The rabbits must have had a death wish. They kept running in front of my car. I knew they saw me coming; I was the only thing for miles and miles out near Steens Mountain. No cars, no streetlights, no houses, not even fences, just a cattle guard now and then. I’m not quite sure why the rabbits kept sacrificing themselves on my bumper despite my best efforts to avoid them. It must be real harsh living for them with the mountain views, fresh air, and clear water.
Steens Mountain is far away from everything. So far that I hadn’t passed anybody on the road in three hours, so far that they don’t even pave the road running along the eastside of the mountain, so far, that if I died, no one would look or find me for a very long time.
You might wonder what might posses me to drive out there. For the last year I’d been having dreams: dreams that told me to climb this mountain, dreams that specifically told me to climb this side of the mountain. I realize the implications of this. The only people who climb mountains because of a dream or a voice are prophets- going all the way back to Moses- and the deranged. But I still couldn’t stop thinking about it and the dreams persisted. So, the Monday after finals, I decided to drive out east to conquer the mountain and to put the dreams to rest.
Anyone who has driven east of Bend knows what’s out there: a whole lot of nothing. But because there is nothing, you start to notice little things, like a stand of juniper out in the distance, a buzzard swooping across the road, or an ancient lava flow. Because humanity has left few marks out there, you are allowed to enjoy nature, which is sparse, beautiful, dry and majestic.
Like most people who find beauty in the desert, I realized that there is something strange in a having a strong affinity for what other people would consider the absence of everything. But there is something there, and it is something that sticks and remains even after the last whiff of sage leaves the nostrils.
Steens Mountain is both magnificent and odd. It appears to rise out of nothing, shooting craggy peaks out of a flat desert floor. It’s incongruous, it’s not like the Cascades which just seem like they should be there, Steens mountain doesn’t fit in with the surroundings, which gives it an ominous and unearthly appeal. Combine this look with its isolation, and it’s perhaps only natural that rabbits would leap in front of my car with eyes full of liebestod.
I parked my car and started along a snow covered jeep track, but lost it after only a half mile. I continued through brush and scrub and eventually found a dry creek bed and followed it for a while. Pretty soon, my car was nowhere in sight, and when I paused to take a drink of water, I heard a stream trickling a mile off and noticed all sorts of tracks going every which way through the snow. There were plenty of deer tracks but after a while I saw some cougar tracks and wondered if their lives were as hard as the rabbits.
The hike was difficult. Perhaps it’s because the mountain is crazy steep and I am a little out of shape, but I was huffing and puffing and sweating pretty hard despite the 30 degree weather. It was cold, windy and lonely up there and when my burning bush didn’t materialize, and darkness fell, I decided to take stock of my situation. It seemed to be less and less of a good idea to spend that night up on the mountain, with snow half way to my knees and nothing around to make a fire with. Feeling dejected and double crossed by the force that had sent me up there to begin with, I descended the mountain.
Perhaps the only real reason I had decided to climb the mountain to begin with was the desire to get out to the middle of nowhere and to be utterly alone. This could be construed as anti-social, but I just felt like I needed to do it, and it was something I had wanted to do for a while. I had left another desert in Iraq, and only found myself longing to return to another desert. It was illogical and perhaps not the best of timing, but I did it. On the way home I got a flat. The Burns Police Department laughed at me from their warm Chevy Tahoe as I changed the tire while snow began to fall. I then drove on a donut all the way from Burns to Bend in the snow in the middle of the night making the long drive at a steady 35 miles per hour. I just can’t seem to get the desert out of my head.
