Winter returns! Plus, there’s a lot happening around town this weekend. Find live music, an adventure film series, bird watching and more.
Live Music
February 21-24 | The Belfry, Sisters; Volcanic and The Capitol, Bend
On Wednesday, Tommy Castro and the Painkillers will be playing at the Belfry in Sisters. Ha Ha Tonka and The Blasters will be at Volcanic on Thursday. On Friday Zach Deputy takes the stage. For island vibes, check out Warrior King, The Rootz Warriors and Mista Chief & Rising Buffalo on Thursday at The Capitol.
Mountainfilm on Tour
February 23-24 | Tower Theatre, Bend
Featuring epic adventure-filled documentaries, Mountainfilm on Tour will be in Bend this weekend. The two-night series, which will include different films each night, is curated by the Telluride Film Festival. There will be a raffle and prize giveaways as well. All the profits will benefit the Environmental Center of Bend.
Taste of the Town
February 23 | Central Oregon Community College, Bend
Sample bites from the best restaurants around Central Oregon at the annual Taste of the Town event at Central Oregon Community College. There will also be live music from the High Street Band and beer, wine and cider to purchase. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the door and have sold out the last three years.
Eagle Watch
February 24-25 | Cove Palisades State Park, Culver
Eagle Watch is a free annual event that coincides with an annual bald eagle migration each February, though this event is about more than just bird watching. An entire weekend of events is planned at the observation area at Cove Palisades State Park, including an interactive birds of prey exhibit from The Sunriver Nature Center. On Sunday, the Quartz Creek Drummers, resplendent in brilliant eagle-themed dress, will perform traditional dances from the Warm Springs Tribe. The two-day event is free and open to the public and includes a free lunch, courtesy of dam operator Portland General Electric.
Zwickelmania
February 24 | Various locations in Central Oregon
Central Oregon’s breweries open their doors for Zwickelmania, a day of brewery tours and beer sampling (ideally from the “zwickel,” the valve on the side of fermentation tanks that allows brewers to taste a beer’s progress). It’s the state’s unofficial beer holiday, and there are events happening at breweries all around the region.
Or, things to do if when you’re not watching the Olympics this weekend. Oregon Winterfest takes over the Old Mill District this weekend. There’s also a fundraiser and sneak peak of Bend’s upcoming opera season, a film series for fly-fishing and a Portland chef comes to Sisters for a special dinner.
Oregon WinterFest. Courtesy of Lay It Out Events.
Oregon WinterFest
February 16-18 | Old Mill, Bend
WinterFest packs tons of entertainment into its annual three-day festival at the Old Mill District. There’s the 10 Barrel Rail Jam, the Royal Run 5k and 10k races, ice sculpting and fire pit competition, bouncy houses and the OMSI tent for kids and live music to top it all off each night, including a Saturday night performance by hip hop legend Coolio. Local food vendors and businesses are onsite all weekend, as well as plenty of craft beer and wine.
Operaganza
February 16 | Elevation, Bend
Get a taste of the upcoming season of opera from OperaBend, a new opera production company in Central Oregon, at the Operaganza. There will be entertainment from local opera performers throughout the evening, as well as a silent auction. Operaganza will be held at Elevation at the Cascade Culinary Institute and the tickets includes a three-course meal and wine.
Colson Whitehead
February 16 | Bend Senior High School, Bend
Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad won a Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards, that year. Whitehead will be in Bend to talk about the book and his other writing that includes novels and essays at the Author! Author! Event from the Deschutes Public Library.
Fly Fishing Film Tour
February 17 | Tower Theatre, Bend
In the twelfth annual Fly Fishing Film Tour, watch films of fly fishing anglers travel around the world fishing. There are two chances to watch the series of films on Saturday at the Tower Theatre in Bend. If the description of the films is any indication—“This year’s lineup of films…would blow the doors off a ‘78 Buick”—fly fishing fanatics won’t want to miss this.
Chef Rachel Yang at The Suttle Lodge
February 17 | The Suttle Lodge, Sisters
Chef Rachel Yang of Revelry in Portland and another trio of restaurants in Seattle will be at The Suttle Lodge in Sisters on Saturday night for a dinner celebrating the Lunar New Year. The James Beard-nominated chef will be creating a Korean-themed menu, which is served as a family-style dinner at the newly renovated lodge and resort.
From a fun brewing and culinary competition to a cross-country skiing event and a free event for kids and families, here’s our list for the best things to do around Central Oregon this weekend.
K9 Keg Pull in Sunriver, Oregon
Brewery Smackdown
January 31 | Tetherow, Bend
Silver Moon and Crux go head-to-head with Portland’s Ecliptic and Ancestry breweries in the third annual Brewery Smackdown at Tetherow Resort in Bend. The event pairs the craft brews with gourmet food. Each ticket is $69 and includes five courses with ten beer pairings.
Backcountry Film Festival
February 2 | Volcanic Theatre Pub, Bend
Fuel your winter stoke at the Backcountry Film Festival. Held at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Friday night, the festival will screen eight short films about outdoor adventure, the environment and more. There will be two chances to watch the films, and the money raised will go toward Project SNOW, a winter environmental education program for Central Oregon students.
K9 Keg Pull
February 3 | The Village at Sunriver, Sunriver
Dogs, snow and beer. Does it get more Central Oregon than this? At the K9 Keg Pull, dogs race down a 150-foot snow runway while tethered to an empty keg from Sunriver Brewing (determined according to their size). The event has drawn so many humans and canines that organizers may bring in bleachers for spectators this year. Bring a bag of dog food to donate and be entered to win prizes from local businesses.
Pop-Up Museum: Chemistry
February 3 | Riverhouse on the Deschutes, Bend
Take the family to this free event from the Children’s Museum of Central Oregon. The Pop-Up Museum Series is a free event for families with kids ages 3-11. There are interactive exhibits that the family can explore together. This month’s theme is “Chemistry,” and the event will have engaging science activities and fun arts and crafts to participate in all day.
Update: A previous version of this article included Luminaria, a cross-country skiing event at Virginia Meissner Sno-Park. The event has been cancelled due to lack of snow, but you can read more about last year’s event here.
Central Oregon has an extensive roster of former Winter Olympians who blazed the trail for future athletes with a shot at the games.
Justin Wadsworth
With its mix of homegrown athletes, transplants and former Olympians, there’s no disputing the connections between the high desert and the Olympic winter games. It’s a relationship that dates back decades to the late 1960s when Lakeview grad and Skyliners ski club alum Jean Saubert claimed a bronze and silver medal in slalom and giant slalom at Innsbruck in 1964. Just a few years later an upstart teenage skier from Bend stormed onto the world stage as a late addition to the U.S. Ski Team at the 1968 Grenoble Games. Bend native Kiki Cutter posted the overall top result of any U.S. woman that year in France, skiing in the downhill, giant slalom and slalom events. She went on to become the first American woman to win a World Cup race. Cutter ultimately accumulated four World Cup titles before retiring early to attend college. She went on to become a ski ambassador and publisher. She now lives in Boston, but her influence is still felt in the Bend ski racing community and beyond.
Cutter was for years the only homegrown Olympian in Central Oregon, but others with winter Olympic pedigrees were circulating around Bend. Ski jumper Jim Brennan suited up for the 1960 Squaw Valley games as an alternate. Brennan later relocated to Bend where he worked as a ski coach and realtor. Now retired and still living in Central Oregon, Brennan was inducted into the U.S. Ski Jumping Hall of Fame in 2009.
Former Bend resident Jack Elder was another pioneer. Elder was an early member of the U.S. luge team, picking up the sport while stationed in Germany in the 1960s. He competed in the 1972 Sapporo Games and took part in several World Championships at a time when few Americans even knew the white-knuckle sport existed.
After Cutter, the next homegrown Olympian was Bend snowboarder Chris Klug, who competed at the Nagano Games in 1998 but broke through in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, winning a Bronze medal in giant slalom. Klug qualified again for the 2010 games in Vancouver, B.C. with Bend ski and snowboard coach Rob Roy in his training camp.
