FLY-OVER COUNTRY

 Notes from a visit to Eastern Oregon

Oregon east-of-the-Cascades is a mystic, even ethereal place.  Not much there, but so much hidden and so much to explore.  I think this as I drive the Subaru out of Bend and Redmond toward who knows what or where.  My brother from another mother – a chum I met back in college – rides shotgun. 

Our usual mode of exploration transit involves two wheels attached to a righteous amount of horsepower. But this trip, in mid-September, found us nursing ailments – knees, backs, joint-related maladies – ailments we never really considered over the fifty years of our shared adventures.  

The west’s Basin and Range, in the rain shadow of the Sierra and Cascades, is a mosaic of lodgepole, sage and pinion, basalt and dry washes and baking desert sun. It stretches all the way to the base of the Rockies. Seemingly desolate and unforgiving, most of us simply fly over from San Francisco or Seattle en route to Chicago, New York, London or any of a thousand historic destinations. Yet, in that jet-plane rush, we’re flying over history that began before time. 

And during that ‘before time,’ the sea floor lifted and buckled to be shaved and carved by ice and wind. Lava oozed from fissures, flowed until cool, and solidified only to be broken into some semblance of dirt by freezing and thawing and the incessant labors of acidic lichens. Winds and rains pushed and scrubbed topsoil off prehistory’s basaltic base. Grasses, shrubs and, eventually, those pinions grabbed hold in protected crevasses. Luck probably played a hand. Luck plays a hand in a lot of life, doesn’t it?

Early man migrating across the Bering Strait during an ice age or two – or seven – left his subtle mark. Ten of thousands of years later, European settlers crossed, lured by the siren song of California’s fields of gold, groves of redwood and fir and soils rich for tillage. Cities were sure to follow.

Some folks trickled back.  Those with a different dream or, perhaps, a recurring one. Looking for the next Mother Lode? Looking for the next verdant valley? Or simply looking. Remnants include rough-hewn cabins protected from rot by decades of arid drought. Fencelines run straight up hillsides begging the question, What was being fenced in or fenced out?

 

Rutted dirt two-track roads followed emigrant routes. Highways followed those. But off those highways, wading through the sage and yellow pine, traces of the steel tires of Conestoga wagons and primitive ox-drawn carts can still be found scratched into the land. One wonders how many head can graze on one’s 160 acre grant. Did they have the land grant program here? They sure as hell couldn’t depend on row crops or grain. There surely was no sod to bust.

 

We drive past a basalt bluff, one that looks like an 11^th century Scottish Castle. (Note: I had visited a Scottish Castle only three weeks before.) The formation long preceded man and will live long after we’ve departed. 

Etched into the base are the pointillist stories of the Utes or their predecessors. The message is probably simple, but we’re left only with conjecture. These humans were independent relying only upon their skill and wit and the stuff they learned from the prior generations. Let’s call that ‘history’ in its most basic of applications.

The contemporary folks who live out here, likewise, are independent souls.  As my companion and I see signs in support of a presidential candidate he and I both disdain, a realization – or maybe just another conjecture – rises. These people depend first upon themselves and then their neighbors. In this lonesome territory, I suspect the sheriff is an hour or more away, as is the tractor repair guy. A trip to a big box store might consume a whole day.  And you might not make it to the hospital in time. So the signs I may disdain might really be saying, Leave me the hell alone. I’ve got this. I’m good out here on the high lonesome. Followed, perhaps, by: You likely wouldn’t be. (In my case, they’d be right.) Hard working, rugged folks with well-honed views of things different from those of two guys cruising around these parts in some damned Subaru.

 

We pass through a small town, no bigger than a wink. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau may have come this way when relocating from Murderer’s Bar on California’s American River (near my one-time Placer County home) to the Idaho mines.  

Up the road a bit we pause where the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh escaped from India and set up a colony four decades back bringing with him seven Rolls Royces and much consternation.  

Further on we visit a site where their-workday-is-done trucks rest scattered about a field like a graveyard, their once robust bodies dissolving into the sage, destined to be lost to history long before the aforementioned bluff.

Throughout the journey we are moved by the melding of horizon and sky, the vastness of geologic time, the incessant workings of the elements, and realization that there is so much more to explore, so many more stories to conject about and – as we both stare into our mid-70s – so little time left to do it.  

