The Land of My Father

Summer Mountain Meadow 9.5x14 oil on board

If you drive up the winding (and indelicately-named) Dead Indian Road out of Ashland and up into the Cascades in the direction of the Klamath Basin...if you take the correct exit onto an unmarked logging road past Shale City (another mystery, the result of a failed attempt to mine oil shale by the settlers in the area, with no habitation whatsoever)...if you take the correct number of left turns followed by the correct number of right turns, you eventually end up at the end of the road.  Parking your car and walking a few minutes along an unmarked trail will lead you to a small but deep depression with a small body of water at the bottom called Lost Lake.  There are dozens of Lost Lakes around, and this one is not as well-known as many of the others, but it has always been a special place to me.  There are steep rock bluffs on which you can stand and look down onto the tops of towering fir trees.  At just the right time of year, Calypso orchids are blooming, tiny and heavily scented wildflowers that are somewhat rare.  And the scent of pine in summer's heat, the soft dead grasses and fields of wildflowers and the stillness of the place lend a mystical feel to it.  It is a place to look within oneself.

But if you instead drive up the south fork of Little Butte Creek Rd, leaving Medford in the other direction, going past White City and then Eagle Point, on past the little Lakecreek General Store, up miles of gravel road until you reach what was once my grandparents' ranch, and if you stand in front of the ranch house and crane your neck way back and look up to the top of the steep mountain that blocks the midday sun in winter and makes the little valley colder than you would expect, you see the peak where my grandmother told us my father would climb when he was a teen, and how with his friends he would hang a pair of underwear from a dead snag for a flag of conquest, and then they would cool off by swimming in this same little Lost Lake.  It was a special spot for him and his buddies, and it became special to me and a few of my friends some 40 years later.

Cascade Tangle 9.5x14 oil on board

And above is another special place - on the Salmon River trail near Mount Hood.  The water is so clear and brisk and it plays delightfully with the sunlight.  You could sit at this spot and contemplate for hours and when you were done you would be the better for it.