What’s in a Name? (First published in the RV times, November, 2024)

Madras at sunset.  There is just enough time to drive to the river.  First the drop into and out of the canyon just east of, and then skirting the flank just north of Round Butte.  At the overlook is the layer cake geology of the Columbia River basalt flows.  And finally, four hundred feet below, nestled in shadow, cradled by the canyon, is the river.  Just the river.  To the south, behind the Round Butte Dam and below the surface of the lake is the confluence with the Metolius, the “White Fish” river of the native Sahaptin. Further south, still below the lake’s surface, is the confluence with the Crooked River, obviously named.  But it is the river that has brought me to this point, the Rivière des Chutes.  The River of Falls.

Lewis and Clark were, literally, the Grand Opening.  A mere 37 years after the triumphant return of the Corps of Discovery’s exploration the Oregon Trail was in regular use, and the great western expansion was on.  A mere 37 years after their return the first provisional state government of Oregon was established at Champoeg.

Champoeg.  The word’s origin remains a mystery.  Is it from the indigenous Kalapuya (“campuik” or “champooik”)?  Is it a French derivative of the Kalapuya language?  After all, French-Canadian explorers led Lewis and Clark to the Willamette Valley, although the former’s journey took about 300 years.

Les Voyageurs had been trekking across the North American continent since the 16h century, starting with the arrival in eastern Canada of Jaques Cartier in 1534. The centuries-long process was based upon trade (especially the fur trade) and was marked by the integration of the voyageurs into indigenous societies.   The Charbonneau area outside Wilsonville is named for Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, a Métis, son of the voyageur Toussaint Charbonneau, and carried into the Oregon country by his mother, Sacagawea.

The way west is blanketed by their names.  The trail follows the Platte River (“the flat river”, from the French “plat”) from eastern Nebraska to central Wyoming.  The first European to see it was Étienne de Veniard. In Wyoming, Laramie is named after the voyageur Jacques La Ramie.  In Idaho, Payette is named after the voyageur Francois Payette. The town of Gervais is named after voyageur Joseph Gervais who, along with his indigenous wife, were part of the founding settlers of the French Prairie region in the northern Willamette Valley.

The sun finally set, a brilliant night sky developing over the desert, it’s time to head back to Madras.  Tomorrow is the return home.  The trip down US 97 will go through Terrebonne (“good earth”) and La Pine (“the pine”).  Other paths have led to other places:  Detroit, Grand Ronde, Lafayette, La Grande, Langlois, the Malheur country, Nonpareil, Saint Louis, Saint Paul, Sauvie Island.  The names may not be thick on the ground, but they cover a lot of country, as did Les Voyageurs.

A favorite, possibly because it is home terrane and certainly because it is so enigmatic:  “Siskiyou”.  

George Stewart, America’s authority on place names, thought that Siskiyou defies explanation.  I tend to agree.  Stewart allowed that six cailloux, or “six stones” could be voyageur landmarks somewhere in southern Oregon, although those landmarks seem to be lost in the mists of time. Lewis McArthur, Oregon’s premier collector of place names, preferred the “bob-tailed horse” reportedly lost in an 1828 mountain snowstorm.  McArthur was likewise not entirely certain, as the origin of Siskiyou in this case appears to be from the Cree language.  Interesting.  Time deepens, connections multiply.  Les Voyageurs would have first encountered the Cree at Hudson Bay.  Est-il possible?  Pourquoi pas?  Why not?

Winter Solstice

Prime

Almost alone, the moment in-between,

The night’s long duty, the day’s brief rise,

All things seem possible, in-between,

Dark night’s dreams behind, ahead day’s birthing skies.

Sext

Day now in full, deep winter heart,

The wheel turn’d round, decay…renew,

Straightway Omega and Alpha unbarred,

Inception’s promise, to which I now hew.

Compline

Brief day’s life complete, wheel’s turn now fulfilled,

Sufficient to this day, all that has now been willed?

Sagebrush Encounters (revised)

We’ve completed the climb out through the Virgin Valley and are in the high steppe.  The air is rarefied, the midday light soft, the winter sun warm, and the landscape familiar.

US-50 through the desert heart of the Great Basin is the Loneliest Highway in America.  However, Nevada 140, the heart of the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea highway, is a contender.

