REBROADCAST: ‘On the road’ in SE Oregon

“On The Road” is “Think Out Loud’s” radio road trip series: conversations with wanderers, tourists and residents along Oregon’s back roads and highways. In this trip, we traveled through the sparsely populated corner of Southeast Oregon from Fruitland, Idaho, to McDermitt, Nevada. We met rodeo riders, rafters, ranchers, and rock hounds – among others.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: I’m Dave Miller. This is Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. We’ve been traveling for this show since we first started back in 2008. Over that time, we’ve been to almost every corner of the state and almost everything in between – from Astoria down to the south coast, from Hood River down to Lakeview, from the Wallowas to Ontario. But that’s left out a big chunk of Oregon that we had not visited until recently. It’s the southeastern-most corner of Malheur County, which borders Nevada and Idaho. It’s a different time zone from the rest of Oregon in a lot of ways, it’s a different world. And it was our destination for our latest “On The Road” installment.

In case you haven’t heard these shows before, the idea is pretty simple. We choose some stretch of road and talk to people we meet along the way. For this one, we started in Fruitland, Idaho just outside of Ontario. It’s about 45 minutes from Boise. Our first stop was Jolts and Juice Coffee Company, which had a row of cars lining up its drive-through window. Inside, baristas were pulling shots and running credit cards. At a table in the middle of the cafe, Dwayne Holloway was talking about weekend plans with a few friends. Holloway was heading to Jordan Valley.

Dwayne Holloway: We’re going down the rodeo from the weekend, taking the grandkids. And my wife and I are gonna go down and meet some friends. So we’ll be down there for a while.

Miller: What’s your grandkid’s favorite part of the rodeo? What’s your favorite event?

Holloway: Well, he’s only four and he’s really into the rodeo. Originally from Colorado, we brought him up here. So he’s really a rodeo and a cowboy boy. He was raised that way so far. He enjoys that stuff.

Miller: We continued down U.S. Route 95, away from the city center towards the farmland that dominates much of the Treasure Valley around Boise. There’s a good chance that the onions you eat come from around here. We spotted Dan Russell taking a stroll with his wife.

Dan Russell: We’re just out walking the dogs. We’ve had a lot of rain here lately, so it looks like we’re gonna have a beautiful day today.

Miller: Russell used to live in LA, working in air quality management. When he retired, he decided to come back to the place where he grew up. But rather than downsize, he bought a 15-acre farm to try his hand at growing wheat. I asked them what they had planned for the rest of the day.

Russell: Just yard work.

Miller: Yard work just in these 15 acres?

Russell: Yard work throughout the whole thing. Fertilizing, we got compost to spread. We also have an apple orchard. We got about 300 apple trees. So we tend all of those.

Miller: It doesn’t seem like an easy retirement.

Russell: Well, I like to work. So, yeah, it works for us. It probably doesn’t for everybody, but I like to work. I don’t like to sit on the couch.

Miller: Did you know how to grow wheat and grow alfalfa when you bought this place?

Russell: Yeah, it’s not rocket science. So, yeah.

Miller: South of the small town of Marsing, the farmland gives way to hills and we began to climb through road cuts of old volcanic rock. We pulled over at a small turnout on the highway. We were there to meet Sammy Castonguay, an earth systems science instructor at Treasure Valley Community College. He told us there’s a small trail there to a lookout. There’s barely even a sign leading up to this spot on the highway. So you’d hardly know to stop. But it is really worth it.

Sammy Castonguay: Oh, wow. [Laughter] Check this out.

Miller: So, I was obviously pretty excited. But the thing is that I grew up in Central New York state and even though I’ve been in Oregon for about 10 years now, I am still really often just blown away by the grandeur of the West. Plus in the entirety of America, east of the Mississippi, this vista would be a major deal. It would be at least a state park, if not a national park. But here, there is barely even a sign

Producer Dave Blanchard described the scene.

Dave Blanchard: It is just such a great juxtaposition of like soft and hard features, like looking out at some of the hills out there. There’s just like rugged, ragged volcanic, rough rock and then it’s covered by this gentle little seemingly blanket of green.

Miller: The Owyhee Canyonlands are famous among climbers, rafters, ATVers and other recreationists. Castonguay told us that one of the reasons this region is special in geological terms is that it’s shaped by a specific type of volcanic rock called rhyolite.

Castonguay: So rhyolite is a very viscous lava. I like the pancake batter analogy. Flow is very thick and really has a difficult time flowing. Rhyolites behave like that as a lava. And when they’re erupting out of the crust, they’re very slow and very viscous as they come out. What we’re standing on is a pile of at least 300 ft thick rhyolite lava.

Miller: From a volcanic eruption or a series of them.

Castonguay: Yeah, from likely one that lasted for a long time.

Miller: The 300 ft shelf of volcanic rock spreads throughout the entirety of this part of the famous Owyhee Canyonlands. It turns out this volcanic feature tells geologists a lot about how the tectonic plates have moved over time.

Castonguay: There’s an age progression of volcanism from here to there. So it starts at about 16 million years or 15.4 [million years] at McDermitt, and then it gets younger and younger and younger towards Yellowstone. So it’s just like a little trail of crumbs leading geologists to Yellowstone to show us how these are connected.

Blanchard: It’s like the Hawaiian Islands.

Castonguay: It’s exactly like the Hawaiian Islands, right? It’s a hot stationary hot spot and the plate has moved on top of that. So it’s exactly that way, except it’s rhyolite instead of basalt – more explosive.

