Leaving the Southwest makes you first think of being cold, but that really isn't true along the Snake or Columbia rivers. I've even managed to enter Oregon without suffering the indignity of being in the Pacific Time Zone. Perhaps this results from southeastern Oregon having a mindset that got established back in the Oregon Trail days.
It has been warm enough to get my first insect bite and to see the first snake of summer:
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| Photo doesn't show him sticking out his forked tongue at me. He was one little pissed-off snake. |
The Oregon Trail passed along these sandstone bluffs. My little girl has played here a couple years ago. She likes sand.
Ahh, what a smooth road went along the foot of those bluffs! A cross-country-style mountain biker like me can really love smooth, flat, and fast, as the pioneers no doubt did.
A couple geese were pocketed in those bluffs. They were easy to hear, but hard to see. They got a rhythm going that reminded me of the Arab women ululating in the cliffs of Wadi Rum in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia."
We got an unusual red shape in the sky at sunset:
These unspectacular white flowers really grabbed me, for some reason. It was the first time I had ever seen them:
Something about them made me think of women on the Oregon Trail. They were a hardy bunch, in several ways. Beauty and ornamentation were not at the top of their list. But perhaps they too noticed these flowers, picked a few, and decorated the inside of their wagon. That would have reminded them of their easier feminine life back East. They were so far from that now. Would any normalcy return to their lives ever again?
Female readers -- if I have any -- should not dismiss my efforts at crawling into their heads. It is what a traveler should do if he wants his experience to be more significant and authentic.
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