Cape Perpetua

I'm looking down a steep cliff side into the surging waters of the Pacific Ocean 800 feet below.

I'm trying to imagine being on the face of this cliff
                   ...on a trail merely 3 feet wide
                       in the winter
                       during a storm
                       crawling along on my belly
                       hanging onto my horses' tail...
to get the mail from Newport to Florence.

This was life in 1897 at Cape Perpetua.
  
By 1914 this narrow trail was widened to accommodate wagon travel.

Cape Perpetua's cliff is the highest headland on the Oregon coast.

I've been blessed with a clear day and can see 70 miles up and down the coast line and 37 miles out to sea.  The view I'm enjoying now came in mighty  handy in WWII.  After the Japanese bombed Mt. Emily in Brookings, Oregon( in hopes of weakening national resources by starting a forest fire) ,the rock shelter atop Cape Perpetua provided a great observation point for protecting this part of the  coastline.

Cape Perpetua is located in The Siluslaw National Forest.  This forest is full of old growth trees with a giant spruce that was just a sapling when Columbus discovered America. Walking down the trail takes me to another place and time.  One tree root looks like a sideways elephant.  The carpet of ferns are big enough to hide a fairyland underneath.

At the base of the cliffs,  puddled in the nooks and crannies of the black basalt rock, are tidal pools that teem with life at low tide.  I'm here at high tide and watch as those high tide waves slam against the rocks finding  places where erosion has worn holes through the rock surface.  The pressure of those waves causes water to explode through those holes like giant plumes from an active volcano.