A River Runs Through It
The view from Lower Table Rock, in the heart of the Rogue Valley, offers a high-altitude Eden. In the distance, the Siskiyou Mountains, home to some of the most botanically diverse coniferous forests on the planet, keep their counsel. Barely visible, the snow-capped stratovolcano Mount McLoughlin (alt. 9,493) touches the clouds. Below, the Rogue River snakes through a mosaic of green and gold pastureland, providing so much yet asking so little.
Tony and I lived in the valley for two months before we actually caught sight of the Rogue—yes, from Lower Table Rock. In many ways, everything about this Southern Oregon enclave opens eyes wide. You will see crystal blue skies by day and Cassiopeia by night, aging hippies—migrants from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond—rubbing shoulders with tourists from Arizona, cattle grazing near vineyards and pear trees flowering next to cannabis. Near the Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford, you will find a burger joint that also serves kangaroo, Himalayan antelope, and wild boar.
And unlike the Rogue, the mountains that rise from the river give it up in one grand gesture. The silhouettes of the ancient Klamath Mountains, the young High Cascades, the forested Siskiyous—they form a rugged line where the farmland and hills meet the sky. Towering 10,000 feet above its surroundings (at 14,179 feet), California’s Mt Shasta, 60 miles south of the Oregon border, dominates the southern horizon.
But to experience the river, you need to see it from above or travel down it. Having aged-out of white river rafting, I hope to catch a ride on the last remaining mail boat in the U.S. that runs from Gold Point to Agness along the Rogue.
“It was a river at its birth,” wrote the Western author Zane Grey in 1912. “And it glided away through the Oregon forest, with hurrying momentum, as if eager to begin the long leap down through the Siskiyous. The giant firs shaded it; the deer drank from it; the little black-backed trout rose greedily to floating flies.”
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