Walking the Tideline: Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast Trail

by Caroline Kurtz

Overview

In Walking the Tideline, Caroline Kurtz solo hikes the rugged, beautiful Oregon Coast—an expedition of isolation, adventure, joy, and grief inside the emotional wilderness of finding one's identity after the death of a loved one.

In her third memoir, Portland-based author Caroline Kurtz travels the coast of Oregon on foot in her late sixties, tracing the boundary of sand and salt water, rock and forests, carrying her shelter and food as she navigates the edges of solace and resolution after the death of her husband. During her journey, Kurtz grieves as she reflects on her long, and at times rocky, marriage to Mark, whom she had known and loved since she was a teenager in boarding school in Ethiopia. As she navigates the adventures encountered along the trail—leaky tents, hitching rides, chance encounters, and beautiful landscapes—she intertwines the historical events of coastal Oregon with her spiritual experience, giving space for the shattering of an old identity and the planting of a new self, nourished and enlightened by the depths of a profoundly complex and considered life.

Kurtz spent her early years in Oregon before her parents moved her and her siblings to remote Ethiopia, where she spent her childhood and teen years, before returning to America for college, where she reunited with and married Mark. The two lived variously in Portland, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and retired to Portland, where Caroline now lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781960803184
Publisher:	Catalyst Press
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Series:	A Road Going Home Series , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Caroline Kurtz lived in Ethiopia from ages 5-18 and worked in Kenya and Sudan as an adult. After her husband Mark died in 2013, Caroline started a nonprofit organization to bring solar energy and women’s development to Maji, still beyond the grid, in the corner of Ethiopia where she grew up. See DevelopMaji.org and https://carolinekurtzauthor.com/ for more information. She now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Read an Excerpt

Fortified by kindness, humbled by how permeable the walls between strangers can be, I got off the bus at the entrance of Cape Lookout State Park. The miles-long driveway to the campground meandered, lush with coastal trees and ferns. As I stood at the entrance, trying to figure out where to camp, I could hear the ocean. I passed RV hook-ups with their gravel and asphalt. I pitched my tent in an open space with a firepit and a picnic table. 

It had been an easy walk into the park, so as soon as my camp was organized, I followed signage for a nature walk through the campground. Trees and shrubs had identifying tags. I wished I was better at remembering how fir and hemlock differed. What evergreen huckleberry looked like in the wild. The name of that other shrub I’d already forgotten.

Near the end of the nature trail I saw a sign for the hiker biker camp. It was lovely, deeper in the forest; cozy alcoves soft with pine needles and a locker for overnighting food. 

I went back to the meadow-like spot where I’d camped and rolled up my tent. I carried it in a big, floppy bundle along the narrow path. A corner of the rainfly trailing behind me snagged on the shrubs. I felt silly making three trips into the forest from the open meadow, which I now realized was a group camp site. Mark would have explored before he set up. Why was I so impulsive? 

As I searched for a stone to pound stakes into the hard ground under the pine needles, I mounted a silent defense of myself. I would never be as careful as Mark. I would always make this kind of mistake. I had so much going on in my head, I was prone to tuning out the physical world, where he’d been so at home. But I could do well enough. Choosing the wrong campground—having to troop three times through the campground carrying my bundles to get it right—it was a small mistake. I could let myself make them often, learning to make decisions like this by myself.

The day had turned overcast. I devised a way to drape the tarp over my tent, sending thanks back to Ahnjayla. For supper, I pulled out my cold leftover Pad Thai. 

But I didn’t have rain. Only, after I’d crawled under the tarp and into my tiny abode, a raccoon. I heard it rustling around with the lunch fixings I’d forgotten in a zippered flap at the top of my pack. My flashlight found his yellow eyes under the table. “Shoo!” I said, and waved the light. The eyes blinked off and then on again, unimpressed.

Falling asleep, Four Strong Winds came back to my mind from the hippie cafe. Those winds that blow lonely and won’t change what I wanted changed. I wasn’t even walking into my new life. I was only seeing the shape of one: I would make my way, impulsive and absent-minded. Mark would not be there to rescue me. Nothing too much would change, but I would get used to it. And was I really alone? For moments at a time I knew I’d be happy again someday.

In the morning, I surveyed the invasion under my table. The raccoon had finished off my crackers, snapped open my air-tight box and eaten my peanut butter. Not on the crackers, I assumed. My bag of GORP was missing entirely, maybe taken home to the family. He—or would it be she, foraging for her kits—had bitten a hole in the sandwich bag holding my expensive sharp Irish cheddar. But left it behind. If I had to share, that seemed an acceptable division. 

Cape Lookout is one of the lowest of the lava-flow headlands on the Oregon Coast. Signs warned, BEAR COUNTRY. I walked with my bear spray in my hand. Even better, if the bears, as advertised, disliked surprises more than they disliked me, I would let them know I was coming. The hippie café had gotten me started on old favorites. 

I sang Nevills Brothers, sweet and haunting. Like their bird on the wire, I was trying to be free. I sang Paul Simon’s playful Mardi Gras several times, full of my joy in the silent green forest. I tried to remember all the verses of Elvis’s, You Were Always on My Mind, a song of endings. Full of regret. 

Here were things I could have said to Mark, things I could have done and hadn’t. I stumbled along the narrow path until I came to a tree slightly slimmer than me but sturdier. It leaned oceanward on the downhill side of the path, smooth and light-barked. I lay flat against it and sobbed. Mark hadn’t always treated me as well as he should have, hadn’t loved me as I wished, but I truly had been always on his mind.

Editorial Reviews

"Walking the Tideline invites us to join Caroline Kurtz on an intimate journey of self-discovery along the Oregon Coast Trail in the wake of her husband’s passing. Written with warmth and honesty, we experience the beauty, exhaustion, and healing of a sandy pilgrimage anchored in grief, yet longing for release. A story brave in its revelations, and satisfying in its insights, it’s a book that stays with you." — Henry Trotter, author ofCape Town: A Place Between

"[Kurtz] is an artistic wordsmith, and it was my privilege to have her as my right arm at Wunlit where the people made their peace become real, mal mi chum-chum, sweet peace, for a time.” — Bill Lowrey, Facilitator of Wunlit (South Sudan) People-to-People peace conference

"[R]eal, raw and truly a sacred story... Kurtz shares her personal vulnerability with readers, creating not just an intellectual exploration of cross-cultural differences, but rather a heart-wrenching witness of what it means to give one’s whole life...not knowing whether one’s hopes or intentions will be realized. I recommend her story to anyone willing to dive deep into their own heart to face the haunting challenges and contradictions of seeking to do God’s will when there are no simple solutions." — Rev Dr. Sue Hudson, The Presbyterian Outlook

From the Publisher