 

Perhaps that is the one great lesson of Oregon’s high desert: never will we see it all or grasp the enormity of its time and space, but never should we stop trying. 

 

o0o

 

This day’s route: US 97 north from Bend; OR 126 east to Prineville; US 26 to Mitchell (Charbonneau?); OR 207 north to Fossil (check out the John Day Fossil beds scattered through here); OR 218 west to Antelope (pop. 39 ~ former locale of the Shree Rajneesh); continue north to Shaniko (field of rusting vehicles, but, sadly, no trace of a Bhagwan’s Rolls); US 97 south to Bend.

Nearby? Oregon’s High Desert Museum about ten miles south of bend on US 97. All kinds of history! Plan on a half a day.  Bring the youngin’s. https://highdesertmuseum.org

 

A bit further east? National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center near Baker City, Oregon. Come see the privations immigrants endured and check out the wagon ruts still visible in solid stone. Allow another half day. https://www.blm.gov/learn/interpretive-centers/national-historic-oregon-trail-interpretive-center

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

FIELD NOTES FROM SCOTLAND’S HIGHLANDS

 A rare Church of the Open Road international sojourn

Imagine a place where the landscape is green year round.  Where cities are dotted with 500-year-old churches and the rural hillside and dale constructs might be four times that old. 

Where smarter-than-I border collies expertly herd clusters of sheep commanded only by the sharp whistle or yip of the shepherd. 

Where rivers and lakes are crossed on 100-year-old ferries with vehicle platforms turn-tabled by hand enabling drivers to enter and exit from the same end of the vessel. 

Where rural roads are single lane and drivers patiently wait in pull out spaces for on-comers to pass. And where folks greet one another with a genuine smile and a kind hello.

This is what Candi and I experienced on our two-week relatively unguided tour of the Scottish Highlands.

  

 

Facilitated by the British travel company McKinlay-Kidd, our transportation ~ generally rail…

…and lodging was conveniently arranged. Booked into small B&Bs and boutique hotels, we were able to fill our days with walks through pastures and hillsides… 

...visits to 2500-year-old ruins…

…and explorations of the non-touristy aspects of the vaunted Isle of Skye.

A successful vacation is at once relaxing and enlightening. On our visit we discovered that the island was sculpted by a combination of volcanic uplifts and glacial scouring.  We learned that the British Isles, like the USA, is a land of immigrants dating back to the times before any Roman conquest reached its shores. 

The centuries-old sturdy rock bridges, we were told, were engineered by a military man ironically named (and this is true) General Wade. 

We were told that the tartans worn by various clans may have been more of a marketing ploy than actual garb fashioned by or for actual families ~ a bit of a jolt to Candi whose maiden name is Stewart. 

And the Scotch whisky. That’s right: whiskey spelled with no ‘e’. The nose and the flavors vary by region ~ I’ll have the highly peated, thank you very much ~ and the worst thing one can do with a wee dram of good single malt is sip it while puffing on a cigar. Kills the flavor profile and nuance. “Save the cigar for ‘yer’ Kentucky bourbon,” I was told by the fella in this photo.

While Cloverdalians were enduring 100+ August degree heat, we were rather enjoying 60 degree intermittent rain and wind.  

Complaint?  Heck no! The warmth of the people, their courteousness and their smiles prompted me to ask, “Did we really want to return to a sweltering Clover Springs?” 

With welcome sunshine evident on only two days of our Highlands sojourn, return home we did, but with profound appreciation for the geography, history and lovely people of this enchanting, far-off land. (And the whisky.)

o0o

Details?  More info on McKinlay-Kidd? (https://www.mckinlaykidd.com) They offer a wealth of different packages for folks wishing to independently explore the whole or the parts of United Kingdom. Check ‘em out!

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

RICKY: ARMED

Unbelievable though it seems to me now, it’s been nearly 25 years.  And I still lose sleep.  

         I served as a principal of an elementary school.  I’d been doing this long enough to know that if, whenever possible, I could spend time on the yard at recess, I could minimize the number of second-hand disciplinary accounts I needed to wade through after recesses.  Plus, shooting baskets with kids – particularly as poorly as I shot baskets – always served as a positive.

