Tracking

On the eastern side of Oregon there's a place called Sparta. Looking at the Wallowas, the scant peek my upstairs window afforded, looking in that direction is a place called Sparta, at the base of the mountains, at the bottom of the foothills that lead to the mountains, the Wallowas. There are orchards there, apple trees that were brought by settlers, trees brought or seedlings sent over later, that were planted and remain; untended, but still producing fruit.

There's a place called Cornucopia, further up from Sparta, where there's a cabin, a cabin that somebody burned. Not too far from the cabin is an old enameled cook stove. It seems someone dragged it from the cabin, maybe, when it first began to burn.

There is a place called Auburn in the foothills of the Blues where there's another cabin almost falling down, and a shed some distance behind it with a fainting couch inside, an old velvet and mahogany couch, brought or shipped over new from the east, broken now and housing mice, a tinge of maroon, still, that can catch an eye in the midst of all this old mining camp.

Orchards, gardens, mahogany and velvet, graves; thousands of women left their mark, remains of the things they tended.

There is a place called Huntington where the train used to unload before the bridge across the Snake river was built, where anyone expecting a delivery, goods from the east, or if someone died and was being returned home, would have to go, to accept it, the delivery.

There is a place called Virtue Flats where the trail still runs, it's there, the trail, and there's a sagebrush tree grown so tall it can shade a lunch break, take the glare off a desert afternoon. Out at Virtue no one can hear you if you cry. No one would even know you were around.

I lived in the mountains for nearly twenty years, up in the high mountain deserts of eastern Oregon, close by towns with names like Sumpter and Keating, with canyons named Burnt, by summits called Dooley, across from bars named Stockmen's, with neighbors named Cowboy Joe and newspapers called The Herald.

Then, after my boys were grown and gone, safe, I returned to my city, back home. I won’t go back. But I will forever recall the smell of sage, right after it’s rained.



All tracks by Laura Davis except "Parting" written by Kevin MacLeod (Stages of Grief) incompetech.com