June 30: Urgency on the beach

We've been fishing both tides each day. The early tides have been high - on the 30th, this was a 25.4' tide. When we came in after a flood pick, we looked down the beach and saw two trucks in this condition. This was in front of our wonderful neighbor's place and we worried that something had gone wrong and now they were in trouble. We rushed over to try to help and saw that it was people we didn't know from another district - maybe wanting to visit friends at Pedersen Point, but not understanding our beach. We get high tides. They erode the cliff which is the stickiest mud in the world - I'm sure it has applications for the defense industry, once they but discover it. They had come down the beach in a small four-wheel drive truck on an incoming high tide and prudently decided to drive high, not knowing that not only was that mud sticky, but it had been thoroughly saturated over the past several days by previous high tides, that have drained slowly due to a berm that has been building up over the past couple of years. (Boo berm.) Their four-wheel drive truck got a flat tire and then got stuck (though it could have been in the other order). This is that truck.

So they procured a two-wheel drive vehicle to come to try to rescue it. And it got stuck right next to it. You might wonder how the neighbors navigate this part of the beach. Generally, when the tides have been high, they keep their vehicles away from here - even though here is just where we'd want to park our trucks on a high tide. The Williams used to pretty much climb the cliff with their truck, just to keep the engine out of the water. But not over the past few years because they'd get stuck before they get to the cliff.

The thing that this episode shows is the sense of urgency we all function under. The water was just about high. Both trucks, though thoroughly stuck, were safe from the tide. All they had to do was wait for the tide to go down, ask the cannery trucks to help them get out (and they would - they are very helpful), fix the tire and get the trucks off the beach. It wasn't going to get worse. But this is a season and an industry that runs on urgency, so they really wanted to try to get the 2 wheel drive truck unstuck. They couldn't quite grasp that they would just get stuck down the beach when they got to our place, or every other site along the mile to Pedersen.

Someone had a four wheeler, and they asked us to help push while the four-wheeler pulled. Folly, but we helped, understanding the press of urgency ourselves. And it got stuck again about 100' down the beach, a little closer to the water. The four-wheeler driver hung back with me and I suggested that if she has any influence over the young men she was with, she should urge them to tow it back toward the stuck truck about 50', well out of the tide's way, and just wait. Apparently, I am not the only one who is impatient and falls prey to a situation's urgency.