Chris Klug
On the Nordic side, Bend is known less for its homegrown talent (though several have come close to breaking through) than for our propensity for attracting elite athletes, such three-time Winter Olympian and former Bendite, Mike Devecka, who competed in the Nordic Combined in ’72, ’76 and ’80. In fact, there was a time, not long ago, that if you wanted to know which former Olympians were living in Bend, you just needed to check the Pole Pedal Paddle results. The winners read like a roster of former U.S. Olympic Nordic skiers. There was two-time Olympic competitor Dan Simoneau, three-time Olympian Justin Wadsworth and two-time Olympians Suzanne King and Ben Husaby. Wadsworth, who competed in Lillehammer, Nagano and Salt Lake City, won eight consecutive Pole Pedal Paddle titles (a record). He now lives in Canmore, B.C. with his wife, gold medal winner Beckie Scott.
Medals are of course rare, but the memories are plentiful regardless of the event or the outcome. Husaby, who worked as the Nordic director at MBSEF and later founded the Bend Endurance Academy, recalls the excitement and being nearly overwhelmed by the scope of the games.
“The Olympics are a completely different animal. There is the added layer of guidelines and rules … the external stuff going on and a magnitude that’s more involved than the world championships. Nothing prepares you for it,” he said.
Husaby competed in 1992 at Albertville, France and then again in Lillehammer in 1994 after the Olympic committee decided to move the summer and winter games on an alternating two-year schedule. It was in his second games at Lillehammer that Husaby said the immensity of the games hit him. There, Nordic-obsessed fans packed the cross-country ski courses shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd that Husaby estimated in the tens of thousands. “That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Husaby said.
Note: Find the complete list of athletes from Central Oregon who have competed in the Winter Olympics in the January/February 2018 issue of Bend Magazine.
Oops. We may have given you some bad directions. If you arrived here from a link in our weekly newsletter, click here to read our story on Bend’s Roster of Olympic Hopefuls.
Ice skating in Bend has seen a renaissance since The Pavilion opened.
It’s 6 a.m. on a cold, dark Monday morning in November, and a group of young ponytailed figure skaters files into the bright light of Bend’s Pavilion ice rink. They are here to work on their edging and jumps with figure skating coach Rebecca King, carving arcing turns into the gleaming white sheet while the rest of Bend contemplates its first cup of coffee.
The history of ice skating in Central Oregon dates back more than a century, and longtime locals recall cold winters in the 1940s and 1950s when downtown Bend’s Troy Field was flooded with water to create an ice rink. Children would skate for free at night, stopping to warm their fingers by the bonfires glowing at the edges of the rink. As winters warmed, skating waned. Now with the recent opening of The Pavilion, King sees a skating renaissance.
Hailing from Fairbanks, Alaska, King started figure skating at age seven and competed throughout the Pacific Northwest in high school. After college, she worked for Disney On Ice as its tour coordinator, or as she puts it, “tour mom,” organizing all travel and logistics for the tours. In 2013, shortly after her parents moved to Washington, King made a quick weekend stop in Bend on her way to visit them. Like many Bend residents, she decided right then that she’d call Bend home. She started coaching at the Seventh Mountain Resort, then at The Pavilion when it opened.
Today, she is the vice president of Bend Ice Figure Skating Club and coaches anyone from young beginners to adults who skated in their youth and want to brush up on their skills. King can coach the tiniest of aspiring skaters and said that if they can walk, then they can get on the ice.
Thea Brown is one of King’s dedicated students who doesn’t seem to mind those early morning practices. At 13, she skates with King because she likes the challenge of improving, learning and making progress on the ice. “I like having Rebecca as a coach because she really pushes me and makes me face things head on. It takes my mind off of school and homework and gives me a different challenge in life.” With King’s guidance, Brown hopes to compete in regional and sectional U.S. Figure Skating competitions over the next few years.
Of course, the other key ingredient to figure skating is pageantry. For young girls, that means donning a sparkly dress that catches the breeze just so as the skater glides around the frozen sheet. When King was young, her mom made most of her competition dresses. Now, skaters anywhere can find reasonably priced dresses on eBay. “Through Bend Ice, we’re also hoping to provide a cost-effective way to let our students borrow or trade dresses for competitions,” said King.
What does she see for the future of figure skating in Bend? “I see nothing but growth in this sport. I’d love to see more boys and men interested in it. Even pairs or ice dancing would be a great addition.”
At long last, Chef Paul Itti of Wild Rose gets to cook his favorite dishes: his father’s.
Chef Paul Itti
It’s 1970, midday in the lush hills outside of Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, and a man leaves the small health care center in the countryside where he is the director and heads home. He goes straight to the kitchen to prepare lunch as he does every day, his nine-year-old son by his side. The boy’s eyes are level with the blade as his father wields it with the precision of a surgeon, slicing raw pork, then methodically moving the long blade through it, mincing it perfectly.
With a long, slender, fresh lemongrass stalk, the father whisks the pig’s blood, infusing it with the herb’s flavor. The boy anticipates his father’s masterful execution of the dish, one of his favorites, larb.
Nearly a half-century later, Paul Itti would recall those afternoons as a boy, what drove him to cook for a living, and why he chose his father’s dishes as the focus of Wild Rose, the restaurant he opened in 2013, in a low-ceilinged, century-old building in downtown Bend.
“The meat has to be perfect—he’d show me how to chop it finer,” said Itti, 56, sitting in his restaurant during a break between lunch and dinner service. “The soup had to be perfect, with the chicken tender—just right. He was picky, in a good way.”
When Itti turned 21, he moved to Seattle to go to college, just as many of his cousins had done before him. He began studying interior design, and then accounting at Seattle Central Community College. Away from school, he waited on tables at a nearby Thai restaurant. He fell in love with one of the cooks at the restaurant and married her three months later. “I said, ‘Let’s do this,’” he said. Itti graduated, worked in accounting for three months, and quit.
“I liked the restaurant a lot better,” he said. “Accounting was eight to five, and lots of numbers. I love meeting people and cooking, so I got a restaurant.”
Itti and his wife, Ampawan, opened a Thai restaurant in Kelso, Washington, and a year later, their daughter, Rosie, was born. They wanted to leave the city to raise her, and moved to Port Townsend, where they opened Khu Larb Thai restaurant in 1989, the first Thai restaurant on the Olympic Peninsula. They were serving the dishes that Ampawan, who is from Bangkok, had cooked for the restaurant in Seattle. Itti learned from her how to make pad Thai with peanut sauce, cashew chicken, and American takes on Thai food—not the cuisine of northern Thailand, or his perfectionist father.
Over the years, Itti took up golf, and became good friends with his first golf teacher, Lyndon Blackwell. After Blackwell moved to Bend, Itti visited, loved the golf courses and the small-town atmosphere, and moved here in 2013. When he looked at the restaurant space on Oregon Avenue, part of a former J.C. Penney store opened in 1908, the landlord suggested that Itti try his hand at a new trend in Thai food.
“He said, ‘Look at Pok Pok [the widely acclaimed restaurant that began in Portland, serving northern Thai cuisine],’” said Itti. “That’s my hometown. I don’t have to look at Pok Pok, I was born in Chiang Mai. It’s in my blood.”
Itti realized that Americans’ ideas about Thai food had become more sophisticated, and as Chiang Mai has grown as a destination, its cuisine has also become more well known. The dishes that Itti had cooked at home—the ones that Rosie’s classmates would make fun of when she took them to school for lunch—were being embraced.
Now was the time for him to cook his father’s dishes. At first, he would make an annual trip to his hometown of Sanpatong, about fourteen miles from Chiang Mai, to get five spices only available in that region, as well as the curry paste made by a woman he considers to be his sister, a longtime family friend. To make the paste, she picks chilis by hand, roasts them, dries them and grinds them, just as Itti’s father once did. Now he makes the trip three times a year to keep up with demand in his eighty-seat eatery, co-owned by Rosie. (His last trip included bringing back nearly ninety pounds of the stuff in several suitcases, he said.)