For those living in southwestern Oregon and northwestern California the route home from  points east is the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea.  Continuing west on I-80 to Sacramento goes too far south, Salt Lake to Portland too far north.  Homeward bound is a two-lane adventure through mountains, desert, and the sprawling steppe.  We’re here – the high steppe of the northwest Basin and Range, the Oregon-Nevada border.  What William Kittredge called “a backlands enclave even in the American West”.  Walking the steppe, a developing warmth from both the sun and a returning equilibrium.

It’s our lunch stop.  Still on the Nevada side, but just.  Big Spring Butte is across the highway; the vertigo-inducing drop into the State Line Valley a few miles west. We’re in the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge – where the antelope play.  Watching.  Movement is rare today – one car heading east, one west.  Wait.  A pickup towing a boat turns off the highway, two men in the cab.  As they pass we all wave, each with the grin and half-shrug of those appreciating the incongruity of the scene.  

The sweeping sagebrush sea:  surprises are here, if one is willing to explore.  I suspect the sagebrush sea sailors, driving in the direction of Catnip Mountain, are going to try their luck at Catnip Reservoir.

As for the pronghorn, not one in sight.  Same for the mule deer, same for the sage grouse.  It’s ok.  I know they’re here.  With the growing warmth and lunch-induced lethargy, I’m reliving another transition, another backlands enclave encounter.

A summer morning crossing the Catlow Valley.  We’ve been in the Steens Mountains and are heading home on the Frenchglen-Warner “Highway”. It’s a good road, wide enough for two-way traffic, and a mere 40 miles to the Hart Mountain Refuge Visitor Center. The issue is the condition of the road’s washboards and best speed over them.  Today it is 35 mph.

It doesn’t matter.  The rising sun is behind us, the day in front.  Hart Mountain is our guide.

Hart Mountain is the northwest member of the pair.  Sheldon, the larger, is southeast; their presence our own refuge, salvation.  The pronghorn are here, somewhere, they have been since the Pleistocene.

Crossing the refuge boundary, scanning the landscape ahead. There is movement to my left.  There he is, a solitary pronghorn likewise crossing the boundary. He is behind me, moving fast, and on a converging course; he will be here in a minute. Indecision takes hold.  Slow down, speed up, stop?  No. There is something about his stride, his confident posture that compels me to hold at thirty-five. Not since the Ice Ages has there been a four-footed predator that could run him down; perhaps my boxy SUV is mere curiosity?

For a heartbeat we are side-by-side, one blue-eyed creature looking out from a rattling steel and glass cocoon, one brown-eyed creature looking back while gliding across familiar terrain. The moment is here.  Adult males are about five feet long.  He is all that.  They are about three-and-a-half feet at the shoulder; he looks another hand higher.  The low sun brings out the resplendent colors of his coat.  There is even greater beauty in his motion – the fluid stride, the graceful contraction and release of the muscles.  There is no anxiety, no fear in his gaze.  A quiet confidence; I see the same confidence in his gaze that I first saw in his carriage.

The next revelation comes as he passes. It is the width of the shoulders, the width of the hips. Side-to-side he is massive, the power that drives his great speed more apparent from this angle.  The road continues southwest toward the visitor center, his heading is west. Slowing a little, watching him pull away, willing the moment to last.

Cloud-filtered afternoon light blankets the Warner Valley, the center of Kittredge Country.  We’ve paused mid-descent on the soaring Warner Rim.  Except for the Lombardy Poplars defining places of human occupation, the view below is of pastel browns, tans, and yellows; the bottoms are all but devoid of blue.  The broad upwarp beyond climbs to the next great rim, the Abert. Further northwest:  Abert Lake, Summer Lake, Summer Rim, Silver Lake – the original Kittredge family homestead. We should be leaving, the day’s travels incomplete. 

Not yet. 

Kittredge’s The Nature of Generosity is his most intriguing book, most charming.  Written when he was nearing seventy, it has been described as a questing story, lessons learned from travels made.  It seems a benediction, a blessing upon us:  his wish for us to take thoughtful care, the book “more a dance than an argument”.  It’s also prophetic:  love the diversity of life, look for and cherish interconnectedness, live generously –  the stakes are high.  

