Into Oregon

Part of Oregon’s attraction has always been so far away. Even in 2008, if you stay off the interstates and away from the malls and the chains, you don’t travel far to find how untrammeled and wild much of the state remains. Yellow-and-black highway sign alone language tells the tale: “Rocks.” “Open Range.” “Snow Zone.” “Tsunami Area.” “Elk.” “Deer.” “Logging Trucks.” “Rough Road.” “Snowmobiling.” “Truck Rollover Danger.”

Hazards obviously aren’t what they were in 1846, but still, signs warn you: “Search and rescue or recovery costs will be paid by you or your heirs.” “Ocean bacteria levels have been measured high.” “Don’t pass snow removal trucks on right.” “Sharp turns ahead.” “Steep drop off.” On the back of a parking meter in Portland: “Hate is Hazardous.”

Oregon feels more remote and barren, more dangerous for a visiting Easterner, in February. No tourists beyond the snow enthusiasts. No one hundred-plus windsurfers out on the Columbia River by Hood River. February is not the postcard month for sun and color. What you will find: 111 inches of snow on the ground at Crater Lake. Roiling seas and storms off the Pacific pounding away at rocky beaches. Roads closed. Away from interstate commerce there’s a stillness that comes with deep snow. Plenty of hotel/motel vacancy signs. Along with rain, fog, and low-hanging cloud cover.

I lucked out. The road to Crater Lake is closed about 50 percent of the days in winter, according the lonely gift shop cashier the day I visited. That day the sky was such a peacock blue it was startling, with all shades of blue mirrored across the smooth as glass lake. I had the lake to myself, standing atop a 30-foot high snowy hill. No wind. Pure serenity, if not for the constant churn of an orange snow removal truck.

Next day on Mount Hood it was 62 degrees, zero wind, blinding sun, and ski instructors wearing tee shirts.

Very easily I could’ve flown the 2,860 miles from Philadelphia and seen neither the lake nor the mountain, if the winter clouds and fog and mist rolled in as usual. When the sun disappears the only colors in the gloom are black rocks and rivers, brown trees, dirt, various shades of gray — and most fortunately the green of the fir and pine woods. Deep dark forest green radiates a richness when the sun shines. The skies, rivers and lakes take on a brilliant blue, snow glistens and shadows dance. If you’re not so lucky with the weather, bring along only black and white film and do your Ansel Adams best.

No matter the time of year, Oregon offers up its craggy Pacific coastline, sand dunes and sea lion dens, the Cascade Range, the Columbia River Gorge, fossil beds, lava beds, buttes, caves, canyons, forests as far as the eyes can see, high desert country, grasslands and waterfalls. Most of all is space, the openness, and quiet solitude. It is a delightful peacefulness to roam an empty two-lane blacktop, with 30-40 mile vistas off in any direction, under an immense sky, on a day with ample sun.

It’s more than enough to lure a romantic and gridlocked Easterner like me almost 3,000 miles. So too the wind surfers, mountain climbers, hikers, runners, cyclists, skiers, hunters, fishermen, snowmobilers, sea captains, snow boarders, clam diggers, naturalists, spiritualists, individualists, nomads, ranchers, farmers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, artists, craftspeople, bead stringers, all “gone crazy.” Each bring their own reasons for coming here..

Lewis and Clark’s expedition came through the Cascade Mountains in canoes down the Columbia River past what’s now Portland in December 1805. For my mode of transport I choose a Toyota Rav4, a compact SUV with four-wheel drive, light gold before covered with road grit, from Dollar Car Rental at the Portland airport.

