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Morgan Lake, OR

Morgan Lake, Oregon

B By the time we reached La Grande, the sun had started to settle his hips down into the mountain tops. So many of our days were like this: waking in the dew-covered tent, breaking camp with a flurry, then the long, pretty drive against dusk. We hoped to find a camp spot and make dinner before dark.

“What town is this?” asked Kate, a bit nervous about the setting sun.
“La Graaaand?” I replied. “La Gran-day?” I googled for a campsite, park, or pond nearby. Google returned a place called Silver Lake Campground, with a specific address. We drove up road X for 1.2 miles, took a turn on road Y for .02 miles, then a HARD LEFT at the traffic circle, followed by a slight right, then a slam! on the break for .0001 miles, followed by some cursing. We were at the exact address Google delivered us to, and it was…a fire station.

“Quick! Let’s ask those guys for directions!” I pointed at two strapping lads headed for their car. Kate hesitated a little. They looked like Lumberjack Oregon Firefighter Loggermen! When we asked them about Silver Lake, Franklin (light green eyes) and Joe (quiet, background-type) said they’d never heard of such a place. But they’d gladly see us to a city-owned campsite not far off, at Morgan Lake. We followed their old Volvo (Kate loved their car) through town and country, parting ways at a gravel road that would lead us to the campsite. I invited them to join us for dinner, in a few hours, if they didn’t mind camp food. They accepted.

Kate couldn’t believe it. “We have no food!” she insisted. “And we don’t have any time–the sun’s going down!” She was right. She dropped me off by the lake and headed back into town to shop for groceries. I pitched the tent. My cell was dead, there were swarms of mosquitos following me everywhere I walked, and I could swear I heard a band of coyotes in the distance, making me shiver. When finally the Chevy pulled up, gratitude flooded my brain. An hour later, dinner was ready: rice, beans, homemade guacamole(!), chips, homemade salsa(!!), bread, olives, and roasted vegetables. And beer. Kate had out-done herself.

The guys arrived at ten to find us huddling over a paltry fire made of twigs and branches. It was all I had been able to find. They left and returned with their arms full of firewood. Ah, men.

The evening went off splendidly: everyone had enough to eat, Franklin and Joe proved to be engaging dinner guests, and we soon succumbed to the “dazed and sleepy” look of people who had eaten too much. When at a very late hour the guys left, I sat poking at the embers for a bit, thinking about the need people have for other people. A coyote howled in the distance, but I didn’t shiver. It was an honest, beautiful sound.

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At the Bagby Hot Springs

TThe Bagby Hot Springs are located in the Mount Hood National Forest, approximately sixty-seven miles southeast of Portland. Long used by native americans, they were named after Bob Bagby, a hunter and prospector who stumbled upon them in 1880. A bathhouse was built in 1920, but it was destroyed by an unattended candle in ‘79. Today, The US Forest Service maintains three bathhouses with the help of volunteers who live on-site.

Despite what the internet says about the Springs being “easy to locate,” we found ourselves winding up and down about twenty forest roads, some with paper plate signs (one of them saying, simply, “Mother”), until stumbling –like Bagby himself –onto the trailhead. It’s a 1.5 mile hike to the Springs. With our tent, food and clothes on our backs, we searched for the fabled Bagby campsite, about a quarter-mile past the baths. The topo map we had was useless, and after an hour of hiking we decided to make camp in a level clearing by a stream. Kate made an excellent fire, I roasted broccoli on a stick. Have you seen this movie? It captures the Babgy Springs perfectly:

When I was a kid, one my my earliest heroes was Grizzly Adams, from the TV show. He had left civilisation for the wilderness (something about being wanted for a murder he didn’t commit) and enjoyed a nigh-telepathic bond with animals.  His demeanor was always gentle, thoughtful, and he looked vaguely like Kenny Rogers, another icon of my childhood. I had fantasies of running away into the woods, subsisting on plants and fungi, and, like ‘ol Grizzly himself, communing with the creatures. The television series lasted two seasons, just enough time for the transformation to take place: on the outside, I still looked like a little girl, but on the inside…I was…JUNIOR GRIZZLY! Of course, the real James “Grizzly” Adams was a deadbeat dad who trapped wild animals and sold them to PT Barnum’s Traveling Show. In the seventies, that would have made an unpopular show.

Kate and I woke early the next morning to break camp and make it to the baths before anyone else. It was a chilly monday morning; the likelihood of people visiting the Springs at this hour was low, and we hadn’t seen any other campers. Of course, being women, we constantly have to make concessions to our sex and consider the risks in any given situation. We know where our codiac mace is at all times. But Junior Grizzly does not like having to make concessions. She would rather take a few (calculated and juicy) risks and lose from time to time, than live a caged life. Whose world is this, anyhow?

Laying in a hollowed-out cedar log, steam rising into the cold morning air, I tilted my head to hear the chirp-chirp of Oregon birds. “This forest is a cathedral,” I thought. I looked at Kate, who had fallen back into her log so that only her bent knees showed. Even her knees are beautiful. Kate says that she is an ugly woman, but I know in my heart that’s not true. Her words, her thoughts, her smile, her shoulders in the sun. It is simply not true.

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Grapefruit Soup

Grapefruit Soup

LLast night I made grapefruit soup. Grapefruit was all we had so Chunsoon bartered them for veggies to go in our broth. This was not too different from begging when presenting wrinkly grapefruit to plump old couples who are watching satellite tv in their Aerolites. The old people in their RVs took pity on ol’ three percent (there is a reason she went instead of me) and gave her cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes. Voila, grapefruit soup, you know, like stone soup.

Tonight we are in a hotel room in Wallace, Idaho. The whole town is on the national register of historic places. I believe it too. I think there are some old families here in Wallace and they all look like they want to eat us. I mean, they look like a bunch of cannibals. We are outlanders and they are all giving each other silent signals while eyeing our calves. I know I’ll be the first to go. When we don’t come back from this trip, don’t look for our frozen bodies in Alaska, look in the Wallace Hometown Foods meatlocker. I once read a book about a town that saved a lot of money on groceries by eating people from other towns. They liked to get women so they could rape them first. One woman had the foresight to swallow her gag- the cannibals ended up raping a corpse. I suppose that’s one way, sister. Speaking of gagging…

I took a bath tonight, safe in the knowledge that Chunsoon was making me veggie rice stirfry with our campstove on the little motel table. I sat down at the table, warm and clean and not too sad –I had a bit of an appetite. I could smell the garlic from the bathroom. As Chunsoon put the oatmeal carrot soup down in front of me, I started to tear up. She got confused.
“Don’t worry honey, we won’t eat the burned parts,” she told me.
“How could you burn it with all this water?”
“I don’t know how to cook quinoa.”

We both ate a few bites before Chunsoon started saying something about “the thought that counts” and asking if I thought there were any homeless people in Wallace. “No,” I told her, “Cannibalism is a good way to clean up your streets.” Chunsoon always wants to know if there are any homeless people or dogs or little anarchist boys in tight black t-shirts wading through dumpsters to whom we can give our food. Our meals have become a time of examining, questioning, and a bit of snobby commentary instead of about eating, and this weighs heavily on her conscience. I no longer have a conscience and everyone who has ever wronged me will pay. Tonight, she stared at the gummy soup for a while before she walked it over to the trash can. She held it above the can and then started screeching and bouncing and jabbing the pot towards me. “AAAh! You do it! I can’t! OH NO!” She had the same reaction earlier when she cleaned a dead bug off of my windshield with her eyes closed. I should have thrown the soup away for her.

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