A Visual Bombardment at Harvey Allen Battery on Cape Disappointment #HarveyAllenBattery #CapeDisappointment #DeadMan'sCove #NorthheadLighthouse

Moss, powder, water, and rust provide the pallet of colors for decomposing structures found on Cape Disappointment on the Washington coast.  Built in 1905, Battery Harvey Allen never saw any wartime action, but now it offers its services as the backdrop for drammatic photo-ops for weekend wanderers.
   

The battery's metal doors evoke an auditory impression of the sound they must have when they were clanged shut – even while the salty air silently besieges their integrity.   
 

Could I have stood on the slab below hour-after-hour watching for whatever might come – not knowing that atomic bombs would make this outpost obsolete before anything worrisome would ever come into sight?

Would I have surmised that the emplacement for the cannon's carrage would become a lily pond? 

Or the barracks dissolve into op-art and

while its roof becomes a floor – a surface for leaf and cone litter?
 

Over the hill from the battery is Dead Man's Cove, named for the men whose bodies washed ashore when their ships wrecked at the entrance to the Columbia River.  The haunting, but exilarating atmosphere of the Harvey Allen Battery repeats itself in this nearby cove.  The solitary tree on the rock seems poised as if preparing to jump from the pinnicle of its tiny-island foothold.         

A short driving distance from the battery is the North Head Lighthouse.  Its structures are being restored by an organization called Keepers of the North Head Lighthouse.  You can see the new whitewash on the tower and its freshly painted railings.  Maybe these structures will not become the home of moss and rust.  With luck, you will visit after a rainstorm and have the bounty of puddles and their reflections for inclusion in your photos.
   

Visit.  Do visit.  Be prepared for a bombardment of images! 

 Like me in the photo below: wander, shoot and harm nothing! 

                           (This last photo gets a credit for Susan Dufroese)