Tracking Foxes in the Snow

A lot of the roads that lead out of the Dalles start being gravel dirt roads that wind through pine forests and rocky canyons. The road we live off is one of those roads. Some of the roads will wind through the eastern slopes of Mt. Hood. One such one laner gravel road will get you to Government Camp – eventually.

There is one road that has a sign that says, ‘Pavement Ends’, and then a small handmade sign that says, ‘and the west begins’.
I have lived in the Dalles, Oregon for a month now after living in Portland. I worried that when I actually got here, I would start to miss the ‘things’ in Portland, but so far, I have only thought about the bacon cheddar fries at Dot’s.
There is so much serenity here. Every morning and evening before the sun sets a covey of quail zig-zag around pecking at the snow looking for food. They get spooked by Rufus or a falcon and flutter in up loudly and clumsily into trees or over the road. They are fat and goofy.
We have bird feeders up so that we can watch the songbirds. There are the sparrows who are the gentrifiers building their round nests on top of local bird nests. There are the towhees, the juncos, and the chickadees. You can hear their song echo down the canyon every morning and evening.
We look south at the hills on the east side of town. We can see the homes and a few steeples in the valley. When it’s dark, the lights are wavy with all the heat rising. There are huge stars on the tops of plateaus, and we can see the one on the eastern wall.
It’s icy out now and the trucks that drive up and down the road go slower. The snow makes the orchard around our house bright. When Rufus and I walked through the cherry trees today, we could see the tracks of feral cats and a fox zig-zagging through the rows of trees, and we could see the mice tracks hurrying out of the area, or at least Rufus could smell them. He kept sticking his entire nose into the snow.
We have had an owl around hooting into the night. He’ll be singing his song at 6 pm and we think it’s three in the morning. When he doesn’t hoot all you can hear is the occasional leaf still on a tree ruffle in the wind. We stare into the darkness hoping to see the eyes of some animal staring back. We know they are out there.
It’s not lonely. There is something about being nowhere near anything that the idea of missing out on something is absurd. I like staring out across the valley or watching the birds. I don’t know when that will make me restless again, but I think more about adventures to places that are even more remote.

I look east and think of a single lane road winding through canyons and plateaus, and I want to know that road. I think of dead trees, rock formations, and vistas that I have never seen. I think of memories of when I have hiked out there before and how I remember the sun making the shadows of the rock long as you can start to see stars appear, and I want to see that again.
You can see so many stars on clear nights. There are millions more when the air is cold and there is no moon. I love the darkness. My thoughts are so much clearer when I am under a dark night sky and there is no light. The brain wakes up under starlight.
There is pride about living in the gorge. You can tell from the way people talk about living here. You can also see it in their yards with wagon tires and turn of the last century farm implements rusting in tall yellow grass. They tell us to not tell our friends it’s nice here. They like it the way it is and don’t like the way Portland changed. So, shh.

I have started baking bread. It matches my environment. You can’t simply make bread. It requires time and flow. I start to have a relationship with the yeast and the flour, and sometimes I make some good bread.

This is where the west begins.