Steens Mountain

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.

An Open Letter to the Oregonian Weather and Travel Gods

Alright, I know you are all powerful and have every right to be vengeful and angry, full of omnipotent wrath. And I know I’ve been tempting you a lot lately. But how come every time I go off on some zany trip of mine, you have to punish me? You know I’m not used to your whims, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. Can’t you just take it easy on me every once and a while? I mean, why do I have to get a flat 130 miles from civilization in the desert? Why do you try to kill me when I drive to church on Sunday morning before the plows have come out? Why do you try to careen my car off a cliff when driving through the pass? It makes me want to gnash my teeth.

Alright, I know I might be taking advantage of your mercy a little to often, and there have been many times when I have made it home safe. But if you could just see to it that I make over the moutains to the Willamette valley this weekend, I promise I’ll just stay in Bend the rest of the winter. I will tempt you no longer and will make sacrifices to your names. Just don’t try to kill me anymore.

Reno

Indie Rock Girl is the same no matter where you go. She has thick black plastic rimmed glasses, a vintage t-shirt and some blue jeans on, even in Reno. I had just put a Pavement song on the jukebox and she smiled at me and poured out a Belgian beer. It was then I realized that I was in one of classiest bars in Reno, and that Reno isn’t at all what I expected it to be. The bar, the St. James Infirmary, looked nice; from the vintage lounge furniture straight out of Mad Men, to the TV behind the bar that played “Edward Scissor Hands” in black and white. I expected Reno to be full of domestic disputes, incompetent cops and a whole lot of meth and trailers. Instead I was in a swanky bar listening to Indie Rock Girl sell my recently discharged best friend, Mat, a $40 dollar bottle of beer. Mat is large; broad shouldered, bearded and wore a flannel shirt. Mat eventually gave into her unrelenting pressure and ordered it and out it came with champagne flutes and a bucket of ice. Called Deus, Biere de Champagne, a Belgian ale aged in champagne casks, and when poured, it came out bubbly and sweet. However it wasn’t worth $40 and even when Indie Rock Girl started to tell us about her dream wedding we began to get bored and realize this wasn’t the Reno we came to see.

We left the bar and headed back to the strip. It was nearing midnight and the bright neon lights of Reno were lit up and fantastic. We walked down the street and saw a man in a white shirt (his face gushing blood) run up the street. We asked him if he was okay and he replied that he had just been hit in the face with a pipe. I thought perhaps he was being ridiculous but half a minute later, a man came around the corner with a pipe in his hand, looked both ways very nervously and then scurried off. This is the Reno we had been looking for and its people were now telling us their story.

We ducked into a little casino called the Nugget real quick, figuring that would safer than walking the dark streets where marauders wielding pipes prowled. The front of it was a dingy, smoked filled room with video poker machines and slots ringing, their lights flashing. We walked to the greasy spoon diner in the back; looking like it had not passed a health inspection in decades. With only limited seats and a small counter space, teenagers looking for trouble and drunk tourists trying to order food with slurred words and spittle, idled around the small area. We ordered some burgers, their infamous “Awful Awful” burger, which came served on a huge basket of garlic fries. The burger emerged from the grill sizzling huge and sloppy; layered in cheese, dressing and a mound of saturated fats.

After the burger, with chests tightening up from cholesterol, we wandered for a few blocks back and found the Reno police department near the National Bowling Stadium. Apparently Reno Sheriff’s department is a fabrication from the popular show Reno 911! because Reno is in Washoe county and the city has its own police force. We took some photos of it and then a friendly policewoman came outside and asked us if we needed anything and we said no, we were only taking photos of their station because of the satirical show on Comedy Central. She rolled her eyes and laughed a little.

After this we wandered back onto the strip and entered one of the casinos. I don’t think casinos are my thing; smoke filled, the cacophony of slot machines ringing and buzzing ad nauseum, old ladies sitting in front of them oxygen tanks in tow. But the casinos are one of the reasons Reno is so famous. Mat decided to retry his luck at Blackjack and sat down at a table next to two middle aged men, throwing away their children’s college fund. Mat started to do well and continued to sit there and I was bored. I went over to a penny slot machine to see if I could understand what made these things so popular amongst the elderly. I slipped in a dollar and started hitting buttons and it started flashing and beeping and making all sorts of noise. Now I guess if I had grown up during the great depression, this would seem high tech and neat-o, but it sort of annoyed me, I just wanted my money without all the bells and whistles. But I kept winning and it kept going on. The next thing I knew I had won $30 dollars and I decided it was time to get up, because I wasn’t even expecting to get my dollar back. I went and checked on my friend who was now seated next to some gangsters sporting tattoos of 666 and eagles brandishing Kalashnikovs in front of a Mexican flag, and they were having a pleasant discussion about harvest time up in Oregon.

