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, but never predictably. For the most part, the smoke made even the most epic vistas look something like the dystopian environments depicted in motion pictures like Soylent Green.

Once again we comprised a convoy of two off-road capable vehicles (Rico’s Jeep and Kip’s increasingly capable Montero) and veered off the highway just after taking advantage of an ice-buying opportunity at the Riley Store, which, apart from the post office building across the highway, appears to embody the entirety of the town of Riley.

This region was once covered with Pleistocene pluvial lakes and hosts some of the oldest known inhabited sites in North America. Archaeologists have only recently found artifacts here that suggest humans were in the Riley area 18,000 years ago. With the advent of the Holocene, however, a long drying-out phase began which reduced formerly vast lakes to barren salty playas.

 

Evidence of a richer past can sometimes be discovered in the flat surfaces of rimrock that overlook long-lost shorelines.

 

Rock paintings as they appeared              after processing with D-stretch    

 

 

Since I was not required to drive, I hadn’t spent as much time previewing the route as I should have. I quickly lost my bearings in landscapes that reiterated a few basic themes about how to become alone and lost.

 

 

Eventually, we passed through the Saddle Butte W.S.A. (Wilderness Study Area). It was notable for possessing several lava tubes, one of which we managed to find by assuming a correlation between lava tubes and random rock cairns that dotted the terrain.

Tumbleweed receptacle

Some of the entryways were less amenable to guests than others.

Photo Credit: Kip

Uncle Rico eventually found a path into the underworld.

The cave was cool, but not delightfully cool in the same way that death is restful, but not the way I’d prefer to catch up on sleep. Once we cleared the large boulder-field at the narthex of the cave, the tube traced a serpentine path down a gravitationally defined incline of dried silt accumulated over ages(?) It didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that, though subtle, the tube was laid out like an elongated funnel. 

I don’t know for sure how far or how long we walked (like fishing stories, spelunking stories lend themselves to exaggeration) until our path terminated in an Uncle Rico shaped hole beyond which Rico didn’t feel the need to probe and Kip and I couldn’t fit.

LEFT: That time lava dripped from the ceiling. CENTER: (Photo Credit: Rico) Mini stalactites? RIGHT: Cave wall with localized mystery sheen.

The walls of the lava tube doubtless tell informative stories to those who can read them. We supposed that we were reviewing a catalog of the different ways basalt can cool from its molten state or the ways chemicals can leech over geologic time. In places, the basalt walls had a curious donut-like icing. Where I was reticent to even touch unknown glazes - my brain harboring references to cautionary horror movies like The Thing, or Stormy Daniel's Bikini Kitchen - Uncle Rico’s scientific curiosity eventually compelled him to lick the wall in a quest for more data points. I don’t think he discovered anything conclusive, but on the bright side, he didn’t drop over dead from some prehistoric pathogen a matter of days later. I am still uncertain whether he should be emulated or not (what if cave walls taste like bacon?).

 

 

 

The question you have to ask yourself in a lava tube (or any cave) is, “How did all those big chunks of rock come to lie on the floor of the cave?” followed by, “Is that concavity in the ceiling a perfect fit for the rock lying below it?” 

Do you ever, when you’re walking down the street, happen upon groups of people being still and quiet, just silently waiting for an earthquake? I haven’t. There’s probably a good reason for that. So to summarize, when deep inside a lava cave, may the odds always be in your favor.

Though hidden in the depths of the Earth, we cannot yet hide from the relentless march of time. Rico reminds us that we must still find a path to the Owyhee River so three intrepid cavemen emerge into the lengthening rays of the sun. We are re-entering a world that teases the apocalypse, but hopefully, we are leaving our misshapen shadows behind on the walls of the cave (Given a little more thought, that could probably be crafted into a fine allegory).

I’m not driving, but I can’t help but notice that our working definition of ‘road’ has become somewhat more elemental. Here, a working road appears to be merely a story told by an unknown predecessor.

The Owyhee River Canyon is, in places, 1000 feet deep and Rico has chosen a particular story about how to get to its bottom. But it turns out the story is out of date and doesn’t account for one deluge or another that erased its physical basis. Given time and resources, we could perhaps create a path, or pick one through the prickly brush, but help is far away and there is no need to go all-in at this point in the trip. 

Deb makes chicken cordon bleu. It's not three species tacos, but it isn't Seven-Eleven roller hot-dogs either. (Photo Credit: Rico)

 

We retrace our route back to the plateau and set up camp in a bare spot. From this vantage point, half the world is sky and half the world is ground and as the last light from the sun retreats beyond the horizon, we soon discover how dark the nights can be and how radiant the stars.

 

Would you like to read Part Two? Follow this link:

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

Eagle Creek Fire Jumps Over the Columbia: Childless Adults Even More Thankful to be Childless.

The Columbia River Gorge 09/05/2017 at 3:00am (As viewed from the Cape Horn Viewpoint on SR 14. Phoca Rock visible in middle of river.)

The Columbia River Gorge 05/31/2010 (from Cape Horn Viewpoint)

I've aligned these images based on the positions of Phoca Rock and the navigational structure in the middle of the river to estimate what areas are burning.

