Watching the sun go down over the Pacific ocean, tolerating inland fog (even the freezing kind) and trying to sort out berry-talk: salmon, huckle, thimble, goose—even cranberries float around parts of Oregon, and of course let us not forget one of Oregon’s newer immigrant berries, grapes.

One of the things that continues to interest me most about Oregon is its rugged and spectacular coast. As a transplanted Oregonian, I’ve made efforts to spend time there and get a feel for its terrain and biology. When I first moved here I spent part of the summer of 2001 harvesting various kinds of seaweed with James Jungwirth, an experienced and eco-conscious harvester who markets the macroalgae. In the season’s lowest tides, we cut the seaweed and transported roughly 1,000 pounds up steep coastal bluffs to the car, then we drove the seaweed back inland to dry and sort. From that experience I got a taste of how people can make a living at the coast in unexpected ways, but it merely piqued my curiosity.

Last summer I took some time away from the Rogue Valley and spent three weeks working at Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) in Portland volunteering on a show called “Think Out Loud.” I planned to immerse myself in the day-to-day operations at a public radio station without the interruptions of work as a nutrition instructor and clinical herbalist. I had initially envisioned going out with reporters and helping to produce news and feature stories (as I’d done volunteering at JPR), but working on a radio talk show would be a different learning experience. I found an apartment, packed my car, and off I went.

I assisted in the production of several shows and booked guests including a health insurance industry executive turned reform advocate and an Oregon Supreme Court justice. I learned about the controversy surrounding exclusively male judges recommended for the federal bench by Senator Ron Wyden and some of the in’s and out’s of the never-ending healthcare nightmare. As with any talk radio show, there’s a never-ending search for ideas. I presented some, and late in the second week, the executive producer accepted my suggestion for a show about people who hand-build musical instruments.

I sought out possible in-studio guests and different instrument types for the live radio show. Fortunately I came upon a list of instrument builders who had attended the NW Handmade Musical Instrument Exhibit in Portland. This is how I met Les Stansell, a guitar builder from Pistol River, on the southern Oregon coast who crafts guitars from native wood, including Port Orford Cedar and myrtle. And so, my journey to OPB, eventually led me to an equally fascinating journey to the southern Oregon coast.

I had heard of Les Stansell through his friend, customer, and fellow flamenco guitarist, Grant Ruiz, who performs in our region. Though Les spoke during the show about some of the techniques and indigenous coastal woods he uses to build his classical and flamenco guitars, he also paid tribute to a more famous Les, Les Paul, the guitar legend with whom he was acquainted and who had coincidentally died the day before the show aired, August 13th 2009.

Early in the fall, Stansell told me that a locally reared violinist would be playing at the Pistol River Friendship Hall, so I made my way to the coast to hear her, see Les’s studio and then explore Coos County to the north. He and his wife Mary kindly put me up over the weekend before Thanksgiving. While visiting the Stansell home, Les walked me through some of the intricate guitar building process, pointing out that over 100 lbs of tension put demands on the bracing and interlocking components within his guitars. His finished flamenco and classical guitars are sleek, seamlessly symmetric, and highly responsive, taking advantage of the strength to weight ratio of Port Orford Cedar, a prized wood most similar to Spanish Cypress that’s used for traditional Flamencos. This would turn out to be my first Spanish connection on my visit to the coast.

That same Saturday evening a Port Orford native, Hanneke Cassel played with cellist Natalie Haas and guitarist Christopher Lewis. In addition to their international performances, the trio had shows scheduled from Eugene to Arcata, via Pistol River and Talent, Oregon. Cassel, the 1997 US Scottish fiddle champion, captivated the audience, playing beautifully and quizzing us on Scotch musical lexicon between short bursts of bow and string song. I wasn’t one who had known the difference between a strathspey or a reel until that night, though I could pick out a jig.

After she covered U2’s “Mothers of the Disappeared,” a concert highlight for a longtime U2 fan, to my surprise I found out that I would have my own different kind of backstage pass as well. The Stansells were putting the trio up too. While we talked and drank wine, there was more playing then we all slept through a pouring rain. Music plays a large role in the lives of many coastal residents; I felt lucky to have been a part of that evening. Witnessing the skill with which Stansell crafts insrtuments from native woods and watching this coastal born musician play, it conjured up a feeling that I had somehow landed in a far away land; but here I was, only a few hours away from the town that I call home.

