Neskowin Ghost Forest

Neskowin, Oregon. Winter 1997.

A local legend about a mysterious forest rising out of the ocean comes to life as winter storms wash away massive amounts of sand, revealing 2000-year-old tree stumps.

The Neskowin Ghost Forest, and over thirty other ghost forests like it along the Oregon and Washington coastlines, is a stark reminder of just how dramatically nature can change the landscape.

Most of the internet will tell you that the Sitka spruce was forest was brought down by seismic activity along the Cascadia Fault, likely the 1700 Cascadia Earthquake, then buried and preserved by mud from the resulting tsunami.

Fascinating, but apparently this is mostly misinformation propagated widely as the internet likes to do. According to this article, the actual process of creating the ghost forest was more gradual.

Either way, it was the target of my most recent photography adventure.

I left basecamp and headed out toward the coast early. Too early, in fact. I arrived around 1 pm in the afternoon, leaving over 6 hours until sunset. I was hoping that my prevenient arrival would afford me sufficient time to scope out the area and find a number of potential compositions.

High tide, however, had other plans for me; or rather, lessons in patience and planning. (This appears to be another theme developing in my photography journey). The first challenge was that high tide, in combination with Neskowin Creek, cut the beach in half and blocked access to the ghost forest. At least, without wading through the creek which was deeper than my boots were tall.

An extra hour and 1.5 miles later, I found a way to the other side of the beach, only to find the entire ghost forest mostly covered by high tide. Any stumps that were not completely covered, were regularly hit with incoming waves making it impossible to plan out any compositions in advance.

So, I waited.

And waited.

The hours drifted by slowly, interrupted briefly by a short flurry of activity in which an adult and juvenile bald eagle briefly put on a show flying around Proposal Rock and I scrambled to try to snag a shot with my 100-400mm lens.

Then, it was back to sitting on a stump of unknown age, watching the sun, and waiting.

As the sun finally started to dip lower in the sky, my nervous anticipation rose proportionally. In my head, I had convinced myself that I would have plenty of time to scope out compositions and not be subject to the typical frantic pace of trying to shoot at a new location with no planned images just as the sun is setting.

This was most definitely not the case.

While it had been mostly clear skies all afternoon, a few wispy clouds had moved in around and behind proposal rock. As the sun began to set, some interesting colors started to develop, kicking me into high gear. As high tide was transitioning to low tide, more and more stumps were being revealed for longer periods of time. Still, as I went from stump to stump trying to form a decent composition, every 4th or 5th wave would still be powerful enough to send me scrambling back up the beach, trying to ensure that neither my photo camera nor my video camera succumbed to the sea.

Just as the light started to look really good, the sun dipped behind the marine layer that was rolling in ever closer and totally changed the look of the scene. What were bright oranges and yellows quickly transformed to subdued purples, pinks, and blues.

Between the changing light and the threatening waves, photo after photo that I was taking turned out blurry or poorly composed.

While it was an absolutely beautiful day and visually and enjoyable sunset, I was quite frustrated with how things went from a photographic standpoint. Once again, I had underestimated the location and overestimated my abilities to find and get a decent shot.

This creative journey seems to always find interesting ways to inspire confidence before tearing it all down again.

On my final composition, I finally managed to get a shot that had decent focus and a bit of interest from the waves around the group of stumps that were my main subject. I wouldn’t consider it a portfolio piece, but I was happy to not get completely shut out on the day.

This is yet another location that I will have to revisit to get the image I really want.