Our 22nd visit to the state of Oregon will see me trying to shift my gaze, the one that peers through the lens of the camera. To the extent I’m able to bring greater intention to where I direct my focus, I’ll be traveling with a macro and a telephoto lens. Those lenses help me capture things near and far, but only if I’m able to stop trying to see everything all at once. I need to look further and deeper as a reminder to see beyond the end of my nose while also trying to uncover things often disregarded in the back of my head or behind it. Extending our scope in familiar territory is never easy because of the inclination to take a little too much pleasure in the things we’ve previously known and enjoyed. Do we then tend to want to stroke fond memories instead of uncovering the unseen and unfamiliar?

I wrote the above on September 28th in order to create a mantra for myself so that once November 17th arrives and we depart for Oregon, I’d have it in my head to follow this exercise. The camera gear and writing instruments are packed and ready to go, but I’m not quite sure about my headspace. Is it due to my encounter with Covid? Or am I distracted by the requirements that surround traveling? I’m nearly always imbued with an underlying sense of things undone that need tending to instead of taking time for a coffee and writing because that’s a part of my daily routine. Instead, I could be at home ensuring that everything’s ready to go and all that’s left is to wait for the Uber to bring us to the airport, but on the other hand, who cares what’s missing as long as we are checked in for our flight and have our documents, lodging, and car are reserved, and our few essentials are packed. Those things that’ll be inevitably forgotten are easily acquired along the way.

Yet, I’m distracted by urgencies and uncertainties. My dislike of those two states creates a strong desire to accept that those things are a normal part of my way of going into a shift of routine, even for the brief weekend getaways. And so, I put myself into doing something typical of any other day to convince myself that today is like any other day, but in seven hours, we’ll be in an airport.

In 12 hours we’ll be in Eugene, Oregon, and then in about 22 hours, we’ll be encountering the coast of Oregon at the town of Florence. At this point, everything changes. There will be an imperative question: did we have breakfast in Eugene? If not, it’s time to eat; beyond that, the only option is to decide on which beach we want to start exploring the romantic conditions of memories that have accumulated over the many years we’ve been walking along the sea. Should we turn north, we could take a walk in the Carl G. Washburne State Park on the rainforest trail on one of the two days we are promised to have clear skies and sunny conditions compared to all other days where cloud cover and rain are forecast.

Only 10 miles north of our favorite rainforest trail is the Devil’s Churn (part of Cape Perpetua), and while we’ll be in the general area of both of those places for four days while we take shelter in Yachats, the sun will be gracing both tomorrow. From there, it’s only a 3.5-hour drive south to the yurt we’ll be sleeping in down in Brookings, and well, that sounds like a perfect day, and we’ll still have ten more days ahead of us to capture experiences.

In keeping with my mantra, this is my attempt to focus on what’s out on our horizon and then use a macro filter taken from our familiarity with the environment to see a level of granularity of how our first day out might unfold, but I don’t want to look beyond that as the optics aren’t so clear and there needs to remain space for spontaneity.