Haystack Rock at One Point Four Million Years

Haystack Rock stands two hundred thirty-five feet above the surf at Cannon Beach, a monolith of dark basalt that has been standing here, in roughly this form, for approximately fifteen to seventeen million years. It is a remnant of the Columbia River Basalt Group, lava that erupted from inland sources and flowed west to the coast, where it met the ocean and hardened. The surrounding rock eroded away over the millennia. Haystack Rock did not, because basalt is harder than the surrounding material, and because the ocean, which relentlessly removes everything it can, has not yet finished the job.

That the rock is still here is fortunate for the birds. Tufted puffins nest in the upper crevices from spring through summer, small, improbable seabirds with orange beaks and a flight style best described as determined. Pigeon guillemots and western gulls also nest on the rock's protected faces. The entire formation is a State Marine Garden and part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which means the intertidal zone surrounding it, the tide pools that drain and fill twice daily, are protected as well. The hermit crabs, sea stars, anemones, and ochre sea stars in those pools are not to be collected or disturbed.

The rock that looks permanent to any human visitor is, on geological time, temporary. The Cascadia Subduction Zone will rupture again. When it does, the tsunami that follows will reshape this shoreline the way it has reshaped it before. Haystack Rock will still be standing. Whether the town behind it will look the same is a different question.