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Showing posts from July, 2023

Hawaii, Owyhee...uh, Böglands (Part One)

  Ruby and Gemma celebrate the end of the world in 2020 In August of 2021, as Summer rounded out the year with its characteristic spurt of heat, Oregon wildfires decided it was finally time to make their bid for infamy and proceeded to scorch the sky by burning 10 times the acreage they burned the previous year. Then, also, U.S. COVID-19 deaths surged past the 600,000 mark (currently 1,127,152) a year and a half after Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow reassured the public, “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We have done a good job…”   Owhyee Canyonlands in 2021 The Southeast corner of Oregon had long been enticing Kip, Uncle Rico, and me ever since our introduction to Steens Mountain, and though we knew the area was isolated and often desert-like, we also reasoned that triple-digit temperatures somehow seemed more wholesome in an actual desert rather than urban Portland. Shifting winds modulated the atmosphere from opaque to hazy to clear, bu