Christ, Cannon Beach wasn’t ready for this kind of invasion. Tourists stumbling around with saltwater taffy in their teeth, kids screaming about sandcastles, dogs dragging their owners into the surf like half-mad lifeboats and then this. The locals of the forest, the real kings of the Northwest, standing in the middle of town like they owned the place. And maybe they did.

Three elk, raw muscle wrapped in velvet fur, with eyes that said, “You hairless apes don’t belong here.” One staring dead at me, square between the eyes, daring me to even twitch. The others calm, almost bored, chewing at the edges of civilization, flowerbeds, fence posts, god knows what else. They didn’t care about laws, traffic, or polite society. They were the law.

Rebecca stood beside me, laughing in that sharp, nervous way, half awe, half panic. While I fumbled with the camera, trying to frame something that made sense of the madness. But nothing about it made sense. Wild beasts in the shadow of neon signs, fur brushing against telephone poles, a calf nosing its way through landscaping like it had wandered into a suburban buffet.

This wasn’t nature retreating into the wood, it was nature storming the gates, antlers first. A reminder that out here, in Oregon, the line between wilderness and humanity is thinner than a bad motel bedsheet. And standing there in Cannon Beach, with the Pacific wind clawing at my jacket and an elk staring into my soul, I couldn’t decide if I was witnessing a miracle, a warning, or the opening act of some long-overdue revolution.