Hope for the Wrong Thing: Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast

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.