LIFE ON THE HIGH DESERT
Originally published in the Oregon Journal November 1960.
It was on a bright May morning in the year of 1920 that we cranked our truck, which was loaded to capacity with household belongings, and John and I with our small daughter, Claudia, started for the vast expanse of country called “The High Desert” that stretches from Bend to Burns. I still remember quite vividly that trip and my introduction to the desert.
Our first stop was Millican, a one man outpost about twenty miles south of Bend. This would be our post office and our only contact north with the outside world. Our ranch was sixty miles on into the desert. Fort Rock and Silver Lake lay many miles to the south of us. The postmaster, who was also storekeeper, made up bundles of mail for two families whose homes we would pass on our way. This was the courtesy of the desert; no one passed Millican without stopping to pick up his neighbor’s mail.
The epic of the High Desert is a forgotten one except by the few who had water holes. At the cry of “free land”, people flocked there from 1906 to 1912 filing on homesteads, planting crops, dreaming of prosperity when they had proved up and the land was theirs. But there lay the tragedy–the desert was not a dry farming country. The soil was too porous. By 1918, the homesteaders were gone: only the stockmen were left. That was our reason for moving from our small farm north of Bend and taking over a ranch and some cattle, on which a bank in Bend had foreclosed a mortgage. John knew the country and was enthusiastic about going, but we had a child of school age and I hesitated about going off to the big, lonely land.
I fairly gasped when I got my first look at the desert. What a view! As far as the eye could see was a great expanse of sage and sand. Gusts of wind caught up gallons of dust and scattered it around and around. I could see no life, just the shifting sand and what looked like a huge lake of sparkling water not too far away. I called John’s attention to it.
“Just a mirage, you goose. There is no lake there.”
I felt the sense of actual loss, so real had been the illusion. But I knew there were lakes ages ago in this part of the desert. I had read about a dry lake called Christmas Lake. (It wasn’t too far from our ranch, either.) Men of science were digging up bones of prehistoric animals out of a dry lake bed. I made a mental note to visit that spot.
What a strange country we drove down into. The past seemed to be unrolling before us. Silent houses, mere one room shacks, stared at us vacantly through gaps that were once windows. They stood there like monuments to an abandoned hope. This land seemed to have absorbed everything and given nothing in return. It just lies there silently waiting–waiting for water–water for irrigation which has never come.
“Oh, who could have lived here?” I asked in wonder.
“Homesteaders,” John replied. “Many of them tried to make a go of it. The average homesteader was a unique character removed from odd haunts in the city or farm. As a rule, the entryman had a family, money for his filing fees, and construction of a one room shack. In a year, his funds generally ran out and he would leave his wife to care for the place, with his shotgun as her sole protector, while he went out to find work so they could keep on eating.”
I shivered and drew Claudia closer to me. “Then hardships really began.”
“Yes,” he replied. “They surely did. Life became dreary, sometimes a struggle for existence. Jack rabbits devoured the crops and in return were the principal source of meat. I’ve eaten it–mighty strong. Other foods came out of tin cans. The winters were long and cold and there was always the problem of water. Water is said to constitute three-fourths of the universe, but on the desert it is the whole world. Some just gave up and walked out, leaving all their possessions.”
I could see a long line of disheartened, weary homesteaders beginning their exodus.
“But we won’t be walking out,” he added cheerfully.
“Don’t look so worried. We’re not homesteaders–you are going to like it. See that ranch over there.” I saw a dim outline of something. “I know that couple. We’ll stop and give them their mail.”
This ranch had a well. The windmill was turning furiously. Water, precious stuff, was pouring into a trough. There was an enclosure made of boards and inside this was a small garden. Rhubarb and a few hearty vegetables were sticking their noses up out of the ground. Nourished by water and protected by the fence from marauding jack rabbits, they had a chance for survival. A small unpainted house was close by.
Mr. and Mrs. Percival were English. They were delighted to see us and invited us in for tea. She must have been a beautiful woman when she was younger, before the desert sun baked her skin and bleached her hair to a dry, dead, gray color. But she dressed this hair in a very high elaborate pompadour and walked with the air of a queen. Like Queen Mary I thought. They gave me the impression of well educated, cultured people.
