Dear Readers

All summer I’ve been pondering the return to writing a blog and finally, the time is nigh.  The original blog began because of a trip to France and was all about travel.  As it continues, I will let time define the direction it takes.

The Running Y Ranch Resort has been home since the first of July and before that I stayed in the small Oregon coastal town of Yachats (Yah Hots).  So a bit of retrospective and then on with the story.

Yachats is tucked in at the base of the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon an hour and a half west of Eugene where the Yachats River meets the ocean.  At one time the main economy was logging and fishing, with booming businesses to support those industries. Logging is mostly kaput now, so it is not easy to find work living as a resident of Yachats.  

From a very young childhood time my family has been going there—it was Mother’s happy place. She would bring my sister and me there annually. When I was in college in Salem, we drove down the coast highway on the way home to Klamath Falls in the spring and spent a couple of nights in a wood-shake beach house.  Here is an old, old photo of Mother (hat and white purse), me, and Aunt Ella on the beach at Yachats in maybe 1945 or 1946.

Seventy plus years later I find peace and inspiration there myself.  I have taken long walks on the volunteer-tended 804 Trail that hugs the rocky coastline from the village north to Smelt Sands Beach, have sat perched on a picnic table-top and watched beautiful sunsets, driven to the lookout point above Cape Perpetua on sunny days, and have frequently lunched on a steaming bowl of clam chowder from a local fisherman’s cafe (Luna Cafe). For nearly fifty days this spring I lived in a charming beach house that overlooks the ocean.  With my trusty iPhone always at hand, I have captured some of the beauty that abounds on the Oregon Coast. 

When not walking the trails or the beach,  I spent hours either reading or sitting at this little kitchen table writing and editing, gazing out at the ocean, loosing myself in the ever-changing vista of the sea and sky, birds and kites, rabbits and raindrops. And when the rain and cloudy skies got to me, I’d pack up the computer and drive up-river to a friend’s house that is at a higher elevation than the clouds that were hovering, where I worked in a sunny loft space, light and tree -tops from the rain forest visible through all the windows.