suppose wisdom comes with time and distance…and acceptance.
speak of it with awe, and aspire to make the pilgrimage each spring. After many years of contemplating it from afar, I decided to make my own migration in 2015.
Oregon’s high desert is a long way from anywhere, in terms of both time and distance. For most, it’s a long airWe planned to meet at the Field conditioned, seat-heated, surround-sound Station on Friday evening. I was coming orchestrated six-hour obstacle to the defrom Bellingham, and Amy was making lights of Portland, Boise, or the bright lights of White-faced Ibis. Photo by Paula Rustan Reno. But for others, it’s a journey back into our collective past along one of a handful of two-lanes developed in the days long before interstate highways. There’s a whole lot of “high lonesome” out there. Time and Distance. Far blue mountains wait patiently on the horizon, never seeming to get any closer. Nothing but sagebrush, lonesome the drive from Boise. Arriving early, with stunted junipers, and long horizons. But lots of time and distance to explore, I slow down and the landscape jumps intook a quick detour around the Diamond timately into the close focus of a lover’s Loop Road, winding through a landportrait, vibrant and alive. scape of ancient miniature cinder cones Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and lava flows. A sign for the Kiger Wild is a gleaming jewel in the center of this Horse Viewing Area caught my eye— “empty” space. The refuge constitutes a who could resist that? I turned off on a small speck of the Northern Great Basin’s dirt road, slick from recent thundershowvast expanse, but is a tremendously imers, but relatively flat. What the heck, I portant piece of wildlife habitat. Birders was driving a beat-up 4WD truck, and
had a tank full of gas. Time and distance. An hour later and eleven miles in and I’d yet to see another car. But red-tailed hawks soared overhead, and pronghorn antelope popped up occasionally. As evening approached, I was just about to give up, when there they were. A lone duncolored horse loped across the road, then two more, and suddenly off in the distance I spied a band of almost two dozen, several with foals at their heels. Buckskin, bay, roan; more shades of brown and sunset than I knew existed. I watched in delight, letting the experience transport me back to another time, savoring it all the more because it belonged to me alone. Later I realized just how special these horses were. Undiscovered in this remote area until 1977, the fewer than 200 Kiger mustangs currently in the wild were proven to be direct descendants of Spanish horses brought to the New World by the Conquistadors - time and distance, time and distance. I got to the Malheur Field Station after dark. The station opened back in the early 1960’s as a youth Job Corps site and, after being abandoned in 1969, had been
Brewing Up the Unexpected … 100 Gallons at a Time! British Ales, Belgian Style Sours and Lagers The North Fork Beer Shrine
Brewery • Pizzeria • Wedding Chapel • Power Station 6186 Mt. Baker Highway Suburban Deming
599-BEER(2337) 20
The heartbeat of Cascadia
>>> Go to AdventuresNW.com
to read ANW