Author Archives: somewhereoutwest

Wassailing the Orchard

by

There must be thousands of ways and reasons to light up the long dark nights of winter. In the western islands of Europe, where most of my ancestors hail from, they lit bonfires in the orchards and wassailed the trees. Wassail comes from the Old English meaning “to be hale” or “be whole”. The islanders toasted the health of the trees and asked for an abundance of next year’s crop.

Unfortunately, my ancestors didn’t do a good job of keeping this tradition alive when they came to America several centuries ago. But why should that stop us? Wassailing is too much fun to lose in the dim recesses of our ancestral past. How does one go about reviving a vague agricultural tradition? Well, there’s quite a discussion about wassailing on the web. We are not alone! It’s ironic and encouraging how well modern technology works to preserve archaic practices.

So, we cobbled together a wassailing ceremony to bless our little orchard of apples and apricots here in the high desert. We lit a fire, ate popcorn, drank hot spiced cider and shared it with the tree roots. Each person thought of a blessing or a wish as they visited each tree and tied a piece of yarn to a branch. We sang wassailing songs, and made noise to drive away any bad spirits. Finally, our youngest family member climbed the strongest tree and left a piece of toast dipped in cider high up in the crown. Afterwards, we huddled around the fire as the cold night settled around us. No one wanted to go inside. We couldn’t stop watching the sparks drifting up toward the crisp stars.

Next morning, I crossed the frosty grass to admire the trees festooned with scraps of yarn — the cheery affirmation of our relationship. We take care of the trees, they take care of us. I thought about how every bright strand secured a wish. The orchard will glow with our benedictions until spring birds take the faded yarn to build their nests.

 

The Archive of Voices

by

A mature forest absorbs sound. The bark, the leaves, the duff, the moss, the needles … don’t bounce sound waves along — they consume them. The hush of a dense forest can be thick with centuries of voices left by passersby. Walking along a trail near Santiam Pass, you might not hear those ancient voices but you can sense they’re there; the laughter of native children, the singing of shepherds, the newsy gossip of women picking huckleberries …

Whoa. Hold up there. It wasn’t all that warm and fuzzy.

For all their deep green beauty, I sensed a minor chord in these woods cloaking the Cascade crest. This section of old Indian trail made me uneasy. At first, I chocked it up to my “pronghorn” personality — I like wide open spaces. But maybe I was sensing some dark aspect of the human history of this route?

When I got home, I researched the Indian trails in this part of Oregon. No surprise that these paths were used for commerce. Everyone wanted to trade for something they didn’t have. During the 1800s, the Pacific Northwest offered everything from salmon to buffalo hides, obsidian to trade beads, horses to slaves.

Wait. Slaves?

Yes. As it turns out, the native people of this region practiced slavery among themselves long before Lewis and Clark showed up. The Corp of Discovery passed through the “greatest emporium of the Columbia” between Celilo Falls and The Dalles where slaves were a high ticket item. Other slave trading centers existed at Willamette Falls and the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.

The trail I followed near Santiam Pass fed into a network of tracks the Klamath people used to bring slaves to the Willamette or lower Columbia markets from the south. Once the Klamath people acquired horses, they were a holy terror when it came to raiding Northern California’s Pit River and Shasta area tribes and carrying off their women and children.

Since slaves often try to escape if they think they can make it back home, the Klamath marketed their excess captives as far away as possible. Who knows where you’d end up if you were “sold down river” on the Columbia? Back then, you might as well have been shipped off to another continent. How many people trod north with little hope of returning?

Next time I walk that trail high in the Cascade range, I’ll understand better where the melancholy notes come from, now that I’ve roamed deeper into the archive of voices.

New World Latkes

by

Our Thanksgivings will never be the same. I suspect this might be true for many American families who experienced the rare and fortuitous cooking collision of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving this year. What a feast! The Thanksgiving potluck we enjoyed included Latkes, the traditional Ashkenazi Jewish potato pancakes. While the turkey roasted, we savored hot fried Latkes smothered in sour cream and apple sauce.

