A Journey With Orvis — -1.0 Fossil, Oregon, Wheeler County Seat, Population 435
“Home is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there….”
Overall my favorite traveling partner has always been Bhudda (my imaginary companion now residing in a cave above Rishikesh) but a close second is my trans friend Cait M.
Cait is hale and hearty and ready to go at a moment’s notice if it is someplace they really want to go. They can pack a tiny bag and slip into their traveling shoes (Ecco World Loafers size 8) before I can slip an international sim card into my I-phone 17. It never really matters where we are going as long as it is someplace Cait hasn’t been in 20 years or more. There is almost no place they hasn’t been at all. So I felt like I hit a minor jackpot when I told they I was headed to Fossil.
“Fossil?” they said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been there.”
It is one of those places, I tell they, where the elevation exceeds the population by a factor of at least five. This peaks they’s interest.
“Wheeler County,” I say “Just under 1800 square miles. Population 1421, as of the 2020 census. Though I bet some of them white supremacist survivalist types take a pretty dim view of the US Census Bureau. There’s probably at least another 25 of them hiding out somewhere….”
“Yeah,” they says, “we should visit before it gets overcrowded.”
So off we go in they’s Highlander, a few camping supplies stashed in the back, a typographical Oregon Road and Recreation Atlas slotted between the front seats. They is driving and so I’m able to sit back and watch the scenery, which, going up the Old Mackenzie Highway, is mostly a scene of burnt forest and in-progress housing rebuilds after the 2019 Holiday Fire. It starts getting green again and forested once we are east of Mackenzie Bridge but then up over the cascades and down into the plateau of Central Oregon and we are back into the dry dusty drought of the high desert.
If you want things to change just keep driving. At altitude in the Ochoco Mountains we find a place to camp among towering Ponderosa Pines and we spread a mat and our sleeping bags out under the stars with the trust that we won’t freeze to death in the night. After all it is mid-October.
I suppose you could take heart that nowadays October in Oregon is more like September and August of years past. The temperature was in the 80’s in Eugene the week before and Cait and I went swimming in the Willamette. Honestly I’ve never swum in the river in October. I’ve been living out here about 45 years. It’s much warmer than it ever was. Smokier too but that’s something I don’t really want to talk about.
In the Ochocos the air was clear, clean and crisp and the sky littered with a billion stars. I dreamed about having a cabin out here. A cabin and a girlfriend who would visit me about twice a week with fresh eggs and roast beef sandwiches. Obviously, I woke up thinking, I’ve been way too much of a celibate vegetarian lately.
Cait likes to cook breakfast and they does a sort of a poached British thing with the eggs while I burn the bacon. Everything tastes better in the mountain air even dirt-encrusted buttered toast after you drop it off the edge of the picnic table. Yum.
It’s not that long of a drive to Mitchell (pop. 124) where we check out the Oregon Hotel which has just gone up for sale. It’s modestly priced considering it has 14 rented rooms two rented cottages and an out-of-tune upright piano in the lobby. We chat with the owner who has lived here most of her life (she migrated when she was 18 from Prineville about 47 miles to the west) and swears she’ll never leave. She wants to retire now to her hobby ranch (164 acres) which it tiny by Wheeler County standards where cattle roam on 26,000 acre spreads and the biggest ranch comes in at just over 100 square miles. That’s a lot of cow-poking, Cait says.
We decide to not buy the hotel though it does come under consideration. In reality, Cait wants to live an alternative lifestyle in a semi-urban housing co-op and I need only a small barn-wood shack on a running creek with no land, no responsibilities and absolutely nothing to do but write stories or blow my brains out whichever comes first.
Back in the car we go. Next stop Fossil.
The road north leads through the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Painted Hills Unit) and the Spring Basin Wilderness (roadless, of course, a certain irony here) then up to Butte Creek Pass (elevation 3788) then down down down into Fossil.
Originally the home territory of the First Nations Indigenous Tribes/Clans Cayuse and Mollalla (Really? I doubt they were the first, but they lived here for about 5,000 years so that’s got to give them some cred…) Fossil was “discovered/founded” by Thomas Benton Hoover. Back then (1876) you could go ahead and name things whatever which way you wanted, so he called the creek Hoover Creek, and he called the town Fossil because he found some ancient fossilized sea shells on his ranch (called the Hoover Ranch, now the Homer Ranch on Hoover Creek Road. With all this re-naming going on I’ve decided to call the little cabin I like on the John Day River in Clamo “Mosley’s Landing”….oh yeah and I’m renaming the river, it’s now the “Tuzik River,” after my dear sweet mom (deceased) and the county will heretofore be referred to as Ukraine County just in case the Russians and the Republicans win the war…)
Obviously, I could go on and on. But let’s rap this up: Cait and I landed at the Hyatt House, a beautifully restored three story banker’s homestead near downtown. Seventy five bucks a night, with a big comfy bed, a nice bathroom down the hall and a damn good breakfast in the morning. They liked it, stowed they’s backpack, and went out to make some sketches of the court house and the museum. They is quite a sketcher these days. Does watercolors too. Did one of me that makes me look like a crotchety old man with a twenty gallon cowboy hat and a far-away look in his eye .
“All hat, no cattle,”as they like to say in Texas.
Me I took the liberty to go shopping. First thing the Fossil Mercantile (555 Main Street) where I purchased a rebel flag kerchief. Then on to Smitty’s Antiques and Collectibles (14 Fossil Ave.) where I considered and did not buy a leather WW I amo case ($15), a hinged tobacco tin with a nicely curved lid from British Currly’s Cut Bohemian Blend (also $15) , and a disabled wooden butter churn which I thought might make a nice end table for that cabin I am going to buy on the Tuzik River ($35, but he was taking offers).
“What I really need,” I told Mister Smitty, “Is an iron fire poker to stoke the campfire.”
He looked up from his Bible and eyed me curiously. “Out back,” he said with a twang that sounded somewhat Australian.
Which is why I opened the back door, stepped out into the afternoon glare and happened to meet the imaginary dog of my dreams.
“The name’s Orvis” he said to me from under bushy eyebrows and a sagging mustache. “Where are we going next?”
And so our journey begins.
