At Tongue Point: Goodbye to Summer

     It is the end of September.  Glen and I are sitting on the viewpoint  at Tongue Point, a rocky finger of land poking  north into the Straits of Juan de Fuca, just west of Port Angeles.  We have been camping at this lovely site for a few days, enjoying the last days of a fading summer.

     Around dusk we decided to finish off our day by taking our camp-cooked bean tacos and sitting out at the  outlook.   This day  has been a dream of a sunny day, now fading into dusk.  The sunset in the west is sensational.  I remark that this is a watercolorist’s dream (I dabble in watercolors).  Glen shoots back, “Or a nightmare!”  And I have to laugh.  How is possible to catch and hold such unearthly colors?

     This place  is that rare thing along the the Washington seacoast: an easily accessible rocky shore.  This is  very different  than the long sandy stretches of Ocean Shores or Long Beach: here the salt water from the Pacific rides east for  60 miles in great rolling swells that crash upon the rocky shore.  All night, bedded down in our warm camp beds, we hear and feel the BOOM POUND THUMP of big swells pushing in a full tide and breaking at last on the stony reaches of the point.  

     These rocky beaches provide an excellent place for a sea garden of kelp to establish itself and flourish.  We were here last spring for a brief visit and there was no sign of this garden; we have the photo to prove it.   Upon our return this fall, the bull kelp is thick, floating and swaying  some 20 feet from shore. 

    During its summer life,  the kelp provides a floating mat island, and many birds take advantage of it; several gulls with crops  full after a day’s feeding, perch on the kelp, facing west and watch the sun sink into the hills.  A lone Great Blue Heron manages to balance itself on the mats !*! and continues to fish even in the last minutes of light.   The bobbing bulbs of kelp look like so many seal heads and we are fooled, over and over again.  

      The rocks provide another  feeding habitat that many rock shorebirds specialize in using. This is the country of Black oyster catchers: as we watch the sunset, they vocalize back and forth  from rock to rock, a mournful piping call.  

     This is a season of migration and transitions:  we watch Pigeon Guillemots in their white winter coats, getting ready to fly to the north Pacific for the winter.  Other birds come in to stay:  small bands of Scoters and other sea ducks move into the Straits for the winter.   

    This is a place of breathtaking beauty.  This is a time of saying goodbye to summer.  There are so many feelings:  a feeling of mourning for summer lost, of reveling in in the beauty laid out before us, of anticipation for  the change of the season.  My heart is full.  

      The sun continues to sink, painting the sky and the water, too, in ever-changing colors.   We watch and wait, until finally, the water turns black. 

Janet

Resources:

•  All photos by Glen Buschmann