I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for a week on the roadless coast. I’ll be meeting up with Marc Mahoney, long-time friend and paddling partner on many previous adventures, in Kalaloch. From there, we’ll drive together to Hobuck Beach and if all goes well, we should be on the water by early afternoon. I don’t know exactly where we’ll be staying that first night (or any of the others, really), not that it matters all that much. Marc is a strong paddler and I’m looking forward to making the trip with him.

I’m curious to see where the reality of marine debris is now compared to what it was when I did the trip back in 2012. With the International Coastal Cleanup scheduled for next month, updated information about where the flotsam is concentrated could be valuable information for prioritizing cleanup efforts. I’m also wondering how much of what has reached shore is actual tsunami debris, that can be identified in some way. The rotation cycle of the North Pacific Gyre is somewhere between 5 and 6 years, so it’s a bit early for the second round to be showing up. But it’s the ocean and you never know.

It will be good to sit by a crackling driftwood fire again, to listen to the night breezes in the trees and to taste the salt of the sea on my lips. It has been too long.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA