Archive

Yesterday’s post was epic. Today’s will be photographic. Sunrise over the east moraine: Then, for three straight days the moraine, lake, and lower fields were shrouded in constant fog. Not once [...]

[This is a really, really long post. Click “Read More” if you want to read more than what’s visible on this screen…and especially if you want to hear about the ghost heard of elk, whose mystery [...]

Last night I asked around at Lear’s pub in Enterprise about the ghost herd of elk. Today I asked the Joseph librarian. I can’t get consensus on whether or not the story is a “white man’s story” [...]

Joseph High School is actually where all public school classes for this area meet, ages Kindergarten through 12th grade. Everyone’s in the high school building because class sizes keep shrinking [...]

Think about it: You’re a few million gazillion years old and glaciers have been sawing at your body for a long ass time. You’re no stranger to the forces of frozen water. You’ve been plucked, [...]

Settling in is always one of my favorite things to do when I arrive at a new place. What are the local stories? Where are the local hot spots? What lies undiscovered? What begs for [...]

It’s possible to drive right up to Old Chief Joseph’s grave at the north end of Wallowa Lake, but I wanted to approach it through the woods so I opted for the Iwetemlaykin State Historical Site [...]

It’s so simple: the way snowflakes confetti into the water, one moment frozen and flying, the next moment swallowed by the blue-green lake. I could watch this magic trick for hours, each flake a [...]

Readers of this blog know that the first thing I do when I arrive at a new location is study my copy of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Oregon’s own Barry Lopez. It’s [...]

Last night, winds howled down the slopes of Chief Joseph Mountain and sent rippling waves across the surface of Wallowa Lake. I woke to patches of clear sky, occasional fits of rain, and gusts [...]