Oregon Coast Trail Beach Walking Discovery by Regina Reiter August 10-September 13, 2019 © Regina Bernard Reiter
[email protected] Oregon Coast Trail Beach Walking Discovery by Regina Reiter August 10-September 13, 2019 Preface I grew up in Ohio, the land of cornfields, fossils, and low hills. I threw stones into rivers, canoed on rivers and lakes, and walked in many streams. The first time I remember visiting the ocean was around ten years old on a day trip with my family to a beach in Maine. It was cold and rocky! Beaches didn’t figure in my life much. I can dig up memories of a handful of beach visits after that cold dip in Maine; a couple of trips along the Florida Keys with friends and colleagues during college; a brief stop at Cape May to introduce my 6-month old son to the surf in 1972. My beach visits got more regular for ten years starting in the mid- 1990’s when we joined my husband’s family for a week every summer on the beautiful beach of Cape San Blas, Florida. One summer, my husband and I walked the 8 miles to the tip of the cape, slept out and then walked back to the rental house the next morning. These trips gave me a deeper connection to the beach. I also took a few walks on the beach of Charleston, South Carolina, where one of my brothers lived. There, I enjoyed the warmth of the beach. So, before my 60th year, I had played in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf.