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...I find sand very sexy May, 1997 |
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The Oregon dunes are...sensual, frightening, awe-inspiring, fascinating, alive. I fell in love with the Oregon dunes. Lenore literally fell in — into a patch of quicksand (that was the frightening bit)! The dunes lie beneath the sky like a tanned and naked woman: languid spread-eagled thighs of sand; jutting hips; hollow navels; rounded bellies; pubic mounds. Even the tufts of grasses resemble pubic hair. I am transported by the sexiness of the dunes. This is mother nature at her most voluptuous.
The plants, too, leave signatures in the sand, sweeping faint arcs
as they are buffeted by the wind that creates these dunes. In a
couple of places the semicircular traces of leaves are all that
remains — the plant has snapped off and blown away.
As you leave the camp site there is a mass of human footsteps, but then they begin to scatter and thin out, until you enter areas of dune where yours are the first prints to disturb the surface of virgin sand, and where you feel a sense of slight indignation when you come across the route of some earlier visitor! Many are put off by the thick vegetation and stagnant pools that lie behind the fore dune, so by the time we wade through and arrive at the beach we are the only humans in sight. You could frolic naked here, except that it is too cold! Mile after mile of firm white sand is littered with driftwood and the dead bodies of small crustaceans. Flocks of energetic plovers hurry along the edge of the surf. They have the endearing habit of retreating before each wave, only to trot down the sand again as the wave subsided. They stand on one leg to rest, and as we approach, hop sideways faster and faster until they remember that they have two legs and began to run. Whale backs gleam in the waves as they swim northwards, gasping and hissing. A sea lion plays tag with us for a while. The only bad thing about the dunes is their use by ATVs, horrid little things that buzz like dozens of lawnmowers as their drivers do exciting things like driving to the top of a dune, and then down again, then up again and then down... Humans are so amazingly like hamsters in exercise wheels sometimes. At least there are some areas of the dunes where you can escape these horrors, but even here you can often hear the ATVs in the distance, and see their headlamps flashing at night. Lenore, playing with the almost-liquid sand at the bottom of a hollow, sinks into it to her knees, and then her thighs. With me panicking ineffectually on the semi-solid edge of the morass, she manages to crawl out, plastered with damp sand. Would she have disappeared completely in a deeper patch? I am reminded of Lorna Doone...
This is a place of changing light, a photographer's dream. Evening shadows make fascinating patterns. We watch wondrous sunsets. |
OREGON |
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There's
a whole secret life going on here. Criss-crossing the sand are scores
of traces whose animal creators we never see: a scuttling beetle,
a deer on its way to water, a worm, a rabbit. There are dozens of
spoor we cannot identify. One anonymous creature emerged from a
tiny hole in the sand, crawled sinuously for a metre or so and then
disappeared down another burrow. Why? What was it? There a traces
of animals with tails, that hop or scurry.
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