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 life's start in Colorado, had gotten into my blood and I envisioned a fantasy of majestic mountains and sweeping landscapes. I had not yet experienced the reality that where the mountains meet the pLains, the sun is hotter, nights are colder, the wind forceful, the distances forbidding. We took a late honeymoon to Colorado and were surprised by a drowning rain and hail storm while hiking, snow and sleet in September. But we also witnessed black night skies streaked with stars, burbling creeks, and mirror lakes rimmed by towering peaks. We lay in our tent and listened to the moaning bugling of elk. 

That article intrigued me. I had never heard of the "Oregon Outback". Was it a secret? Were places like this perhaps common in the western US? Or was it really such a place where people could not or would not want to be?  

Bike racing took me closest to this remote corner in the early 2000s. I got mild sunstroke on the first stage of the Columbia Plateau Stage race, but loved the nights camping out in school fields and eating pasta buffets served by the local teens. We felt the raging wind near Baker City (now just called Baker), first on a tailwind road race finish where riders struggled to the finish in ones and twos, and next in an out-and-back time trial that finished with 3 miles of the invisible hand of air pushing against me and the bike. 

I spent one day hiking in the Wallowa Mountains and watched armadas of dark clouds marching across the plains trailing curtains of rain that never reached the ground.

These places are not strictly within the area described in the article but rather are part of the emptiness bordering the even emptier land. 

Forward to a dozen years ago and I heard about a 1000-mile "race" called the Steens-Mazama route. It was an ultra-endurance race from Portland to the top of Steens Mountain. Then it crossed the desert to the west and climbed up to Crater Lake before returning to Portland. I started asking myself if I could do this but I concluded that I am not the type to ride 1000 miles while barely stopping. I am more of a tourist, preferring to experience a place both in motion and still. But I was very interested to know about the route and that it could be traversed on a bicycle. I filed it away and have been looking for the right opportunity to attempt this.

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/40668958

I know it will be harsh and difficult. This trip will test my endurance and I will have to figure out how to motivate myself in the face of the winds, and sun, and dryness. I am well aware now that places that we dream about are not always what we envision. It's likely that Death Valley has more extreme landscapes, that the canyons of Utah are grander, that the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana are more majestic. But I have confirmed many times lately that places closer to home are worth the effort to explore. At the end of summer, there will not be much water in creeks or green grass or trees anywhere.  I have planned and am confident that, if the universe is willing, I can pull this off and hope that in a few weeks I am standing on top of Steens Mountain and seeing what there is to see.