The ingredients are integral to many of the signature dishes at Wild Rose, such as khao soi, a yellow coconut curry broth with egg noodles, shallots, pickled cabbage, crispy egg noodles, green onion, cilantro, lime and hot basil pork, with aromatic “holy basil” over sticky Jasmine rice and topped with a fried egg. Even as the menu and fanbase have expanded, the flavors remain firmly grounded in the family tradition. A quick review of the menu reveals “Grandfather’s tom kha soup” of coconut milk, lemongrass, galanga, kaffir lime leaves, straw mushrooms and cilantro and includes an exuberant declaration: “Our grandfather’s secret recipe!” Whenever Paul Itti sips the hot, herbaceous liquid, he’s a little boy in Thailand again, discovering why perfectionism matters.
Careful preparations, choosing durable and easy to maintain materials and designing for safety will ensure the success of your master bathroom project.
Living rooms, like bedrooms, can be rearranged and reinvented. Couches can be swapped, colors added and subtracted. Lighting revamped. But bathrooms, like kitchens, remain stubbornly fixed in time. All the more reason to ensure that any bathroom remodel project is carefully planned and executed.
We talked with designers Martha Murray and Patricia Julber about two recent projects that combined contemporary style with functionality. In each instance the homeowner traded clunky or outright kitschy elements for clean, bright designs that emphasize simple elegance.
“When we looked at the house, you couldn’t help but notice the bright teal color of the bathtub even though the owners had tried to obscure it with a big potted plant,” explained Bend homeowner Shelley Ransom, who worked with Julber on the remodel. Other design features that had to go included small greenish tiles in the jetted tub’s surround and sinks that were carved into the counter to resemble shells.
Kathryn Miller had a different tale of bathroom woe. “I didn’t like the layout,” she said. “A huge shower was oddly placed in the middle of the room, and the dark cabinetry was maybe lodge, maybe Northwest, but not really anything, style.”
Both women echoed what designers say Central Oregonians now want in master bathrooms: light-filled spaces, freestanding tubs, easy to care for materials, white or light cabinetry and functional spaces.
Whatever the reasons for the project, or the accompanying wish list, the common denominators are budget and time. Managing expectations is key. “Watching HGTV has not done anyone any favors,” said Bend designer Julber. “The programs give a distorted view of the projects. Everyone thinks project timelines will be much shorter and budgets will buy a lot more.”
Due to the cost of plumbing and finish work, bathrooms are especially challenging. “It might be a small room,” added Murray, the designer who worked with Miller, “but people just don’t realize what goes into a bathroom—the technical details, money spent on fixtures, the number of workmen involved and the high labor costs in Central Oregon.” Whether the project is new construction or a remodel, upfront planning is essential and hiring a designer is an excellent idea. “I don’t know how someone could act as their own project manager,” said Ransom. “There is too much to do, and in Central Oregon where there is such a demand for good subcontractors, you need a designer who already has everyone in place.”
Many people start by choosing the counter material. Quartz, quartzite and granite are popular and durable choices that are easy to maintain. “I had originally wanted marble counters,” recounted Miller, who opted for low maintenance quartz, “but Martha talked me out of it because it stains easily.” Also out are tiled counters (though tile backsplashes are popular). “I can’t remember the last time I put in a tile counter,” said Julber, who used quartz in the Ransom home. “People want easy care.”
Like small tiles on countertops, big, jetted tubs are also out. “They took up too much room,” said Murray. “People are now asking for freestanding bathtubs.” Both Miller and Ransom replaced jetted-tubs with freestanding models. In the Miller bath, a freestanding tub took the place of the oddly placed shower, and in the Ransom home, it replaced the teal Jacuzzi.
While tubs and countertops may drive the design style, flooring, lighting, and hardware and plumbing fixtures are also important choices for style and safety. Miller and Ransom opted for porcelain non-slip tiles, which are budget friendly and help prevent accidents on wet floors. Additionally, both families had better lighting in their bathroom wish lists. “I like to layer lighting,” said Murray, who added a chandelier to Miller’s space, “with lighting overhead, at eye level and under cabinets.” Julber noted that while different metals have become popular for fixtures, it’s important to choose designs that are easy to manipulate, such as the lever-style faucets and bar-shaped drawer pulls in the Ransom project.
Choices made and work completed, Miller and Ransom are more than pleased with the finished rooms. At the Ransom household, the parents knew the project was a unanimous success when their two young daughters decided they could share the bathroom, as well. “I haven’t had the heart to send them back to their own bathroom,” said Ransom. “I understand why they want to be here.”
The owners of a steep lot in North Rim challenged the architect, builder, and subcontractors to execute their vision of a modern, industrial-style home that incorporated metal and steel in starring roles. The result? A stunning custom home.
The aesthetic unfolds from the front doorstep, where the doorbell is made with an engine bearing from a Porsche race car, embedded with a red button that says, “engine start.” A 1970s restored vintage motorcycle sits in the entry hall. An interior sliding barn door is actually a facsimile of a jailhouse door complete with a pass-through. These are among the fun and quirky features of the home in Bend’s North Rim neighborhood.
Custom built by Dennis Staines Construction between 2015 and 2017, the 4,080-square-foot residence incorporates wood, stone, concrete and other materials common in today’s contemporary styles. But it’s the metal work that sets it apart. And there’s plenty of it.
The owners, Marnye Summers and Kevin Reynolds, both create art from metal, so it’s not surprising they chose to incorporate it in structural components and as artistic flourishes around the home.
“Heating, smelting, forming, twisting, forging hot metal is bending nature’s raw materials to form structures that support and enhance our dwelling,” said Summers. “It is like magic to me. I love it!”
Reynolds restores vintage motorcycles and shares a downstairs studio with Summers. In her main floor studio, Summers creates dog-themed art by painting flat pieces of steel that she’s fabricated with a plasma cutter. These colorful pooches are frozen forever in dynamic poses affixed to walls throughout the home and sold to clients who commission her work. Flesh-and-blood rescue hound Ratty Rat, a pit-bull mix, is one of fourteen dogs the couple has rescued over the past thirty-four years. She keeps a guarded eye on her masters and spends time in her own custom-designed indoor and heated outdoor kennels.
An Urban Loft in Bend’s Foothills
The home’s main living space on the upper floor has high ceilings, oversized, industrial-style light fixtures and radiant heat beneath concrete floors. “There’s an urban loft atmosphere,” said Bend architect Scott Gilbride, who worked with the couple on designing the two-story home. “We got close to building an urban loft in the foothills of Central Oregon,” he joked, adding that “[Summers and Reynolds] don’t have the city, but they have the feel of it.”
The kitchen island and front door illustrate his point. The island’s Caesarstone quartz countertop is supported by a shipping container on steel castors (which don’t actually roll) and metal seats that swivel. The metal panels of the front door are constructed in what Gilbride describes as a “steampunk” design, which plays out in this house as scrap metal put together in a quilt-like pattern with exposed fasteners.
Doug Wagner of ModernFab in Bend built the metal panels for the front door, as well as the jailhouse barn door that separates Summers’ main-floor studio from the living, dining and kitchen area. “Marnye was persistent that the jail door have an opening where she could be fed,” he said, adding that she gave him a lot of freedom in creating the design. Working with the couple was fun because they were open to experimental approaches, he said. Another unique feature is a space high above Summers’ studio where salvaged, dilapidated windows of varying sizes and colors hang from metal railings constructed by Wagner.
A key design concept was to locate Summers’ and Reynolds’ studio and office spaces close together and adjacent to the great room. “We’ve been married thirty years and like to be close,” Reynolds explained. His office, like his wife’s studio, has a standing-height workstation on wheels.
Industrial Meets Contemporary
Despite the inclusion of one-of-a-kind metal touches (for example, all the wood baseboards and door trims are edged with steel, painstakingly incorporated by Elevado Metalwork), the industrial aspects are tempered by curved, knotty cedar ceilings, farmhouse sinks in the kitchen, rustic cherry wood doors and cabinets, bold colors and a wood-burning fireplace in the living room.
