Walking the Tideline: Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast Trail (Caroline Kurtz) - Review
Although I was born in Los Angeles,
I grew up in Northern California (San
Francisco and Mount Shasta) and Southern Oregon (Klamath Falls). That makes me
a West Coaster, despite having lived in Michigan for nearly two decades.
Growing up in Klamath Falls, one of our favorite family vacation spots was on
the rugged central Oregon coast. We usually stayed at a hotel on the beach in
Yachats, a small village that lies between Florence and Newport. My father even
ended up living in Waldport, just north of Yachats, in the years before his
death. Since Florence was close to Eugene, visits to the area were common
during my college years in Eugene. So, although it has been a long time since I
have had the opportunity to spend time on the Oregon Coast, I have fond
memories of the area. When I received a review copy from the publisher of Caroline
Kurtz’s memoir that focuses on her pilgrimage on the Oregon Coast Trail, I had
to read it.
People have gone on pilgrimages for
millennia, usually for spiritual reasons. One of the most common pilgrimage
journeys is the Camino de Santiago, which leads to the Cathedral of Santiago de
Compostela, the church in Spain that is said to contain the remains of St.
James the Great, one of the Twelve. When Caroline Kurtz, an author and former
Presbyterian missionary in Ethiopia, decided to make a pilgrimage after the
death of her husband Mark, she thought about following the lead of the many who
have journeyed on the Camino de Santiago. However, after she discovered
information about the existence of the Oregon Coast Trail that lay not far from
her home in Portland, she chose to embark on a pilgrimage much closer to home. The
Oregon Coast Trail begins at Fort Stevens State Park outside Astoria and ends
at the Oregon border south of Brookings.
In Walking the Tideline, Caroline Kurtz invites us to join her as
she attempts to deal with her sense of loss a year after the death of her
husband of more than twenty years. The subtitle catches this reality, in that
it speaks of Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast Trail.
If you know the Oregon Coast, then
you will be drawn into her story. If you are dealing with grief at the loss of
a loved one, you may also resonate with her story of struggling to make sense
of life without her husband. Along the way, we learn about her life in Ethiopia
as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, including her years at a boarding
school in Ethiopia, which is where she met her future husband, Mark. As she hikes
along the Oregon Coast, a woman of sixty-five years, journeying along the
tideline alone, without much experience backpacking, Kurtz reflects on her past
life with Mark, whom she married after they reconnected after she finished
college. Like many missionary kids, she and Mark returned to the place they
knew best, Ethiopia, where they served with a Presbyterian-sponsored ministry,
followed by life on a farm in Oregon prior to his developing cancer. She shares
details of the ups and downs of life together, including dealing with his death
and the need to make a new life without him. All of these memories are interspersed with
the challenges and adventures encountered along the way as she hiked the Oregon
Coast Trail, following the guidance of a book she had read that described the trail
and how to traverse it.
If you know the Oregon Coast, you
will know that it is rather rugged. US Highway 101 often straddles a narrow
strip of land between mountains and cliffs on one side, and the beach or cliffs
on the other side. The weather along the Oregon Coast can be challenging, with
rain being common. So, you can only imagine how these factors might impact
someone's attempt to hike along this trail. Despite her lack of experience with
backpacking, she decided to take this journey alone, hoping to walk from
Astoria in the north to the town of Florence, which lies along the central
coast west of Eugene. In preparation for the pilgrimage, Kurtz purchased a
backpack, borrowed a pup tent, purchased food and a portable stove, among other
things. After doing some preparatory hiking in the area around her home in
Portland, set out from Fort Stevens on a journey that at times was rather
harrowing. As we take this journey with
Kurtz as our guide, we encounter people who were helpful and gracious to her,
while also experiencing with her difficult times as she navigated bad weather
and difficult terrain, whether on beaches or steep climbs. At several points
along the way, she had to walk along a busy highway and traverse waterways.
As I noted earlier, as Kurtz offers
her account of her journey along the trail, she intersperses it with stories of
life in Ethiopia, both as a child and as an adult. She shares with us the ups
and downs of life with Mark, and the deep loss and sense of loneliness that
accompanied his death from cancer. While the book is not "overtly"
religious, it is clear that faith plays an important part in her life. Therefore,
we encounter what I would call a quiet spirituality that gets tested and yet
sustains her in life, including as she hikes along the Oregon Coast Trail. I
will leave it to the reader to discover the full story of the journey,
including how far she got along the trail. I will say this: she did make it to
Yachats. She even mentions the trail that goes along the coast, just above the
beach, that crosses in front of a particular hotel that sounds a lot like the
hotel where my family stayed during my youth.
People respond differently to
memoirs. Sometimes we can identify with the writer, and at other times we might
not. While I haven’t lost a spouse to cancer or spent time on the mission
field, either as an adult or child, I know the land on which she journeyed.
That knowledge drew me into the story, but then, as I walked with her
(metaphorically, of course), I found myself caught up in her story. This is
especially true as she told stories of people who offered help and support as
they learned her story.
So, whether you are struggling with
a sense of loss at the death of a loved one or are intrigued by a pilgrimage
along the Oregon Coast, Caroline Kurtz offers a thoughtful memoir that may very
well serve as a blessing. Even as you learn Kurtz’s story, you will meet a few
people, such as Ahnjayla, the hostess at a motel in Oceanside (I mention her
because readers will want to keep a lookout for her), who offered Kurtz gifts
of grace that made her journey something that brought her a sense of renewal in
the midst of loss. May the time spent with Walking the Tideline be a
blessing to you, even as I found it to be a blessing.
You may purchase a copy of Walking the Tideline at your favorite retailer, incluidng my Amazon affiliate and my Bookshop.org affiliate.
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