Six in the morning at Cape Blanco, and rswfire was already awake and recording. Christmas Day, the light not yet arrived, the camera on and the greeting out before the hour had fully registered — oh it's early. He named the date the way a person names a landmark they are passing rather than one they are standing inside: a wonderful time of year, religious or not, human tradition. Then the count began. One week to 2025.
The plan had been to drive. North past Florence, up to the Heceta Head Lighthouse, to take the measure of what the 101 corridor feels like on Christmas — a question that had become genuinely interesting to him the day before, when the coast turned out to be far busier than he expected. But a storm was moving in, large enough that he had screenshots to share, large enough to close the road as an option. He said they were stuck at Cape Blanco, and then, almost immediately, revised himself in real time: I don't know that I should call stuck cuz this is going to be amazing. The plan was gone. The day was not. He had simply had other plans, and now he had this one.
What he had done instead, on Christmas Eve, was reconnaissance. He had driven north — far enough that the city names ran out on him, since he only knew the southern coast by heart, the stretch he had spent three months making his own. Brookings to Port Orford: territory, claimed by traversal. Then the correction arrived mid-sentence, the map resolving under him — Reedsport. Somewhere between Reedsport and Florence was where he would be for the next three months, volunteering on a campground, and the exploring would continue from there. Coos Bay was in the frame too, possibly for the nights. Sixteen hours of darkness a day on this coast in December. Hours that need something in them.
He had gone to look at the place. He had checked the shower facilities, and they were not very good, and he had measured them against the worst he had ever encountered — the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, a comparison retrieved and weighed on the spot. Against that standard these would do. Three months, tolerable, make the best of it like we do everything, because that's how you just approach problems really. The lake there had been boring. Then it started raining, and the water began to move, and the whole thing changed character in front of him — he liked it at that point. The trail was short, not very long, but good enough that he already knew he would spend time on it. Sand dunes nearby, worth checking out. Dune buggies, possibly. Possibly warfare on the dunes with other dune buggies. He did not know. He could find out.
And the lake stayed with him past its inventory line. Since this new chapter started, he said, he had wanted to be on water. Not near it — on it. Maybe this was the place where that finally happens.
He turned outward before he closed. To anyone watching with kids: he hoped the morning had been an amazing memory, because Christmas is wonderful. He hoped the coming week was good. Then he told them how he was going to spend his own day — the storm out there, and inside, adult-themed Skyrim, finally downloaded, running perfectly on a machine built exactly for it. He was already, he reported, being a town slut in Whiterun. Just saying.
The storm arrived on schedule and the road stayed closed, and rswfire sat at the seam of it — one coastline finished, the next one scouted and waiting, a lighthouse unvisited, a lake he intended to get onto, three months secured, a year about to turn. He did not close the seam. He narrated it, from a dark hour on a headland, and then went inside.