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I could feel an intense rumbling vibration all around as we pulled into a parking spot in Ecola State Park, a small plot overlooking several views of the Oregon coast. One such view was Cannon Beach, the setting of a fictional town featured in a children’s movie. The rock formations were as tall as any skyscraper I had seen, and the mist hovering along Indian Beach was the perfect setting for any pirate adventure.

As I opened the door, the rumbling became even louder. It vibrated in my bones. I looked up to see two coastguard helicopters hovering above us. They sat perfectly still, one perched almost in the trees. The sound of the propellers, I could only imagine, was the same sound that came from the universe in the deep aftershocks of the Big Bang. We watched as they sat motionless, frozen in time. I saw a guardsman slide down a rope and disappear beneath the ledge where we stood. The ocean waves came five and six in a line, crashing well above the walls of a lighthouse sitting hundreds of feet out in the ocean.

A few minutes later, the same guardsman was pulled up the rope by himself.

There were several emergency vehicles in the parking lot cordoned off from the public, and not a single emergency responder in sight. It gave me an uneasy feeling, but the crowds of people who were there to take in the view acted as if all of this were normal, so I took it as nothing more than a Coast Guard exercise.

I stopped along the asphalt path to get some photos of the beach in the distance. The sun was out, and the coast was blanketed in an almost-transparent curtain of fog filtering the sunlight off the giant rocks. The entire area, as a matter of fact, was covered in a surreal mist as if this were a dream. As I pulled out my camera, I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread, an intense, vacuous emptiness that I couldn’t explain, and almost brought me to tears. The tears and aching in your gut that come when standing over the casket of a loved one.

I was deeply connected to whatever brought the Coast Guard helicopters to this place. Even though I couldn’t see it, I was tethered to some kind of death that had taken place along this shore I had never been to until today.

A few weeks later, on a Sunday morning while doing nothing more than sitting in my chair drinking a cup of coffee, that feeling of connection came back. Not nearly as strong and triggered possibly from the sound of an ambulance siren passing in the street. The details were hazy, like the beach weeks before, but they were there. I was an old sea captain in a previous life.

I don’t remember anything about my crew or my boat. I know it was many years ago when the best technology was looking at the stars to guide the way, and the way the ocean smelled just before a storm. I remember nothing except that my life was taken by a rogue wave in treacherous waters. The only reason I can think of for being out in the water under such bad conditions was greed. Or maybe we were simply trying to feed our families. The feeling wasn’t clear. And for a moment, sitting in my chair, coffee in hand, I was back in that instance, at least the part of me who remembers I was a sea captain. I know now the sea doesn’t want us here on this planet, tossing waves like you or I might flick a mosquito away from our skin.

I inhabit a different body now, with a deeper respect for nature, but I am no longer in love with the water. It brings nothing but a tense feeling in my bones. A deathly hum in my body meant to erode my existence like the waves pulling sand from the beach, and a dark, unearthly fear of the unknown.