Miller: Now, Castonguay can obviously analyze a landscape in hard science terms. But given the sheer beauty of the area we were standing in, I asked him how he took it all in on an aesthetic level.

Castonguay: Oh gosh. I hear the dove in the background and the meadowlarks in the background, and right now is a very nice time to be in the Owyhee because it’s very green. And the sage is all getting its new growth and whatnot. What aesthetically appeals to me is kind of, as you were mentioning, the juxtaposition of the really craggy landscape with the smooth landscape. And then all of the hidden biota that’s around. You can hear everybody talking, and you can hear the action that’s going out there and the crickets in the background.

But in the desert, life is hard. It’s not like the forest, where there’s a big stand of trees. It’s just standing there saying, “talk to me, I’m here.” Instead, right here you need to sort of seek out the individuals and the organisms of life. And I think there’s a lot more sort of personal appreciation that you have to have for the desert because it’s really hard to make a connection unless you’re out there for a long period of time.

So aesthetically, that’s sort of what I see. I just see the juxtaposition of the harsh landscape and how fortunate I feel to be living in that landscape. You really do have to spend more time feeling the landscape.

Miller: Further down the road sits Jordan Valley, a small town built on ranching. We stopped at Mike Hanley’s house on the outskirts of town. Hanley has a passion for old wagons. He walked us through a barn on his property filled with 20 or so wagons that he’s refurbished.

Mike Hanley: This wagon is an important one. It’s got the old-time lynch pin axles on it. I don’t think that means mess to anybody unless they know a little bit about wagons. But it’s the same kind of wheels the Romans used …

Miller: You get the sense that Hanley could talk about wagons for hours. And the fact is there is a lot of wagon diversity in his barn. Some are covered in canvas, some are open, some are enclosed in wood. Some are beautifully painted. Many of them are usable.

Hanley: My wife, 21 years ago, when we celebrated the 150th year of the Applegate Trail – the southern branch of the Oregon Trail – I was a wagon master on that, and my dutiful wife accompanied me. She drove 400-some miles across the desert. I think that’s kind of neat, but she did a fantastic job. And this is the outfit she drove.

Miller: Are you a dutiful husband?

Hanley: Well, I try to be, as good as anybody tries to be, I guess. Sometimes you succeed. Sometimes you don’t.

Miller: How did you get into these wagons to begin with?

Hanley: I was about nine, 10 years old. I wanted to take the family jeep, myself and my friends, and go on a camping trip up the mountains. And my dad said, “why don’t you just take that little wagon?” It’s just in the corner of the field there and the feed team – our workhorses – and use them. The wagon wasn’t very good. So my dad helped me fix the wheels.

Miller: You were nine or 10 years old, and your idea was to drive a jeep into the mountains yourself on a camping trip.

Hanley: I can understand why my dad never thought much of it.

Miller: Although that actually seems maybe safer than giving you a horse team and a wagon.

Hanley: All of us kids at that time grew up with horses all the time and we used them in the hay fields, raked hay with them. So it just made sense that we would use it.

Miller: So you and some friends went camping with a horse team and a covered wagon?

Hanley: Yeah, we took the old wagon, we got the wheels fixed and went up. I think we ran … our age was from about 10 to 13 years old.

Miller: So you did have some experienced hands there.

Hanley: Yeah. Well, all of us, most of us had driven horses and so forth.

Miller: What was that camping trip like? What do you remember from it?

Hanley: Well, we drove up, and camped, and had a lot of fun, and cooked on a fire, and tied the horses up to a tree. They ate grass and then we went and moved them to another tree, and they ate all the grass around that. It was a lot of fun. They seem to enjoy it too.

Miller: Hanley says that by preserving old wagons and buildings, he’s preserving history. I asked him if his children or grandchildren care as much about historical preservation as he does.

Hanley: Not yet. I think they care, but young people aren’t really as close to history as I and my neighbors were, because we grew up with it. But the electronic age has changed everybody’s focus. People are more people of the world, and we were really people of the community. There’s a difference. Hopefully, they’ll come around.

Miller: Why is the history of this area so important to you?

Hanley: Well, I think that, right now, if you take a look through rural America, we’re suffering a decline in our population as people are moving to the cities. We see that happening. But more and more we’re finding out the rural lifestyle is probably what America is all about. And I think retaining our history is vital, not just for us as the early white settlers, but for the Native people as well. Because down through the years, we’ve pretty much intermingled, we have the same culture here.

We’re having a big rodeo here in a couple of days. And if you’re gonna be here for that, you’ll see that there’s American Indians. I mean, there might be an Australian roper in here. You don’t know who’s gonna be here participating, but we have a culture we’re very proud of here in the West and we wanna maintain it ‘cause that’s who we are.

Miller: As Hanley mentioned, the whole town was getting ready for its annual Big Loop Rodeo while we were visiting.

Mike “Fluff” Wood: My name’s Mike Wood and everybody just calls me Fluff.

Miller: Our producer, Dave Blanchard, met Fluff near the rodeo grounds. He was lounging in a camp chair with some friends. They’ve all been coming for decades. He’s a silversmith, a big guy with a wide long white beard, round purple sunglasses, a newsboy cap and leather suspenders over his plaid shirt. The Big Loop Rodeo is better than almost any other in the West, Fluff said.

Wood: This is about as western as it gets right here. You got some of the best saddle makers silversmiths. If it has anything to do with the horse, you can usually find it here.

