Desperately Seeking Flora

Long ago memories combined with fantasy may drive us more powerfully than we know. But there’s no shame in that.

Today’s featured photo is Joseph Creek Canyon, winter home of Chief Joseph’s band of Nez Perce, according to the interpretive sign here. Over forty years ago I was camped for almost a week in the flat, green meadow on top of the highest bluff in the left of the picture. But more about that in a moment.

The sun was out this morning, here in Troy, Oregon, and I was excited for it to get warm, but clouds came in and now it’s partly sunny and not warm. Just a bit, on the back deck of the bath house, where climbing red roses are releasing their scent in the warmth. Across from the bath house is a restaurant, and that is it. A few houses, but no gas, no store.

Yesterday I left Joseph, and went back up into Enterprise to get gas, water, and ice. At the Texaco the man came out to do the filling for me, so apparently this corner of eastern Oregon is keeping the full serve, and I asked for the usual–mid-grade–and he said they were all out of mid-grade, and the high-grade too. I told him that was a first in all my life, that a gas station was out of any kind of gasoline. He said it happened off and on, and when I asked him when that started, he said during the covid operation (no he didn’t call it that) and ever since. He said normal business practices had sort of broken down. I said I understood, as they had in my neck of the woods as well. So I took the regular and moved on, a little shaken by the reality of just having your supply of gasoline disappear arbitrarily. Again, you hear about it, or the possibility, but it is quite different when you feel it yourself. “We can cut you off whenever we want, so think about that all you proud and independent farmers and ranchers who live and die by gasoline.”

As the road climbed, going north on Hwy 3, toward Flora, the hills went from bare to stands of Ponderosa, and a great show of early summer wildflowers. Loads of yellow balsam root, like sunflowers on shorter stems, blue lupine, and then some red flowers that were the color of Indian Paintbrush, but I now think are called Skyrockets. And then the masses of pink wild roses, at the height of bloom. I did not get out, which I somewhat regret, because I bet the scent was wonderful. They looked so pretty in the shade of the big pines. The photo on the left is not mine, it’s by Jeff Goulden. But it’s very like it was.

I passed a whole meadow of balsam root, with a big pine or two dotted amongst it, then came to, way before I expected it, the Joseph Creek Canyon overlook, from which I took the Featured Photo. I looked straight across the huge canyon from the overlook and saw a high green meadow on top of the highest point, and realized it was Table Mountain.

Now, Table Mountain, only accessible on the other side from about 50 miles of gravel and then rough dirt road, was where my mom’s boyfriend Sparks Yarbrough took us, me, my mom, and my little brother, for a deer hunting trip. He even loaned my thirteen-year-old brother a rifle. I remember the extreme lonesomeness of the spot, still quite in the middle of nowhere and many miles from any paved road, much less a town. I remember how dramatic the canyons looked around us, and the trek to the bottom of one to retrieve a deer Sparks had shot. We took his horse, just the two of us, and I remember all the yellowjackets that came to feast as soon as he’d gutted the deer and piled the entrails there. The horse kindly let us load the bloody carcass and we did the strenuous hike back out of the canyon.

At night I remember just us four, near the edge of that big meadow, and nothing but blackness all around. We sat by the campfire, listening to the only radio station on the dial (who has a radio nowadays?) that somehow made its way all the way out there from a city far away, playing a special hour of Herb Alpert music. I noticed one or two lights way off in the distance, on the other side of the open blackness of the huge canyon (of which I was now on the other side, 44 years later), and asked Sparks “What’s that?” He looked, and said “Oh, that’s Flora.” Two lights. I never forgot the name.

Anyway, I knew that on the map, Flora was quite close to the overlook, but away from the rim of the canyon. Once in Janet, it was only about a quarter mile and we came upon a huge house, that I know was formerly an inn, perched right on the edge of the canyon. It looked like it pre-dated 1980 for sure. I’m sure that was the brightest light of the two I saw those nights up on lonely Table Mountain during my very lonely high school years.

Then we turned off for Flora, and zigged and zagged through some farmland and ranchland. I have been told that that was at about 3,000 feet elevation, and the canyon bottom where I am now is about 1,500 feet in elevation. The sign at the overlook interpreted for me that the Nez Perce thought the white settlers were bizarre for choosing to live year round up on the high plateaus. But then they weren’t wheat and alfalfa farmers and stock raisers.

