West Coast geography, in all its igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic geology bears the effects of the great Pacific Ocean force far more than the seashore of the Inside Passage.

Tides running to twelve feet often leave a broad shore line completely undressed and exposed at low water, sensational to beachcombers who can, for a few hours, view tantalizing secrets and bizarre creatures.

The intertidal zone holds an enormous abundance of life forms, occupying every rock, beach, pool, sand or mudflat. This is possibly the richest life-zone on earth, where plants and animals compete for space and often stack upon each other like damp totems.

Aggregating Anemones and Seersucker Kelp, wait for the return of the water.

Skeleton of a sea-log church and an outhouse in a salt meadow at Nuchatlitz Marine Park.

A hanging float often indicates a trail head. Sometimes it is simply art.

Beachcombers

Driftwood piles up on along the high water line awaiting the next spring tide to float off into navigation channels, hoping to damage the running gear of unwary boats.

“It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals.”

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row