Blanchard: So when you say it’s as western as it gets, what does that mean? What distinguishes this from other rodeos?

Wood: Well, the cowboys that are buckaroos that are rodeoing here, they’re the real deal. They’re not just cowboy athletes. I mean, these guys out here working, living the life day in and day out, 365. And that makes it really interesting.

Miller: The mood in town was really festive. A lot of the people here only see each other a couple times a year, but people slip back into comfortable teasing friendships pretty easily. Greg Gomersall was hanging out nearby with his friends. Dave walked over to talk to him, and Fluff came along too, teasing Gomersall.

Wood: This isn’t gonna be broadcast anywhere near Canada, is it?

Blanchard: No, probably not.

Wood: That’s good.

Blanchard: Where you come from.

Wood: Because he’s down here illegally. [Laughter]

Greg Gomersall: I’m a citizen.

Fluff: Trump’s after him right now.

Blanchard: Where are you from?

Gomersall: New Plymouth, Idaho.

Blanchard: What, what’s he referring to?

Gomersall: I’m from Canada, originally. I met my wife over in the parking lot over here about 17 years ago.

Fluff: That’s another story. But he’s got to tell you that one. We can’t publicize that one. [Laughter]

Miller: A little bit of it, maybe.

Gomersall: I just had come down from Canada with a truckload of gear to show my wears one year and ended up meeting my wife while I was here.

Miller: While Dave was talking with those guys, I was wandering among some of the other folks who were setting up shop for the rodeo. Tracy Sue Bruce has been coming every year for 24 years. I told her we’d started our day in Fruitland and she immediately jumped on my pronunciation.

Tracy Sue Bruce: Fruitland is Fruitland [“Fruit-lund”], not Fruitland [“Fruit-land”].

Miller: You knew I wasn’t from here the moment … actually, the moment I stepped up to you, but then I got back.

Bruce: Are you from west of the Cascades?

Miller: I am. Yeah.

Bruce: No, that’s all right. I was too, at one point in time …

Miller: Where are you from?

Bruce: Um …

Miller: You don’t even want to say it?

Bruce: I wanna say several decades ago – Albany.

Miller: OK. You grew up in Albany.

Bruce: Yes.

Miller: Do you want to leave that past behind – the Albany past?

Bruce: It’s a nice place to visit.

Miller: What’s wrong with Albany? You don’t like the paper mill?

Bruce: Democrats.

Miller: OK. [Laughter]

Bruce: I will give you an honest opinion.

Miller: So what’s wrong with Democrats?

Bruce: We like to kill, clean, cut and wrap, and eat our stuff. We like guns. [Laughter]

Miller: Do you feel … so you’re in Idahoan and now, through and through?

Bruce: Oh, absolutely. I’m where I should be.

Miller: You felt like you were born on the wrong side of the mountains or the wrong state even.

Bruce: On the wrong side of the mountains. Eastern Oregon is good.

Miller: After some more razzing, Bruce told me what she was most looking forward to for the weekend.

Bruce: Seeing people that we only see once a year here. It’s like a big family reunion to people you’re not related to. So it’s even more fun sometimes than actual family reunions.

Miller: In some ways, it’s literally a family reunion. Her son, Ray Baird was there. He’s a bronco rider.

Describe it for somebody who’s never, never done it before – which is most humans.

Ray Baird: Most humans. To start with, like when you first started riding bucking horses, you don’t remember probably your first six or seven because the adrenaline rush. And after that, it’s like everything goes into slow motion. It’s like smoking a good bowl, I guess.

Miller: Really? Huh. Riding a bucking horse is like smoking a big bowl of marijuana?

Baird: Pretty much. Yeah, it is. [Laughter]

Miller: How?

Baird: It’s a good high. That’s all I got.

Miller: Just with more concussions and broken bones.

Bruce: An adrenaline rush.

Baird: No, it’s an adrenaline rush and it’s just everything … after you get accustomed to it and know what you’re doing and everything, everything goes into slow motion. You can watch things come together and you can think and see things coming up ahead of time and it’s just [an] easier way of getting high, I guess.

Miller: So, even though it’s eight or 10 seconds, you’re saying that the experience of it, like it lasts a lot longer.

Baird: Yeah. Lasts five minutes it feels like, everything goes into slow motion. You get happy, bouncy, cheerful.

Miller: Baird said that the competition isn’t actually that different from daily life as a buckaroo.

Baird: I ride every day. So, I actually ride a lot of horses that [inaudible] and buck with me at work every day. Just kind of nice to make a paycheck, and have fun doing it, and see everybody while I’m here.

Miller: How often do you get thrown off?

Baird: Personally, I’ve been bucked off once in the last six years.

Miller: Oh, that sounds really good.

Baird: That’s a good average. I’ll probably get bucked off on Saturday, now that I said that.

Miller: How much can you make from one race or one … what do you call it … one ride?

Baird: Depends on where you’re at. I’m up in Sheridan, Wyoming on the 11th and that’s $8,500 added, plus half back of our entry fee. So first place will probably pay right around $8,000.

Miller: Really?

Baird: This one will probably pay right around $3,000.

Miller: Can you describe the moment right before the shoot opens?

Baird: Controlled chaos. Best way to describe it, just control chaos for a minute. To make sure you’re going through a mental checklist, I guess. Just like you would be flying, just get everything.

Miller: What’s the checklist? What do you have to make sure is right?