My solo expedition begins with a few days in Portland, taking care of business, since my magazine covered the airfare. The assignment: report on the annual gathering of the National Hearing Conservation Association, about 300 noise, sound and audiology techies, all seemingly on a first-name basis with each other. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant calls Portland “its own universe. Still a frontier town.” Several of his free-form films (“Elephant,” “The Last Days,” “Paranoid Park”) have been shot around Portland. The city of 568,380 or so doesn’t appear an outpost, with its sleek, glassy modern skyline. But at street level there is a certain “free form” to it. Folks meandering streets and parks and riding the transit make Portland seem to be America’s largest college town. Casual, hang loose, hip, funky, nerdy. There’s many a book reader holed up here. One bookstore in Eugene offers free buttons: “Readin’ in the rain 2008. Read more!” Portland also has a strong skateboard culture, featured in Van Sant’s “Paranoid Park.” And girls in vintage long sweaters, short skirts, black tights, scarves and sandals or boots. Guys in mirrored shades. Guys in black chic. Goth girls. Of course if you hang at Powell’s City of Books, the department store-sized bookstore at NW 10th and Burnside, you’ll see this laid-back fashion parade day and night. In wintertime, though, Portland takes on The North Face conformity. It pours rain days on end, just like the winter of 1805-06, when Lewis and Clark camped further west in what’s now Astoria.

Friday afternoon I escape my cushy downtown riverfront Marriott, take rail transit to Powell’s, then return, hop in my rental, and cruise out through the Gorge in the cloudy afternoon fading light to Hood River, about a 100-mile roundtrip. Cross the Columbia to into Washington and almost immediately get called out by a relaxed police officer in shades, sitting in his black and white patrol car. He observes that I’m standing on railroad tracks snapping photos, right beyond a “Warning: No Trespassing” sign. “Two or three photographers have been killed here,” he says. Then with a slight smile: “We try to keep people alive.”

I’ve brought my old manual Nikon fm 10, with two lenses: a 35-70mm standard lens and a 60-300mm zoom. Since I’m not digital, I’ve got film canisters with ISO speeds from 100 to 800, depending on the light. I don’t carry much else. About 20 CDs, a backpack with two books I won’t open, and a large Under Armour gym bag with gloves, thick socks, heat packets, wool cap, jeans, couple of shirts and tees, hygiene essentials, and a cardboard box to keep the conference business attire somewhat professional.

I bring along a few basic rules as well: don’t check bags at an airport, exit the interstates soon as possible, stay away from malldom, no global positioning system and its pushbutton predestination — let’s improvise — and try not to retrace your steps. Eighty to 90-percent of this trip of about 700-800 miles total will be on two-lane state roads. I don’t step near a mall, take a few wrong turns without the GPS, and rarely go down the same road twice. Mission accomplished.

The Gorge, even on a solid gray day, is flat-out grand. Sharp-rising cliffs and forests with moss-covered white ash, pines and varieties of fir. You smell the pines and feel the dampness. Falls rush over rocks, plunging hundreds of feet, flowing down through stone-strewn creeks. The view from the Washington side is preferable to me, though you’re further from the falls. This is mandolin pickin’ and grinnin’ country, or Merle Haggard or Willie or Waylon. Two fiddle players provided the soundtrack for the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, after all. Route 14 in Washington twists and turns through tunnels, S curves and up and around hills, past the old white-painted steel truss Bridge of the Gods. The span has a total cantilever length of 1,131 feet. It’s a startling man-made contrast to the natural magnificence surrounding it. Route 14 nearly brushes the front porch of the Cook House Cafe general store and diner in Stevenson, with local business cards pinned to the bulletin board, and then beyond the Gorge, takes a straight flat line west, back to Portland.

The next morning I bid farewell to the hearing conservationists and head south to Corvallis. A classic Greyhound Bus sign stands on the main drag. Low, boxy buildings are anchored by a square with an impressive white, red tile roofed county courthouse and clock tower. Oregon State U is a few blocks to the west, through a tree-lined residential neighborhood. There’s a rugby match going on, not much else. The sun is dancing in and out. OSU’s shimmering stainless steel and glass football stadium dominates the quiet campus. I lunch at small deli with a surf theme, The North Shore, downing a turkey “Pipeliner.”