The master suite sports less metal, more wood and is a tribute to African art collected during the couple’s travels. The large, open bathroom with windows to the backyard features towel-warming racks, an open shower with no door to squeegee and a head-to-toe body dryer.
But the standout architectural feature is the huge closet. Three walls of floor-to-ceiling cherry cabinets hide clutter and every thread of clothing. (A meticulous streak apparently competes with Summers’ anything goes, artistic impulses.) A peek inside one of the cabinets confirms that shoes and sweaters do, indeed, reside there. The closet also includes an island and mirror to reflect its purpose.
City Style Outdoors
From the rusted metal panels that form the roof to the landscaping, the Reynolds-Summers industrial style found expression on the home’s exterior as well. Two local metal workers, Hunter Dahlberg of Orion Forge and John Herbert of Iron West, shaped steel into metal walls in the landscaping and forged exterior staircase railings and gates. Troy Stone and others of Bend Heating & Sheetmetal created rusted panels for siding. “They showed us different ‘recipes’ for rusting metal,” said Reynolds. The home is also sided with stone and a wood product that replicates the look of barn wood.
In the end, this couple moved directly into the house from Southern California and got exactly what they wanted: an industrial modern home that reflects their love of metal and space to pursue their creative visions.
FAN, or the Family Access Network, connected more than 9,000 children and family members to basic need services during the 2016-2017 school year.
Lena Loukojarvi moved to Central Oregon in 2011, with her two kids, looking for a change of scenery. But with no connections here and no local references, Loukojarvi couldn’t find a job. She struggled to make ends meet.
“I just remember being so completely overwhelmed with my circumstances,” recalled Loukojarvi. “I just needed some direction. I didn’t even know what to ask for. I just knew I needed help.”
A neighbor told her about FAN, or the Family Access Network. Founded in 1993, FAN is a nonprofit organization that works in public schools in Deschutes and Crook County to connect families with basic needs services. FAN’s mission is to ensure that children do not miss school because of a lack of basic needs, such as food insecurity, lack of clothing or school supplies or because of inadequate housing.
A FAN advocate is placed in each school and helps families navigate the government systems of aid, for everything from grants to pay utility bills to scholarships for school. It also connects families with job opportunities and affordable housing, the lack of which, say experts, is contributing the cycle of poverty in Central Oregon.
Loukojarvi met with the Three Rivers school FAN advocate, who helped her with school supplies and clothing for her kids. Then she helped her get into culinary school and pay for it with scholarships.
Loukojarvi described FAN as a safety net without judgment. “There’s no shame with them. Especially with government help, there’s a certain amount of shame you feel by having to reach out. That doesn’t exist with FAN,” said Loukojarvi.
Julie Lyche has been the executive director since 2005, when the FAN Foundation was formed to fundraise for the program. In the 2016-2017 school year, FAN helped more than 9,000 children and family members.
Lyche said that 50 percent of people who use FAN’s services only need it once to get back on their feet. FAN steps in to ensure that families can find stability so that kids “can walk in ready to learn.”
Sunny Maxwell started volunteering with FAN five years ago when her children entered kindergarten. She joined the board of directors shortly after to help fundraise for FAN. “The longer I’ve been on the board, the more I’m aware of the impact we make,” she said. “It continually amazes me that there’s so much need in Central Oregon, even though it’s so often hidden.”
The annual event for women and girls will also launch a month-long program that celebrates women in the Central Oregon community.
The Muse Conference has never felt more relevant or important. After a tumultuous year that saw the rise of action against sexual assaulters and harassers, a local space to elevate the power and voices of women and girls brings a needed message of hope and positivity to the dark social and political landscape.
Created by writer and activist Amanda Stuermer, who is also Bend Magazine’s editor-at-large, the Muse Conference brings people together from around the country for a four-day event each March. Featuring a range of feminist activists from entrepreneurs and artists to authors and athletes, Muse is not only a celebration of women and girls, but also a call to action for social change.
Stuermer said that this year’s conference and speakers will cover a variety of issues facing women today, including the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment, social media, immigration, teen suicide, systemic racism, women’s incarceration and more.
The sixth annual Muse Conference will also feature talks from internationally recognized speakers, as well as art shows, yoga classes, films and workshops.
About more than just awareness, Muse’s mission is to change the narrative about these issues and provide tools for social change at a community level.
“We’re not just talking about all the issues, but really looking at them through the solutions lens,” said Stuermer.
The annual conference is just one aspect of World Muse, the nonprofit organization that Stuermer founded along with a team of other activists and entrepreneurs in Central Oregon. Muse also hosts a camp each summer for girls, as well as programs in local schools for girls.
New this year is the Bend Women’s March, a month-long series of programs and events that will continue after the Muse Conference. Muse will partner with local businesses and organizations to celebrate “all the ways women are contributing to our community through arts and culture and the outdoors,” said Stuermer.
The Muse Conference will take place in downtown Bend from March 1 through 4. Learn more about the conference and how to get involved with World Muse at theworldmuse.org
Pity February and its never-ending nights and frigid days. The second month of the year is so unpopular that we actually shortened its stay to twenty-eight days. But February possesses a powerful irony; the month so unloved is all about…love. Yes, this is the time of year when we celebrate romance and relationships. February isn’t for haters—it’s for lovers! So inspired are we by this notion that we’ve come up with easy weekend retreats that will either rekindle the most dormant romance or throw another log onto an inferno of passion. Whatever your status, we’ve got ideas for a cozy itinerary just for two.
Wintry Escape Into Newberry Crater
A (semi)adventurous overnighter in the heart of a volcano.
Photo by Kat Dierickx
Not much has changed at Paulina Lodge over the past half century, and that’s by design. If you’re looking for a luxury experience, you’ve come to the wrong place. The accommodations are rustic but cozy, especially against a long winter night. The resort offers nearly a dozen cabins ranging from one-bedroom abodes that are perfect for couples and small families to “Grand Cabins” that sleep up to a dozen and are suited for larger groups and extended families. While the resort offers restaurant and bar service for guests and day visitors, all cabins include full kitchens, and many opt to prepare their own meals.
The lodge operates on a special use permit from the Deschutes National Forest, one of two resorts and a handful of private residences that were grandfathered when the Newberry National Monument was designated in the 1980s to preserve the area from further development. Those who have visited during the summer months know that the area is often abuzz with activity. The twin waterbodies of East Lake and Paulina Lake are a draw for anglers who begin arriving in June in search of trophy brown and rainbow trout. In winter, it’s a different scene altogether. The resort’s primary clientele consists of snowmobilers and skiers who come for the hundreds of miles of snow-packed trails that are accessible from the resort.
From the winter basecamp, visitors can explore the surrounding area, making skinny tracks across the frozen lake. On nearby Paulina Peak, backcountry skiers mine some of the region’s steepest and deepest powder stashes, dropping narrow chutes above tree line into broad glades below. Paulina’s primary draw, though, is for snowmobilers who use the resort as wintry basecamp from which to zip around the 150 miles of groomed trails and the more than 300,000 acres of designated off-trail riding.
For the Romance Win: If deep snow doesn’t prevent you, locate the hot springs on East Lake and dig out a romantic soak for two. Don’t forget the champagne.
Storm Chasing On The Oregon Coast
Wildly stormy beach days pack an unforgettable punch.
Winter storms are fantastic entertainment. Waves pummel the shore, trees lash in the wind and flocks of birds arc through the sky in thrilling, pure theater. But an epic storm can be introspective, too. Tucked away at a safe vantage from which to witness the earth’s atmosphere unleash on a coastline, we are able to truly contemplate the power of nature. Even better if you are hunkered down observing the drama with your sweetie by your side.