Baird: Make sure your butt’s where you want it to be in your saddle, your hands where you want it on your bronc grain. You gotta make sure you got both stirrups where you want them on your boots and you’re in the right angle for your horse to come out so you can make your mark. And I don’t know, just go to it. You run through it in about a second and a half. And so you just kind of run through it real fast and try and get out of the shoots before something can happen.

Miller: I said goodbye to Ray and his mom. But before I walked away, she handed over a bottle of Old Crow bourbon that had been making the rounds.

Bruce: This is called Rusty Chicken.

Miller: That was tasty. Thank you.

Baird: What do you guys call it in Montana?

Wood: We call Wild Turkey “feisty pigeon.”

Miller: Feisty pigeon. Yeah, I think that’s the first time I’ve had some bourbon as I’ve done this show. OK, that’s good for now.

Bruce: You’re not driving.

Miller: I’m not driving. I’m just interviewing people. All right. There we are. Thank you.

Bruce: All right. You’re welcome. Well, nice to meet you.

Miller: Good to meet you.

And on we went. Jordan Valley is a kind of stopping point for people on road trips. That’s why we found Ric Seaberg and Marie Deatherage eating lunch in the town park. Deatherage grew up in Oregon, but Seaberg didn’t. She was a geography teacher and led field trips throughout the state. Now that they’re both retired, she’s showing her husband the state.

Marie Deatherage: I’m always telling Ric about these fantastic places in Oregon. It’s like the most diverse state of all. So I have to plan these little trips and take him to various places he’s never seen.

Miller: They bought a new van for these excursions.

Deatherage: So it’s very, very well designed, very cool and things work – well, except for when they don’t. We’re having a bit of a glitch right now.

Miller: What’s a glitch?

Deatherage: Oh, a hose broke.

Miller: An important hose or just one of the inessential hoses?

Deatherage: A catastrophic hose.

Miller: Not the catastrophic one!

Deatherage: The catastrophic hose means we haven’t showered since Sunday.

Miller: What day is today? I’m looking at my watch. It’s Thursday.

Deatherage: Thursday, yeah. So that’s way too long.

Miller: How are the two of you as travelers together, as traveling companions?

Deatherage: Well, I’m the navigator. I’m the geographer. I have a map in my head. So I’m on the planning, the navigating. He calls me the brains of the operation.

Miller: So then what are you?

Ric Seaberg: I’m the guy that puts the knee pads on and goes into the truck to try to fix that hose.

Miller: You don’t really pay much attention to the navigation because that’s taken care of.

Seaberg: My wife has a master’s degree in geography and so … end of topic.

Miller: How long have you guys been together?

Seaberg. Since 1997.

Deatherage: It will be 20 years this August. Ooh.

Miller: What does the “ooh” mean?

Deatherage: I mean, it’s amazing that it’s been 20 years because it seems like we met late in life and we’re still alive.

Miller: [Laughter] It’s wonderful you found each other.

Seaberg: Well, that’s exactly the way we feel about it.

Miller: That’s Ric Seaberg and Marie Deatherage.

Later on, we stopped by the Flat Iron Steakhouse. It was filled with cowboys. Out on the front porch, a group of men were listening to Mark Fillmore tell some stories, while children played in the grassy yard.

Mark Fillmore: Do you guys know the difference between the cowboy story and a fairy tale?

Miller: Tell me.

Fillmore: A fairy tale starts out “once upon a time” and a cowboy story starts out “this is no bull[bleep].” And that’s the way it is.

Miller: [Laughter] That’s the only difference?

Fillmore: That’s the only difference.

Miller: Fillmore’s wife runs a restaurant, and they have a ranch a few miles outside of town. I asked him what his favorite part of ranching is.

Fillmore: Being outside, and moving the cattle, and riding your horse and stuff.

Miller: You still ride a horse on a regular basis? I mean, you’re not just on a four-wheeler?

Fillmore: Oh no. Every ranch around here uses a four-wheeler way more than it used to. But every ranch around here also still uses horses.

Miller: Both of his oldest sons have moved away. He’s not sure they’ll become ranchers.

Fillmore: My youngest son seems to show the most interest in it, and me and him are roping together in the rodeo here later on this week.

Miller: That must be exciting. What’s it like when you rope with your kid, with your son?

Fillmore: It’s freaking cool. Me and my middle son won matching saddles last year at a pretty big roping. I was at a big roping, and roping with another guy. My youngest son that I’m roping with here, he is roping with another guy. And I was just ahead of him in the average. When it was all done, he wound up beating me in the average at the Winnemucca finals. It was totally awesome. I loved it. It was cool to see your own kid beat you. It’s great.

Miller: That’s the rancher, Mark Fillmore, who we met outside the Flat Iron Steakhouse in Jordan Valley.

About halfway through the day, we turned off of Highway 95 into the tiny community of Danner. We met Bob Skinner at a historical marker. It’s a site of the burial place of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

Bob Skinner: Charbonneau was the baby that was born at Fort Mandan to Sacagawea of Lewis and Clark fame.

Miller: Skinner’s grandmother discovered that this is where Charbonneau was buried. She was Scottish and Charbonneau was half-Scottish. So she wanted to memorialize him here at the grave site. I asked Skinner how his grandmother wound up in the area.

Skinner: She was a 17-year-old girl, walked out of the house in the highlands of Scotland, told her two sisters and mother goodbye and said she’d be back. She said, “I’ll see you.” The reason she took off was that she was told by doctors that she could have TB and she needed to find a drier climate. And Scotland isn’t a dry climate. So she came to the United States, landed at Ellis Island, rode the train and stage coaches across the United States, ended up here.

