Postcards from the Rogue Valley

The far-flung  town of Burns in Central Oregon, is not, strictly speaking, where followers of Ammon and Ryan Bundy took over a federal building and plotted the overthrow of the American government in 2016. That is 30 flat and lonely miles south. Still, Burns is out there, in the middle of nowhere. It’s the population hub (at 2,800) of Harney County, the largest county in Oregon (at 10,000 square miles) and one of the largest in the country, where cattle outnumber the 7,400 residents 14 – 1.

I’ve been fascinated by Oregon’s most rural territories since we first arrived in the Rogue Valley. I once referred to rural America, at a national meeting I’d convened of rural educators, as “the least urban parts of the country.” Boy, did my colleagues let me know I was off base.

And I’ve been fascinated by Burns. The standoff at the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge captivated me as I watched the events unfold on the television in our cramped Brooklyn apartment.

A few weeks ago, Tony and I planned the road trip I’d hoped for since moving here—to Burns.

Before heading out, I refreshed my memory about the militarized occupation there three winters ago.

It goes roughly like this.

On January 2nd, 2016—18 days shy of Trump’s inauguration—a few dozen folks calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom holed up at the headquarters of the Malheur refuge. The Bureau of Land Management, the longtime nemesis of the conservative West, manages much of the county, and its sister agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is in charge of the nature preserve—home to Native American artifacts and endangered plants and animals. 

The occupation was purportedly started to support jailed Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, then imprisoned in California for illegally burning government land. The occupiers invited comrades from across the country to join them in their armed defiance of the federal government’s ownership of public land.  

Engulfed by law enforcement and fierce public meetings about the standoff—with the whole country watching—Burns became an ideological proving ground. Thirty years ago, the town had seven timber mills; in 2016 it had none. The sharp shift from timber to ranching had brought local sentiment sufficiently in line with the anti-government Bundys, although the town was bitterly divided about the actions taken.

“This county is so torn up, it will never be the same—ever,” one townsfolk told The New York Times. 

Forty-one days after the occupation began, it ended.  All of the militants surrendered or withdrew from the occupation, with several of the leaders arrested after leaving the site. One, Lavoy Finnicum, was killed fighting arrest. 

On July 11, 2018, President Donald Trump pardoned the father-son duo, the Hammonds, whose imprisonment had sparked the Malheur drama.

My refresher on the standoff hardly prepared me, though, for our drive to Burns, across a terrain as vast as an inland sea. At 4,000 feet and more, Oregonians call these lands “high desert.”

In Plush (pop. 57), 200 miles from Ashland, Tony and I joined the 60-mile dirt road that crosses the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, our chosen route to Burns. We ordered sandwiches to go at Plush’s lone café; there would be no food (or gas) for the next 100 miles. As I sat at the counter fiddling with my iPhone, the only other customer came up to me and said, “If you’re calling me, you won’t find me. You don’t need that thingamajig here.” 

An hour and a half later, Tony and I stood among the sagebrush  and wildflowers—and, Tony feared, rattlesnakes—and ate our sandwiches under a cloudless sky.

We met only one car in our three-hour drive—no need to roll up the windows against other cars’ dust—but we spotted pronghorn, mule deer, and bighorn sheep. Spanning more than 422 square miles, the Hart Mountain refuge is one of the largest wildlife habitats in the West with no domestic livestock. 

We rejoined the paved road and traveled 35 miles to Frenchglen (pop. 11), gateway to the Steens Mountains, also on my short list of places to explore. 

The gravel drive up the side of Steens Mountain can be deceptive, an article in The Oregonian warns. Hints of mountain views come slowly, as the empty expanse gives way to huge canyons filled with stands of rare aspen and wild horses. Steens Mountain tops off at 9,734 feet. The east rim drops off suddenly, giving way to sweeping vistas far off into the desert. The western edge rolls smoothly away, dropping into canyons and valleys below.

