The town of Newport is situated along Oregon’s central coast and is home to a few notable attractions such as the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Yaquina Head Lighthouse. During my stay in Oregon in the mid-’90s, I visited both places multiple times. In 1995, Keiko, the orca featured in the film Free Willy, was a resident of the aquarium and I was able to see this majestic killer whale in person. It was both exciting and disturbing to see Keiko as he swam restlessly and dispassionately in his tank, his drooping dorsal fin a sign of possible illness, injury or stress from captivity. He was eventually relocated and reintroduced into the wild off Norway’s coast, where he succumbed to pneumonia in 2003. His story is a sad one, and I was fortunate to be able to see this wonderful orca up close. Yaquina Head Lighthouse is north of Newport and oversees the area like a sentry. On this December evening in 1995, I had my back to the lighthouse as I photographed sea stacks in the bay, with Newport in the distance. The soft lighting rendered the scene in a gentle lavender hue, and as I made this image, a nine-inch-long banana slug meandered by in its slow, lugubrious way to the left of my tripod, leaving a slime trail in its wake. (Canon gear, Fuji Velvia ISO 50)