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The Salt Cairn —Seaside, Oregon Winter at the end of the trail, where the Columbia washes the ocean, what one book calls The Kingdom of Conifers and you, “the prettiest greens”: cedars, hemlock, Douglas fir. Here, Clark sent his salt makers across the scuffled dunes, to make a salt that was excellent, strong & white. We are coughing, our lungs thick with a cold we carried through the taffy shop and pinball palace to a carousel that no one rides in this ragged carnival town. Did the salt makers camp near the end of this block? I search for the cairn. To my left, an anvil of headland stretches away, beyond me, the ocean heaves forever shoreward. The air is salt and wood smoke, the rain, good in my lungs. Twenty minutes go by before I find it–– cemented together by the village Lions and squared in a wrought iron fence, five kettles atop the fitted stones. I have dragged you into a salt maker’s life. What will become of us? You singing to the sleeping child, me boiling the ocean down to whatever is good, to what remains. 85 ...

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