A story

On the return road from Montana, I hung a far right into Astoria via a massive bridge i hope to never cross again. An event weekend left no rooms or campsites open on the northern Oregon coast. But a friend of a friend let me crash in an old Victorian her crew was rehabbing, a home a family had lived in for years, while their children, apparently, grew. Now a stripped-out construction site, with ocean brine in its boards. And a landing pad for me and my backpacks. 

I slept on the moldy as hell living room floor, rose at dawn shaky and bleary--too many hours drinking like a writer with my writer friend at this place:

walked to the water and discovered why everyone fawns over funky Astoria, with its odd tugboats breaking the horizon, trumpeting angels, and old salt bars. 

Back at the house, I found a balletic spider who humored me while I shot him from every angle. We became fast friends as I drank my 7-11 coffee and ran my lens over the porch's creaky old floorboards performing visual excavations of time and home. While wind smashed the waves and the tugboats bellowed, alert to something stirring nearby.