Oceans of bits. Bandon used to be defined by the sweet smell of the local lumber mill and the morning fleet of fishing boats that chugged their way out the mouth of the Coquille River, past the busy lighthouse and out to a long day and night on the Pacific Ocean. Today, the mill is closed, the fishing boats fewer and the lighthouse used only for postcards and screensavers. Bandon now is a tourist town. The houses along the cliff, looking down on the rocks and beach made famous by Jeep Cherokee commercials, are filled with wealthy retired Californians.
Locals drive by in pick-ups chatting on their cell phones.
And the local paper is filled with letters complaining about the quality of the cable television service and the local Internet Service Provider. Bandon these days lives on e-mails and Fed Ex, eBay and the World Wresting Federation. But when you climb down the cliff to the beach, with its pounding breakers and looming off-shore monoliths, Bandon Beach is the same as it was a million years ago. Back then, there were more Coquille Indians than American settlers on the beaches and, elsewhere in the world great, troubling poems were being written about places like this. The great Victorian poets of England and America were obsessed with the ocean.