Up and into the southern Cascade Mountain Range.....
Over the mountains where summer storms bring rumbling thunder and jaggy lightning, and where the 'cha-cha-cha' of giant sprinklers irrigating alfalfa fields lulls you to sleep at night.
...and mustangs greet you at the corral.
Where grandpa is a cowboy and you can ride horses with the cousins....
Where grandpa is a cowboy and you can ride horses with the cousins....
...or shoot guns with dad......
...and where swimming holes are high desert rivers.
We've been away to a part of Oregon where the counties are huge but are populated largely by sagebrush....
...and tiny communities dot the landscape.
Where you can go way out in the outback, way out where the sagebrush expanse is like a sound sucking vortex, where it is sunny and so very quiet, and you can gather sunstones.
We've been out where the trees draw the line and give over the expanse to sagebrush and juniper scrub.
Out where the hills have names like 'The Coyote Hills' and 'Big Juniper', and giant escarpment fault block mountains rise up from the desert.
Where the desert rivers run into inland seas and evaporate. Many of the giant lakes are 'dead' from alkali saturation.
We've been away, driving back west across the desert expanse into the Central Cascade Mountains where my parents' cabin can be found....
...to gather with sisters and more cousins.
A region loved by the populated 'wet side' of Oregon, where the summer crowds crush, and the 'swimming holes' include rather civilized pools.
A place where my parents' purchased a cabin 30+ years ago, and selling it is in the near future--if the economy cooperates.
A place where the crazy, old pink tandem is still ridden by the children, just as we rode it when we were 'the children'.
Where 'Fort Rock' is part of 'the lore' of the cousins, and they build and arrange the rocks each time we visit.
Where the sagebrush and Juniper scrub give way to the mighty Ponderosas, and the mountains are lined up, creating the division between eastern, stark, dry beauty and western, wet, lush beauty.
So much to see and do.
It was a great getaway.
1 comment:
This choked me up, Gretchen, why I don't know. The family, the beauty, your words, your photos. You are so fortunate to have history with your family in places like this, and to have extended family who get along so that they enjoy doing this again and again and again...
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