Remnants

Point of Arches, Shi Shi Beach, Washington. This is one of the most remote beaches in the country. I came here twice, and knew I had to spend the night the next time, to capture it the way I wanted. It is two miles with a backpack from the trailhead, the last of it down a not-quite cliff, with heavy rope to get you through the worst of it. Out of the woods and then over, and through, massive piles of huge, bleached logs, several feet thick, piled 10 to 15 feet high like pick-up stix, trees that washed into the ocean to be stripped bare and tossed back up to the tree line by massive Pacific storms. And now you are on Shi Shi Beach, impossibly long and wild. You walk a mile and a half to get closer to the end of it, and set up camp high above the tide line and marvel at just how far out there you really are, with no one else in sight. And then march another mile down the sand to Point of Arches. They say that millions of years ago, the forested headland, just a bit behind me, stretched out to that far, far stack on the horizon. Wind and water, night and day, worked at it for millenia, until it broke and broke, again and again, and left these skeletal remains. Sea stacks, some with forest still attached. How long did this great mass stand before crumbling to these remnants? I still stand...unbroken, but not untouched. I can hear the incessant break of water, feel the wind. In my world, it is love, loss, passion and pain that are inescapable, breaking us down. I am only in this one overnight.

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Filename: Remnants
Image Size: 2048x1359 / 2.3MB; Point of Arches Shi Shi Beach Washington Coast Olympic Coast Washington WA coast beach ocean sea Pacific Ocean wilderness seascape landscape landscape photography Ray Palmer Ray Palmer sunset sea stack headland
Contained in galleries: West

Point of Arches, Shi Shi Beach, Washington. This is one of the most remote beaches in the country. I came here twice, and knew I had to spend the night the next time, to capture it the way I wanted. It is two miles with a backpack from the trailhead, the last of it down a not-quite cliff, with heavy rope to get you through the worst of it. Out of the woods and then over, and through, massive piles of huge, bleached logs, several feet thick, piled 10 to 15 feet high like pick-up stix, trees that washed into the ocean to be stripped bare and tossed back up to the tree line by massive Pacific storms. And now you are on Shi Shi Beach, impossibly long and wild. You walk a mile and a half to get closer to the end of it, and set up camp high above the tide line and marvel at just how far out there you really are, with no one else in sight. And then march another mile down the sand to Point of Arches. They say that millions of years ago, the forested headland, just a bit behind me, stretched out to that far, far stack on the horizon. Wind and water, night and day, worked at it for millenia, until it broke and broke, again and again, and left these skeletal remains. Sea stacks, some with forest still attached. How long did this great mass stand before crumbling to these remnants? I still stand...unbroken, but not untouched. I can hear the incessant break of water, feel the wind. In my world, it is love, loss, passion and pain that are inescapable, breaking us down. I am only in this one overnight.