Just about anywhere on the Oregon Coast will do when it comes to reveling in winter weather gone wild. The Central Oregon Coast offers Lincoln City, where storm watching comes with a fun challenge. Each winter, “Float Fairies” place hundreds of hand-blown glass floats on the seven-mile stretch of beachfront. The city-sponsored program “Finders Keepers” happens daily, rain or shine, giving visitors a solid reason to go forth into a storm. Find a float; take it home. Didn’t find a float? Buy one at Jennifer Sears Glass Art Studio, where you can also see glass artists at work creating the round beauties from scratch. Have dinner at Kyllo’s Seafood Grill, suspended on a platform over the beach and the D River. Stay the night at Inn at Spanish Head, where guest rooms tower ten stories over the ocean and boast floor to ceiling windows perfect for taking in the tumultuous scene outside.
For the Romance Win: A winding forest road and a short hike take you to the tippy-tip of Cascade Head. From a high meadow perch, views of the Salmon River Estuary and Lincoln City beaches to the south are breathtaking enough for a proposal.
Serenity at Sisters’ FivePine Lodge
Find luxury and romance at the base of the Cascade Mountains.
Photo by Benjamin Edwards
Sometimes the best getaways are the ones that don’t take much effort to achieve. A close-to-home destination just right for winter escape and romance is FivePine Lodge and Conference Center in Sisters, where a collection of brand new cabins opened last year. Drive thirty minutes from Bend and check into a luxurious cabin for two in the lush forest at the base of the Cascade Mountains.
The new Serenity Cabins sit at the western edge of the FivePine campus and were designed specifically for romance. Each is appointed with all the necessities for a cozy weekend, including a pedestal bathtub, a shower with three kinds of showerheads, a fireplace, plush robes, gorgeous Craftsman-style furniture and a back patio with two Adirondack chairs facing the ponderosa pine forest. What isn’t in your cabin is nearby: The FivePine campus includes restaurants, entertainment, swimming pools and more. If you’re in the mood for a film, wander over to the Sisters Movie House. Three Creeks Brewing, fashioned after an Old West livery stable where they pour their own terrific craft beers, is also on the FivePine campus, as is Rio, a Mexican dining destination.
FivePine also boasts an incredible spa, Shibui, a serene and beautiful Asian-inspired escape. Enter into an open space, low-lit with an expansive water feature marked by a large Buddha statue. The sound of water permeates into surrounding, luxurious treatment rooms. Before and after treatments, enjoy the Swedish dry sauna and hot thermal soaking tub. Rest in the common area before you leave, basking in a tranquil environment of healing and relaxation.
For the Romance Win: At Shibui, book the couple package, Rendezvous for Two, which includes a hot stone massage and a glass of champagne for each person.
The perennially anemic winter flows in the upper Deschutes basin will get a boost this winter thanks to a decision by Central Oregon’s irrigators to release more water between November and March 2018, a period when river levels are typically at their lowest.
Photo by Alex Jordan
The Deschutes Basin Board of Control, which comprises all the local irrigation districts, voted in mid-November to ramp up releases below Wickiup Reservoir to at least 175 cubic feet per second (cfs), which is the equivalent of 78,000 gallons per minute, or enough to fill roughly seven Olympic-sized swimming pools in an hour. That’s a significant increase from the 100 cfs that the districts had previously agreed to release during the winter to benefit fish and wildlife.
“We could have sat on the 100 cfs all winter and come spring have a big gush of water in the river,” said board chair Mike Britton. “That’s not really what we are after. We are trying to balance the flows in the river over a long period of time versus the historic ups and downs.”
The decision is part of a larger effort by irrigators and interest groups to address the impacts of irrigation withdrawals on the upper Deschutes River, primarily the stretch between Wickiup Reservoir and the Fall River confluence where river flows are most depleted in winter.
The ramping back of releases to below historic averages, and the subsequent ramping up in the summer months to above normal flows, contributes to erosion and negatively impacts wildlife, including native redband trout and the Oregon spotted frog. Britton said those concerns are not lost on irrigators or their patrons, who share the public’s concern about the health of the river.
“They completely understand the dynamics and politics,” said Britton, “and if we can release a little more water to improve conditions, not just for the river, but also our public perception, they are all for it.”
Youthful energy abounds at Hope Springs Dairy in Tumalo. One fall day, the lively chatter of owners Jeff and Lysa Seversons’ six children, all under the age of nine and on their best behavior, echoed pleasantly, complementing a quintessential farm soundtrack. Six piglets rolled in flakes of hay as two cows contentedly munched on their brunch. Two dogs wrestled emphatically, weaving past grazing chickens who clucked disapproval. Mud squelched under hooves, boots and paws as the whole menagerie gathered in the pasture, where each cow-calf pair gets an about an acre of land, so the adults could talk about the raw milk business.
“I wanted to do something where I could be around my kids,” said Jeff, who was working in the building industry until he and his wife started the farm in 2013. “My buddy at the Bend Soap Company pointed out that we’d been milking goats for years so our kids could drink quality milk. We believe in the nutritional benefits, so it was a values-driven business that my wife and I could get behind.”
As the Seversons transitioned from hobbyists to business owners, they also made the move from goats to Jersey and Guernsey cattle breeds. “We met the Jersey cow and it was all over,” said Jeff. “They have great milk—with the best cream—and high production volume. They also have such nice personalities. I needed cows I could trust with my kids.”
The Seversons’ timing couldn’t have been better. Within a year of starting Hope Springs Dairy, the family had enough income to support Jeff diving into the business full-time.
Around the same time, the Oregon Department of Agriculture settled a lawsuit that cited first amendment infringement and stopped enforcing the state law that banned raw milk advertising. In 2015, Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill allowing dairies to advertise in Oregon. While laws regarding the way in which raw milk can be sold vary by state, the number of states that allow the sale of unpasteurized milk has increased more than 20 percent since Gov. Brown’s decision.
“When it came through that they were going to uphold free speech and the constitution, I went gangbusters—advertising and building the business,” said Jeff. “We now have more than 200 herdshare members and produce more than 200 gallons per week. We’ll be growing the business from our own herd and will hopefully have ten milkers soon, producing about 300 gallons of milk per week.”
A herdshare is a partial ownership stake in a cow, which is the only legal avenue for off-farm raw milk sales in Oregon. In Hope Springs’ herdshare program, customers buy a portion of the cow and receive weekly milk deliveries that break down to $8 per gallon, then pick up their deliveries at one of two drop sites, Central Oregon Locavore in Bend or Schoolhouse Produce in Redmond. The Seversons are essentially the cattle’s caretakers, farming, milking and running delivery logistics. They have built the business organically, not having sought any financing for the dairy.
So why all the legal battles and tricky ownership structure for a natural product? Many public health experts warn that pasteurization, the process of heating milk to kill potentially harmful bacteria, parasites and viruses, is necessary for public health.
The Seversons, and other raw milk proponents, argue that cows are milked using a closed milking system (in which a hose is placed over the teats), reducing risky exposure during the milking process.
“I hang my hat on studies that show that the enzymes and probiotics in raw milk attack pathogens,” said Jeff. “We combine that know-ledge with sanitary practices and healthy cows.”
Supporters also cite studies showing the added nutritional benefits of drinking unpasteurized versus pasteurized milk and the large percentages of people who are lactose intolerant who can purportedly drink raw milk with no reaction. While the scientific community is divided on the issue, legislative changes are tipping toward camp “raw,” and the market share of people with raw, unpasteurized milk mustaches continues to grow.
“We couldn’t be more thankful for people who want to eat locally and care where it comes from,” said Jeff, whose cows only eat non-GMO grass, hay and locally-milled barley. “We feel so blessed.”
In 2018, St. Charles celebrates its 100th anniversary. Sister Catherine Hellmann, president of St. Charles for twenty-five years, had the vision for what the medical center is today.
When Sister Catherine Hellmann arrived in 1948, Bend was an emerging mill town of 10,000 people. A nurse by training, Hellman was sent by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Indiana to work as the nursing supervisor at St. Charles hospital in downtown Bend. Hellmann, then just 27 years old, had dedicated her life to service. Though her initial stay spanned just three years, it had a lasting impression on Hellman that changed the course of health care in Central Oregon.