No excuse was made for the cabin. It was their home and it was clean and contained only necessities. In contract to the scanty furnishings, a piano remained aloof in one corner along with a fine collection of pipes.
Mrs. Percival placed a rough, homemade chair for me to sit on with as much courtesy as would have been accorded me in a lovely dining room and she gave us tea in dainty little cups. Claudia was given a glass of cold milk. It seemed queer that they should be living in such surroundings. Tactfully, I expressed this thought and with a charming English accent she told me that her family objected to their marriage because she belonged to the nobility and Mr. Percival did not.
He left England and came over to Canada. She broke with her family and followed him. They were married in Canada. He wanted to come to the United States and finally they drifted this way to the desert and took up land. She also said she received an allowance from her family which helped them to improve their property and buy stock. then she changed the subject and said my husband was a gentleman because he had removed his hat in her presence. Of course, I couldn’t tell her he often left the wood box empty and I had to swing an ax. I enjoyed meeting this couple and hoped I would see more of them and learn more about their interesting past. We said goodbye. John tipped his hat and we started out again.
The road was surprisingly good. Nature had provided a sort of pumice stone for the wheel tracks and the truck passed easily over the sagebrush growing in the center. Deserted dilapidated houses still stared at us and banged their doors dismally as we drove past. We stopped at one shack out of curiosity to read a sign hung over the door. “Abandon all hope, Ye, who enter here.”
“Let’s go in,” I said eagerly, undaunted by the warning. Claudia screamed as a big wood rat scampered out. We went in anyway. This shack had the luxury of two rooms, but it had been ransacked. What people didn’t take, the rats cut up. The wall had been papered, but only a spot here and there was left. A few rages fluttered in front of some shelves. Boxes had been broken into and were not full of debris that the rats had stored away.
I noticed an old tin trunk and walked over to it and lifted the lid. Down in the bottom were some old faded portraits and books. I picked up a book. It was a complete volume of Shakespeare’s works. There were many notes written on the edge of the pages. Its owner must have been a lover of the classics. I couldn’t make out the owner’s name. The writing was too dim, but the date was still clear enough for me to see that it had been written May 17, 1893. I couldn’t leave that book; 1893 was before I was born. I took it and several others. Why not? The name wasn’t legible and I would take good care of them. Where was the owner anyway? The wind answered with a hollow moan, “gone, gone, gone” and sucked more dirt out from under the house.
Our next stop was at what then known as “Four Corners.” Four different pieces of land joined there. Four sun blistered shacks faced one another. One was more than a shack. It seemed to have more than one room and there was a well close by, also a barn. I saw cattle and horses standing around the water trough. Pete Grabler, his wife Maude, and their brood of five bright eyed children rushed out to welcome us, as we drove into the dusty yard scattering pigs and chickens in every direction. John had a bundle of mail for them which they fairly tore apart, so eager were they for outside news.
Looking around, I could see nothing growing, but they didn’t look hungry. Pete was a quiet, rather weather-beaten, thin man with a drooping mustache, but she was round and rosy with snappy, brown eyes, very friendly and cheerful, and seemed quite capable of handling her family. I noticed that she limped slightly. Their house boasted three rooms and several rocking chairs. I saw a big bass viol standing in the corner of the living room. “Daddy plays it,” one of the little girls proudly told me. There was nothing shy about this family.
A thought came to my mind–what would they do in case of an accident or sickness? No telephone with which to call for help, no near neighbors and sometimes, John said, the snow could get over four feet deep in the winter. I voiced my fears. She just laughed. “We never get sick.” Maybe there was something about this close proximity to nature being conducive to good health. She did say Pete had never been very strong and this was one way they could live and all be together.
Pete told me, between juicy expectorations of tobacco juice, that before they had their well drilled he had walked ten miles a day to get domestic water, which he carried back in two five gallon cans attached to a yoke that he made of wood to wear across his shoulders. He made shoes for the children and when the last child was born there was no doctor around. Pete took charge. This was really a family capable of looking out for itself.
