Hug Point State Recreation Site

Author's Comments

Most people drive past Hug Point on their way to Cannon Beach proper, and I understand the logic. Haystack Rock is the postcard. Hug Point is the footnote. But the footnote is where I keep ending up on quiet afternoons in late September, when the tide drops in the four o'clock hour and the small cove opens up into something larger than it looked from the parking lot. The waterfall is the obvious draw and it deserves the attention. It falls directly onto the sand, which is not a thing I have seen elsewhere on this coast, and at low tide you can walk right up to its base and turn around to see the Pacific framed behind you. Long exposure works here. The water is not voluminous but it is steady, and a few seconds of shutter softens it into something closer to silk than spectacle. What I did not expect, the first time I came, was the old road. Carved into the headland a hundred years ago when the beach itself served as the highway between coastal towns, the wagon ruts are still visible in the rock if you look for them. There is a strange tenderness to standing in them. People drove their lives along this stretch of sand at low tide and waited out the high tide in whatever shelter they could find. Come midweek if you can. Come in the afternoon, when the light has moved west and is hitting the headland directly. Check the tide tables twice. The window is real and it closes quickly, and the cove you wanted to photograph will be underwater before you have finished telling yourself you have time.

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