When I arrived at the viewpoint, it seemed I had missed the explosive advance of the fire's front. Still, as the wind gusted, and photographers scrambled to secure their tripods, one or another tree or other combustible item would explode like a solar flare.

The smoke stung my eyes. The buffeting breeze reminded me of speeding through central Oregon on a 104 degree day with the windows down.

Whenever the breeze lagged, voluminous, billowing smoke would hang briefly, as if in collusion with the ravenous flames, attempting to cover their sins of gluttony.

Starting around 4:00am, I started receiving emails indicating that the fire had jumped the Columbia and set Archer Mountain aflame. The photographer next to me pointed out an ominous glow to the East.

I drove to the St. Cloud recreation area and caught site of the flames — ever expanding.

 Looking South to the Oregon side of the gorge from St. Cloud recreation area.

Another view of Archer Mountain from a vantage point at Skamania Landing.

Looking South from Skamania Landing. Here, having exhausted its orgy options, the fire begins a more refined winnowing process.

At dawn, the fire is still occupied with Archer Mountain (from a viewpoint at Shahala Lake).

I had hoped to catalog the landmarks affected by the fire in the daylight, but smoke from the fire proved to be too thick, obscuring even the sun hours after dawn.

The blanket of smoke continues to obscure the sky at 9:00am (as viewed from Rocky Butte)

Editor's Note (09/07/17):
Thank you for your comments (here, and on Facebook). I find them fascinating.


Let me re-assure some of you, particularly my mother, that my self-preservation instincts are fairly well refined. I am keen to avoid burning, blunt force trauma, falling great lengths, suffocation, drowning and drunken drivers — for starters. But thanks for the reminders.

The wildfire in the gorge is frightening. It is like an uncaged wild thing, or like a malevolent genie unwittingly released from its lamp. It feeds with evident cunning, and takes what it can with absolutely no empathy. With the capriciousness of a tornado, it obliterates some locations, while leaping over others and leaving them nearly unscathed. Lives and the works of lifetimes hang in jeopardy.

I do not take lightly the terrible consequences of this fire, but I do want to briefly address the recurring theme of sadness at the loss of so much beauty in the gorge, by suggesting that the very beauty we have grown up with is itself a product of volcanic ‘disasters, geography altering super floods, tectonic plate level seismic events and countless fires through the eons. 

Living in a scenic area where we have found it necessary to fence off our waterfalls and pave our wilderness trails, it is easy to believe that our Gorge is a permanent unchanging feature, bereft of natural cycles. But I suspect this is an illusion fostered by our short lifespans. 

Born from the stars, life has always contended with fire. Indeed, some life intimately depends on it. New niches will open, and various specialized plants and animals are just waiting to move in and make the world new again. And we humans, I suppose, will continue to risk building our houses near flood plains, or deep in the new forests of the future, because … it’s always going to be pretty.

Fabled Channels of Flowing Catfish

I told Kip and Uncle Rico about a magical lake that drains at low tide revealing channels of flowing catfish that you can catch with a bucket.

So we set sail, testing the waters as we went...

...but the pelicans already knew.

Cafeteria queue 

Uncle Rico strikes a classic heroic beer drinking pose

(I call this one the '10 o'clock meeting')

Last Friday when I left work, I thought I caught the faintest hint of autumn gently wafting on the breeze. This scene seemed to confirm the arrival of fall, but Uncle Rico reminded me we were downstream from a super fund site.

End of summer lakes leave broad fertile plains around their perimeters.

Uncle Rico and Kip engage in a competition to see who can catch the smallest fish.

Dr. Jekyll clouds begin their amazing transformations. Far-away rumblings are carried on the wind.

Even though the waning tide has begun to suck all the water out of the lake promising the writhing rivulets of catfish I described, our collective reasoning dictates that we spend the rest of our daylight on acquiring a campsite.

The craw-fish traps contain a surprise. Shrimp (supposedly with glowing red satanic eyes). I ask Uncle Rico, "Fresh water shrimp?"

Uncle Rico said, "I've never seen anything like it around here."

"Maybe bait shrimp have escaped and started a colony?" I wonder out loud, imagining the tiny wounded crustaceans pulling themselves off  hooks and fashioning bandages from algae. 

"oh shit." said the crawfish

Despite a lengthy bout of indecision (or delicate diplomacy) we secure a campsite on an island that seems to welcome visitors.

Slowly...

 ...but surely...

...the day's bounty transforms into...

...something we call, Three Species Tacos...

...and I suppose it would have been heaven, if not for the bold, evidently sentient raccoons that, once aware of the presence of food, summoned reinforcements, surrounded us, and waited for us to drift to sleep.

We made it out alive, but we will probably never be the same.

Editor's Note: ...it was raccoons.

Editors Note:  Alert viewer 'Jarm' posits the identity of these shrimp as invasive Siberian Prawns. We are providing these two additional pictures to aid in a positive identification. These shrimp were caught in a crawfish trap at the 'fishing balcony' where Sturgeon Lake empties into the Gilbert River.

Editor's Note: I asked Kip to take a picture of his kayak deck with a ruler on it. He sent me the picture and I've superimposed it over the shrimp picture (50% transparent) to give a fairly close estimate of size. Given this graphical evidence, and accounting for perspective distortions, I'm revising my length estimate to somewhere between 2.25 and 2.5 inches.