Killing Time on the Docks While Cats are Fixed at S/nipped

On the way to S/nipped, the spay neuter clinic in Coos Bay, last Sunday, I stopped in to use the restroom at the Elk rest area, just outside Reedsport.  The moon was out, but not the sun and the fog hung low. 

To pass the day, although I should have been napping in my car, while the cats were being fixed last Sunday, at S/nipped, I wandered down to the dock.

This is not a dock on the ocean, but the ocean is close.  Just beyond the spit of land across from the docks.  The oceans mixes into the harbor and slough, in a giant loop, leaving Empire and North Bend at the north end of the loop.

I love the water. I love the ocean.  Yearnings arise whenever I am near water.  I want to be out on the water or in the water or consumed by water.

I watched tiny 14 foot aluminum boats head out in rough water whipped by gusty winds to check their crab pots.  A couple of the tiny boats were weighted down with two people.  I'd see the occasional idiot not wearing a life jacket.

On the dock, I waited out crab pots, baited with chicken, with the pot owners who congenially flipped over red rock and dungeness crab to show me how to tell males from females.  They would rebait their pots and hurl them out into the water, attached by frayed yellow ropes to the dock.  Gulls would dive at the bait on the traps, trying to snag a chunk before it sank.

Some would wait inadequate time before pulling the pot in and up to see what might be caught.  Others were more patient and waited long before slowly pulling up their catch.  Most keepers were red rock.  No limit or size restrictions on those.  Dungeness of adequate size were not to be had this day.

Many boats were out on the water, most small.  But soon along came a tug pulling a barge piled high in Oregon logs (formerly trees).