Six Eras

Sitting on a stump, fresh cut, smelling of spruce, I overlook the fog sitting off shore. From here I can see the whole of my town, its length. Rooftops and paved roads dot and stretch in the quiet of distance. People move about in glimmering cars.

Today I can also look behind this scene. I can see the was-of-it, because I know a bit of what was. My imagination can view some of the history within this little patch of beach. It comes to me along the crisp fall air, the same air that carries fragrances so well. I can sense the six eras of this place tangled in one whiff. In the length of it. The whole of it in one view.

The first era I call Magic. Here is where rocks and sand were ground from the hearts of mountains to marry the land and sea, where the wind danced with clouds full of rain to settle and shape the hills. Forest and foliage enriched the air and soil. This era lasted as long as was needed, no way of knowing anyway. It is an imponderable, best left to dreaming long cool dreams of its wonder. Magic took its time to become this best of places — just right, just so, just in time for us beings to enter stage right.

One day, way long ago, a man carried his daughter over the hill, yes that hill to our right, and he said to his daughter “child, this is our new home.” Their journey had come to an end, a search with unaccountable beginnings only to find one clear and obvious answer. He found for his family a place of magic. Her daughters and daughters of daughters formed families that stayed and thrived for so long.

This comprises the second era — the Original era. I know little of this time but do thrill in the imagining of it. Rills of salmon crossed from ocean to creek, swimming under trees too old to call grandfather. A few long cedar plank roofs grew along the banks of the water. Smoke rose to catch the northerly breeze. Vast tall spruce and hemlock hid the beach at this angle because of their height. The tip of a verdant rock hosted a halo of birds and the same lazy fog bank, in the same spot as today.

Their lives may or may not have been tranquil. Surely these first folk traded and fished and sang songs around fires. Most assuredly they laughed and played in the sand. Generations became part of the magic of place.

Much, much later another man on a horse, his son beside him, grasped the salt-cleaned air in lungs full. He claimed a parcel of land out on the southern reach of our vision. Freed from the steamboat whistles and soot, alone and away from the hustle and grab, his family built down the beach past that nob there. A new roof, trim and angular shone the gold of fresh split shingles. A round rock chimney climbed the wall and rose above the ridge. A garden, then a patchwork of tilled land, perhaps a goat or a cow meandered into the picture. Elk got their fill of rose buds and corn stalks. Wagons crossed over the creek on a wood pier bridge. Evening songs drifted up from revelers sharing house-made beer.

This forms the era of the Pioneer, of hearty souls who dared to live in the wilderness. Each bound to learn its comforts and trials, they accepted the shared history from those few remaining first folk. They learned of the tests this shore can bring to their door, like the winds and the long gray hum of endless rain. They found the souls of trees and heard the hearts of the waves welcoming rhythm. They sang with the sands and built between tides. Yet in their discovery they brought burdens with taints of distant boundaries. The baggage they carried from where they escaped filled the cracks forming between the lines of wondrous discoveries and bygone mistakes.

The fourth era is established, the Founders. Here came builders who cared less to learn from the prior discoverers. These were quantifiers who made lines: lines on paper to delineate ownerships and ledger values; lines along the ground for walking and hauling; lines to be divided again and again. They walked on lined sidewalks beside roads lined white and yellow. Their lines of words filled tomes of rules and regulations, ordinances and charters. Their lines on forms were filed and transmitted into articles of municipal formation. A town was born.

A city rose along those lines with roofs of substance, tar and asphalt. Signs on shops appeared as splotches of color, singular and gay. Festivals imported from across the land sang on frozen nights and sent brilliant bombs into a summer sky. Poles strung lines joining roofs to each other. And there! You see it from here don’t you, the lights in the dark? No mere candles these or smoky oil lanterns. Power from afar.

The buzz of the mill rang into the night, audible from here, as are the axes and saws in amongst the hills behind us. This very stump I sit upon today is then nothing more than a cone of hope from a fallen giant.

This era was a central point, a transitional balance of past and future on the verge of mediocrity, with one foot glued in the moss of history and the other desperately testing modernity with a calloused big toe. Founders learned how to care for the preciousness they knew they held. Folk here struggled to remember the ancestors and honor the descendants, learning how to corral their upbringings and the burdens of elsewhere. They longed for the spark of place to both live and share in its magic, like longing for a toy in the window. They pressed hard against the glass of learning, knowing the was-of-it by virtue of proximity. Close to that history, they savored its flavor, pleasant and comfortable. There, do you see it? The candy.

Then came us — mine own generation, the era of the Creators. These are the artisans who plead and search for inspiration, that glory of place that breathes life over the unfurling petals of birth. We were charmed by the heart of the waves and their rhythms, twice a day in and out. We celebrated the wind, soaring in it’s jester ways, and the curtains of rain that can be calming by enclosure. We hollered at the clouds and sang to the stars over the horizon. Yes, perhaps we can hear drifting up here where we are, the song from around a beach fire, if the wind allows. Maybe it’s like the long ago song sung by the fire in a longhouse by the creek. Perhaps the distance makes it sound similar.

The creators designed and built more roofs, more lights. A fresh charm of place rose up. The aura of character melded with the sound of the waves reborn, each anew. The call of the gulls and the smell of the spruce cheered around us in swirls celebrating this union, art and place. Laughter of children on the dune vied with the tide for the attention of the winds. These sounds come and go in drifts up the hillside to our sticky stump.

Artisans partnered up with these fair surroundings. It felt quaint and far away, that odd world over behind us felt distant. Visitors praised and bought. Charmers peddled. Patrons asked their server what its like to live in such a place. Servers dreamed of the next wave. Dreamers built on stories biographic and fantastic, theatrics charming the life out of winter’s doldrums. Words found pages while the waves stepped and toed, in and out. All the while, unnoticed over the rising commotion the sand sang a little less. The gulls became desperate for a fried bit of potato. Special days were scheduled from a need to tidy up, remove plastic bits from the sand. Upon their retirement from dodging nets, the salmon found the taste of their creek was not so inviting.

Today’s pace of life panders to something less green than the tall forest of before. A man comes over the hill in his powerful utility vehicle, children huddle in the back behind small screens. But for one. See the boy there looking out the window in awe. The magical horizon has caught those big eyes. The aroma carries a whiff of salt, foreign to him, fresh smells moved along by that jester. This direction the spruce is overwhelming and sour, that way salty and languid.

From up here, the little village packs in more and more till tempers rise. The brown old rock looms over hunters of tranquility, rare to find elsewhere. And peace…how they look for a moment of peace. We have enough to share. The magic is pale yet strong, if not endless. It’s just the gray concrete and blacktop that hide and tease the view of it. People can feel it even if unconsciously, it draws and beckons.

Partakers of the heart of the wave thrill to slide down the foam where surf carries man and board. Or strollers peruse walls and shelves of shops for traces of magic to take home. The creators have begun to learn that there is a price for creating. Too late? We might ask. Might be, but I see the elk still wander looking for rose buds. Waves walk along relentless in measure. Fog sits wherever it wishes and from way up here we see the sand as white as ever.

We who know better, have we discovered the next era, perhaps our last one? Growing pains and developments leave this era as yet unnamed. Have we learned enough or is there an everlasting something more to seek? Thank you for musing here on my stump with me, as this was but a contemplation. It’s a good stump, was a better tree. Now approaching is an era I prefer from another vantage. Not here. This vantage suits best the was-of-it. I will go down now and face the new era with some hope. Hope is the charm and the character, and most definitely the magic. This place where it all comes together. Hope is all I can bear to learn today.