Miller: Do you know what her first recollections were? Or what her first experiences were?

Skinner: Yeah, that’s kind of interesting. Her first night in Jordan Valley was as western as you can get. She was in the Old Stone Hotel that night. And then the sheriff in Jordan Valley had a gunfight like the westerns, where they stood out there and had a face off. That would have been quite a sight for a 17- or 18-year-old to come in and see that when you first arrived here. I’m not sure I would have stayed here.

Miller: Welcome to your new home.

Skinner: It was for real. This was for real. My grandfather … my great grand … my great, great … well, even my great grandfather who I remember. I was nine when he died. Those guys, it was for real. I mean, those Indian wars were not romantic to him. He didn’t smile. It was pretty scary. And my great, great grandfather, he got in a lot of pretty terrible battles with the then warring Indians.

Miller: Skinner is also a pilot and he runs search and rescue missions in the area.

Skinner: The Owyhee River is extremely loaded with recreationists right now and the whole area is absolutely remote. I mean, I don’t know, remote with the big capital “R” emphasis added. Some of the area south of here is the most remote in the lower 48. And people get in here that want to experience solitude, and all of a sudden, they’re in way over their head. It can be life threatening. When the sheriff’s office gets a 911 call, they’re duty-bound to go. Lots of times in this area, they’ll call me to go find them.

Miller: The land that Skinner flies over, the Owyhee Canyonlands, may be dangerous, but it’s also stunning.

Skinner: 186 miles of wild and scenic river and spectacular country. It’s pretty. It’s really pretty. You can’t see it from anything other than the aircraft because it’s so vast and big. You can run the river, but all you see when you run the river is water and straight up in the air, in the canyon walls. But it’s a pretty place.

Miller: Thirty miles west of Jordan Valley is tiny Rome, Oregon. It’s basically just a restaurant, a gas station and a put-in for rafters getting ready to run the Owyhee River. Most of the year, the Owyhee is not raftable. But this spring, the conditions were ideal and there were dozens of vans and cars at the put in when we got there.

Rose Wallick and Regan Dunn were about to put their boats in the water. Dave Blanchard spoke to them.

Rose Wallick: We met about 20 years ago as raft guides in Colorado.

Blanchard: Have you guys rafted together ever since then or is it sort of a reunion of sorts?

Regan Dunn: Well, we rafted quite a bit, but it’s been probably eight to 10 years since we have last been on the river together. So this is a chance for us to all come to the same location. We have one friend coming from Reno. We came from Chicago of all places and Rose came from Portland. So it’s a great place to meet all, get back on the river together and spend four glorious days.

Wallick: And the length of time between boating approximately coincides with the age of our children. So this is really fun. Not only is it the women getting together, but we’re also bringing our sons into the fold as well too. So that’s a really exciting adventure for us.

Blanchard: So how do you think this trip is gonna be different from the trips of the past?

Wallick: Well, it was different when we were in our early twenties without children. So that alone changes the tone of the river trip.

Blanchard: A little more responsibility required this time.

Wallick: A lot more responsibility. A little less wild. But I think it’ll still be really fun and really rich in other ways to have our kids along.

Blanchard: So, what do you do now?

Wallick: I’m a hydrologist for the US Geological Survey.

Dunn: I’m a paleontologist, a paleobotanist, specifically. So I study fossil plants, plant evolution.

Blanchard: Are you excited to see anything in your field on this river?

Dunn: Sure. There’s lots of deposits, rock deposits that are interesting. There are some fossil plant localities nearby. Nothing that I’m aware of on the river itself, but this is more of a recreational trip. So it’s just fun to get out there and see the rocks.

Blanchard: What can you tell me about what we have learned from the fossils of plants in this area?

Dunn: Well, these rocks are between 16 [million] and 10 million years old, and they are the result of the Yellowstone hotspot volcanism. So there’s lots of rhyolite in this canyon and there’s lots of deposits of sedimentary rocks that are combined with sort of the products of the volcanism. We call them volcanic plastics. They’re like pumice rocks, and ash rocks, and those other volcanic rocks that are deposited in lakes – they were deposited in lakes and in areas nearby. We know that there’s fossil horses and peccaries, camels, several different types of rodents, rabbits. A peccary is like a javelina. It’s kind of a pig relative.

Blanchard: How about you? What are you looking at professionally when you get on a river like this?

Wallick: Well, this is a pretty special river from a geomorphic perspective. The Owyhee has a great history of landslide dams and lava dams. So it’s just really neat to see this river [and] how it’s evolved over time in response to those. My colleagues call them extra fluvial events, and that’s something that I’ll be looking at and talking about with my kid.

Blanchard: It must be a lot of fun to have a kid as a scientist. Because your job relies on curiosity so much, right? And then you have this innately curious being that is like coming with you everywhere. Is it so much fun to be a science mom?

Wallick: It’s an amazing treat to be a science mom. And my little guy is so curious, so it’s so fun to see what it is that he’s curious about. Because in many cases, it’s different than the things I’m curious about. He loves it all. He’s asked a ton of questions, and it’s so fun to just support that and see him blossom as a little scientist.

Miller: A little ways from Rome, several miles down a gravel road and four miles from the nearest neighbor is Helen Dougal Corbari’s home. She makes mecates, a Spanish-style rein made out of horsehair. I asked what’s special about horsehair.

