I wake up a few hours before sunrise and take a walk down to the boat ramp, and then onto a deer trail along the Owyhee River. Fish are jumping like mad.
I spend a couple hours following the deer trail along the river bank. Completely wild, the early morning along the Owyhee is filled with life; chukars, a type of introduced partridge from Central Asia, scream from the hills above. Hawks soar above me, and I can see large mammals traversing the hills above.
When I return to the boat launch, the first of the bass fishermen has backed his Skeeter Brand bass fishing boat into the water. I decide to watch them from above.
The man's hair is what we call 'all business in the front, party in the back.' He is in his forties, blonde mustache. T-shirt advertises a brand of fishing reel. His wife and two young children, and black lab, are manning the boat trailer, seeing him off.
His boat - shiny, filled with gear, slides off the trailer, and out into the open water. But when he turns the key, his engine farts and hollers. After fiddling with the engine, he turns angry. "Oh wouldn't you know it, it’s the goddamned spark plugs."
His boat floating deeper into the river, he yells at his wife, "Well don't just stand there, get me some spark plugs!"
His wife dutifully scrambles into the back of the Suburban, frantically searching.
Bass fishing used to exist merely as a lazy late summer pastime in America's deep south. Oh, how things have changed. In my lifetime, bass fishing has become a massive commercial sport. Twenty million Americans fish for Micropterus, of the black bass genus. The yearly Bassmasterstournament is a second Superbowl to millions.
"Ah hah!" she yells. The dog is barking frantically. She holds something up, and starts to wade out into the water. I can only imagine how cold that water is. She gets her shorts, and then shirt, wet, as she holds the spark plugs up and hands them off to her husband.
He makes some adjustments with his new sparkplugs, fires up the engine. He waves to his family, and the dog barking, he speeds off into the lake, looking proud.
By the time his wife gets out of the water, a number of trucks and trailers are lined up, waiting for the boat ramp to clear.
Our hopes of doing some fishing ourselves has vanished; the trout streams in this area are washed out by heavy snowmelt water. So instead we opt to spend the hotter parts of the day practicing our casts.
In the afternoon, we leave the truck on the side of the dirt road, cross the Leslie Gulch creek, and up.
Hans says he prefers walking this way - overland, rather than on trails. It's the truest notion of going your own way.
Here, the hills are grassy, but steep and composed of loose soil and gravel. The higher we walk, the steeper. Hans scales the hill like a goat. I opt to hug the ridge, where the gravel is looser, because we are scouting for a tripod perch.
The gravel starts sliding under my feet - what's worse, I have my tripod and Toyo slung over my shoulder, so I only have one arm to use. I look down and fuck, fuck, fuck, it's a quarter mile straight down. How did we get this high! I take a step, and I slide. Again, and I slide.
The fright gives me a burst of energy, so I begin to dart up the gravely ridge. I decide I need to just keep moving, to keep from slipping down.
"Just get to the rock," Hans yells from above.
But I'm already moving faster up bare rock than I ever have. And I keep moving until we reach a sort of solid promontory jutting out into the sea of grass and gravel.
Still stricken with the frights, I just stare blankly out at the view of Leslie Gulch; steep and riddled with thousands of red spire rocks and golden cliffs.
I had noticed the unusual colored stones underneath our feet. But Hans bothered to pick one up. "Well I'll be," he said, blowing at the stone.
He didn't even need to say it, because I know what he is about to say. He puts it in his hand. "It fits perfectly," he says, stabbing at the air with a shiny beige rock in his hand.
"Could have been naturally?" I say, taking it from him. "No," he says, pointing out meticulously crafted etches in the stone; the way the stone was carved to fit a left hand. "It's a scraper tool."
I pick another one up off the promontory; this one was even more obvious. "Look at this," I pointed Hans to a round bowl cut out of the promontory rock.
The fact that these items are just sitting here on bare rock implies that we are the first non-Indians to set foot here. It is an amazing revelation; and a testament to the remoteness of the Owyhee.
We examine the mortor. "Holy crap!" I say. "This was an Indian hunting perch. It makes perfect sense." From here, a hunter could see for miles; in gullies and along the creek, out toward the Owyhee River, and up a myriad canyons, waiting for an elk, deer or a coyote.
There is nothing extraordinary about finding Native American antiquities in Oregon. Arrowheads and other stone tools are still found. But to find such a thing on your own, even if you are one among thousands to do so, is an immeasurable joy and education; because to experience it for yourself is to set yourself on a quest of deduction and discovery.
Once you have found such a treasure, you are naturally compelled to unravel its puzzle: who used this tool, when, how and why?
Because Hans, my Oregon guide, is soon to leave the state, the void puts me in charge, for a year, until he returns. Almost immediately, I remember my family’s legacy in Oregon. I figure this year as the family’s Oregon representative, I ought to do something to live up to our own Oregon legacy. I am going to take this old obsidian stone tool, use it to unravel the Owyhee puzzle.