Head west to Newport on the Pacific, with whale bones set out on a beach park and a Vietnam Memorial Stone right off the sand, with perhaps 25 names engraved. It’s fully overcast now, windy, with the strong smell of salt water. Then it’s south on the swerving Pacific Coast Highway as night falls to Florence, with a stop off at Seal Rock Beach. I’m on the cell with my wife when I tell her, “I’ve got to pull over and see this beach before the sun sets.” The bluffs 30 or 40 feet above the beach and tidepools are thick with old growth fir, spruce, oak and maple, rising steeply across the PCH. There is something primal about those black, jagged rock outcroppings, the whitecaps crashing in. A dad can’t get his young five or six-year-old boy off the gray beach. There’s something primal, too, about young boys loving to toss stones, and the beach is thick with handy , smooth stones. The Seal Rock monolith, moss-covered, rounded with age and perhaps 70 feet high, is close enough to touch at low tide. A lone red cedar log perhaps 25 feet long stretches out diagonally on the sand. At some point I pull over on PCH, roll the windows down, turn off the engine, and listen to the black ocean’s dull roar. About 6:30 pm the last light disappears over the cloud-laden horizon. What makes for that constant rushing roar? Then I get what I’d call an Oregon moment of freedom and it strikes me, don’t analyze. Just take it in.

Dinner in Florence, a sea town that jumps in the summer, is at the cozy Firehouse, lined with fire department caps and tee shirts from around the country. The co-owner, a man of about 60, sits at the next table with friends. They talk of the new casino up the road, changing times, fishing, the no smoking in restaurants ban, past vacations in Mexico, vacations to come. “Casino killed my bar business,” says the co-owner. “Had one guy who’d spend $50 a day. Gone. To the casino. I think it’s time for me just to go fish.” There’s talk I can’t decipher. Then: “You fear for your grandkids, don’t you?” Another snippet: “We ran out of common sense a long time ago.” He grabs hold of his manager. “See that woman slip by the bathroom. She all right?” “Yeah, I picked her up. Said she still liked her dinner.”

Drive in a drizzle east in the dark to Eugene on Route 126, listening to Carley and Lurrie Bell play the blues. Takes some patience on these twisting two-lane tree-lined roads when you’re behind laggards, especially at night in the rain. I notice a pattern though: Just about when you’ve run out of patience the sign appears, “Passing lane one mile.” Roll into the Best Western in Eugene and the drizzle has turned to steady, cold rain.

Rain or drizzle all the next day in Eugene. Eugene is a tale of two towns. One is the official downtown, with civic center, office buildings, parking garages and a pedestrian/consumer open mall. The other is the U of Oregon campus a mile or two south, with a typical college main street (E. 13th Avenue) of shabby coffee shops, Mexican take-outs, outdoor wear apparel, the U bookstore on a corner, pizza shops, a head shop with showcase bongs, and a hip American Apparel store my college junior daughter would love. Streets all have designated lanes for cyclists. This is the Eugene for me, ramshackle off-campus houses and all. A small church has been converted into a movie house. Tonight the Oscar Awards are being shown for free, starting at 5 pm. The House of Records, with a commendably large collection of surf and rockabilly CDs, is crammed into an old bungalow. I go for a local band, “The Sugar Beets,” woodsy mandolin, violin, guitars and harmonies, I picked up on in a Eugene weekly “scene” paper. Also a northwest band, “Floater,” that the paper mentioned, a thick-sounding metal trio. And “Surfme’n’tal” by the Brazilian self-described metal-surf-punk instrumental band, “Estrume’n’tal.” Fodder for my archaic CD collection that confounds my iPod-loving kids. Download Brazilian surf-punk-metal, go ahead. Actually, I’m sure you can.

Eugene is like Boulder, Colorado, with its official chic downtown pedestrian mall with chain restaurants and upscale boutiques, and then the shaggy U of Colorado campus main street up a hill. Same kind of post-‘60s easy-going vibe. Same feeling that the outdoors is essential. Similar mix of extreme sports stores, new-age bookstores, gray-haired ponytailed hippies, lean jocks in training, and plenty of java to go.

Both towns are running, climbing, hiking, cycling meccas. At nine on a Sunday morning in Eugene runners are out in the thin fog and rain, in wool caps or not, in shorts or tights, in pairs or alone, running the sidewalks. It’s raw, about 40 degrees. In the 82-year-old U of O gym, McArthur or Mac Court, there’s a three-on-three half-court roundball tourney going, Black-Eyed Peas hip hop echoes off the ancient rafters on the PA during warm-ups. The Mac has three decks, like the old Boston Garden. Wood seats crammed together. A single wooden door opens with a single door knob to the restroom. After another two seasons or so, it will be replaced by a $200-million gym, the largest college basketball arena in the country.