Helen Dougal Corbari: It’s softer.

Miller: I mean, not as soft as my hair, but … oh, you can make them out of human hair too. It’s a little bit softer. Is it as strong though?

Corbari: Yeah, it’s actually strong.

Miller: The mecates are twisted together, not braided, something Corbari says a lot of people get wrong. And when they’re made well, they can last a long time.

Corbari: I had one that lasted 25 years.

Miller: One that you made?

Corbari: Yeah, I made it and I used it every day. But we had a barn fire and it burned up. It was still a good mecate. If you take care of them, you don’t let dogs chew them, you don’t tie your horse up with them, they’ll last for 25 years or more.

Miller: How did you become a mecate maker?

Corbari: My mom taught me. I’ve been doing it since I was eight. My grandma did it. My mom learned, and then I learned, and then my daughter does it as well.

Miller: So four generations in your family have made generations. Do you have different styles?

Corbari: Four generations. I pretty much stay with the traditional style – like my mom. These are mostly my mom’s patterns, but my daughter, she adds color to them.

Miller: Oh, your face just now! [Laughter] You moved your lips aside, like …

Corbari: She adds color. So she takes the white and dyes them. So she puts pinks, and turquoise, and blues, and oranges [in them].

Miller: And you think it’s just great.

Corbari: Oh, yeah. I think it’s awesome.

Miller: You made a face like you didn’t.

Corbari: No, I do. I think it’s awesome because she has a whole different market than I do.

Miller: So, this works. What does your mom think of what your daughter’s doing?

Corbari: My mom doesn’t really like the dyed ones.

Miller: She thinks it’s just too out there – pink and purple, and fluorescent. She’s more of a traditionalist.

Corbari: Yeah. Right.

Miller: You should explain to her that, hey, at least your granddaughter’s not biting into your market.

Corbari: Well, we should, but she’s 99. So it’s kind of hard to change her ideas.

Miller: Is she still making mecates herself?

Corbari: No. I would say about three years ago she was probably still making them.

Miller: Corbari grew up on her mother’s farm near Jordan Valley. They had no electricity and got their water from a spring.

Corbari: She still has a generator. She doesn’t have electricity.

Miller: Did you use a generator growing up or was everything just lamp light?

Corbari: It was lamp light, like, till I was in high school. And then we got a generator.

Miller: What was it like to grow up without electricity?

Corbari: It was my life. Yeah, actually I liked it.

Miller: You would do homework to just a gas lantern?

Corbari: A gas lantern or a kerosene lantern. Yeah, I did. It was fun.

Miller: OPB’s Oregon Field Guide profiled Corbari’s mom. And you can see that video on our site – opb.org.

We continued on down US Route 95, following it all the way to the border with Nevada and the small town of McDermitt. We were planning on meeting Joe Van Eeten, who goes by the name White Buffalo. He owns a rock shop and he’s also trying to open a veterans retreat at the Old White Horse Inn in town. When we arrived, he was just getting back to his shop, along with the members of the Central Oregon Rock Collector’s Club.

Ken Lawson is one of those members. He is the kind of guy who has a groaner of a joke for every situation.

Ken Lawson: A question I have to ask you – have you ever heard the story about the sunrise?

Miller: No.

Lawson: The story is it’s gonna dawn on you tomorrow morning. [Laughter] See, it’s even clean. You can put that on the air.

Miller: It’s clean.

Lawson: Yeah, I tell a lot of jokes and I’ve never had anyone tell me they were great. And then there was a story about the jump rope … Just skip it.

Miller: There were many more jokes like that. Eventually, Lawson and Suzie Meeker showed me some of the rocks they’d found earlier in the day.

Suzie Meeker: We had a great day out there looking for rock. [We] found opalized, petrified wood. We found agates.

Lawson: Now, the folks on the radio, they can’t see this, can they? Well, my goodness.

Miller: What are they missing?

Lawson: They’re missing about 180 lb. piece of agatized, petrified wood right there.

Meeker: This is another piece of petrified wood.

Miller: This is another piece of reddish, gold.

Meeker: Opal and agate. Agate is clear so you can see through it and sometimes you have to cut it and slice it, but you can see there’s purple, red, all the different colors.

Lawson: And there’s a lot of people that say, “you got a bunch of dirty rocks in your truck.” It’s all in the eye of the beholder. You get these and wash them off, and start slicing them, and everything like that. Put them in a tumbler and polish them up. Oh, cherry.

Miller: I asked them how they became rockhounds.

Lawson: I was a retired stonemason, or I am a retired stonemason. So then I just kind of gravitated to smaller rocks. Although there’s some fairly large ones in there.

Miller: So you spent a lifetime or a work life hauling rocks around and building things with rocks. And now, in your fun time, you go looking for rocks.

Lawson: That’s a fact. It’s in my blood, man. I’m a third-generation stonemason, so I just have no choice. I have to do it.

Miller: So, what about you? How’d you become a rock hobbyist?

Meeker: Twenty years ago, I was in a small town in Northern Arizona, and we were just looking around to find something to do. A school gym had a rock show, and I wandered in because we were tourists and just finding something to have fun. And I picked up a piece of polished petrified bog wood, this McDermitt wood I always wanted. It was dark green and it had swirls of blue in it. I thought it was so fascinating that it was actually part of a swamp and that Oregon was part of a swamp millions and millions of years ago. So it was always a goal of mine to come to McDermitt.

