Robin and I spent three nights last week the Ochoco National Forest. We like to do a little camping when we can get away - it’s been three years since our last excursion. Arriving at about 5:00 Wednesday evening, we set up camp on what appeared to be a long-abandoned logging road that spurred off a navigable dirt track. Although we brought a tent, we didn’t set it up because the sky was clear and expected to be so for the rest of the week.
As I unloaded the car, Robin set to work pulling up a circle of grass about eight feet in diameter, then we gathered rocks to build a fire ring within the clearing. I wasn’t too surprised the tall grass was still green. It seems the whole state had a late start on summer. In the clearings were holdovers from an earlier wildflower bloom: purple lupin, orange Indian paintbrush, and yellow wyethia.

Robin laid the kindling while I cooked dinner on the camp stove. For the rest of our stay, her routine was fire-tending and mine the evening meal preparation and clean up. For other meals we snacked on fruit, bread, cheese, and crackers.
We spent our late evenings around the fire, sipping tea and talking into the night under the prominent Milky Way. During the day, we spent much of our time following the shade with our camp chairs. After a while, we didn’t notice much the carpenter ants as they crawled up and down our ankles.

One of Robin’s favorite things to do while camping is read aloud from a well-chosen book. This time it was “Siddhartha,” by Herman Hesse. I had read this book back in the ’70s, when I knew nothing of Buddhism, then again about 10 years ago, when I knew but a little. Robin hadn’t read it before and picked it up at the last minute. It’s not a long story, and we were through it in two days. The Buddhist aspects of the story gave us much to talk about.
When we weren’t reading, we took time to explore our surroundings. The Ochocos are in central Oregon, northeast of Prineville. Everything east of the Cascade range is cowboy country, and we were right there in the midst of it, in one of several favorite spots for deer and elk hunters during their respective seasons. At the end of the road that ran by our summer home was a vacant horse camp. Come October, there will be a good deal more activity.

Our site was on a rocky prominence bordered by deep draws that ran down from either side of us. Our abandoned road - made impassable by a series of berms, deadfall, and young pines - took us to the end of the prominence and gave us a grand view to the south. One of the hallmarks of our prominence were a pair of snags that appeared to dance in the sky.

Saturday morning, it was already hot by 7:30 when I started the coffee. After breakfast, we slowly broke things down and packed the car. Our last activity was a sponge bath. We dumped the water over the fire ring and covered it with rocks. By noon we were on our way home and to our mundane routines.






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