“It’s both the pinnacle and the gem of Southeast Oregon, a place where the view goes farther, the stars shine brighter and the high desert is at its very best,” The Oregonian concludes.

I asked the receptionist at the historic five-room Frenchglen Hotel, built in 1923, how we could access the Steens Mountain Loop Road.

“I’m afraid you’re out of luck. It’s not open yet, due to snow at higher elevations,” she said.

We continued on to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 14 miles north. Created in 1908 by President Roosevelt, under a law allowing the president to declare game preserves on federal public land, Malheur is one of the most productive waterfowl breeding areas in the U.S. and an essential migration stop for the half million birds that follow the Pacific Flyway each year.

The refuge’s wetlands were lush with snowmelt (and mosquitoes) when we visited. Birdsong and the dipping and soaring of birds of all colors and sizes filled the air. The refuge headquarters, on the other hand, were quiet. The rifle-bearing, flag-waving militants who squatted there three years earlier left no trace.

Nine hours after we pulled out of Ashland, we pulled into Burns. Tony and I looked for a cup of coffee but ended up with a slice of cherry pie. 

We checked into the newly renovated Historic Central Hotel, formerly a Masonic Lodge, that boasted “prohibition-era touches with hand-crafted details at every turn.” It is a remarkable place. The owners, one of which grew up in Burns, are part of a movement to bring a dying town back to life. “Our hopes for Burns,” said Jen, “include vibrancy, pride, and LIFE!”

Tony, who counts his steps and was shy of his daily 10,000, led us on a late afternoon walk along the one-mile Burns Nature Trail, past new Kubota tractors, demolished cars, abandoned buildings, and constructed wetlands that cleaned the town’s sewage and drew flocks of Canadian geese. This was not the nature we expected, but it shimmered under the intense sun.

At the family-friendly Pine Room known for its six-course dinner for $22, we listened in on our server’s conversation with the diners next to us. Abby, a rising sophomore at Idaho State University, explained that she grew up in Burns and “wouldn’t change that for anything.” She recounted family trips to Costco in Bend, Oregon, a two-hour drive (“we’d go when our supplies hit rock bottom, given the distance”) and regional travel with her high school sports teams (“our school didn’t have money for a decent bus so the conditions were pretty basic”). 

“They say rural kids like me grow up without much, but we’re blessed in other ways,” Abby offered.

Back at the Central Hotel, I listened on my phone (my thingamajig) to a 2013 Oregon Public Broadcasting interview with high school students at the nearby Crane Union High School, one of the last two public boarding schools in the U.S. Its 60 students, bused from remote ranches in Harney County, spend the week at Crane Union and weekends back home. Some are the second generation to attend the school.

The teenagers talked about their weekend chores: building fences, roping cattle, training horses, herding cows, feeding pigs, weaning and vaccinating calves—really, whatever needs doing.

They shared their hopes for the future. Jack wants to study marine biology at the University of Hawaii and Peter wants to be an aerospace engineer—careers that would likely take them far from the ranch land they cherish. Shelby wants to practice family medicine in Harney County. Ann wants to teach nutrition at a nearby community college. Clay wants to be a farrier (an expert in horseshoeing) “so that I always have work to fall back on.” 

We returned to Ashland via Bend, a surging metropolis of 90,000 filled with chic restaurants and sleek SUV’s and surrounded by some of the Pacific Northwest’s best hiking trails. 

Still, it was Burns and not Bend that stuck with me. I imagined returning to Burns and inviting students at Crane Union High School to create a photo essay book about their lives in one of our country’s most rural places. At my nonprofit What Kids Can Do, I worked with youth around the globe to produce stories about daily life in “their village”—from the jungles of Nepal to North Hollywood. 

“They call us conservatives,” one student told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “They make that sound bad, but I don’t agree. We believe in family, community, standing up for ourselves and helping others, not putting on airs. What’s wrong with that?”

This seems a good place to start a conversation.

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