After waking to clearing skies and milder temperatures, we ate breakfast and said our goodbyes. The band and I headed in opposite directions. I drove north along the coast, passing through Port Orford, crossing the beautiful Elk and Sixes Rivers.

While continuing towards Bandon and glancing out at cranberry bogs, I noticed a harvest in operation. Thanks to the sun’s low position in the sky, the glistening cranberries appeared a ruby sea corralled by slats that kept the berries from dispersing. Having been separated from their stems by a combine-like machine, the cranberries, which are actually low growing shrubs, glowed in the dark waters.

I spoke to the bog owner, Gary Henriques, about the process and found out that—you guessed it—these berries were headed for Ocean Spray. Though I’d never seen cranberries harvested, the site of bobbing berries took me back to John McPhee’s book, The Pine Barrens, which delved into life in one of the earlier cranberry bog-lands, southeastern New Jersey. Cranberries, named “craneberries” by early European settlers for their resemblance to cranes, are actually not native to Oregon or the west coast of North America. However, from what I could gather from my travels through these parts, cranberries have clearly carved out a niche.

Before getting back on the road, I asked Henriques about tasting a few berries and was advised against it. However, he fished out a sack of them which ultimately made fine cranberry sauce for my Thanksgiving feast once I rinsed them and separated leaves and stems—a task we’re spared buying in markets.

Henriques’ kind gesture was appreciated, and the story of my visit with the bog-owner brought a new dimension to conversation at our holiday table.

Continuing north, I seemed to cross paths with various other ruby colored gems along the coast. I passed Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge and then crossed the lower Coquille River, entering Bullards Beach State Park. There I spotted a beautifully appointed (and clearly repainted) vintage Volkswagen bus. The owners were sitting down to lunch on locally caught salmon. Traveling with their son Luca, Ane and Andres Tempelmann were making their way to California stopping briefly to wonder at the intriguing beauty of our Oregon coast. The young German travelers, sporting the iconic functional vehicle, even had their toothbrushes meticulously hanging behind the passenger seat’s headrest.

Reluctantly refusing their offer to stay for lunch, I got back on the road. Considering that I wasn’t too far from home, I was amazed at the other-worldly feeling I had meeting folks from so many different walks of life. That fleeting interlude with the German family cast a lovely hue on my adventure.

I was scheduled to visit the Coast Guard Air Station in North Bend the following day for a ride along on a training flight. I had time to kill before checking into a motel for the night.

From Coos Bay I headed southwest, through Charleston, a town known for its crabbing and clamming, and visited the rugged coast near Cape Arago. Before arriving at the rocky and churning scenic endpoint, I passed a tranquil clam shaped cove, Sunset Beach. Immediately I was reminded of La Playa de la Concha in San Sebastian, Spain, a beach made famous in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Although undeveloped and a fraction of the size, Sunset Beach simply blew me away.

I thought of the talented, exacting and dedicated people that had led me to this place, from those at Jefferson Public Radio and OPB to Les, Hanneke, and Lt. Gregory Mouritsen, the public affairs officer for the Air Station. I shook off the butterflies I’d had all day about going vertical the following morning in a French-designed Aerospatiale HH 65 Dolphin short-range recovery air-sea rescue helicopter, the flying workhorse of the USCG. I was thinking it should be called “Pegasus,” but naturally its role is mostly maritime, so “Dolphin” (or Dauphin) it is.

I had once seen an English-built Harrier “jump jet” take off vertically, then thrust forward over the Hudson River, one of the loudest, most amazing things I’d ever witnessed. Enabling a 7-ton fighter to outdo gravity requires an enormous amount of lift, and that’s without munitions—which can add another 9,000 lbs—no small reason why the Pentagon is among the world’s biggest consumers of fossil fuels. Another ear-splitting sound I experienced was listening to a helicopter’s fuel control at Erickson Air-Crane in Central Point, Oregon while volunteer reporting for JPR. Until now, seeing the construction of an Air-Crane was the closest I’d been to a helicopter.

I had no idea what to expect flying in a chopper. I imagined great views, lots of noise, and a fair amount of turbulence, enough to make me seek out a, umm, “barf bag.” I felt a little more at ease when one of the officers in maintenance control—who mentioned that he listens to Jefferson Public Radio from North Bend —kindly offered me one.

I was disappointed by neither the noise nor the views. In addition to the bag, I was given a pair of foamy squeeze-fit earplugs by the rescue swimmer, Aviation Survival Technician (AST) Rich Chambers, who geared me up with a flight suit and helmet. For the record, I ate nothing before the flight, though I did drink coffee, without which I probably would have felt sick.

