I remember when I first fancied myself a “Western writer,” I went mountain bike riding with my laptop and my over-sized headphones, and I went looking for inspiration in the Blue Mountains outside of Walla Walla, Washington, where I was attending college at the time. In the open air, I squatted down in the grass in the attempts of writing something profound and life-changing about nature’s wonders.
Without having written one sentence, the battery in my computer didn’t last long enough for me to ponder the sunset and the blue of the aptly named mountains to write something that could equal the view. The smell of wild onions seeped onto my hands, which were distracted and led me to dig through the earth rather than tap away on the keys. It’s easy for me now to snicker at my naivety of wanting to be a wilderness purist, a Western conservationist, even with a backpack full of technology, but little did I know that I was fulfilling a life of dreams that have always inspired Westerners, one characterized by this balance between nature and comfort.
Even now, in my brilliant escapes from the daily drivel of the modern world, my hands get itchy and search for my so-called smart phone or twiddle with my digital camera. As much as I enjoy the sounds of the forest and tend to leave my iPod at home, I do remember a fine moment on a camping trip in college when one of my old roommates handed me his Walkman and I listened to his Beatles’ Abbey Road cassette in its entirety without being able to move, paralyzed by the harmonies of “Here Comes the Sun,” as the golden orb split through the clouds floating over Tiger’s Canyon in the Blue Mountains. My Eden. My paradise, at least for forty-five minutes or so. So, in a way, Western technology can fuse with its wilderness, in order to create an Eden. Indeed, that is part of our way of being.
Paradise, though, is truly elusive.
We went back to Tiger’s Canyon, one of my favorite places in the world. It is a tiny, little corner just over the border between Oregon and Washington. After being stuck for so long on the west side of the Cascades—a place that’s like a a Sno Globe, except instead of snow, there’s drizzle—it feels good to get out to where the country opens up. It was the first time in a long while that I could finally relax without worrying too much about projects hanging over my head. We sat on a log, still for the first time in what seemed like years, overlooking a beautiful forest of Ponderosa pines. I could hear a woodpecker off in the distance. A junco was flicking to and forth. And just when I thought I had found paradise, I thought I should take a picture. The flies started buzzing us, picking at our skin. Despite the flies and the distractions of technology, we found a corner in this world that we could call ours.
Nestled some 30 miles from the town so great they named it twice, Walla Walla, the place of many waters, we meandered up a dirt road with the dogs, a tent, and the kitchen sink packed into Tommy 3 Reds, my trusty little truck that just lives for crawling up these kinds of dirt roads that provide access to our refuges from the ills of the world. The ravens called us higher up the canyon, deeper into the Umatilla Forest. We set up camp at a saddle at about 4800 feet in elevation.
A single engine Piper Cub swung low and waved “hi” to us, a friendly gesture in a place where you’re lucky to see anybody for days.
We watched the sunset drinking a Columbia Valley wine, sitting on the poncho I got with a huge sombrero at a Mexican carnicería when I was a gringo Pancho Villa for Halloween during my last year in college.
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