OREGON COAST - What part of this planet can you find sand that glows, sand dunes that may sing, a plant that eats insects, a mysterious green flash above the sunset, more shooting stars than usual and forests of ghosts? Sounds like that freaky island on the show LOST, doesn’t it?
You’d be correct in assuming there’s an ocean involved. But all these wild and weird occurrences are part of the natural world in our own backyard - Oregon’s coastline. Many of these happen during the summer, but some oddities of nature and beachy surprises take place year round, and sometimes mostly in winter.
Glowing Sand
It’s been mislabeled as phosphorescence on the beach, but that’s not correct at all. It is, in fact, caused by tiny little forms of phytoplankton called dinoflagellates. They are bioluminescent – like fireflies – and they cause the sand and sometimes the sea to glow in an eerie manner at night.
First, you need the right conditions for these little guys to have washed up, and those are quite varied, but it tends to happen more in the summer and fall months. Then, you need a dark patch on the beach at night with no interference from nearby lights. What you’ll see is tiny, faint, blue/green sparks beneath your feet as you walk on spots on the beach that contain them. It helps to walk backwards, scuffling your feet, so you can see the wee beasties fire off.
Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, there will be such a huge patch of healthy ones that after you knock them around (which fires them up), that patch will continue to glow, like a big glow stick just under the sand.
Places to look for them are generally wet sand near the tide line, but they can be hiding anywhere from the outer edges of the wet sand to just inside the tide itself. Pools of seawater are also good for finding them, and can result in the most stunning displays. They can look like a small galaxy briefly exploding into life beneath your feet.
Locals in Tillamook County have nicknamed this “star stompin’,” which fits quite well.
They have been known to light up the surf as they crash on rocks, but that’s much more rare. This can be seen in bays near the ocean with bizarre results a little more often, however. In Nehalem Bay, if present, moving your hand in the water will create startling blue trails, or it will make your hand look like a ghost hand.
Green Flash at Sunset
Sometimes, under the right conditions, you may see a weird green blob briefly hovering above the sunset, or just at its upper edge, just seconds before the sun dips below the horizon. This isn’t to be confused with the optical illusion you sometimes get from looking straight at a sunset, where you see some dark, nebulous blob around the sunset. This is a definite green flash of sorts, lasting anywhere from a split second to several seconds.
It used to be the impetus for ridicule for those who claimed they saw this, but developments in video and camera technology in the 70s ended that. There are still many naturalists who doubt its existence – but it’s very, very real, and it’s definitely caught on among those gathered along the edges of the beach towns at sundown to watch the fiery show. You often hear someone in the crowd talk about hopes of seeing it.
What you need is a clear shot between you and the horizon, meaning a cloudbank offshore probably won’t allow you to see it. The famed green flash can be seen from high vantage points in cities as well as the desert, and there is a version of it at sunrise. Finding a high spot helps, like those cliffs just south of Cannon Beach, the lookouts above Manzanita, Cape Meares, Cape Foulweather (near Depoe Bay) or Yachats’ Cape Perpetua.
The reason for this wacky visage? As the sun begins pinching itself below the horizon, more and more color bands get blocked out by the atmosphere. The last color band to be locked out is the green.
Hungry Plants
Straight out of “Little Shop of Horrors,” there is a freaky plant on the southern Oregon coast and northern California coast called the Darlingtonia Pitcher Plant, which actually lives on insects. You can find plenty of them at the Darlingtonia Wayside in Florence, which is just off Highway 101, near Mercer Road.
These wacky creatures simply sit around, waiting for bugs to land on their sticky parts. Bugs are lured there by the bright colors and smells emitted by the plants. They soon find themselves confused by what look like exits, and get sucked down into the plants’ digestive systems.
You’ll also find plenty of picnic tables at this park, although it’s difficult to say this is suitable entertainment for dinnertime.
A Plethora of Shooting Stars
When August arrives, it’s pretty well known it’s meteor shower season all over. But on the Oregon coast, this wondrous natural event attains some stunning new visual heights.
The pollution-free skies of the coast allow for better viewing of these, although you’ll have to find a night without clouds. August has better chances of that than many months, however.
What you’ll see is a crystalline, awe-inspiring view of the stars, where the big shooting ones streak across the sky with much greater intensity. Plus, you’ll likely see more of them.
Hebo Mountain, near Tillamook, is known as an outstanding place to check out the nocturnal show. However, these typically clearer skies of the coast (when they’re cloudless, that is) mean better viewing of shooting stars year round.
Find yourself a cloudless night at any time of year, set yourself on the overlooks above Manzanita, away from the highway street lamps, and it’s likely you’ll spot a couple spectacular meteors darting through our skies.
Neskowin’s Ghost Forest
Throughout the year, this eerie ancient remnant is visible at Neskowin, just south of Pacific City. They are tree stumps some 2,000 years old, unearthed in recent decades by lowering sand levels of this area, and other parts of the Oregon coast.
These craggly, often barnacle-covered, twisted shapes were part of a forest stand that was gradually smothered by sand or soil, killing off the trees. Then, oddly enough, the stuff that killed the forest preserved it, by covering up the trees completely and keeping them out of the oxygen that would normally cause them to decompose. This process probably took a few decades.
The ones at Neskowin have been carbon dated by state officials as around 2,000 years old, but other ghost forests show up with increasing regularity at other times of the year, often twice as old. In and around Newport, they pop up after winter storms at beaches near Seal Rock or Moolack Beach. They can also be found at Cape Lookout State Park, and of course at Hug Point and Arch Cape – where the two historic cannon were found this past winter.
Sand levels are getting alarmingly low in some spots along the coast during the winter, which many scientists chalk up to global warming, creating heftier wave action during our famous winter storms. These sand levels rise again during the rest of year, but they appear to not be replenished as much as in previous years. The result is sand levels getting so low in areas like Neskowin that the now famous ghost forest stumps were getting uprooted and sucked into the sea this past winter. Sadly, their days may be numbered.
Singing Sand Dunes
Right up there with crop circles, this one too seems like science fiction, but this extremely rare phenomenon has been documented all the way back to Marco Polo’s jaunts to China.
In Oregon, it happens only on two spots on the coast: in some areas of the National Dunes Recreation Area south of Florence and just south of Cannon Beach. At times it sounds like distant voices singing. At other times, it's a bit like a violin or an odd, elongated squeaking noise.
These only happen under specific and very rare conditions: when two different kinds of sands grind together under the right degree of humidity. There are park employees at the National Dunes Recreational Area who have worked there for 40 years who have never heard it.
For more oddities, or extremely detailed tours of the Oregon coast, along with extensive dining and lodging listings, check out Oregon Coast Beach Connection.
Andre' Hagestedt is the editor of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, a travel news and entertainment Web site about the upper half of Oregon’s coast. He has been a journalist for nearly 15 years, having been employed at or written for a variety of media organizations throughout the Northwest. He lives in Portland and in Manzanita part time, and admits he is "so obsessed with the Oregon coast that it's ready to take a restraining order out on him."