Years before, a chance meeting on a ship returning from Ireland in 1908 between Father Luke Sheehan, a Catholic priest from Bend and founder of St. Francis Church and school, and Mother Gertrude Moffitt, a nun from Indiana, would mark the beginning of St. Charles Health System. At the time, Bend had around 500 people. Sheehan spoke to Moffitt about the need for a hospital in the small, poor mill town. Eight years later, Sheehan visited Moffitt in Indiana, urging her to send nuns to Bend to start a hospital. On Christmas Day in 1917, five Sisters of St. Joseph traveled from Indiana to Bend by train, arriving three days later to start a small hospital on the banks of Mirror Pond.
In 1921, the hospital was rebuilt in downtown Bend and named St. Charles. By 1951, it had been remodeled at the same downtown site into a modern facility with sixty-five beds.
Hellmann returned to Bend in 1969 with a master’s degree in health care administration and a mission to further modernize Bend’s health care system. She was named the president of the hospital that year. It was her foresight and grit that led her to spend the next three decades transforming the hospital into the regional medical center it is today. It was a labor of love, but also of sacrifice.
“It was hard to give up that hands-on nursing,” recalled Hellmann in an interview with the Bulletin in 1987. “But at the top I could have more influence on how patients were treated … I also felt that I could contribute something to the health field by demonstrating that good business and the spiritual aspect of the healing ministry can be in harmony.” In 1972, the Sisters of St. Joseph transferred ownership of the hospital to the new nonprofit St. Charles Medical Center, Inc., which maintained an affiliation with the Catholic church until 2010.
Hellmann’s primary goal was to find a new location for the hospital. She had her eyes set on a sight east of Bend near Pilot Butte, and though “[h]er dream was met with jokes and protests that the new hospital was going to be halfway to Burns,” according to a 1999 Bulletin story, she persisted, and convinced the county to approve a $12 million bond to build the hospital. In 1970, St. Charles purchased the land off Neff Road, and the new hospital was built in 1975.
In her twenty-five years as president of St. Charles, Hellmann oversaw its transition from a Catholic institution to a nonprofit organization. Her “singular vision and determination” took “St. Charles from a $1-million-a-year city facility into a $40-million-a-year regional medical center offering cancer treatment, open-heart surgery and a host of other services not generally associated with rural medicine,” according to the 1987 Bulletin article.
Hellmann stepped down in 1995 when she was close to 70 years old. She was the last of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Bend. She returned to Indiana in 2001 and died in 2009. Today, St. Charles is the region’s largest private employer, employing more than 4,400 people in 2017. It might not be what it is today—a regional health care system with hospitals in Bend, Redmond, Madras and Prineville and still the only Level II trauma center in Oregon east of the Cascades—if not for the vision of Hellmann.
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In Bend, Weld Design Studio crafts aesthetically detailed, highly original sculpture and furniture in a north Bend metal shop.
For the past eleven years, Andrew Wachs has run a metal shop called Weld Design Studio out of a modest industrial space on Bend’s north end. The 1,350-square-foot studio is wedged into a nondescript building surrounded by rabbit brush and juniper near the Deschutes River. Inside is a feeling of order. Steel plates and bars lean efficiently against one wall. Slabs of reclaimed wood are stacked neatly on a table. An enormous CNC plasma-cutter sits unobtrusively in one corner. Simple design elements decorate a wall. Everything, it seems, is precisely in place.
“It works for me this way,” said Wachs, who has lived and worked in Bend for the better part of twenty-three years. “It’s a tight space for a reason. I can work more efficiently. Whenever I feel cramped, I think, ‘If this studio was in Brooklyn, you’d be a king.’”
An amazing diversity of fine art, sculpture and metal fabrication emerge from Weld, as if rabbits from hats. Wachs, who grew up in Portland and studied sculpture at Western Washington University, has completed projects in scope from 10 Barrel Brewing logo cutouts smaller than your hand to a kingfisher perch installed near the Bend Whitewater Park last spring that’s as tall as a tree snag.
Dylan Woock and Andrew Wachs | Photo by Alex Jordan
Lately, Wachs’ passion has turned to furniture. A few years ago, he began collaborating with Portland-resident Dylan Woock, a family friend, Bend native and University of Oregon architecture graduate. The two dreamed up a collection of tables, each individually designed from the top down, that they call the Sketch Series.
That’s where the reclaimed wood comes in. “Each table is handmade and driven by shape,”said Wachs. The table design begins with a wooden slab, suspended mid-air. “We begin with a concept of dimension.”
Legs of rolled steel are essentially ad libbed underneath, fitted to complement the table top, creating a product guaranteed to be different than the one that came before it and the one that will come after. “We use four uniform legs—they are all the same,” explained Woock.
“But by the nature of how we compose them, they look random,” said Wachs. “That’s why I call these tables sketches. They come together like a drawing.”
The collaboration that Wachs, 50, and Woock, 27, share benefits from a “fluid information transfer,” said Wachs. Woock is a skilled computer draftsman and technician, while Wachs is more free-form, accustomed to creating sculptures in real space.
On the other hand, Woock said, “My approach is looser. Andy’s work is beautifully detailed and highly crafted, but my design sensibility is to show roughness here, a blemish there.”
This blend is demonstrated in another recent project, a rocking chair known as Rocker XL that Woock sketched on a whim one day. “That’s been our baby for the last year,” he said. The simple, contemporary sling rocker is fabricated from tube steel treated with a patina, oiled leather for the sling and black and white oak for the arm rests. “The rocker is the classic American piece of furniture,” said Woock. “Ours is clean, contemporary and oversized. It feels like sitting in a hammock.”
For now, the Rocker XL is available only as a commissioned piece, though Wachs and Woock dream of taking it to market on a larger scale. The Sketch Series tables are also mainly commissioned, produced one at a time from Weld’s compact, tidy studio. In each case, they are a demonstration of art meeting purpose, springing from order. “My approach is straightforward,” said Wachs. “Design, fabrication, execution. We’re creating something to function—it shouldn’t be just pretty.”
As Oregon’s top athletes gear up for the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang this year, we look back at the history of Oregon’s bid to host the games.
Chris Klug
Come February all sporting eyes will be on South Korea—assuming Kim Jong Un doesn’t nuke it first. These Games give the South Koreans a chance to show the world they do more than just kimchee and K-pop and that they have a winter sports culture, too. But let’s get real, if seaside Sochi was a stretch, then South Korea doesn’t seem much better.
Let’s do some comparing. PyeongChang, like Bend, has an outdoorsy vibe with a river and trails and cars crowned with roof racks, but unlike Bend, PyeongChang is not a single town but a collection of them. Taken together, they have about the same population as we did circa June 1999, or about 44,000 people. Their mountains, the Taebaeks, are no Cascades at about 5,000 feet. And though PyeongChang does have more ski areas than we do, you could fit every one of theirs into our one, all at once. Snow? We got you there, chingu. In Korea, powder usually refers to what you put on your face. So if South Korea can pull it off, why not Oregon? The U.S. Olympic Committee is lobbying to bring the Winter Games back to home soil. So how about it, why not Bend 2038?
“Well, we did host the National Beard and Moustache Championships here,” joked Kevney Dugan, president of Visit Bend. “The Olympics would be fascinating but, I mean, just some of the basic requirements for something like that, where would we even start?”
The question, it turns out, isn’t “where” so much as “when,” and the answer is a hoot: 1984. That’s the last time someone got serious about trying to bring the Winter Olympics to Oregon, while noting the events that could come to Bend.
The story of the time the Olympics nearly came to Bend but didn’t starts with one Sam Lackaff, a Portlander and general manager of Blue Bell, a potato chip company that Lays would later crush. The Winter Olympics that year were headed to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where the Bosnians had to build the starting gate for the men’s downhill on the roof of a mountain-top lodge just to meet the event’s requisite vertical drop. Lackaff thought if Sarajevo could do it, Oregon could do it. So he took the idea public and mentioned aloud how some of the ice skating events could unfold on Sparks Lake.
