SchrÖdinger’s Gun
Elissa E. Minor When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my pistol. —Stephen Hawking
My wife and I drive the dogs to Sand Lake on a rainy Saturday. A four-mile swath of rolling sand dunes, Sand Lake lies between Cape Lookout and Cape Kiwanda on the North Oregon Coast, just twenty minutes from our house. The road curves, wrapping the trees and estuaries on either side into a wet, mossy huddle. The wipers make easy work of the steady rain against the glass, and when we pull off the road, the dogs leap from the car after the ball we’ve thrown into the dunes. Mixed-conifer forests surround us on three sides. And to the west, always, is the sea. We aim for the eastern stand of Sitka spruce trees, following the dogs over dunes capped with European beach grass and through low valleys where fairy carpets of neon moss and carnivorous sundews cling to the sand underneath them. When the humans have had enough, we open the back of the car and yell, “All aboard!” As I wait for the dogs to hop in, I kick a rock in the sand that turns out to be a spent shotgun shell instead. This is why we only come to Sand Lake when it is raining. When the weather is nice, people flock to the area with ATVs and guns. They make a shooting range out of my mossy fairy carpet. Their four-wheelers replace the thrum of rhythmic waves with the muffled, throaty roar of engines and the pop-pop of their