The Chetco River Inn, Heaven on Earth.

It was August 2020. folklore had just been released. I clung to it like a life raft. The world was strange. Stores half-empty. Masks over every face. People crossing streets to avoid one another. Headlines stacking grief after grief. Covid had stripped away the rhythm of daily life and replaced it with fear.

I had quit my psychotropic medications a month before. That meant withdrawals. Nights without sleep. Mornings with tremors. The old fear of hallucinations returning. Everything felt raw. Every sound too sharp. Every silence too wide.

My husband knew I needed escape. He booked us a week away at the Chetco River Inn. A place far from newsfeeds and hospital counts. A place where the river was wild and the stars still bright.

We drove south. Elvis, my new black lab puppy, sprawled across my lap. Digby, my puganese, snored in the back. Hank Williams, my Anatolian shepherd, stood watch out the window. My child, eleven years old, sang along to the radio. We stopped at In-N-Out, the last of modern comforts on this trip. We pulled over to gather blackberries along the road, juice bleeding onto our fingers.

Harris Beach was our first pause. The waves were constant, slamming and retreating, as if nothing had changed in the world beyond. Bird Island sat offshore. Tufted puffins nest there, though August is past their season. Gray whales pass in migration, though that day the horizon was empty. Still, standing at the edge of the continent felt like a benediction.

Then we turned inland. The road grew narrow. Dust rose. The last stands of redwoods appeared, giants older than my imagination. Oregon’s hidden grove, where trees reach 300 feet high and some are over 800 years old. The northernmost outpost of their kind. The drive wound up and up until the sea was gone.

At the end stood the Inn. Thirty-six acres along the upper Chetco. Off-grid. Solar powered. No cell signal. No news. Just river and garden. Pear trees heavy with fruit. Chickens scratching dirt. Rosemary and roses spilling fragrance into the hot August air.

Brookings, just downriver, is Oregon’s banana belt. The “Chetco Effect” makes this coast warm even in winter, sometimes 20 degrees hotter than nearby towns. That week the heat was a brutal 99 degrees, no relief from fog. The canyon itself felt like a furnace.

But the river was waiting. Cold, clear, emerald. Designated Wild and Scenic for 45 of its 56 miles. Fed by the Kalmiopsis. A refuge for salmon, steelhead, bald eagles, and kingfishers. Pools deep enough to swim. Rapids that dared you. Newts hiding under rocks.

I called it heaven. Should heaven exist. I sat on the porch and listened to crickets rise as the light dimmed. I watched the Perseids flare across the sky. Fear kept me awake. Wonder kept me alive.

The next morning we returned to the sea. Whaleshead Beach stretched wide and empty. The rock offshore shaped like a whale’s head. At high tide the spouting horn shoots water through the stone. That day it breathed mist into the air, like a giant exhaling.

By noon the heat pressed down. We ran back to the river. I let myself ride the rapids with no board. Foolish. Rocks cracked my tailbone and the bruise stayed for months. Impulsiveness was back in my life, no longer numbed by medication.

Healing meant learning where freedom stopped and recklessness began.

The days slowed. We swam. We picked pears. We braided rosemary. We cooked simple meals. We sat in the garden as the dogs slept. The Inn gave us rhythm. Wake. Swim. Rest. Repeat.

On our last night I stayed awake again. The Perseids streaked. Crickets sang. For once my fear did not swallow me. I felt my chest expand with the same cadence as the river. I felt like I could carry on.

That trip became a marker. A before and after. The next year I would go viral. I would travel full time for four years. No relapse. Still living med-free. Still alive.

But my heart always returns to the Chetco. To that August when the world shut down but a river still healed. To redwoods older than empire. To the banana belt heat. To a spouting rock that breathed like a whale. To the reminder that even when the world falters, wild places keep speaking.

And sometimes, they teach you how to listen again.