In the closing pages Kittredge tells of a weekend trip made with Annick Smith to Houston.  He describes a visit made to a butterfly center: 

“We walked beside waterfalls in a flowering multi-tiered jungle, and the butterflies sometimes were attracted to bright colors; they rode on Annick’s loose silvery hair like fluttering decoration, and contributed, as unrestrained creatures will, to restore our shot nerves. Maybe that’s civilization’s main reason for contact with other forms of life these days; we like to have them around because their presence reminds us of rhythms that might keep us sane.”

A return to the moment.  I do not know why the big fellow made that solitary run, but it seemed playful, joyful.  I do know that a vital rhythm was present, and, intentional or not, it was a gift.

Sanity restored, the leave-taking is now at hand.

Sanity restored.  But there is something more.  The connection a sort of consanguinity, possibly?

Stanley Meadow (revised)

Day’s end, Year’s end. 

Frostfall, Lightfall, the remorseless, inevitable Fall.

Walking the meadow’s edge, walking the deepening dark.

The walking purposeful, the soul

seeking.  Grace?  Bendition?  Resurrection?

Spring

The great elk rule the dark forest, but prefer the western rise; a country of cinnamon-colored ponderosa and dappled light.

Known by now, my intrusions are tolerated with faint curiosity, limited patience.

Benign amusement?

The request for my removal is unspoken, restrained, but resolute. My response is unhurried, but rapid, respectful.

Summer

Mountain Cedar has a stronghold on the meadow’s south rise; both pines and firs give way.  

It is the nursery, the cedar’s broad skirts providing home and hearth for the doe and her fawns. 

A private, familial moment; I watch from the meadow, will come again in the Fall.

Fall

A singular Ponderosa, tall and strong, a proud visage, the great keep on the small rise mid-marsh. 

It is home for a Sandhill pair; they return every year – find their castle intact, dominion secure.  

An ungainly, angular countenance on foot, a simple elegance on wing, their lazy circles congruent with the autumnal pace of the day.

Winter

Last sun passing into the first twilight on the water’s surface; the stream’s wintersong different, perhaps the ice-fringed bank? 

The heron, a statue at water’s edge, her day over.  

The owl, a silent shadow, gliding into the start of his.

What little breeze present dying away,

The winter calm intensifies with the growing twilight.

Sand Creek: Reflections at 160

Be still.  The practice is ingrained, no conscious effort is required:  a tri-part 12-count; breath in, breath out, pause.  Repeat.  Repeat again.  Repeat again.  The short walk up to the rim is not physically challenging, but in every other way the challenges are formidable.  A moment is required.  Sitting on the edge, five cycles completed, the senses open, as does the world around.

The world is spherical, the expanse boundless, and yet there is the feeling of being inside the sphere, as if living inside a snow globe. The sky is washed, the light blue lighter toward the northern horizon where the harmless puffball clouds engage in a slow, intimate dance, without much rise-and-fall, the dance more Bachata than Bolero.  The transition to the lower hemisphere is likewise intimate, the azureous upper embracing the soft pastel sages and tans below.

The air is light, vibrant, active.  Something a little more than a breeze, the warm southwest wind, like the autumnal sun, is at my back.  Dry, desiccating, its long connection to the landscape below manifest.  Alive, it is both creator and conveyor of music.

The air rolls past the rim, waves rather than gusts.  Each wave brings the sand sage and the grama grass to life, their voices likewise a rise and fall.  The cottonwoods in the draw below quake in response, but are too far downwind to hear their contribution.  Two different birds add the upper voices.  The Western Meadowlark remains unseen, but the long, crystalline soprano line is a repeated demand for attention. There is less certainty about the alto, but it could belong to Say’s Phoebe, which may be the dark bird seen at the entrance. The sound is a short, slurred whistle which provides a chromatic counterpoint.

Sagebrush is on the wind, its familiar smell an important part of the stilling process; it is the smell of long years, long journeys, as well as the smell of immediacy, of Place. The smell of the gramma is subdued by comparison; the herbaceous and earthy bouquet lacking the spice and tang of the sage.

