Getting away …

Next door is a guy with a saw. Its voice cutting through metal sometimes comes through the wall. Mostly, not. His name is Shane, the guy. “Like the movie,” he said, when we introduced the day after pulling in with our car full of getaway crap.

He and Brandon were in the shop, doing what you do in a shop. The shop shares the back wall of our rental house. We have the wall of windows with a view of the ocean, windows that rattle and wake us in the night when the wind gusts up over 40.

Windows face the sea from the dining room, kitchen, living room, bedroom. Beyond that, on the deck, sits a hot tub. In the hot tub, daily, sits my wife. I join her, often, because why not?

We watch nature TV. Rain clouds coming and dumping. Waves tumbling and frothing. Sun, occasionally winking through it all, to remind us of the source behind our gray skies.

We’re visiting in a stormy cycle, early January, a getaway. From what? To what? Those are the questions I ask when considering departure from my comfortable, familiar home.

Snow has come and gone several times this winter. Freezing rain crusted all the snow, when we returned in the rain from a brief trip to the coast over Christmas. It was 9 degrees the day we left for the coast.

For a break from all that inclemency, we snagged this rental on the southern Oregon coast, timed to coincide with one of the snarliest bouts of winter weather in years. Day after day of heavy rain, flooding coastal and central California, pushing river levels high and higher near us. We expeected power outages but have, for the moment, dodged that side dish at our winter feast.

We brought hiking shoes, rain gear, whiskey. No sunscreen. We sit. We read. We leave with the dog for a hike. No freezing rain, yet, but the rain has undercut a stretch of highway we were hoping to use for our return. Instead, we must take a lengthy detour. If the weather doesn’t close that, too. If it does, we might be forced to stay longer.

That wouldn’t be so bad. Before he dipped into his fix-it stuff yesterday, Shane handed me a bowl of eggs freshly plucked from beneath his chickens. Damn, they taste so good, staring out at the ocean, wondering about the health of all that still lives there, hoping they and we all live long and healthy lives.