Now I had a new interest in going through Flora because of the steaks I had bought the day before at the bar in Joseph. The young man had said that Julia Peterson raised the beef, and was selective in her crossbreeding for the best quality. I really wanted to meet the woman who had raised the beef I was going to eat that very day, and see the cattle. I could have stopped and asked at the former inn, but for some reason I just didn’t feel like it.

I decided I would just keep an eye out for any ranches, and especially for a sign, which the ranches often have. On the way I had been indulging in a fantasy that Julia would be handsome and single, and very interesting and very interested and would be pleased at my love of good beef, and more pleased at my history of experienced horsemanship (she had turned into a woman with beautiful horses, too), and we would start a romance and I would end up with a writing studio up on the canyonlands of Wallowa County, Oregon, and a cultured (yes, she was now also cultured, could probably play at least one instrument well) companion. Just as well, there was no obvious sign of where she lived, and no actual live human beings about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The community was there, and still operating, as the first thing we passed was the fairly new Flora grange. Then it was a mix of old, falling apart houses and actual homes. Very odd. This went on for what would be a couple of city blocks, and then a corner and then I saw the old, very large, schoolhouse. I’d read in the arts section that they had a fundraiser showing pioneer homesteading skills just that weekend, to help restore it. I do see why, after seeing how many ranches are dotted about in these canyonlands. And they are having kids, because I saw signs of it, in toys, and signs asking drivers to slow down.

We carried on, turning where the tiny green sign just said TROY. Soon there were two signs saying the road was blah blah blah, a very long paragraph, but mostly that it was not kept up and there were no warning signs, aside from this obvious one, and that no RVs or large trucks should attempt it. Ok, perfect, we’re game. Driving blithely on, me still enjoying the large shrubs covered in those perfect pink wild roses all along the roadside.

And then it immediately turned to gravel. Ok, fine, been there, done that, Janet and I, many times. And then the views opened up, and I stopped to take some pictures.

And then the twists and turns started, which I had expected based on the map. And then the real impact of what they were saying started to dawn. I remembered a man, where was it? In Joseph? Anyway, murmuring when he heard my plans something about that road being pretty tight and tricky to go down.

Yeah. It was the scariest road I have ever driven on, in Janet or otherwise, in my life. I have been on tiny, one lane tracks in the Pyrenees, in the Jura, in Oregon, in other western states, California’s north coast, etc. Nope. Nothing like this. The dry gravel was one thing, the steepness another, the tightness of the turns another, but the utter lack of any space, just a few blades of grass, at the edge of what was a one lane highway of two way traffic, and the sheer drop off that edge of hundreds of feet, and the total blindness of all the curves of which I was supposed to be on the outside in case of oncoming traffic…and the ease of sliding right off if I so much as twitched the steering wheel or braked suddenly in the face of an oncoming truck.

I didn’t want to go around some of the blind curves, and I couldn’t stick to the inside, because hitting oncoming traffic could send both of us down into the canyon. So I just went. What choice did we have? Literal death in front and to my right. And we were fine, but then a big four door truck loomed up in my rearview mirror. I made it wait while we continued on at our 15-20 mph speed  almost to the bottom, and then found a safe spot to ease over and let it pass. It took off in a merry cloud of dust. He was still going too fast, I say.

Down at the Grand Ronde River, we crossed over and went left into Troy. Down here it is almost 20 degrees warmer than up top, and the river is nice and there are a few houses, some with apple trees loaded with little green apples and cherry trees loaded with red, ripening cherries. I felt like I’d arrived in paradise. There are old cabins that have been let go that could be charming, until I looked in the windows and saw that no, ‘frontier architecture’ is only charming from the outside. The abandoned sofas and magazines and formica tables and chairs didn’t help.

But there were camping spots right on the Wenaha River  (which joins the Grand Ronde right here) shaded by big Ponderosa. I parked at one and went to find the operator of the place. He finally came out, though the sign said the restaurant is closed the two days I am here. Thankfully I had just enough cash to pay for two nights since he doesn’t take cards.  You are not near any other services in Troy. There is zero cell service.

Old Priam was tall, with a silver beard so long and fine that the wind blew it sideways, a tank top showing his very brown and muscular arms, and a hat shading his light blue eyes. When he spoke I saw the brown bits of teeth randomly arranged in his mouth. He told me there is electric, and said the water is spring water and untreated because it is so pure, and gave me a key to the shower room in the bath house. And now I’m really grateful to my long lost Julia for the steaks, since until that impulse buy, I’d counted on eating at the restaurant here!