Down an alley from the Mac I catch a glimpse of a lacrosse game. I end up on the sideline next to Paul A. Bilder, M.D., from Cottage Grove, south of Eugene. He’s an old goalie from upstate New York, forced between the pipes by a bum ankle, played lacrosse in Utah while in pre-med, started the first high school lacrosse program outside of Portland down in Roseburg some years ago. Another Oregon pioneer. Paul’s seldom at a loss for words, as he’ll tell you, and he educates me on lacrosse’s western expansion. Cheery, smiling beneath his ball cap, Paul looks to be in his early 60. Says he’s cut back on his work, only 50 hours a week instead of 100. He’s also the U of O ice hockey club’s unofficial doc. One of the players calls his cell, complaining of a sore throat. Come on over to the game, says Paul. The kid wanders over, Paul steps away, they talk, I hear Paul on his cell calling in an antibiotic prescription. Then another call, from a diabetic with a low sugar count. Meanwhile, U of O’s club team is clobbering Washington State; the score ends up 30-0. “Won’t get worse than this,” one of the WSU guys says taking off his uniform after the game.

Next door is Hayward Field, the historic old track with roofed grandstands on opposite sides of the field where Steve Prefontaine, Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike with track coach Bill Bowerman, and the Men of Oregon won many titles. The field’s fenced in and locked up, under re-construction for this summer’s U.S. track and field Olympic trials.

In the rain, just at dusk, I get lost and then find Autzen Stadium, home of the U of O Ducks football team. It’s on the opposite side of the Willamette River from downtown and the campus, a bowl built into the ground with a huge green O lighted outside one end zone. Super boxes, sky boxes, club lounges have been recently added on, and the stadium is locked down with surveillance cameras and sensors like Fort Knox. Across a walkway are the glassy modern athletic offices, a huge barn-like indoor turf field and training center, a souvenir shop, groomed outdoor practice fields surrounded by shrubs and locked fence, and a plaza with a flaming torch. This multi-million-dollar compound has risen to impress old alums with deep pockets, dawn-to-dusk game day tailgaters, and teenage recruits with size and speed. Peering up at the flame through the rain splatter, it hits me: Eisenhower in the ‘50s warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex; today, we don’t do industry in America, now we’re overwhelmed by the 24/7 sports-entertainment complex.

On 91.9 KRVM a disc jockey named Rome conducts a humorous, fawning interview with a faux humble Yale grad who left law behind in Thailand to start sing pop jazz. She’s flattered when he compares her to Joni Mitchell. “Really? No one’s ever told me that before.” Everyone’s in show biz, no mater where you are. Over on 88.1 KWVA the U of O station plays African tribal tunes from 6-8 pm. I try to find my way back to the Best Western in the rain, the dark, beating the steering wheel to the tribal drums.

Out of Eugene early, 7 am, the next morning after grabbing a large coffee at one of the many drive-thru java huts and a stop-off at a grocery store for a water bottle and turkey roll up for lunch. Then it’s I-5 south to Route 58 east. Try a short cut off 58 to get to Crater Lake’s north rim, head round a bend of dry road and make a quick turn to the right only to plow through a low snow bank that catches me by surprise. The Rav4 rolls slowly to a stop on a snow-packed road in the woods that hasn’t been plowed. Move the Rav4 up the road about 20 yards in low gear, then shift into reverse to blast through the snow bank and get out before Georgia-Pacific security guards come to my rescue. So now it’s the long roundabout way to Crater Lake: 58 to Route 97 south to Route 138 east to Route 230 south to Route 62 east up to the lake. Snow is piled high on the ridges. Groves of thin aspens coated in white form walls of dense frozen columns. The north rim is closed during winter, so I’ve circled the lake to come in the only other way, from the south. The national park’s tremendous snowfall is a result of its position at the crest of the Cascade Mountain Range.

