Brown Squirrels, Blue Herons, Gray Doves, Yellow Rabbit Brush & a Red Scooby Pt 4

Alkali Lake to Riley



There is a stretch of road from Alkali Lake, which was a dried out squat of land that smells not quite as bad as Abert lake, (Rob says Abert with an Ernie-Muppet accent, Ay Bert)all the way to Riley that has ABSOLUTELY nothing along it. It’s sand, sage, rabbit brush, a juniper tree or two and barbed wire fence. That’s it. 2 hrs of alone time in your head because to talk about this monotony, is itself, monotonous. 100 miles of gray sand. Okay that was sorta nifty. Gray sand, in the middle of a desert where you don’t see obvious volcanic activity is kinda unique.


This many weeks away from the event I can’t tell you what I was thinking of, but Rob and I did have a conversation about midway along this stretch. I fudged the tale a bit, there is something out there in the exact middle of all that. It’s a dried out, uninhabited group of buildings called Wagontire. I don’t have any comment on another abandoned postal drop in Oregon. But Rob and I did look at this expanse with no water in sight, sand and brush and rock ridges and wondered, how did the pioneers get their wagons and horses and oxen through this? Native Americans didn’t have a lot of horses in southern Oregon. They were mostly walking to and fro. But here come the Euros and they come laden in the summer ( wagon travel is not speedy, they were getting here in June and July) with the heat baking down on your and considering that 20 miles a day on good ground was fast I can only guess that to make 12 miles a day was good in this country. It looks formidable to me. I think we both spent the last 50 miles of this stretch thinking on those hardy and rather foolish people. I get to call them foolish because I’m related to them. I know how stubborn they are. Traversing hundreds of miles of desert with horses and oxen and sheep! Amazing.


Riley


Coming up the hill on Riley is a nifty view. There is a sign that stands on poles 40 or so feet tall, the sign on that is another 15 or so feet high by 20 or so feet wide that advertises Riley’s charms. Gas ~ Food ~ Maps ~ with several bogus statements about how this is the last chance for anything before you get to Burns or if you’re headed north, to Bend. It’s a garish little squat in the road and there were several cars with Idaho plates parked there. I can only assume that most of their business has to come from Nevada/Idaho/California/Montana travelers that don’t have GPS or can’t read maps.


Leaving Riley the land becomes more familiar. Ranches, alfalfa fields, sheep and homesteads, complete with poplar trees, are defining the landscape to both sides of the road.


Burns


I expected more. I thought I had some solid memories of Burns but I think I was confusing it with another town but at this point I can’t even tell you what memory I was confusing it with. I think my brain had painted Burns with the memory brush of a town in Nevada but I don’t genuinely know.


Burns is just as dirty and uninspiring as Lakeview. Truly this is a town with very little to it, but it does appear to be on a better economic footing than Lakeview.


They do have a few more stores and businesses along their main street. The houses are on foundations, not on bare ground the way they were in Lakeview, and the properties are cared for. By the time we hit town it was 3 pm. We were hot and getting weary from the heat. The first two things we saw helped immensely. A Dairy Queen and a shady cemetery!


Three weeks later I can still tell you how underwhelmed we were by the service in that Dairy Queen. The ‘manager’ took our order with a sneer on her face and an attitude that beggars description. We would have left except we wanted that cold cold ice cream so badly!


The cemetery was across the street from the DQ. 5 or so acres of headstones and elm trees and walnut trees make for one happy Boo. We wandered that garden for an hour or so, stopping to read many of the names and dates. I found family there. Not surprising really, but I didn’t know they were there. I had assumed that most were either in the Mitchell or Madras or Clarno cemeteries or on family land. There are several ranches in eastern Oregon where family was buried on the land we lived on rather that in church yards or town cemeteries. Even now, by state law, when I pass, I could choose to be buried in a family plot on private land. Lucky for the folks that now own those ranches that I have no intention of being buried, I plan to be cremated, mixed with compost, left to season for a year or so and when the next spring or fall rolls around my children can plant a tree someplace and use what’s left of me to nourish it. No headstones, no caskets, no lead lined ‘covers’, just my ashes, some compost and a tree. A poplar would be appropriate, don’t you think?


I wanted to talk more about the animals we saw driving home, blue heron, antelope, deer, jack rabbits . . . but I’ve dragged this tale out more than long enough over several blogs. If I think of a good ending for the story beyond the tired and quiet drive home, with Rob behind the wheel, the Boo asleep in the back and me with my head against the glass watching the land speed by, I’ll come back and write about it.


We got back to Bend as the sun was sinking behind South Sister. It was a glorious day.