When I moved a couple of years ago, I realized that this was my opportunity to take advantage. Central Oregon is a real mecca for rock collectors because of all the volcanic activity. And I was finally close enough to McDermitt to come.

Miller: The rockhounds made plans to meet Van Eeten again. The next morning, we followed him to his defunct hotel. Van Eeten fought in Vietnam. He told us that when he got back, he had PTSD and complications from Agent Orange. He fought with the VA over his benefits and had a hard time readjusting to civilian life.

Joe Van Eeten: I had a difficult time getting along with people. I had a difficult time to stay married. You know, you’re in this war mode, and with a lot of bad nightmares and flashbacks.

Miller: Van Eeten eventually found a calling helping other veterans at a place he set up in the coast range he called Base Camp Bravo. It was a place where veterans could support each other and get access to benefits.

Van Eeten: And what was neat about it is that all the other veteran representatives, instead of the veteran having to go into these offices that they didn’t like … you know, we were very leery, claustrophobic of going into these federal buildings and going into the VA. None of us trusted the VA. It was very well known. Veterans did not trust the VA.

So what was really neat – they were all coming out to my basecamp and they would sit with these vets and they talk and talk and talk and talk, and fill out all their paperwork. Then their paperwork gets filed. And when a veteran had to go see a psychiatrist – you have to see a psychiatrist – when that time came, he did not have to go alone. There would be three or four other people that would drive him and take him and bring him there. It was like a buddy system.

Miller: But he was eventually shut down because of land use issues. Van Eeten moved to McDermitt, in part to search for gold. He found the White Horse Inn and started renovating it. He thought it could be a good venue for a reimagined Base Camp Bravo.

Van Eeten: They could stay in the rooms. I got 21 rooms. I got five acres. We can develop it. We can make a small veteran village. I believe that once I had veterans here, other people would come and visit and help, and we could do the same thing we did at Base Camp Bravo.

I just ran out of money. I put everything into it. I figured maybe once I get going, other people would get involved, but nobody did. And there was GoFundMe pages, but they’re not doing much because you have to be on it all the time. And I’m not a computer person. I know lots of things but not the computer.

Miller: Joe got his nickname, White Buffalo, from some of the Native American veterans that came to Basecamp Bravo. He’s friends now with some of the people who live on the nearby Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation.

One of those is Dennis Smartt. Smartt’s been trying to get a storytelling project off the ground for a few years now. He’s 71 and he says he’s seen the reservation change a lot since he was young.

Dennis Smartt: Every holiday, we used to have round dance, hand game, card game – having fun and associating with each other in the way we are supposed to, the way we are taught. So we’ve forgotten all that and now we are divided, seems like to me. So for that reason, I’m trying to get everybody back into our hallways, because people used to visit each other many years ago, come in a wagon, walk horseback or whatever from different reservations. They’re going to Owyhee, Nevada to the Fourth of July event over there. This is where they would stop, to go over to the mountains. And so those are the reasons we all did pretty good. We work together as a Native people, but now, seems like we’re separated.

Miller: To fight against that separation, he’s tried sharing stories with young people on the reservation.

Smartt: I used to go to school here in McDermitt, talk to the kids, tell them coyote legends or sing them a song, and seems like they enjoyed it. And a lot of times, people call me, “how do you say this in Paiute?”

Miller: Dennis told us he enjoys sharing his stories and knowledge. But he also wants to get other people on the reservation to share their experiences.

Smartt: But now that I’m forgetting, I was thinking this would be a good idea to try to remember those things. Then trying to get the people from here to go up and tell their part of what they know, or what they have heard and what they have seen. That’s why I am looking forward to it, to do this. And the door is open to anybody.

Miller: They tried a small version of it last year.

Smartt: It was quite a few, mostly young people. So I thought it was a good idea. And after that, we got done, they ask if we’re going to do it again.

Miller: He feels like a lot of people on the reservation complain about things but rarely are able to change them.

Smartt: We all bark and growl, but yet, like what they say, “big thunder, no rain.” I’m thinking maybe if I do this, I’ll maybe open the door to the whole world, where they might see what kind of life we are living – the people that originally owned this United States, from North Pole to South Pole.

Miller: Smartt told us about a time when he recognized the power of storytelling as a way to heal a community.

Smartt: I don’t know, a few years back, I went up to Burns, Oregon. The tribe up there, they asked me to go up because they had all their foster kids from there in Burns or from the state of Oregon. They all came and they hosted that. I went up there and prayed, sang some songs and told them stories that I know, which I think everybody enjoyed. I know I did, because I can feel it. Most of the stories hit me.

Miller: He put his hand on his heart.

Smartt: Here … that’s why I do this. Well, I don’t know how long I’m gonna be in this world.

Miller: That’s Dennis Smartt. His next storytelling event will take place in early August.

After talking with Smartt, we headed back to the Say When Casino in McDermitt. It’s owned by Sean and Leigh Ann Dufurrena. We talked with them, as they passed their 10-month-old baby girl back and forth. They took over the casino from Sean’s mom. About three years ago, Sean’s grandmother first opened it in the 1970s. Sean spent a lot of time here as a kid.

Sean Dufurrena: I grew up mainly searching for quarters behind slot machines and stuff like that when I was a little kid, but I did come back here. We moved away to Elko when I was about 10, but I did come back and bus tables and stuff when I was about 12 or 14.

Miller: Sean said it was a very different town back then.

