We blazed out to central Oregon this past weekend and spent a day volunteering with the Oregon Natural Desert Association. The org’s mission is to defend public land, preserve natural areas and restore habitats, amongst a handful of other worthy goals.
Our volunteer group harvested and bagged 2,500 willow and cottonwood cuttings, which will be put in cold storage before being planted later in the spring. Once rooted our cuttings will prevent erosion and provide cooling shade for high desert rivers and the fish that live in them.
Not corpses! Each bag contains 150-200 tree cuttings.
After the harvest, we spent as much time as the sun allowed exploring the John Day Fossil Beds. It’s a mind bending snapshot of millions of years of geologic time.
These rocks are remnants of a three hundred meter high wall of boiling volcanic mud called a lahar that swept through this area fifty-ish million years ago. The event was likely a bummer for the tiny four-toed horses and other fantastical animals living in what was then a rainforest. Also check out my sweet sun hat.
For years, during our rural road trips, it’s been the duty of the passenger to google small towns as we pass through. We’re often trying to figure out why there is a town in a seemingly nondescript spot? Who lives here? Who lived here before European settlers?
We weren’t expecting exciting results from our google search as we left the fossil beds and passed through a nearly abandoned town called Antelope. We were however shocked to discover that in the 1980s this tiny spot at the bottom of a dry valley was the center of a conflict between townspeople and the followers of an Indian spiritual leader named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
It’s almost a too-weird-to-be-true story that devolves into violence and bioterrorism. It’s also the subject of the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. On top of covering the religious movement and its subsequent backlash, the documentary is an examination of community, religion, freedom and who is deserving of that freedom. The town of Antelope features heavily in documentary footage and some of it looks straight out of a fantastic 80s sci-fi film. It’s worth a watch.
We also hiked a bit in the Deschutes and White River valleys. I made Amy pose by waterfalls and, despite me wearing a beanie due to Sunday’s cool weather, she continued to mock my sun hat.