Sometimes a city doesn’t live up to your expectations and sometimes it does. Sometimes you run into a man who just got hit with a pipe. And sometimes Indie Rock Girl starts telling you about her dream wedding. But even though Reno is better known for its casinos and trailer parks, there are also a lot of other people; people who love to bowl and gorge themselves at an all you can eat buffet, people who love to spend their organized crime earnings at the black jack table, people who love the biggest little city in the world.

Winnemucca

I was already twenty dollars down, sitting across from a blackjack dealer named Bea. Bea had grey, permed hair, wore a vest and a bow tie, and spoke like a westerner who had worked her whole life; deliberately and with a drawl. Bea was telling us stories about the old days, how she used work down in Vegas in the 1960s when change falling out of slot machines used to echo up and down the strip. Bea used to party, I could tell. She probably spent some time playing craps with Frank Sinatra, maybe with Dino looking on. I’d like to think she did, and if she told me she had, I would have believed her.

But what I couldn’t believe was that I was in Winnemucca, Nevada, closer to the middle of nowhere than I had ever been in my entire life, and I was actually having a spectacular time.

Earlier that day I had almost given up hope that Winnemucca even existed. Hurtling down that lonesome road at 95 miles an hour, I was regretting the idea I had concocted at 3 a.m. the night before. I hadn’t seen another soul in over 2 hours and I was certain my chariot, the 1996 Nissan Maxima was about to collapse and I was going to die of dehydration, my last hour spent watching buzzards circling my body. I was sure Winnemucca was a mirage, created to lure unsuspecting Oregonians into the desert to feed the wildlife. And the desert is truly isolating, harsh with grandeur and loneliness.

But life prevailed in the desert and the neon lights of Winnemucca appeared, flashing enticements up and down the strip. After the desert, Winnemucca was an oasis of culture; casinos, dive bars, cowboys strolling the street, and Basque restaurants. I stopped in at Ormachea’s, a homely Basque restaurant adorned with kitschy prints my grandmother hangs in her house and a wood-paneled wall singed with local ranch brands. While waiting for our table, we sat at the bar and got some drinks. Winnemucca bartenders do not mess around. Let’s just say a drink that tall and strong for that cheap a price ($3) has never been poured in Bend. The Basques definitely know how to make some food and they know how to make a whole ton of it. I ordered lamb, and out came an entire half of a lamb, accompanied with an enormous plate of French fries, and bowls of beans and rice, and being the proud American I am, I went to town on all the food, not to be defeated.

After this, with bellies full of seasoned lamb and pitchers of cheap wine, we stumbled into the neon soaked nightlife of Winnemucca. After trying a couple of different places, we wound up in a slender dive called Cheers. Despite its name, Kelsey Grammer was fortunately nowhere to be seen and the bar was populated with a good mix of older and young working class people who were all unwinding after a long week. The drinks were even cheaper and stronger here (50 cent PBR bottles and $2.50 well drinks) and I started plugging quarters into their jukebox, possibly the first patron that night who didn’t play a Zeppelin or Stones song. I soon began to network with the bar’s patrons. I turned to my right, and found a lady about 40 with flushed cheeks and tobacco stained teeth, who had just come off work at the casino, and we had a good conversation about the Who and how I look like her son. I then spent a long time talking to an employee of the Bureau of Land Management about local grazing issues. I had no idea the sort of work and effort that went into awarding grazing rights to various interests. Interesting stuff, or at least interesting at 1:30 a.m. after a near mauling from a marauding cougar.

I then went to a casino, Winner’s. Nobody is a winner at Winner’s. I lost a little money at black jack and I almost stormed out when they didn’t have any PBR. But then I met Bea and learned what it meant to party Winnemucca style. Bea doesn’t mess around, and she knows how to party, or at least did know how to party circa 1962, continually sliding drinks in front of me and winking at me when I win. But I realized the only reason Bea was being nice to me, was because she wanted to ply me with drinks and steal my money and I was going nowhere with her matronly looking face. So I left Winner’s, with the sun gathering a haze in the east, and stumbled along, craving corn beef hash and every egg the town had.