| abstract | - When I was maybe eleven or twelve, my family used to go down to Clam Beach a lot to gather driftwood, which we either used for stove fuel or building material. In those days, we had more time on our hands; the Mad River hadn’t shifted its banks yet so the entire beach was crammed with a jumbled hodgepodge of available material. There was no metal gate blocking vehicle access so people could drive their big SUVs on the beach and take what they want. I seem to remember the day being overcast, though I can't recall whether it was spring, summer, or fall. Anyway, we drove further down the beach than we ever went before, maybe on past the Vista Point Lookout. We stopped near this dense cluster of alders and tangled brush and started collecting wood. Then my dad spotted something gleaming in the midst of this tangled shoreline woodland. It was a house. Not a crude hippie hut woven together from driftwood or a sprawling Victorian, but a simple, one-story, wood-frame house with a shingled roof. The front of it faced the ocean, and it had either red or green trim. We didn’t go inside it, however, so I could only speculate on what the interior must have been like (probably damp and moldy, filled with the rubbish left behind by human squatters). The house is probably long gone now, washed out to sea when the river finally relocated. I still think about it though. Let’s suppose that instead of leaving, we went inside to explore. Let’s suppose that instead of dark dreary rooms filled with mildewy, smelly trash piles, we found a completely different world in which anything is possible, including the laws of magic overriding the usual laws of nature. Let’s suppose that this particular house is actually one in a series of gates connecting a vast multiverse. We humans like to think such things are conceptually possible, that we can venture through a seemingly ordinary doorway and have a spectacular adventure in a place far from the rigid framework of scientific law. It may sound great until you consider what might be lurking on the other side of that particular door.
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