S. Dufurrena: The town was a heck of a lot busier. There used to be a mercury mine here, believe it or not. So that employed probably, I would guess like 80 people or something like that. So this place used to have two blackjack tables. We used to have two dishwashers going all the time. Probably double the kitchen staff we do now. The bar was hopping all the time. It was a lot busier town.

Miller: The blackjack tables are gone. What’s left are slots, video terminals all around the casino, but it’s still open 24 hours a day. I asked who comes there in the middle of the night in a town of only a few 100 people, hours away from any major city or even really a minor city.

S. Dufurrena: A lot of truck drivers spend the night here because we’ve got a big lot, we’re out here, we got a lot of space. It’s a convenient place for people to stop. I think we have pretty good food so that’s pretty popular. That’s probably our main overnight clientele.

Miller: They also get people making long hauls from the Bay Area to Boise, snowbirds moving homes for the season, and once a year, people making their way to the Burning Man Festival. If it seems like the arty, experimental, drug-friendly crowd for Burning Man might not be a good fit for a rural ranching community like McDermitt, Sean says it’s actually pretty familiar to him.

S. Dufurrena: So when I was growing up here, like 35 years ago, I would say that the culture is pretty similar to and pretty … I mean, people that were here then would definitely fit in at Burning Man now because people just kind of did whatever they wanted.

Miller: It seems pretty different now. Or maybe I’m wrong.

S. Dufurrena: There’s still some of that. I mean, this is kind of the wild west a little bit still, I’d say. So, people feel free to do what they want, I guess.

Miller: Sean and Leigh Ann were living in Boise before moving here. They came with big dreams for the place.

Leigh Ann Dufurrena: I came down with sort of this romantic vision that it would be more of a destination type place for music and things like that, but it just kind of never panned out that way.

S. Dufurrena: I thought coming in, my mom would bring up issues and stuff before I came down here, and I would tell her that would be easy to deal with and it’s easy, easy, easy. Then I kinda have big plans that just all got lost when we got here, because the day to day just kind of keeps us so busy.

Miller: On the other side of the casino, sitting at the bar, was a younger couple at a very different stage of life. Steven Heitmann is a ranch hand on a farm down in Orovada, about 30 miles south.

Steven Heitmann: And pretty much we take care of, oh, easily over 1,000 head of cattle on a lot of BLM permitted land. We basically live in the American cowboy dream.

Miller: He and Brie Nidey were grabbing dinner at the casino. The meal options are fairly limited in Orovada.

Brie Nidey: There’s nothing there at all. Maybe a gas station and not a thing.

Miller: This is a forward question. Are you guys married?

Heitmann: Actually, I just proposed to her last week.

Miller: Really? Did you say yes?

Nidey: Yeah. I did.

Miller: OK. Congratulations.

Heitmann: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Miller: How long have you been together?

Heitmann: About a year and a month. Yes, sir.

Miller: How did you know it was time?

Heitmann: Well, we moved up here recently about three months ago. We met each other in college. We’re from Colorado originally. I found this job up here and I told her about it, and she said, “well, I’ll go wherever you go.” So we loaded up and headed west, like they talk in the old days, I guess you’d say. Then [we] came on out and things have been going good.

We were coming on our one-year anniversary and she’s got to go do an internship to finish her schooling in Montana. I’m gonna stay here and work. So I wanted to show her … you know, I can only give her so much to show my appreciation and I think that pretty much showed her all of it. That’s all I could give her, really. That’s about all I could do.

Miller: What was the moment like when he asked her?

Nidey: It was awesome. I was wondering what he was doing because he was suspicious. It was awesome. It was very romantic and cute.

Miller: How’d he do it?

Nidey: He took me out in the middle of nowhere, like literally the middle of nowhere. Nothing was out there. It was out on the ranch, and he said, “I just wanna show you.” I was really confused at first. Then he set me up, and turned me around, and proposed to me. It was just magical. It was awesome.

Miller: How old are both of you? How old are you?

Heitmann: 22

Miller: And how old are you?

Nidey: I’m 21.

Miller: What’s your dream for your life? Like for the next 30 years? What do you want from your life?

Nidey: Just to live a happy and full life, and say, “oh yeah, I did that.” Whenever I’m old, I wanna have fun stories that I can tell my grandkids. I don’t want it to just be one place, [a] boring life. I wanna go see the world and make mistakes and have a wonderful time doing it.

Miller: What about you? What’s your dream?

Heitmann: Well, my full dream one day is to have a family and have something that I can stand for, something to show for – a place with some land, some cows, some horses. It’s kind of a little bit different than anybody else. But all-in-all I guess, to sum it all up, I wanna be what they call a top hand. Somebody everybody looks up to, somebody that has got a good family that their kids love, that he loves their kids, and somebody that just has worked hard for everything that they have.

I just, the same thing, wanna just go and see the world. I can find work in 50 different states, even Hawaii if I wanted to. I just gotta pick one. I like to live my life two years at a time and just kind of leave on good terms. And just go see the world place by place, you know?

Miller: Thank you, guys. Congratulations.

Heitmann: Thank you.

Nidey: Thank you.

Miller: That’s Steven Heitmann and Brie Nidey. You can see a picture of the recently engaged couple along with plenty of other folks we met along the way on our website opb.org/thinkoutloud. While you’re there, you can find links to all of the other “On The Road” shows, including our walk down Portland’s Sandy Boulevard and our drive on Highway 38 from I-5 to the coast.

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