Latkes strike me as the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. You can eat them with your fingers, they’re delicious, and they symbolize a profound horticultural circle between the “New World” and the “Old World”. I find potato history fascinating, but in case you don’t share that peculiar passion, here’s the saga in brief.

Spanish explorers show up in South America and find everyone eating these weird starchy tubers. The Spaniards acquire a taste for spuds out of necessity and stock up on potatoes for their long return voyage. They introduce the folks back home to the lowly potato which gradually gains favor. The new tuber becomes a staple crop in Eastern Europe where the Ashkenazi Jewish people incorporate it into their recipes. Since frying potatoes transforms them into highly addictive substances, the confluence of Hanukkah — a holiday celebrated by frying foods — and potatoes was a match made in heaven! Latkes were born and eventually came to America with the Jewish people.

Of course, Jews aren’t the only folks who love potato pancakes but their version of the dish might be the most well-known in America, for good reason. The sweetness of the apple sauce, the sour of the cream, and the salty fried potatoes create a synergy of flavors that resonate, and make my taste buds deeply thankful.

The Lowly Rock Jack

by

 

When the ground is too sandy or rocky to sink a fence post, you gotta come up with an alternative. A wire basket filled with rocks is the favored solution around here. Throughout the West there are variations on this theme. Where wood is plentiful, the rocks might be corralled in a square or triangular box.

Different regions have different styles and names for their rock-assisted fencing contraptions. I’ve heard them called rock jacks, rock cribs, or gabions. There are probably more names than that. I like rock jacks. It seems to match their utilitarian nature and appearance.

Most rock jacks are hardly noticed as one speeds past them mile after mile across the rangelands. But there are a few out Steens Mountain way that rise above the ordinary. Leave it to those Oregon buckaroos to jazz things up with an occasional hubcap.

 

Tumbleweeds in Bloom

by

 

Tumbleweeds and I don’t get along. It all started when my daughter got bucked off her first bike and landed hands first in a pile of dried tumbleweeds. I lifted her from the prickly thicket and pulled dozens of tiny thorns out of her palms and fingers. Even after we got all the prickers out, their sting lingered. It was a long, tearful ride home. Since then, it’s been war between the species.

Later we moved to a place where tumbleweeds are the dominant plants. They form six-foot-high windrows against backyard fences. They lodge under cars in dense, impenetrable mats. They spread summer wildfires across miles of rangeland. I spent hours uprooting them; extricating them from flowerbeds; smashing their remains into trash cans; yanking them out of bushes at the end of a pitchfork … all the while, hating them with an irrational passion.

But last week I saw a side of these noxious weeds I’d missed. Walking along the edge of a parking lot in Central Oregon, I noticed a scattering of tumbleweeds glowing magenta in the filtered sunlight. I knelt to investigate. Their tangled purple stems sported tiny papery flowers in screaming shades of crimson and pink — each blossom no bigger than a lentil. This fragile beauty nestled in a den of nasty spikes, protected from adversaries like me. Because tumbleweeds are wind pollinated, they don’t need to create an inviting environment for pollinators. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to create uninviting environments for everything, including each other.

Which is why the brilliant jewel-toned flowers were all the more amazing. Why splurge on the frivolous party colors? I don’t know the botanical answer, but for me those blossoms are the counterpoint to the tumbleweed’s spikes — the yin and yang, chasing each other endlessly across the West’s wide open spaces.

Mountain Thoughts

by

 

South Sister thinks up her own cloud. In meteorological terms, this Cascade volcano is creating an altocumulus standing lenticular cloud. She is particularly good at coming up with these. I’ve yet to learn why that is — maybe it has something to do with how her slopes are shaped? For whatever reason, she often has her head in the clouds. We’re alike that way.