As Chambers escorted me to the whirlybird, its main rotor was spinning, and naturally I ducked. While approaching, I caught a glimpse of the windsock, which was thankfully half limp. I took a deep breath and crawled on board. The pilot and co-pilot were up front. The flight mechanic, Jimmy “Hock” Hockenberry was to my right. Among other things, he operates the hoist that Chambers, who sat in back, and whoever he happens to rescue, depend on.

It was a perfect morning. Minimal wind, clear skies, and big windows framed amazing views of land’s end I’d seen from sea level the day before. We flew past North Bend’s McCullough Memorial Bridge and Coos Bar—the jetties at the ocean outlet of the Coos Bay and River—then headed north. In the past I’d driven by the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area but never got a perspective of its breadth from Highway 101 to the Pacific until flying above.

Earphones and microphones were hooked up to our helmets allowing communication within the rotorcraft, however I had a tough time discerning whether the pilot or co-pilot was speaking to me, since they were looking forward. The volume was turned up to overcome flight noise, so I was grateful for the earplugs. We circled Winchester Bay, and I told the crew I had an appointment to meet the owner of Umpqua Aquaculture once back on the ground. The oyster company’s beds lay where two southern jetties meet at the Umpqua’s mouth, with its processing facility, store, and offices at Winchester Bay.

The crew conveniently pointed out the building I’d be driving to an hour later. From the Umpqua Bar, we turned around, headed south and flew by Cape Arago. There was “la concha,” Sunset Beach. They mentioned that Brad Pitt’s mother was rumored to have a home on the bluffs not far north of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, and pointed to a spot where they did some cliff rescue training thereabouts. From the bird’s eye view of Face Rock and other rock “stacks” by Bandon, we circled west and again headed north. Then they performed a training maneuver that I barely noticed.

Any thoughts of nausea had long since passed. I was busy photographing like some mad paparazzo. Warm in my suit, Hockenberry opened a few air vents for me. We flew briefly inland where the crew pointed out waterfalls in what Mouritsen later told me was probably Gold and Silver Falls State Park near the Elliot State Forest. While I listened to hunting stories and about the crew’s comrades at Air Station Kodiak, Alaska, I thought I’d like to continue our journey north to Astoria, the location of Oregon’s other USCG Air Station, and see more of the coast and a Sikorsky Jayhawk or two.

Back on the ground I took a few pictures on the tarmac and in the hangar and did a double-take when I saw hockey equipment sitting in the corner. Chambers told me they play hockey in the immaculately clean hangar. Actually, there’s no shortage of recreation in their area: kayaking, hunting, golf, fishing, surfing—even riding horses on the beach or driving dune buggies were possibilities.

Next to bay and ocean kayaking, however, I’d prefer to eat oysters. I didn’t expect to be in the sky close to an hour, so I called the owner of Umpqua Aquaculture, Cindy Simmons, and told her I was running late. I’d eaten some trail mix or other such road grub on the way up while my mind remained fixated on oyster brunch.

Cindy and I met at the processing facility where she showed me tanks in which they raise the larvae and explained some of the process. Once the staff was back from lunch, I watched them separate the oysters from the lines and each other with an air hammer, and Cindy shucked me some to eat (with her wedding ring on).

Umpqua Triangle oysters grow in a mix of 80% seawater and 20% freshwater at the brackish mouth of the Umpqua, and due to being cultivated on lines are not exposed to bottom sediments that can change the flavor and texture. The oysters I tasted were clean and crisp and tasted of the sea. They’d been neither taken from the shell nor fresh water rinsed. I bought another half dozen to eat there and a sizable container to share that night with friends.

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As I looked out at the wetlands near Winchester Bay, I further considered the various challenges of employment and holding onto a coastal way of life. Fishing and logging aren’t what they used to be to the coastal economy, and tourism has its seasonal and economic vagaries. Though Stansell finds joy in building guitars, he also maintains a small-scale timber operation, selling mostly Port Orford Cedar. Others in agriculture and aquaculture, to a great extent, are also at the hands of an often unpredictable and clearly changing environment. The coast can be harsh and unforgiving, inspiring wonderment and imagination.

I took that thought back on the road—it was time to go home.

Michael Altman is a nutrition consultant and instructor at Southern Oregon University and College of the Siskiyous.  Currently a landlubber living in Ashland, he often longs for the ocean’s song.