In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 6 the rogue’s emBraCe “What’s there to do in Sisters?” I asked the waitress after I’d settled onto a stool at the counter, where I could watch the cook prepare my breakfast. The waitress, pretty far along in her pregnancy, seemed to be enjoying her job at the Ski Inn, at least for the moment. She mentioned a nearby lake and a museum in Bend. I asked her about the famous Crater Lake, maybe fifty miles south, and she said she’d never been, though she’d like to sometime. Hearing this made me a little sad for her. The roads to Crater Lake National Park, I discovered, had just been cleared of snow. In July. No rivers fed the lake, which was formed after a volcanic eruption and the subsequent collapse of a twelve thousand-foot-tall volcano . The lake was filled with rainwater. It was, according to the National Park Service, “one of the snowiest places in America.” I had no doubt that it was worth seeing, that there was no place like it, but I decided not to camp at Crater Lake. I might visit, but for camping I decided on the ominously named Lost Creek Reservoir, fed by the ominously named Rogue River, which I deemed a safer, more convenient, and softer adventure than driving up to Crater Lake, a wintry place for which I was ill prepared. In short, I chickened out. My campsite at Joseph H. Stewart State Park afforded a view of the bathhouse, a volleyball court, and many other campers, bivouacked across the mown fields. There was no view of Lost Creek Reservoir, nor of anything like Mount Jefferson, the snowcapped peak I had gazed at the previous night while at Lake Billy Chinook State Park. Here I was camped on a small rise under a big dark Douglas fir, and several yards below me was a campsite impoundment of several tents with at least ten people and one guy, short and thin, with an unusually loud deep voice. Moments after I’d arrived, he was saying something about “dumbasses,” and though I don’t think he was talking about me, I went back to 54 The Rogue’s Embrace the office and arranged to move one site over from Little Deep Voice, who resembled the late Frank Zappa—black hair, Fu Manchu mustache. From the new site, I could still understand every word he shouted, including the fact that he could no longer eat almonds, but it didn’t sound as if he were inside my head. A brief hike made me think I was back in the Tennessee Valley. I had descended to the southern tip of the Cascades, where a mix of hardwoods and evergreens stood on hillsides that gently sloped down to an expanse of impounded water that was not as cold, not as clear, and not nearly as blue as Billy Chinook. People caught catfish from Lost Creek Lake. By that evening, a Friday, the campground would fill to capacity, and the air had that Fourth of July sweatiness about it, even though the Fourth was a week away. I talked to a camper who had a wooden boat with an upturned bow and stern. I’d fished from one of these on the South Platte in Wyoming, when I’d attended the University of Wyoming, but I’d forgotten what they were called. “It’s a drift boat,” he said. “They used to be called MacKenzies.” I told him I was going to paddle from the lake up the Rogue as far as I could go. He said his brother liked to kayak down the Rogue. “It can get pretty nasty up there,” he said. “What do you mean?” “It can get really intense,” he said. For some reason, the vague way he was putting it made me think he was talking about people who lived on the upper Rogue. I was thinking Deliverance villains. “Do you mean people up there will bother you?” He squinted at me, trying to understand. “No,” he said. “The river is very dangerous.” When I returned to my site, I had neighbors on each side of me. On one side, next to Frank Zappa, were a man, a woman, and a johnboat. He was setting up a tent. Grinned at me and said he’d just gotten it out of the box. On the other side was a guy standing next to his bike. He waved...

Share