By the time I meet the waterline, a deep crimson darkness overcomes the lake; the baked clay scars in the land turn from interesting to menacing, and a light on the lake reminds me of why they call this Oregon's Outback. 

All that you can see from the shores of Summer Lake is a spectacle of simplicity.  Forget great heights or the complication of plant life; this is the scenery of peace.  But I get this sense that I am not alone on this empty lake, so I turn around and am startled by two figures, looking out at me from a section of dry mud. 

"Hello," the man says before I humiliate myself from the mud.  "Are you a birdwatcher?" he says.  It may seem a strange greeting, but not uncommon in such an area, when one is not carrying a rifle.

The man is forty-something, the woman next to him maybe ten years younger.  Although he appears faintly European, tanned and groomed.  She is pale and wears her hooded-sweater in a way that makes her look formless and broad-shouldered. 

"No," I tell them. "I'm bringing my wife's car up from L.A  I took the long way."

The man, his expression, his European-ness, the way I imagined him at a discotheque, or being a sport in the alps, did not jive with that pair of sharp-looking binoculars around his neck.  I said, "well, you two are birding?"

"Yes, yes," he said, his wife giggling.  "But we're just beginners, we don't know much." 

They come here every summer, to the inn.  Each year they dedicate a portion of their travel to birds. 

"The avocet mating season is beginning," the man says.  "There will be millions of them here.  When they fly, millions fly together, it's like a wave."