people hit the age of 10 months, they start learning to walk.  It’s a major event for every parent to watch your child take their first steps.  From that point on, walking is ‘just something you do’.   We don’t think about walking unless we have an illness or injury to prevent us from getting around easily.  On this trip we’ve walked the streets and sidewalks in Napa Valley; a volcanic rock trail; uphill to cascading falls; around coastal headlands, and on the quiet redwood trails.  The walking motion was pretty much the same on each walk – some were just harder than others – but, many were on terrains outside my normal daily environment.

Standing on the sand dune side with the vegetation behind

Today, I added another terrain to this list as we visited the Oregon Dunes National Park between Florence and Reedsport.  This park listed several trails with one in particular that covered both sand dunes and the beach.   We have sandy beaches by the ocean at home in Hermosa Beach; but sand dunes are very different.   Along the Oregon Coast, there are many sand dunes running parallel to the ocean in long stretches beside U.S. Highway 101.  They are made up of extremely fine sand and sea grasses that have all been massaged and shaped by the wind.  Lots of wind.

 

Wind blowing the sand and grasses

 Luckily we covered the sand dune portion of the 4.5 mile trail at the beginning as it was much tougher traveling through the soft sand than the return on the beach side along the ocean.  An interesting side note was the weather….sunny on the dunes side and heavy marine layer on the beach side even though they were only separated by low vegetation on a sand rise between the two. 

Beach with my footprints and marine layer

This was our most solitary walk so far on this trip with just 2 encounters with others on the trail.  Not a bad thing to have some quiet, meditative time to reflect on how we take this ability to easily move about so much for granted.