The house stood facing the ocean, just as I remembered it. Wind-sculpted pines and leathery clumps of salal and Oregon grape hugged close between it and the sand.  Through the trees and the bushes, flecks of blue-green ocean. And always that watery roar and powerful salt air.

When I was young we stayed in the little cabin next door on most visits while the grandparents, who knew the owners of the property, stayed with their friends in the main house. Both had stone fireplaces and an assortment of beach finds from Japanese glass floats to artfully twisted driftwood.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the spring and summer weekends (and sometimes, oh glory, a week!) would be precious times replayed in my memory like a favorite movie.  We did the quintessential beach things there. We constructed sand castles bravely but vainly standing against the surf. We collected shells and rocks by the truckload, each a small wonder.

We also collected a variety of sea creatures from the beach and tide pools nearby in the days before much environmental consciousness had dawned. Once we set up a temporary aquarium in a small glass tank left in the cabin to watch the hermit crabs, snails and little frenzied translucent sea creatures we had captured in buckets. All were returned a little worse for wear, but back to the sea.

One year, while my sister, brother and I were still in grade school, we walked the beach to where a coastal river meets the ocean. Drawing up to the river’s edge, we heard splashing. At first we thought it was was someone swimming or falling clumps of sand where the river cut through the beach. Then, in a flash of silver and slap of tail, we realized we were witnessing salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn. My brother, apparently not awed for long, jumped in the river after one. After a brief chase and much splashing, he emerged from the shallows soaked but triumphant with a flapping salmon clutched to his chest. We ran back to the cabin with our prize, which became that evening’s main course. Few of our friends back in the city believed this story, even when we produced a photo.

As a child I was convinced that somewhere in the long, wind-swept grass, the tumble of silvery driftwood or expanse of sand, a pirate treasure lay. Old cannons from sailing ships had been recovered nearby. That and the legend of treasure left by mysterious sailors several miles south fueled my quest. Although the only treasures found were of the rock or shell variety, I was undeterred and took to carving my own treasure runes in the tumble of sandstone rocks.

Over the years we gathered, mom and siblings, the cousins, the grandparents, aunt and uncle, everyone still living from my mother’s family. We played together, argued, walked the beaches hand in hand as the surf roared and the healing wind washed over us.

My grandmother so loved the beach that she requested that her ashes be spread there when she died. We all felt a great fondness for the cabin and the beach it fronted. We would stop there on our many day trips to the coast. I took my own family and friends there. When my grandparent’s friends died, we quit going to the cabin, although we still visited the beach from time to time. Several years passed and with them my grandparents and my uncle. Gramma’s ashes were spread over the beach and the rocks she loved. The kids who made sand castles grew up and began families of their own.

Then my aunt, all red hair and energy, mustered the clan for a visit. The little companion cabin was still there, now the home of a caretaker. In the main cabin virtually everything was the same, as if only a few minutes had gone by, instead of years. The beach, although ever-changing, was the same comfortable stretch, the familiar rocks on the point and at sea in their places.

The difference was us. We had lost a few members, but added a few new ones. They built castles on the sand, collected precious shells and walked hand-in-hand on the beach, all the while keeping an eye out for pirate gold.

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The Beach House

Copyright ©2012 by Steve Dodge

ISBN 9781476419428

Cover watercolor by Lynn Buettner. Used by permission.

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