Forgotten and not missed

Day 51, May 22, 1997

Oregon Dunes

246 km

Much to my surprise, the sand of the dunes is fairly firm. Walking is generally easy unless one is walking up or down the lea side of a dune where the sand is loose rather than packed. There is more vegetation in the dunes than I had expected. The dunes are sensuous, consisting of curves and dips, shadows and lines, as they rise and fall as far as the eye can see.

The foredune, consisting of hard packed sand and driftwood anchored by grasses, is a parallel to the ocean. The foredune is not a natural occurrence, but the result of European vegetation that was introduced in the early part of the century to prevent the sands from shifting and building. As a result, the dunes may disappear in 70 years as the beachgrass encroaches ever inward. At this time, the dunes themselves shift very little because the ocean winds do not hit them directly.

The deflation plain, just inland from the foredune, is caused by wind moving the sand inward, and the foredune acting as a windbreak and preventing new sand from replacing the old. This process creates a hole down to the water table, where vegetation, including forest, takes root. Tree islands, stands of forest that have not been choked by the sand, dot the landscape. There are also small ponds and areas of "quicksand" caught between the dunes, where the sand has been stripped away to the water table, this time more inland from the deflation plain.

That first full day in the dunes, we made our way two miles to the ocean, where we were the only humans for miles. To get there, we had to take off our hiking boots and change into rubber-soled "sand shoes" to wade through knee-deep stagnant puddles in the deflation plain. It was like walking through a muddy, dark, water-logged forest.

We returned to our campsite because the sky was grey. By dinnertime we were visited by our first rain of the journey, which we had not seen for weeks, and had not missed.

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