         A new fifth grade boy named Ricky presented a particular uniqueness almost from the moment he walked on campus that fall.  Handsome as a kid could be, but big and intimidating. Intellectually very, very sharp, but, unable – or, perhaps, unwilling – to be a friend.  My goal was to make him mine by interacting, shooting a few hoops and making eye contact whenever possible.  It didn’t work.  I think he knew I was looking but for some reason, he wouldn’t look back.  

         After a string of questionable behaviors – running through jump rope games, being overly physical on the court or while in touch football, ‘getting into the face’ of another student – the kid eclipsed my patience when he approached a fourth grader who was playing basketball, grabbed the ball and kicked it across the yard.  The littler kid puffed out his chest and said, “Go get that!” at which point Ricky put the kid in a headlock and punched his face not once, not twice but three times.  That earned the big boy a three day suspension from school, even though an assault charge and a report to the police might easily have been in order.

 

Suspensions – the very few that I issued – always required a student-parent conference upon reentry to campus.  The conversation at this one was particularly memorable. 

 

Me:            I’m glad you’re back at school.  This place isn’t complete unless all my students are here.

Mother and child both likely viewed this as condescending. Perhaps it was.

Mom:          Ricky has something to ask you.

Me:            Go ahead.

Ricky:        Why are you always picking one me?

 

Flabbergasted, I didn’t know quite how to respond.  I wasn’t going to argue with the child, I wasn’t going to mention the criminal assault I’d witnessed, though should have. Instead, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open until I released him back to class.

         His mom then spent a good five minutes excoriating me for singling out her son. “He comes home and tells me how he’s being bullied all the damned time!  And you, you who’s supposed to be in charge, you turn out to be just another male who lets him down!”  

Quite the tirade, I thought.  The school secretary, having heard the commotion from outside my closed door, agreed.

         

Later that afternoon, I received an unsolicited phone call from Ricky’s grandfather.  He apologized for the behavior of his daughter’s son and for that of his daughter.  “The boy’s had a rough time since his father abandoned him and his brother.  Really left my daughter in the lurch.” I thanked him for his concern, but he continued. “I’ve decided I need to take a stronger hand in teaching him some respect and responsibility so I’ve decided to take him and his brother up to the ranch an learn ‘em both how to work the animals and maybe learn’ em how to fire a rifle.”

         “Fire a rifle?” I don’t think I stammered, but I might have.

         “Yeah.  Target shooting. Cleaning the thing afterward.  I think that’ll help teach ‘em how to be respectful and responsible.  Deep down, I know he’s a really good kid.”

         My heart had always told me that deep down, they’re all really good kids. But in this case, I didn’t understand the logic.  Here was an angry kid, one who had become an expert at posing as the victim when he was the victimizer.  Indeed, he was a bully – but one whose behavior was always accepted by his parent. What the hell was learning him how to use a rifle really going to do for him?

I didn’t respond with that question. Instead, I thanked Grandpa for his concern but as I hung up the phone, a distinct chill coursed through my body.  This kid potentially could bring a firearm to school and, instead of punching someone his junior, he could pull it out and shoot him. Or he could storm into my office and shoot me. 

         That sleepless night, I found myself thinking not so much about my own mortality, but that if I were somehow incapacitated, how would I be able to protect my kids out on the yard or in their classrooms?  The thought didn’t leave me, even when I transferred from that school site position to an administrative slot in the neighboring district office.  Ricky knew where to find me, I was sure.

 

Retired now some fifteen years, that eerie chill revisits every time some kid gains access to a weapon and makes his way onto a school campus. If I were there, I’d throw myself in front of the kid if I thought it might save the life of another. 

That urgent, weird feeling of regard and disregard returned on a recent Monday when news broke of a 14-year-old who took out two fellow students and two math teachers at a high school in Georgia.  The kid’s dad reportedly bought him an AR as a birthday gift.  

 

I didn’t sleep well that Monday night.  I kept thinking of my boy, Ricky, Even though he could no longer be a threat to me.

About twenty years ago, over a holiday break – several years after Ricky left my elementary school campus – as a junior or senior in high school, his mom found her son hanging from a closet rod in his bedroom with his Sunday-best tie looped around his neck and knotted over the dowel.

         Over the course of my 35-plus years in education, I lost five – maybe six – students to early deaths.  One with a congenital heart defect.  Another slipped over a waterfall.  With each, I found myself burrowing into a quiet room where I could shut the door, turn down the lights and simply cry. 

         Ricky would be no exception.

         But I still lose sleep.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press