Being trapped in Bend, OR during the Great World Shutdown of 2020 has not exactly been an agonizing experience. My parent’s home is sufficiently lost in the surrounding juniper woods, and aside from my violent allergies to the tree, I’ve been embracing the great outdoors so holistically, my pioneer great-great-grandparents are applauding me for their graves. Though I’ve been trying to snap a pic whenever I go out, nothing has been quite so impressive as this animal spine that I found dangling from a tree. I’ve tried to figure out how it got there, but so far I’m a little lost as to how some that big (no joke, I think I might have been a cat) got suspended from a tree. I’ve seen some red-tail hawks divebombing what I can only assume are rodents, but maybe one nabbed a cat and brought it up into a tree to feast.
Anyways, the first bit of my walk is always spent in tree spine contemplation. One of the contemporary mysteries of my life.
As I move on forward I wander down the hill through the forest along a sandy path. Bend is in a part of Oregon called the high dessert. It doesn’t rain much (not like the part of the state before the Cascade Mountain range which is an actual rain forest) so the dry, almost sand like dirt holds footprints. Everyday I follow my own footprints winding through the desert (I can see I’ve been the only one out here, because I have weird, styrofoam-like soles that have a distinctive mark), the only other sets are from deer who have their own paths.
After about half a mile I walk up a little incline and reach a lava rock canal that is mostly empty except for some still water and like 50000000 tumbleweeds (think western movie). The rocks are black and rough, and sometimes I climb down into the ditch and skip little fractures of stone on the brown water.
Once I make it to the road I can see the mountains, the most majestic are a set called the Three Sisters. They are snowtopped and sometimes bleed into the clouds in front of them. On a clear day though, they puncture the sky.
I’ve hit farm land now. And my new best friends live here:
Usually this is where I turn around, I’ve waved at my cow and I am ready for the two miles back to the house. However sometimes I find the courage to take the 6.5 mile track. I was literally bragging to everyone about how I was gonna do Devin (a race in BA that is almost exactly 6.5 miles) and if anything good came out of Coronavirus, it’s that I can avoid the race and not have to make up an excuse, haha. But as almost an indictment on my laziness, to visit the coolest of all Oregon places I have to make it that far.
The Peterson Rock Garden is a true marvel of mankind. It is a recreation of all of the most important places on earth, in tiny, colorful rocks. I was absolutely (and unknowingly) trespassing as I kicked my way through the cornfield. The place has the air of an abandoned amusement park. It has an almost eery run-downess to it. Everything is slightly off-kilter. And it’s FANTASTIC. Just this week I safely saw monasteries in France, the Taj Mahal, and New York.
So that’s that. A walk around rural Bend during the off-off-season.
Randall's Sandals 