Road Notes fromJohn Day Country

The John Day River zigzags north and west through Oregon’s dry middle for some 280 miles without a single dam on its main stem, one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the lower forty-eight. That makes it a kind of symbol for the state: the John Day is free, wild and unpredictable.

In the summer of 2015, everyone in North America knew about California’s drought. Hardly anyone noticed that the same drought had reached Oregon. In Portland it just meant sunny days and a warm winter, and it was hard to see what else it meant.

Head east from Portland, though, and the drought comes into focus. First you see the shrinking glaciers of Mount Hood and the bare wildflower meadows on its slopes. Then, passing through Warm Springs, southeast of the mountain, you drive through a hundred square miles of scorched earth where there used to be beautiful desert scrub.

Locals will tell you this fire started when an outsized RV dragged a trailer along Highway 26 on a bare rim, throwing sparks for six miles. Investigators were careful not to say so, but the story has stuck.

The Drought Nobody Noticed

What made the Northwest drought different was not just heat and a lack of rain. It was a lack of winter snow, the snowpack that feeds the rivers through the year and fills the reservoirs across the state. 2015 was on its way to being the warmest year in Oregon’s recorded history. Streams were trickles, docks on mountain lakes sat hundreds of yards from the water, and the grasslands were brown. For most of that year I saw these things in passing without really adding them up. Then, in late summer, we rolled into the small city of John Day, and it all became clear. The town had become command central for the Canyon Creek Complex fire, which was still burning. Exhausted National Guardsmen were everywhere, and fire trucks were parked in nearly every lot downtown. At the grocery store, the clerk told me that forty homes had been lost and sixty-seven thousand acres had burned. By the time it was out, the fire would burn more than 110,000 acres and 43 homes. “Look south when you walk outside,” she said. “That big plume you see? Those aren’t clouds.” News of the fires had traveled across the state, and many travelers cancelled their plans, which only hurt a town that was already hurting.

I think it’s important not to cancel. It’s good to visit a place in its moment of despair; you see it more clearly. My memory of John Day is a memory of weary Guardsmen and Oregon firefighters around a table, planning their next attack on the fire.

Tepees Among the Motorhomes

We were camping with friends in rented tepees at Clyde Holliday State Recreation Site, on the John Day River just outside Mount Vernon. The park caters mostly to RVs, and although the two tepees sit upstream from the motorhomes, someone thought it wise to put the RV gray-water dump right next to the tepee campers’ parking lot.

A woman in her late fifties walked up to us while her husband pulled on a pair of white gloves. “Did you stay in those tepees?” she asked, amused. We told her they were comfortable and the kids loved them.

She started laughing, and between laughs she kept saying little things: so small, so rustic, so cute! I always appreciate how friendly RVers are, and she was no exception. But the laugh, which was turning into a cackle (tepees! can you believe it!), was the classic bewilderment of the American motorhomer at those of us who would rather not drive our kitchen sink and toilet from place to place.

Then I heard her husband clamp the gray-water hose to their RV, and the sucking and humming of their nasty RV water draining into the underground tank.

A lot of Americans have decided that the bigger the vehicle, the better the road trip. I think that is the fundamental flaw of the American road trip, and I’ve come to believe that the more of the RV mentality you can shed, the better off you are.

That long, dry, hot summer brought out a long season of Oregon road trippers, and it gave me plenty of time to watch them.

One Bag Each

Years ago, a van loaded with kayaks, canoes and bicycles would fill me with happiness. An RV with lounge chairs strapped to the roof and a fishing boat in tow would have me ecstatic.

And when I packed for my own road trips, even when I thought I was packing light, I filled the car to capacity and then reached for the rack straps.

When I downsized to a two-door Jeep that year, I had to rethink what light packing meant, and I started paying attention to how other road trippers packed. More often than not, it was the overstuffed cars and vans I saw stopped on the side of the road: overheated engines, blown tires, or just time to re-tie the straps.

A road trip takes very little gear. When my family travels by car, everyone gets one carry-on-sized bag. Once you set the rule, packing and unpacking are a breeze, and there is always room to spare. Tents, sleeping bags and camp chairs go in a soft bag on the roof rack.

Otters at Dawn

The John Day winds northwest through spectacular desert canyons. One morning I got up before sunrise and drove out from camp on the road that hugs the river. It was early enough that nobody else had been on the road yet, which meant the wildlife was out, and near Cathedral Rock I spotted something moving in a deep pool of the river.

I swung the Jeep around, parked it on a narrow ledge off the road, walked down to the water, and watched three river otters playing. It would be one of my favorite memories of the summer, and it could not have happened in a Suburban or a camper van, and certainly not an RV. Road trips need nimble vehicles.

That same road runs through the Sheep Rock Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds, where the river has cut down through layers of green and buff and red volcanic ash that hold one of the longest fossil records of mammals anywhere in the world: tiny three-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, rhinos, camels, some 40 million years of them. An hour’s drive west, near Mitchell, are the Painted Hills, the most photographed of the three units, rounded hills banded in red and gold and black. A minister and amateur geologist named Thomas Condon first brought the fossils here to the attention of science in the 1860s. Even in a drought year, there is no place in Oregon that makes you feel more like a small, recent arrival.

A road trip should not glue you to your car; it should give you the freedom to get away from it. That is the other problem with the big, overloaded vehicle. Stuck in RV parks and avoiding city streets, a motorhome keeps you at arm’s length from wherever the action is.

Another good rule is about packing and unpacking. Tell everyone when their bags need to be ready, well before departure. I ask my family to have their bags by the door the night before. American roads clog up by late morning, so leaving on time almost always means an easier drive.

Coming home works the same way. Before anyone opens the house door or checks the mail, the car gets stripped and everything gets put away. Walk your fellow travelers through it. For us it’s: empty the gear bag, separate the laundry, clean the cooler, put every piece of gear back where it lives, and only then open the door.

Tools Worth Carrying

The less gear you carry, the faster and more often you can get out on the road. But once you’ve shaved your kit down to the essentials, you can add the tools that really make a road trip better.

For us, a road trip means getting out and discovering something ourselves. Nearly everything extra we keep in the car — a hatchet, a geology pick, a snake stick, a spotting scope, a cooler, a kitchen knife, plates and cutlery, a water jug, a battery pack — either keeps us on the road longer without restaurants and motels, or helps us explore wherever we are more fully.

One of my favorite lines comes from a book about ultralight backpacking. Global travelers tend to live by it; road trippers rarely do.

Ryel Kestenbaum wrote in The Ultralight Backpacker, "The old school of thought would have you believe that you'd be a fool to take on nature without arming yourself with every conceivable measure of safety and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in nature is all about. Rather, it's about feeling free, unbounded, shedding the distractions and barriers of our civilization—not bringing them with us."