(A Fear and Loathing Field Note from the Oregon Coast)

We set out chasing mushrooms, simple enough. A clean, earthy pursuit for fools and romantics. But Oregon has a way of hijacking your plans, twisting them into something far stranger. The mushrooms were there, somewhere in the dark soil and fallen logs, but what found us first was life. Wild, raw, and indifferent to our small human nonsense.

From Ona Beach down through Yachats and into the dunes of Florence, the world opened up in fits of beauty and chaos. The coast was alive, gulls howling at invisible gods, sea lions barking like drunks outside a tavern, ravens playing judge and jury from the treetops. Every gust of wind felt like a challenge, every crashing wave a sermon. The Pacific doesn’t whisper out here  it roars, demanding you listen.

Somewhere along those cliffs, surrounded by spruce and salt, I stopped pretending there was a plan. The lighthouse stood ahead like some holy relic, a beacon for lost souls, weary travelers, and deranged photographers looking for something they couldn’t name. We followed it, half out of curiosity, half out of instinct. That’s the trick with Oregon: it doesn’t show you what you’re looking for, it shows you what you need.

So we wandered, snapping photos, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Not a mushroom in sight, but plenty of wild hearts beating in the brush. Deer in the shadows. Hawks circling above. The coast itself felt alive, breathing, shifting, daring us to keep up.

And when the day finally broke open into that cold coastal dusk, sand in our boots, wind howling like an old god. I realized we hadn’t found mushrooms at all. We’d found the wild itself, waiting just beyond the edge of reason.

Because that’s the Oregon Coast for you, she gives you what you didn’t ask for, and if you’re lucky. You survive it with a story to tell.