A Weekend in the Oregon Desert:
I planned the entire trip around taking a single photograph. I didn’t take the photo I envisioned, and I’m not finished editing even a third of the photos I took, but I already feel satisfied with the results, and I’m excited for what’s to come. A couple of years ago, I started intentionally not hiking every piece of each trail I went to, leaving offshoots unexplored on purpose to give me something new to see in places I knew I would return. In a sense, not taking the photo I envisioned leaves me with a sense that I still have unfinished work in this place and a vision not completed. It’s an offshoot left unhiked. Not to mention, being there this past weekend inspired me with some new ideas, which I’ll need to go back to create, hopefully later in the summer, though my initial vision may have to wait for next year. They’re all good excuses to return.
A small group of friends all planned to join me for the weekend, and so we left town and headed south after work on Friday afternoon, stopping for gas and groceries for the trip at the halfway point. The drive south was beautiful, as always. Southeastern Oregon is a different kind of pretty. There’s not much there, and that’s sort of what makes it - I find myself constantly asking what it’d be like to live that far out as I pass ranches without neighbors for miles. The road winds through a mountain pass and then drops down into a valley just before you turn south on a road that heads due south to Nevada. The views as you head down the road south are worth the drive alone.
I don’t know quite how to describe the experience of being in this place once you arrive. If the wind isn’t blowing (which it frequently is), the experience of sitting out there was well described by my friend Russ, “It’s like being in a sensory deprivation chamber.” Just sitting in such a vast expanse of nothingness is almost overwhelming in its abscence of stuff and things. There’s just empty, dry lakebed, in some directions nearly as far as you can see. The absence of sound (without wind) is palpable. Visually, distances are extremely difficult to perceive. People drive out on the playa frequently; but what you may think is a person on a dirtbike a half mile away might be an RV 3 miles away. Perception is frequently distorted in the mirage. Despite its in-your-face novelty, I find the nothingness wonderful. Seeing the horizon has always been relaxing to me. There’s space to think, I don’t feel trapped or constricted. I don’t feel tense. There’s nothing there to be hypervigilent about. There’s nothing around you for miles. This place is nothing but horizon, and of course, some 10’000ft mountains to the west. Minor details.
I think the thing that I created this post to type was how wonderful the experience was of sharing this trip with friends. I came to create a very technically challenging, but hopefully beautiful photo of the Milky Way galaxy (the original vision of which will have to wait for next year), but what I’m finding is that the photos that mean the most to me and capture the experience the best are all of the shots taken in the moments with friends - chillin’ in the sensory deprivation chamber, the crew at the campfire under the stars, and Russ casually brushing his teeth in the bizarre, alien landscape. They tell the story, and they make me remember the experience of being there, which I’m thankful for now and know I’ll be thankful for forever.
Until next time Fam,