Days 102-104 – 10/16-10/18 – Portland to Cape Meares, OR – 84 miles
What’s the point of an epilogue, anyway? I’ve been listening to some mysteries while on the road. It’s not a genre I had consumed much in previous years, but it’s a better fit for audiobooks than more classically literary stuff. I’ve noticed how important epilogues are to these kinds of stories. The final chapters often […]
Days 99-101 – 10/13-10/15 – The Dalles to Portland, OR – 101 miles
The sun burst over the Eastern Gorge, the Columbia River glittering below, as the hills were cast in a soft, pink hue. An early departure from The Dalles saw me climbing steadily into the hills, accompanied by a resurgent urgency. Only two stages–admittedly, two long stages–stood between Portland’s eastern fringe and me. A much shorter […]
Day 98 – 10/12 – Biggs Junction to The Dalles, OR – 24 miles
If you’ve followed the journey thus far, you know that there wasn’t a singular Oregon Trail, with a tidy, uniform line of wagon wheels rolling westward in perfect formation. On the Platte River, for example, Mormon pioneers tended to follow the north side, while the Oregon and California Trail folks held to the south. And […]
Days 96 & 97 – 10/10-10/11 – Boardman to Biggs Junction, OR – 68 miles
Modern pilgrimage, for all the echoes we’re fond of highlighting, is awfully different from its medieval predecessor. That’s hardly a controversial statement. I wonder, though, if we’ve ever fully grappled with the profound ways that flying (or taking the train or bus) home–as opposed to walking home, making that same long journey in reverse–fundamentally alters […]
Days 94 & 95 – 10/8-10/9 – Pendleton to Boardman, OR – 56 miles
There’s an old saying in baseball that momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher. It might be the only accurate statement ever made about momentum in sports. It’s a classic narrative move, focusing on a single, distinct action, like a turnover or a dramatic score, and then extrapolating a larger trend from there. There’s something […]
Days 92 & 93 – 10/5-10/6 – La Grande to Pendleton, OR – 57 miles
Sometimes, an entire story unfolds over the course of a walk. It helps, of course, to have 57 miles and two days to allow that runway to unfold in full. The road signs leaving La Grande are aggressive. Not only do they alert drivers to the 17% grade looming ahead on the dirt track, but […]
Day 91 – 10/4 – North Powder to La Grande, OR – 31 miles
A quiet road led me northward from North Powder, climbing gently through rolling hills. Suddenly, an agricultural vehicle veered off the road directly into my path, slowing to a halt as the driver leaned halfway out the cockpit. “Just a heads up–we’re about to be herding 800 cattle on this road. They’ll be coming right […]
Day 90 – 10/3 – Baker City to North Powder, OR – 21 miles
When did the Wild West end? It’s a contested issue, in part because the whole notion of the “Wild West” is contested, but also because any prolonged, ill-defined era is going to suffer from arbitrary endpoints. If you pin down a historian, though, and make them commit to a year, they’ll probably squirm for a […]
Days 88 & 89 – 9/30-10/1 – Ontario to Baker City, OR – 85 miles
I have a vivid memory from the first time I left North America. No, it doesn’t involve some UNESCO World Heritage site. I was watching television in England. Some BBC channel. The idea behind the show was that people who found potentially interesting, historical objects buried in their yard could bring in experts to conduct […]
Days 86 & 87 – 9/28-9/29 – Caldwell, ID to Ontario, OR – 46 miles
How long can divisions flourish, can polarization mount, until the center can no longer hold and things fall apart? Perhaps we’ll have an answer before too long. Few current or former Republicans have paid as steep a price as David French for adopting a Never Trump stance. I recognize that critics could respond that his […]