Held Hostage

So inspired from my solo trip around spain and portugal, I decided to take a trip alone to the Oregon coast. When I am working, I'm always wishing I could take off mid-week for the coast so this was my opportunity and I was taking it.

I had forgotten to take into account three elements: darkness, weather, and most of all..... wildlife.

I arrived at Fort Stevens around 3:00pm and in order to take advantage of the last hour or so of daylight I decided to forgo unpacking the car and head to the beach. I returned around dusk and realized that my outside light at my yurt was not working. This made me a little nervous because I'd prefer to see any intruders before they are at my door but I told myself to just "buck up" and be strong. As I approached my yurt I noticed I had some visitors--a group of about 7 (very large) raccoons. I thought they were very cute at this point but was a bit disconcerted as they seemed to be treating the area under my yurt as a a home base.

I continued to unload my stuff from my car into the yurt. As the light continued to fade, the racoons became more and more confident,and I less and less. Before long you could tell that they could smell my fear and so they were no longer afraid of me. My hand claps and shouts were doing nothing to remove them from my path. As I would leave my yurt they were outside the door looking at me. When my headlamp looked under the yurt there were many pairs of yellow eyes staring out at me and they were starting to make a loud chirping noise. I felt like I was in a steven king novel and I was going to be the first victim of rabid racoons that take over Northwestern Oregon. By the time I exited my yurt to find two on the porch, three in the firepit, and two more peering out at me from below the yurt I had hit my limit. I hightailed it in my car to the information booth (thankfully still open) and requested a yurt transfer. The couple was laughing at the poor seattle city slicker who had been run out of her yurt by racoons but I didn't care. I was terrified and not ashamed to admit it.

Luckily (or perhaps not) I was the ONLY CAMPER in the entire campground so switching yurts was easy. And after a few more dashes into my old yurt to retrieve my stuff I was off to my new yurt (#2 a very nice yurt if you are ever at Fort Stevens). But my whole racoon encounter had thrown me off and the reality of spending a night in a yurt, alone, in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors was starting to hit me. To add fuel to the fire the weather started to turn stormy and the wind began to howl and the rain fall. It was an eerie sort of storm the kind where you expect to hear a knock at the door of your yurt at any time. I did manage to calm down enough to sleep at some point around 2 am but the lesson learned is that I am not a solo yurter and my fears definitely get the better of me in the dark. At least in the dead of winter with no neighbors and many hours of darkness to kill before I can go to sleep.

But, on the bright side the next day dawned bright and beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed my day walking the beach, wandering seaside, and hiking in Ecola State Park. But when darkness returned I decided to drive back to seattle and have a beer at my favorite bar, Al's, rather than return to another restless night in the yurt.