The weight is palpable.  This is hallowed ground, tangible, insistent.  Its beauty is at once both crystalline and ethereal.  It is the ground in front and below that draws attention. The bend on the Big Sandy, the half-moon flat.  That half-moon flat.  Willingly unfocused: the mural of pastel yellows, tans, browns, underpinned by the celadon gray-green.  Focused:  the dry bed of Big Sandy, the oblong-ish shape of the half-moon bottom, the scattered cottonwood copses, the rilled face of the break rising to the rim.  And, on the delicate edge between the five senses and the sixth, something else?  

The Platte River is surprisingly straight-coursed on its trek across the Great Plains. Becoming two-headed upon gaining entrance to the High Plains, a south arm reaches toward the east face of the mountainous wall at prairie’s end.  The north arm, leaving the country, explores the Wyoming territory.  The Arkansas River, birthed even further west and even higher in elevation, breaches the great wall on its way to the prairie.  It follows a remarkably straight course across the western prairie before entering the eastern and embarking on its great bend.

The High Plains rise between the two great rivers.  It is a hard country, filled with sharp angles and edges, and the seemingly endless rise to the west.  It is a difficult country for those who do not understand it, bitterly cold in winter, blindingly hot in the summer, with the air in motion at all times.  And dry, always dry.

Nevertheless, an ice-free refuge from the more-northern continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene, it is a land of abundant life, even during the time of the great ice.   People have lived here for centuries, engaged in the conversation. 

Black Kettle lived here.  Although born in the Dakotas, this was his community, his conversation, his communion.  The conversation is, as conversations are, back-and-forth – where to summer, where to winter, following the rains, following the migrations.  The conversation is fluid, in motion, involves the “lesser” rivers:  Republican, Solomon, Smoky Hill, Walnut, Pawnee.  The Big Sandy.  Although in a dry land, nothing about water is “lesser”.  In a dry land, encounters are where water is found, “lesser”or not.

Black Kettle was here that day, the White Truce Flag and 35-star Old Glory waving on his lodgepole. The old Peace Chief survived the day, as did, miraculously, his wife.  There would be some more days for them, until the day, along another river bottom, Charon came to collect them, delivering them to the Shadows. 

White Antelope was here as well, awake with the sound and the feel of the drumming hooves, striding across the frosty ground, walking out to meet his fate.  “…nothing lives long, only the earth and mountains…”. 

Chivington had arrived.  A man of The Cloth.  A man of God.  “…it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians…”.  

Manifest Destiny?  Our concept of “enlightened self-interest”?.  Our way of relationship, our attempt to understand all that is around us, starts with ourselves and expands outwards. Does this explain the mistake, the too-often tragic mistaking self-righteousness for morality?  Of our ability to behave with inhumanity toward others?  Especially The Other?  The myopic view of our home, The Creation surrounding us? The Creation of which we are all a part.

How else to explain the graceless ease of hubris?  Or our inability to see certitude for what it really is: a type of Death.  A death of curiosity.  A death of our ability to delight in discovery, mystery, to enjoy awe and wonder.  A death of imagination, our ability to see things from different angles, different directions.   A death of creativity, perhaps the most joyful, most human part of us. 

Why this death grip on our certainties?  Perhaps because to loosen our grip is to chance encounters with uncomfortable realities?  

The encounters have been numerous, widespread.  With the Maya in the heart of the Yucatán; with the Diné, deep within the high, dry plateau country of the Southwest; with the Paiute and Klamath in the northwestern Great Basin, with the Tlingit and Haida in southeast Alaska.  Common themes come into focus.  The deep, persistent, intentional sense of gratitude. The sense of place within The Creation. The commitment to generous living. The millennia of practice.  

So many lives lost here.  Life, lifefulness, also taken.  Standing now, looking out over that half-moon flat along the Big Sandy, remembering, bearing witness.  A Landscape of Shadows is out there, just beyond my grasp.  The full measure of the unspeakable is here; standing here, erect posture my resolution to bear the weight.  So much lost here, Donne’s diminishment of us all is visceral,  a blow to the face.  

And yet, looking over the bottoms, looking forward into the past, as Black Kettle might, a different vision emerges.  The old Peace Chief has been here for hundreds of years; this place has been this place for thousands more.  An “unself-ish” community is possible, indeed has a story, a history.  Engaging the “un-self”, the view outside-in.  The Creation.  Is there any higher duty than in its care?  Is there any better way to care for ourselves?

In the fulgent afternoon light a second landscape emerges:  a Landscape of Hope.