Life on the Outside

Despite the lack of a blazing sun (I’ve given up on such a thing happening on the Pacific Northwest coast) I decided to brave Netarts Bay this afternoon for a little kayaking and had a wonderful, albeit all to brief, reward. As I was paddling along, I felt something bump the

Well, hello there.

underside of the kayak. This is an inflatable kayak, still quite heavy duty, so things bumping the kayak are very noticeable. At low tide, you can much of the sandbar that runs throughout the bay. In fact, there’s actually a small channel that winds through the bay to allow larger boats access since the bay is largely impassible. So imagine my surprise and pleasure when a few seconds later a sleek gray harbor seal popped up just four or five feet in front of the kayak.

Of course I immediately stopped paddling, He (or she) simply bobbed in the water, looking me and my bright yellow kayak over. Just as quickly as he emerged he slipped below the waterline and disappeared.  A few moments later, he reappeared off my stern, again only a few feet away. He continued this disappear/reappear a few more time before the current and his search for fish finally led us apart.

For natives of the Oregon coast, spotting a harbor seal is much like spotting elk in Colorado or a black bear in Yosemite National Park. They’re everywhere. But for me, it was a magical event. With just the sound of gulls squawking overhead and waves splashing against the hull of my kayak, I felt utterly and completely untethered from my landlocked world.

Kayaking in Netarts Bay

I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow! Although I really do need to learn how to exit my kayak a little more gracefully. I look a bit like that seal flopping about on the shore. Oh, well.  Here’s hoping for dry, if not sunny, skies.

Life in Cannon Beach!

Even the wildlife here have expensive tastes.
This baby squirrel was seen busily gorging on a chocolate-covered strawberry at a recent business event.

(Click on the image to view full size)

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I’ve been working in Cannon Beach and Seaside for the past few months now and am glad to say that — for the most part — I really enjoy being there. Aside from some insanely long days, which I hope not to repeat any time soon, I’ve enjoyed helping the staff learn new skills, become better writers and photographers and helping to guide our papers to be a newspaper people look forward to reading. Goddess knows I’ve learned a lot over these past months as well. And all of the feedback I’ve received from the community has been extremely positive too.

But I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. Knowing that each of these cities depends heavily on tourism to support  their economy, how much of our “news” should be focused on those things visitors will be interested in and how much should be focused on more traditional news. While I’ve been wrestling with this since first taking on the managing role at the two papers, it recently became more of an issue.

Last week, there was an attempted rape at one of the local hotels. I tasked our editor with covering the story — not in terms of reporting on the attack, but how often attacks at local hotels happen (maybe this was just a one time event or does it happen more often than we think), what are hotel owners doing to ensure the safety of the guests and what are local authorities doing — if anything — in light of the attack, should hotel owners and authorities be doing anything more than they already are, or are they already doing everything they can, etc.

Knowing that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes again women, I felt very strongly that our paper should cover this story. Image my surprise, and maybe even a little disappointed, when I was cautioned against running the story for fear of scarring off those genuinely important visitors. Keep in mine, we weren’t told not to run the story, but just to be cautious of how it’s covered. But this got me to thinking (always a scary thing).

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