Jack Elder laughed when he heard that. Elder had been an Olympic luge athlete at the 1972 Games in Sapporo, where he got fifteenth. After the Games, he moved to Bend to work at KBND, so he knew both Sparks Lake and the Olympics well. “I phoned Sam up and said they don’t do Olympic ice skating on lakes any more,” recalled Elder, now 76 and living in a suburb south of Portland. “Sam said to me, well, if you know so much why don’t you come work with me. So I did.”
Elder rallied Oregon grocery store executives, business leaders and a couple of IRS agents to form a nonprofit called Winter Organization Oregon, or WOO, and together they set their sights on the 1998 Games. The timing was good. Anchorage had just been passed over for the 1992 Games, which ended up in Albertville, France and the United States Olympic Committee opened the bidding up to other destinations. Salt Lake City, Reno and “Oregon” all expressed interest.
By 1988, things were cooking. “No better Oregon project than a bid for Olympics,” boomed an editorial in the Oregonian. “Let’s get aggressive and try to land this gem,” read another a few months later. A survey of 300 mostly-Portland residents found 80 percent of respondents would favor hosting the Games. Lawmakers in Salem freed up $300,000 in matching funds to go toward the estimated $1 million it’d cost to just prepare a bid. All in all, estimates put the total price tag of hosting the Olympics at around $700 million. Could this really happen?
“There were a lot of dreamers back then,” recalled Bob “Woody” Woodward, a former Bend mayor who covered six Olympics as a journalist starting in 1980. “I think everyone was a little starry eyed.”
Even so, Bend roared into the discussion on January 22, 1988, when UMA Engineering out of Portland released a technical assessment looking at where exactly the events could be held. Portland’s Civic Stadium, with some upgrades, could hold the opening and closing ceremonies and an expanded coliseum could house the hockey. It mentions housing athletes on cruise ships moored along the riverfront. Mount Hood would likely get the Nordic events on new trails that’d have to be built along with some of the alpine runs. The Bachelor portions might make you gasp.
Today if you head skier’s right off of Bachelor’s Cloudchaser chair, cruise past Wanoga and drop into what the maps call The Low East, you’ll find the kind of terrain the study pinpointed as ideal for a bobsled course. If you come back around and gaze high upon the West Ridge and all the way down Thunderbird, that would be the Olympic downhill course, though today that route is not quite long enough. And ski jumping? “Mt. Bachelor has potential on a small butte near the main day lodge,” the report noted. That’s right; it’d be on the cone.
In the end, the effort fizzled. Salt Lake City, which would eventually land the 2002 Games, had thrown down more money and mustered more political will. An executive at U.S. Bank in Portland nailed the coffin closed after he pulled Elder into a room and told him that none of the big banks were willing to risk the hundreds of millions of dollars it’d take to make it all happen. They tossed him a bone. If he didn’t blame the banks for the failed bid they’d pay off WOO’s $100,000 debt. No hard feelings, Elder said. “To quote The Godfather, it was just business.”
The idea of Oregon hosting the Olympics still lingers, though. Most recently, Damian Smith, founder of Pepper Foster in Portland, launched Oregon 2028 to explore the idea of bringing the summer games to our state. That effort lost its edge when Los Angeles won, but Smith said the idea isn’t dead but postponed. As for Bend, Dugan and others think the town should try to hold a smaller event like such as an Ironman or a Nordic championship. We have the hotels. We have the terrain. We have the will. Until then, we’ll always have PyeongChang.
Luminaria has been a popular cross-country skiing community event since it began more than a decade ago.
Photo by Tim Neville
Twelve months ago, when Bend was still in the thick of the snowiest winter since the invention of the Subaru, dozens of bundled up skiers and snowshoers milled around the parking lot at the Virginia Meissner Sno-Park, ready for one of the coolest events of the season. They futzed with headlamps and bindings and primed their cores with cups of free hot chocolate. Lights dangling from the shelter’s eaves lent the snow a festive flare. Coolest of all, hundreds of tea candles tucked into paper bags lined a trail leading off into the forest. Gemültich didn’t begin to cut it.
Every year for the past fifteen years the Meissner Nordic club—the group that brings you free cross-country skiing and snowshoeing on forty kilometers of groomed trails—has organized the annual Luminaria event. Though the night has fallen under various names and has been held for varying reasons, the purpose has largely remained the same: a community event to get people out into the wilderness at night.
This year was no different, except it was. Whether it was the epic snowfall or the word was simply just “out,” the event drew the most people ever. By the time my daughter, Evie, and I showed up with a couple of friends around 7 p.m., volunteers had already handed out more than 700 glow-sticks to help people see each other in the dark. All told about one thousand people would slip under the faint stain of a moon for the mile or so it takes to reach the Meissner Hut, where bonfires burned in fire pans and volunteer Josh Cook and friends had built a massive snow dragon sculpture complete with an internal luge. We poked our heads inside just in time to see a marriage proposal. (She said yes.)
The event is also a fundraiser for the club, which managed to pull in about $3,000 in donations. That’s but a flake in the blizzard of expenses it costs the crew to groom so many miles of trails each season. (Think in the $30,000 range.) While the fundraising helps, that was never really the point of the event. In fact the first edition, held just weeks after we invaded Iraq in 2003, was called the Luminaria Ski for Peace. “In a small way it was a resistance event,” said Sue Vordenberg, now 74, who started the tradition along with a couple of friends. “It was all pretty spontaneous.”
Every year has been different, of course. It’s been icy or windy or warm and wet. In 2013 the event was dedicated to Vordenberg’s late-husband, Lloyd, who’d spent a couple of seasons grooming the trails with an ATV retrofitted with tank-like treads instead of wheels. A high school jazz club sang around the bonfires. Now the club lords over a $40,000 Pisten Bully groomer, and the event has grown so large that last year’s organizers teamed up with the Bend Endurance Academy to offer shuttles between Wanoga and Meissner sno-parks to help ease the parking crunch.
This year, organizers would love to have a shuttle run directly from town. It’d be nice if the jazz singers came back or if the weather would hold for real. Even if they don’t and even if it doesn’t, you should still grab some sticks and give it a go. Standing in the forest at night with so many candles warming the way, you can’t help but feel that, even in the midst of such an unforgiving season, there’s still no place you’d rather be.
Ruffwear’s president Will Blount on growing an international company in Bend and nurturing a collaborative creative community of outdoor entrepreneurs.
Photo by Will Blount
Colorado native Will Blount has been at the helm of Ruffwear since 2001. The performance dog gear company was founded by Patrick Kruse, who presented a collapsible, fabric water bowl for dogs to an immediately enthusiastic public in the early 1990s. Today, Kruse leads the product development team and Blount is president of Ruffwear, which generates $20 million a year in sales from its headquarters on Bend’s west side. Bend Magazine caught up with Blount to discuss the company’s trajectory, the local outdoor entrepreneurial scene and the cool renovations coming to Ruffwear’s commercial space.
Tell us about your background and how you first came to Bend.
I grew up amid the mountains and rivers of the Rocky Mountains. I earned a business administration degree in college, and knew early on that outdoor pursuits, following curiosity for the unknown and learning by doing were my path to a fulfilling life. When I was 10, my father took me steelhead fishing on the Deschutes River. I remember the beautiful sunrise and sunset and the adrenaline rush of catching my first anadromous trout on its journey back to its birthplace to spawn. This experience ultimately drew me to call Bend home in 2001.
What have been the most significant challenges and benefits of growing an international business in a small Oregon mountain town?
Our backyard is full of mountains, forests and a vast high desert that are the inspiration and testing ground for all our gear. Recreational attractions, combined with a great culture, help us attract amazing talent. As for challenges, one we’ve set for ourselves is to make purposeful visits to our customers and distributors, whether that means down the street or across the ocean, to understand their needs.
Ruffwear is renovating its headquarters to include a new co-working space. What sort of members do you wish to attract, and what sort of environment do you hope will result?
