Our local headland, Cape Disappointment, is a place of history, natural beauty, respite, and wildness.

Digging through our drawers of files of folders of research, I recently found this charming old newspaper article, titled “The Enchanted Cape.” The article was written by Professor A.W. Devoe and published in the Ilwaco Tribune in 1932. I find myself craving any historical description of our local headland and this piece poetically captures the romantic attractions of Cape Disappointment. The article starts off with an editor’s note that describes the author, Devoe, as being a former Ilwaco High School teacher that was a “keen observer of nature in all its aspects.” The editor continues with a description of Devoe that I hope someone, someday will say about me, “There were few days he did not ramble through the woods or over the hills to North Head.” Through Professor Devoe’s somewhat flowery language we are able to get a glimpse of the cape seventy five years ago.

The dynamics of a rocky cape surrounded by water and its’ powers can be a challenge to synthesize; I think Devoe did wonderfully. “Here a sense of unreality thrills the mind as if this were an oracle to speak to the heart; a shrine where generations of men shall come to marvel like children at tremendous forces in play; the sweep of the Columbia, the daily motion of the storm winds of the Pacific and the fecund powers of nature so evident in the ruthless abundance of living forms. Cape Disappointment! That bold headland stands a challenge alike to the thrust of the Columbia and the momentum of unbroken ranks marching incessantly from the Pacific!” By the way, fecund means “fertile” or “productive.”

Multiple times throughout “The Enchanted Cape” author Devoe refers to the story Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, which, I discovered through some research, is about the quest for human happiness. A section of the article, titled “Moonlight and Glistening Sands” paints the cape as a place of mystery and enchantment. “Maid of Abyssinia! Sing as in a vision of this magic cape; of moonlight on long reaches of glistening sands that pour round its walls; of its fields of driftwood, the flotsam and jetsam of centuries; of its numberless creatures of the air and water, of its flocks of coot and gull winging above the sea or resting upon the cliffs; of monster whale plowing the seas in the distance; of racing porpoise, of herds of playful seal and of huge black-fish that swim in its boiling kettles. Let me hear again the wild melody of ocean beating his ancient rhythms in the lone caverns of the Cape.”

Anyone who has explored Cape Disappointment’s forests knows that it can be a wild place; much of the park is preserved as a “natural forest area.” If you leave the campground or Waikiki Beach parking lot, chances are you can relate with Devoe’s following observations under the heading, “We Like the Rain.” But let it rain, and let us join the creatures appreciative of life whether in sun or rain…The air is mild. A dank odor of dense forest and the smell of rain pervades the atmosphere. We are conscious of the throbbing breakers on the distant Cape. Over the planked roadway, slippery with the ooze of primitive life form we venture, keen to the coastal wilderness…We enter a spacious woodland chamber, carpeted knee-deep with velvet sphagnum. About us in the eerie light, in beauty and significance are symbols of the forest life, the mossy of mounds of its ancient progenitors, the ivy-covered hulks of these that once stood proudly, and beneath it all is that tangled skein of eager searching root forms feeding upon the ancestral mold.”
Next week we will continue to review Professor Devoe’s explorations and descriptions of Cape Disappointment. My hope is that in the next week you will have an opportunity to take a hike, get into the wild, and smell the rain.