Some people cry when they climb to the top of the rim and look across the lake’s placid expanse. That’s their second reaction. First comes: “Holy shit, that’s a 900-foot drop straight down to the lake!” The opposite rim of the crater is almost six miles away. The lake is more than 1,900 feet deep, the deepest in the U.S. I clomp up a snow bank in sneaks to get my look. To my immediate right is the rustic Crater Lake Lodge, dating back to 1914, closed in winter, with long jagged icicles hanging along roof ledges. A 33-mile road encircles the crystal clear, deep blue lake along the rim, but it too is closed in winter. I didn’t have room to pack the boots needed to hike; the snow is almost knee deep. It’s about 29 degrees at high noon but it doesn’t feel cold in the sun and fresh, clean air. I don’t want to move, just meditate. Tranquility Base with three inches of fresh powder from last night. Evergreens are crushed by the weight of heavy snow, many twisted and bent at odd angles. Bare outstretched tree limbs form white skeletons. Stands of pines and firs rising on the rim’s ridges seem dusted with a powdery blanket of crystal white.

Head back down from the lake with snow walls 8-10 feet high on either side of the narrow road, wet with melting snow. Like a bobsled run. The Rav4 is in neutral, coasting pretty much the whole way, except for the snow and slush curves when I shift to low gear. No cars anywhere. Get back on 62 east across flatlands. Funny, an hour ago up on the rim I felt like the only person on earth; now I’m on my cell listening to my daughter Kate, from her apartment at the University of Delaware, describe in detail the plot of movie she saw last night. “You’re not going to see this, right? OK…”

62 meets up with 97, where I turn and drive north for a long stretch to Bend, hitting the gas and passing as many trucks and cars as I can when those passing lanes open up. Most of the way The Staples Singers are clapping and crooning ‘60s and ‘70s civil rights soul music. Civil rights seem somehow out of place where nature so dominates, but I enjoy the contrast between song and scenery. Stop for gas at a Chevron station in tiny Chemult with the needle just about on E. No self-serve in Oregon. An overweight young woman in a white tee walks out to pump the gas while I get out to put on my wet sneaks. “Oh, you drive like me,” she says. “Socks are more comfortable.” Another woman inside says, “Great day for a drive.” She would know. Bright days with ample sun and 50 degree temperatures in central Oregon are seldom seen in winter. All the more to illumine the barren, dusty plains dotted with sagebrush, windswept wheat-colored grasslands, sandy ravines and small canyons. Barbed wired and wooden fence posts run along the road. Horses, deer, sheep, cattle and rusted barns and farm equipment are a few hundred yards off 97; one or two farms have rotting yellow school buses planted in weeds. Signs highlight summer rodeos. These barren central plains seem the epitome of Oregon’s “do your thing” independence — whether it’s skateboarders, windsurfers, artists, Mount Hood climbers, ranchers, farmers, long distance runners or small businessmen. “You know them up in Salem,” I remember one of the guys at the next table at the Florence Firehouse saying while they discussed the no smoking ban in restaurants, referring to the state capital. Oregon wasn’t made for them bureaucrats.

My cells rings and it’s my wife. “I wasn’t going to call you, but I thought I might have missed your call.” All’s quiet on the home front. “It’s beautiful out here today.” “Too bad you can’t stay out there longer.” Right.

Before the trip I reserved a room in Bend, but found the Shiloh Inn was across from a mall. Forget that. So I cruise on past La Pine, then Bend, to Route 20, taking a left to head west into the sun. I had read in the Portland Sunday Oregonian about a town, Sisters, that sounds like a more natural place to spend the night. Sisters sits at the base of The Three Sisters Mountains in the Cascade Range. Population 1,706. I wind up at the FivePine Lodge and Conference Center, only a year old, all red cedar logs and stone, a business and weekend summer getaway retreat for well-off Portlanders. I get room number one. Right off the arched lobby with the grand fireplace and granite floor.

Smallest room they have, the young desk clerk says, comes with a king-size bed that could sleep a family of four, about a dozen pillows, a 42-inch plasma flat screen TV hidden above the electric fireplace, which can be viewed through open doors from the soaking tub. The Italian tile shower could easily fit a basketball team. Wood plank floor with Oriental rugs, hand-crafted Amish wood desk and nightstands, black leather easy chairs and foot rests by the fire, recessed lighting, tiffany lamps. “Health. Balance. Adventure,” is the FivePoint motto. The owner’s wife is a massage therapist, and you can stroll over to the Shibui Spa to get one. So much for being in the middle of nowhere. Actually, it’s about three hours southeast of Portland. And perhaps is there no nowhere anywhere anymore. I’ve read where a string of luxury golf courses has opened in Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail.

