PROLOGUE
It was called a force of nature. Formed more than sixty million years ago. The product of a lava flow emanating from a westernmost mountain range so huge and powerful that it spread across hundreds of miles to the shore, and at one point burrowed into the ground and came back in a kind of eruption. Once part of the coastline composition, decades of erosion has since separated the erupted monolith from the mainland. It towered seventy-two meters or two hundred and thirty-five feet above the shore and became celebrated by the native tribes as the Saghalie, known today as Haystack Rock off the coast of Oregon. According to legend the Saghalie emanated a strong supernatural and benevolent spirit that watched over and protected generations of its indigenous people. It was their belief that its spirit delivered paranormal activity, lightning, high wind storms and even earthquakes altering the outcome of not only tribal hostilities but peacetime livelihoods.
Throughout history mystical rumors persisted. Accounts of pirates and ghosts, even disputes over Sir Francis Drake’s landing prevailed. But the most prominent stories were the profound effects of the Saghalie that surrounded the landmark Lewis and Clark Expedition. Although significant, these events were never officially documented in the governmental ships log. However, if the sacred ancestral tales passed down through the generations of the Chinook and Clatsop tribes were studied, documentation did indeed exist.
“Innumerable rocks of immense size out at a great distance from the shore and against which the Seas brake with great force gives this Coast a most romantic appearance, . . .the grandest and most pleasing prospects which my eyes ever surveyed, in front of a boundless ocean…”
Captain (and surveyor) William Clark, January 8, 1806