We had to cut our visit short; the sun was sinking fast and we had ten more miles to go. So with promises to see one another soon, we started out again. Our ranch was on the edge of the desert where the sagebrush met the pine trees. I was so anxious to see the house. “We will soon be there,” said John. “This is Button Springs.” We approached a mudhole where several cows were swallowing the muddy water with relish. “Stock can water here until summer. It dries up then. The ranch is just over the hill.”
With my first look I saw it was just as he had described it. A low, log house, roughly but substantially built, perched on the hillside facing the desert with stately pines flanking the back. “What a beautiful setting,” I murmured.
Before entering, I turned and looked. The sun had gone down and an afterglow of wonderful purplish colors hovered around the horizon where desert met sky. The view was magnificent. Miles and miles of sagebrush melting into the distance where I could dimly see the outline of mountains. John waved his hand toward the desert. “There is a cave not too far out there where we can get ice when the weather gets hot. There,” pointing to a mound of cement near the door, “is the cistern full of water. Want a drink?”
My house, too, had only one room–a bunkbed and two stoves, one for heating, the other for cooking, a rough board table and boxes to sit on. But I had brought many things in the truck, soon I would have a cozy cabin. After a bite to eat, we made our bed on the ground and under the pines where we could breathe the pure desert air. I filled my lungs to capacity with it, relaxed and looked at the stars. “They seem so much brighter and closer,” I said to John.
“They should be,” he replied, digging down under the covers. “They are closer. We are now over 5000 feet above sea level.” Then the night tucked her blanket of darkness gently around us; the pines sighed a lullaby and we were soon asleep.
I lived two years on the desert. The altitude bothered me some at first, causing a shortness of breath, but oh, how I could sleep all through the night without once awakening. The first summer we had a well drilled. It provided us with an abundance of water, but we had to dig almost seven hundred feet to get it. That was a good summer for us all. We roughed it, ate simple food, slept outdoors and bathed in the water trough.
Claudia and I took long horseback rides over the desert. We explored caves and deserted shacks, shot jack rabbits and wood rats. John shot a bear that was investigating our door yard. Once during the summer the gasoline engine that pumped our water broke down. The thirsty cattle bellowed and fought around the trough for three days before John could get help to repair it.
We were recovering from that ordeal when a forest fire descended on us from Fox Butte and crept to the foot of the hill back of the cabin. For days smoke and cinders belched over the top of the hill. We were packed and ready to pull out at a moment’s notice, but the fire was finally brought under controls by the forest rangers before it reached the top.
Claudia raided sixteen little lambs that summer. Every time a band of sheep passed our ranch on their way to summer range in the mountains, the herders would give us baby lambs. She took care of them, fed them milk from a bottle. Each lamb knew its name and would come running to her when she called. We were never lonely. There was always somebody extra around.
Sometimes we would get home late at night exhausted after a long trip to Bend for supplies and find every bed full. Those trips were fraught with harassments. Our little Ford pickup, christened “The Button Springs Flyer,” seldom made it without mishaps. Its thirsty radiator constantly called for water, often draining the water bag to the last drop. Flat tires were always on the agenda. John usually didn’t have a jack along and I had to perch myself on the end of a fence post that he could substitute for one to prop up the car. If nothing else could happen, we could always run over a porcupine and have a grand blowout.
One hot day, before our well was drilled, a caravan of tired, perspiring men stopped at the ranch and asked for water. Luckily, we had just filled the cistern with water hauled from Grabler’s well. One large, sunbaked fellow looked vaguely familiar. After they had quenched their thirst and moved on, one of our perennial guests asked me if I knew who he was. It turned out that I had had the honor of giving the late Irvin S. Cobb a drink of water. Later he wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post about that trip over the High Desert.
In 1926, we left Central Oregon and a way of life that I had long been used to, for good.
Sometimes now, when the jets thunder over my home in Portland and break the sound barrier with a terrible blast, my thoughts go back to the log cabin at the edge of the desert, the sage with its pungent odor, the cowboys who always managed to drop in just at mealtime, the sheriff on his galloping horse, ever searching for his man, the purple sunsets, and the lonely howl of a roving coyote.