They best milk this eco-tourism while they can. Oregon’s beaches are eroding, maybe because of warm air from Japan sent over the Pacific has stirred up some monster storms. And up on Crater Lake they get almost 200 inches less of snow now each winter than in the 1940s.

The Sunday paper also mentioned Bronco Billy’s restaurant in Sisters, so it’s ribs and a much too-large dish of ice cream and shortcake dessert at Billy’s. Posters of Clint Eastwood westerns hang from the wood-paneled walls. Next morning starts with 26 miles going back eastward on Route 126 to Redmond. Turn left onto 97 again and head north through high desert country. No snow across these plains. It’s like northern Wyoming, brown jagged hills, ranches, sand and gravel; a nice coat of road grit covers the car’s windows. To the left off 30 miles or so are The Three Sisters, each snow-capped at about 10,000 feet, and Mount Jefferson, which I first mistook for Mount Hood, standing at 10,497 feet.

At Madras a left turn puts me on Route 26, through the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. A typically desolate western rez. Route 26 aims straight as an arrow at Mount Hood, rising 11,239 feet to a near-perfect snow cone peak. That’s when it’s visible. I’ve got another rare sunny February day and Hood can be seen from more than an hour’s drive away.

I leave 26 to take the Timberline Road turnoff, going up the mountain’s southern flank about six miles to the Timberline Lodge. Climbers launch their assaults on the peak from here, but today it’s all skiers and snowboarders. From a snowy parking lot I follow footsteps in the powder snow along a ridge, ducking into a few surprisingly roomy ice caves, I suppose dug out for training demonstrations. They are only a quarter-mile or less from the lodge.

As lonely and still as Crater Lake was yesterday, the parking lot is packed at Mount Hood’s Timberline Lodge. The place buzzes with lunching skiers. It’s as though a freak “sun day” holiday was called in Portland and families, grade schoolers and college kids, middle-aged businessmen and women all drove out to the slopes. I’m very likely the only fool on the Hood wearing sneakers. And yes, I’ve never skied a day in my life.

After two hours or so clomping around extremely whiteness, sunglasses being de rigueur, I throw two soaked sneaks on the back seat, put on a fresh pair of dry socks, and the Rav4 rolls back down the lodge turnoff and west on 26, past Government Camp and Zigzag and farms in the Huckleberry Wilderness Area. One has a rickety wooden wheel barrel with cut evergreen branches in the front yard. Another showcases a piece of true rural roadside sculpture: a red rusted-out Harley Davidson, with skeleton wheels and frame and a rusted skeleton rider fashioned from metal parts, one fist raised above his helmeted skull, American flag flapping in the rear. But civilization looms. Portland’s suburbs stretch out to the town of Sandy, and the last hour of the drive is familiar stop-and-go early rush hour slowdowns past shopping centers and fast food chains.

There’s time for a last trip into town to Powell’s City of Books. I want to go back to the rack of “zines” and pick up some of these personalized blogs in bound print that certainly aren’t stocked at Border’s — “Reality Ranch,” “Survivalism (by a soldier in Iraq),” a series of “Four Hundred Words” of autobiographies, and “Sufism,” with the cover line: “The present time is history in its truest form.” How can you resist such a promise? It also hits me I’ve taken ten rolls of film with nary a shot of a human being. So I lean against a column at one of Powell’s entrances and shoot cars and couples and streetwalkers as the sun sets on office windows across the intersection. Nature’s not private, there’s no invasion taking natural shots. People, though, see the camera and duck. And my shots will turn out pedestrian, figuratively and literally. Then it’s back to the airport, to a Country Inn & Suites, to drop off the rental and to learn the second leg of my flight back tomorrow, from Chicago, has been cancelled. “Hello, can I get a four o’clock wake up call?” The United flight to L.A. leaves before dawn, and then it is the long haul back.