Oregon's Outback
I remember sitting in the living room of our Schaumburg, Illinois home reading this National Geographic article about the empty southeast corner of Oregon. It was 1997. Nathan was a handful of months old. We were on the precipice of moving to Seattle, a leap of faith that we may not be capable of now at our wiser ages. The skin on my neck prickled. The haunting photographs and stoic prose by William Least Heat-Moon resonated with the viral wanderlust that infected me in those days. The article described a place empty and lonesome and sere and also dry, harsh, and caustic. The photos and prose depicted a massive ridge called Steens Mountain, longer than the Rhode Island-Connecticut border, rising over 2 vertical miles on the east face above an alkili plain. It described lakes that appear and disappear with the seasons. It showed empty roads and bullet-ridden signs. I didn't know shit about the West but knew I wanted to be there. Somehow, a few short years, from birth to age 7, a li...
