Somewhere between the salt-stained cliffs and the ghostly hum of the Pacific, the Heceta Head Lighthouse burns like the last sane eye on a deranged coast. The air tastes like rust and rain. The gulls scream with the conviction of lunatics, and the beam cuts through the fog like a blade through the fabric of time itself. Ten trips in. Ten dispatches from the edge of Oregon’s wild heartbeat and somehow, this one feels like a milestone.

There’s something ritualistic about standing before a lighthouse. It’s not just architecture, it’s a confession. A weather-beaten monument to human paranoia and persistence. You can feel the ghosts of mariners and madmen whispering in the wind, warning you to steer clear or steer true, depending on your mood and the bottle at your side.

This trip, like all the others, wasn’t planned in any clean, linear way. It was another leap down the rabbit hole of Oregon’s coastline a stretch of elemental madness that feeds the lens and the soul. The original plan was mushrooms in the forest, and somehow we ended up chasing lighthouses through coastal fog and sea spray. That’s the beauty of it. No script. Just the road, the weather, and the quiet hum of creation that won’t leave you alone.

But standing there beneath that red-capped tower, watching the lamp flare against the clouds, I started thinking about something bigger. Two years of chasing the light, from ghost towns and mountain ridges to waterfalls and city alleys. Every frame, every shutter click, a breadcrumb trail leading back through the wilderness of my own mind. Maybe it’s time to string it all together…. A book, maybe, covering the whole strange journey. Legacy through the lens of the damned and the determined.

There’s still more road ahead, Maryhill next month, with its strange blend of desert wind and stone altars and December remains unwritten. Maybe it’s a snowbound trail, maybe another forgotten town, maybe something entirely unplanned.

But whatever comes next, this light at Heceta Head feels like a checkpoint. A signal to keep going, even when the fog rolls in thick and the world forgets to make sense. Because that’s the trick, isn’t it? To keep shooting through the madness, until the light finally hits the glass just right.

“Buy the ticket, take the trip.”

And maybe, just maybe, write the damn book when the year’s through.