Collared: Politics and Personalities in Oregon's Wolf Country

12. Moving Targets

105 Moving Targets My brake line cracked sometime between last night and this morning, but I found out only when I dropped into the Wallowa River canyon heading from La Grande to Joseph, Oregon. Feeling the brake pedal hit the floorboards, I downshifted from fifth to third before slamming it into second. At the bottom of the grade I pulled onto the shoulder and crawled under the chassis, where I found runny brake fluid coating the undercarriage and the inside of the driver’s-side rear wheel like too much syrup poured over too-hot pancakes. I limp the truck in to Enterprise, Oregon, and park. It’s a Sunday. Monday is a holiday. There is not a single mechanic or auto parts store open. On my first-ever trip out to Wallowa County more than a decade ago, a high school kid leaned across a counter and told me, “Out here we change our own oil.” As I lean against the side of the truck and watch the last of the brake fluid form a puddle around the tire, I think maybe I should move out here and get a little place with a garage. It’s a thought that at the moment is born of exasperation and too many nights in a row spent howling at the moon, but it’s also something I’ve been mulling over in general, and the reasons go far beyond having a place to work on the truck. There aren’t any stoplights in Wallowa County, Oregon. No McDonald’s or Walmart sitting on the corner. No major airports or destination resorts, either. Where not narrowed by construction, landslides, or topography, the highwaysaretwo-laneandruledbydust-coveredAmerican-madefarmtrucks 106 Moving Targets with tumbleweeds stuck in their front grilles and herding dogs balanced on their heavy steel flatbeds. Narrow rivers snake along the bottom of steep forested canyons bearing native trout and returning Pacific salmon. Moose, cougars, black bears, and now wolves roam the side hills in relative obscurity. When the sun sets the whole Milky Way glitters and gleams in an inky black sky like sequins thrown by a three-year-old. It snows in June, sometimes in August. Old-timers say winter can last for nine months and that -20 degrees Fahrenheit isn’t all that rare. They call it little Switzerland due in no small part to the Wallowa Mountains that jut into the air like sharp, pointed teeth. The kid who years ago gave me advice on car maintenance probably came from a ranching family where he had been driving a truck during haying season since he could see over the steering wheel while sitting on a stack of phone books. He could probably not only perform basic automotive and farm equipment maintenance, but also butcher livestock and wild game, build fence, move irrigation lines, and back a trailer down a narrow, potholed canyon road without flinching. Born and bred in Enterprise, Oregon, population 1,934 and falling, he would have been well aware of what owning a cattle ranch in Wallowa County entailed; a whole lot of work and heartache. “Nobody out here has time to pat your hand and tell you not to worry.There’s a lot to worry about, and always more to do,” said rancher Rod Childers after telling me about all the work and worry that accompanies ranching in Wallowa County during modern times. For more than a hundred years, Oregon families have been raising cattle andsheeponprivatefarmlandandpublicgrazinglandsinOregon’snortheast corner. In Wallowa, Grant, Baker, Union, Umatilla, and Morrow Counties, cows outnumber people by an average of three to one,1 and agriculture, specifically the livestock industry, has consistently been a primary source of employment and income in the region. According to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, in 2011, sales of cows and calves from these six counties alone totaled upward of $16.5 million. Yet despite this, farm employment in the northeast region has experienced declines of more than 20 percent in the last twenty years, and nearly a third of farm owners have either sold their Moving Targets 107 operations, retired, or gone out of business in the same time frame. “We’re operating on such small profit margins out here that even a small loss, if repeated, can do in the business,”said Childers. The same can be said for the state’s wolf population. Wolves were hunted to extinction in Oregon...