It was dripping; the sun shrouded by cloud, the cloud returning to damp where dew ran with rain and rain soaked into thick rivulets of sand. All these paths led to a tempest of gray salt, growling together as an always-temperamental Northwest coastline. We shouldered our loads, pack mules down scree slopes, each step sinking into the shifting earth.

The first day was different. From the golden sun reflecting off a classic green pearl, a perfect wave was ridden with friends yelping like small creatures in a wide world. Slowly, in its own time, the swell built into a fortress of play. A soft offshore breeze told ancient stories of the last days of summer, like secrets spoken only to the two of us out that morning.

Walking off the beach, skin tensing from the drying salt water, we turned and marveled at the temptation we left, but the promise of additional companions and a new adventure forced us back through the thick fern fronds and salal fields that guarded those secrets. We pulled into a freshwater bay to meet our other companions: Sam from Ocean Beach and Kris from hometown.

As we spread our gear across the gravel, we reveled in what was just had and the anticipation of what was to come—a sea of imagination. Tents and tarps; jackets and neoprene layers; stoves, filtration systems and amenities; all stuffed into bear canisters and assertively packed within the confines of four new SealLine expedition packs. Canoes and paddles, boards, wetsuits, a small wooden door, screwdriver and hardware made the trip. Finally, amenities for the sun and the cold: beer.

Each canoe weighed heavy in the soft mud as the four of us laughed, organized and inspected everything. We had the gear and a malleable plan. Now we needed waves. Under a milky afternoon, still with high, wafting clouds, we embarked waters teaming with perch, pikeminnow, coastal cutthroats and kokanee to a point of cache and then further across deeper waters into the middle of nowhere.

This was our annual expedition in search of far-away waves—often not there, often there. We scanned bays and points, searched maps and planned routes. One year the Lost Coast Range, another south to Baja. This year we wanted to stay home and discover the little-known secrets of our wild backyard.

On far western shores we moored the vessels under thick drooping cedar boughs and trekked into the shadows, dusk above us and wet bog beneath. We slipped on decaying boardwalks, falling sideways and forward as we toddled, drawn to the roar of a thundering ocean a mile away. Our boards acted like crutches under our arms and our thick waterproof packs like mattresses. As the trail rose and fell, twisting through the forest terrain and between protective eight-foot-tall salal fields, we were in a florist’s dreamland, as well as our own. Suddenly, darkness gorged upon the remaining light, birds fell still and night insects began their choir. Surf hissed as it crashed upon salty shores. Thousands upon thousands of pounds of hypertension breaking, tumbling over and over one another. The animals, the dripping canopy, the ancient muttering streams tinged brown by Fall leaves was drowned by excitement.

Camp One welcomed us with an evening storm that lulled us to sleep with the soft, synthetic patter of raindrops on nylon. As we emerged into the light of day two, all was sodden, the leaching wetness of winter – the rotting season. Nothing remained dry outside our expedition packs. And as we cooked packets of instant oatmeal, we scanned the angry horizon for signs of contour.

North was a mark on the map, a point, as well as lingering deer tame enough to comb with a pick. South was a bay with few signs of humanity and, straight west, into the heart of the Pacific was a madness of gray matter combusting without pattern, ending in a wall of white frigidity. So we checked north. We ventured south. And came to the conclusion over much deliberation, pseudo-scientific nonsense and amateur forecasting that south was the answer to our dreams. There, miles from camp we witnessed a clean, A-frame peak dashing itself upon a hardened black shoals, falling to rest after its long journey. So we tore like madmen, over silky seaweed and mounds of purple bear scat back to camp in a rush to beat a pulsing tide. Packed a little lighter, we double-time over bleached-tree graveyards, through gaping stone holes and slippery cavernous passages.

Camp Two was a sand bank, a small cove of great fortune that was ours, alone, for four days. From this vantage point, we watched the sea. Corduroy lines of swell marched like infantry. That clean A-frame was gone, replaced by a meaty little slab.

Wet in the water and wet ashore, the weather carpeted the coastline each passing day. We ate food the consistency of porridge and drank small cups of instant coffee. Shaded by the rainforest above, picking our way through fern and salal below, we scoured for any bits of dry wood we could find. At the end, we divvied the remaining food and gear between us to lighten our return. Mosses and lichen draped over any uncovered surface.

These instances were often the most memorable, the time away from time where scrutiny of an industrial civilization weighed weight upon a ticking time bomb. Omniscient and harmonious was the mind, free to soar in solitude like the eagles above, and glide like a Pelican upon the updraft of rolling sea. We found more scat; bear, raccoon, coyote. We stepped over the skins of dogfish and collected Japanese plastics from disasters far away and seemingly long ago. Then we ended.

The morning of our departure, the sun broke and alighted our long playful shadows across the sand as we slipped northward towards Camp One, back through the fern forest and salal fields to a freshwater point. We had work to do.

As we paddled towards our cache near a hollowed-out burnt cedar remnant, abandoned hundreds of years ago by the People of the Canoe, a fire blazed in a clear-cut swathe just over the park boundary lines. It filled the lake’s reflection an even deeper brown, eerily reminding us of the forgotten emptiness that now lies still on the coastal banks, watching the same shoal morph and erode with the ocean’s power.

We slid onto the sandy beach, found our stores of wood and hardware, beer and fire, and set to work. Skyler repaired the lean-to with his fashioned door. Sam built a hot fire of cedar wood and lava rock, while Kris fashioned a shovel to carry the stones from heat to shelter. Over the course of three hours we took turns bathing in the sweet sweat of a traditional sauna, removing all traces of bitter cold from our bones. And then just before dusk we set off for home, just as we had done days prior when we entered the shadows of fern and salal that guarded the undiscovered surf in the wilds of our backyard.

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest

© Cameron Karsten Photography of surfing the Washington coast, Pacific Northwest