We consider the co-working space to be an incubator targeted toward outdoor-oriented professionals. We envision it as a home to like-minded businesses, independents, startups and freelancers, from creatives to conservation nonprofit organizations. We want this to be a community, with up to 125 new users to the space and nearly 25 percent of the space developed as common areas.
Ruffwear is projecting at least 100 percent revenue growth over the next four years. What are your goals moving forward as a company and as a part of Bend’s outdoor products scene?
From the start, we’ve been a company driven by purpose over profit. We’re focused on building relationships with our dealers and customers, as well as our team and our community. While Ruffwear is an international company now, we started as one fellow working in his garage. We believe in a culture of innovation, and we hope the co-working space will nurture this. Through educational talks, noon-hour mountain bike rides or beers with friends at day’s end, we believe networking, sharing resources and conveying experiences make for engaging days—this makes us better at what we do best. We also believe the time is right. Bend is home to the first outdoor industry-focused accelerator in the country, Bend Outdoor Worx, and a funding conference, Venture Out, for outdoor companies, as well as the Oregon Outdoor Alliance and an outdoor product design program at OSU-Cascades. It’s an exciting time.
What do the dogs have to say about more company at the company?
We’re secretly working on a dog translator! But I think it’s safe to say the dogs are excited about having more four-legged and two-legged friends.
While there’s never a good time to suffer a snowsports injury, twisting an ankle, tearing a knee or nursing a sore back can make for a long winter of sitting on the couch watching ski videos instead of living them.
Avoiding ski injuries starts with prevention, and any good program should include elements of sport-specific strength, flexibility and balance, said Ellie Meyrowitz, a physical therapist at Rebound Excellence Project (REP) Biomechanics Lab, a performance center for recreational as well as professional athletes. Rebound, an official physical therapy provider for the U.S. Ski, Snowboarding and Freeskiing teams, treats scores of cross-country and downhill skiers suffering from snowsports-related injuries, many of which are preventable, she said.
Nordic Skiing
Typical Nordic skiing-related injuries are caused by overuse or repetitive movements, the most common of which are knee pain, back pain and shoulder pain. Less common, but not infrequent, are traumatic injuries to ankles, wrists, thumbs and knees, which occur from falls. To avoid this, stay upright. Here’s how.
Build a strong foundation
“You can shoot a cannon off a deck or a canoe,” said Meyrowitz. Be the deck. A strong core sets the foundation for stability throughout your body, and decreases the likelihood of both falls and repetitive use injuries. Simple, dynamic plank exercises are a good place to start.
Get your balance on
Balance on snow is huge in Nordic skiing—not only for preventing injuries, but also in the ever-constant pursuit of being more efficient. Set aside time when you hit the trails to practice skiing without your poles. Once you’ve mastered this drill, advance to gliding on one ski for as long as you can, maintaining a quiet posture. You’ll get an idea of which leg is stronger, after which you can work toward gliding on each leg for the same amount of time, until your right and left leg glide the same distance with equal effort.
Pace yourself
Possibly the hardest advice to follow is the easiest one. Don’t do too much too soon. Try to resist picking up where you left off last spring by following the 10 percent rule, just as you would with running. Give your body time to adjust by increasing your ski volume by no more than 10 percent each week. This simple step will go a long way toward keeping you on snow and out of a PT clinic.
Alpine Riders
As you might expect, alpine injuries are most often the results of a trauma caused by a fall. And ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) tears take the prize for most frequent injury “by leaps and bounds,” said Meyrowitz, followed by MCL (medial collateral ligament) tears. Keep your knees in good shape with these steps.
Mind your equipment
Good working and well-fitted equipment is critical to avoiding knee and leg injuries. Be sure your bindings release properly and that your ski length is appropriate for your height and your skill level. “The shorter the ski, the easier it is to control,” said Meyrowitz. “We have many local ski shops that are all great in helping the local skiers out for this type of prevention.”
Check your ego
Just because your buddy is shredding the black diamond run doesn’t mean you should. Mind your ability and stick with the terrain you’re comfortable with. Meyrowitz notes that aggressive snow plowing—sometimes referred to as pizza pie—is taxing on the MCL. “Keep the season fun and light, and enjoy runs where you are comfortable,” she said. “If you do find yourself in a big pizza pie, make sure each leg has equal balance.”
Bending is winning
When skiing over bumps, jumps and uneven terrain, be sure to absorb these features with a bent, rather than a straight, knee. And, be sure not to stand erect to avoid a fall. The best way to avoid the rigid-knee response is to practice landing safely doing plyometric ski lunge drills. This teaches skiers to load the leg, spring off, and then absorb the force and land safely again.
When Shanan Kelley first came to Bend in 2009, she told her friends she’d be back to Seattle in a few short weeks. Eight years later, she’s still here teaching yoga, emceeing events and fundraisers and bringing laughter through The Night Light Show, a regular variety show featuring local artists and community members. Adjusting to life in a smaller city has allowed Kelley to tap into her creative side. Kelley sat down with Bend Magazine’s Teafly Peterson to talk about finding her muse and what it’s like to live on “island time.”
Photo and Illustration by Teafly
On Starting Over
I was in denial about moving here. I was living in Seattle, which I loved. I thought if I left it would be a big deal, because it is so beautiful there. So, if I was leaving then surely it was because I was going to New York or London or beyond. But then I got here and it was so beautiful, and the idea of moving at a slightly slower pace sounded really appealing. There were so many wonderful people here who were talking about how much they loved their community, and that really captured me right away.
On Bend’s Growing Pains
I don’t miss making $10,000 a year. I don’t miss being recessed. I think our poverty consciousness has slightly improved. This is why I love the growth. I want more unique people to come here. I want people who have a bigger thought process and broader view of what it means to live in society to come here and help us make good policy and manage how we grow and make the most of what we have here. I want that for myself, and I want that for my larger community as well.
On Possibilities
Bend is a really safe place to do a lot of things. When I first moved here, I felt really strongly that I could build something for myself here. The possibility of what I could build felt like it was worth pursuing, without a doubt.
Leaving the Rat Race
We’re on island time here. When I first came here, I was really shocked by how long it would take for someone to email you back in business. I had to embrace it. And then I loved it, because it gave me some grace. And then you get a bonus of, like, ten hours a week, because you’re not in your car as much. You could use it for anything—exercise, time with your family, creativity! That is really significant. And if you use that bonus of ten hours a week to sit on your ass, it will literally change your life.
On Family
I get my sense of humor from my family. Growing up, we had a lot of stress, but we laughed all the way through it. They made me super sensitive. I had experiences as a young person that were so intense, you don’t un-experience them. Those experiences gave me a level of empathy.
Finding Her Voice
When I got to the University of Washington, I took Drama 101 and I just was like, “Oh my God!” All of a sudden these doors just flew open. I’ve always known I was funny, but as a young person it would veer toward sarcasm. So, I was learning how to manage that. And then I was in this drama class and it was so open and free. I had found my place! Prior to this I thought I wanted to be a lawyer or an engineer. As it turned out, I just wanted to play one on TV!
On Being Ourselves
Sometimes in Bend, we have this “big fish in a small pond” mentality. It is very high-schooly in a way. Do you do this because you love it or because you feel the need to fit in? I would love to see people give themselves permission to break out of that and explore more deeply who they are and why this place called to them. Because that is truly beautiful, people being themselves. There are so many healers here and so many people facilitating opportunities for that kind of work—for true connection and self-discovery, so take it. What are you using your bonus “island time” for?
This winter, skip the lift lines (and traffic) and head to Mount Bailey for an epic backcountry skiing experience. Not into extreme skiing? Close by, Diamond Lake Resort offers adventures for everyone.
Photo Sebastian Folz
What if I told you that we could reduce snowriding to its essence? No resort crowds, no lift lines. How about no lifts at all—and no boundaries. You’re thinking Valdez. But I’m talking about Southern Oregon’s Mount Bailey, where the primary marketing initiative is word of mouth, and the terrain, well, it speaks for itself.
Bailey was once intended to be Oregon’s next-big-thing destination ski resort, but plans to transform the 8,000-foot volcano into a traditional lift-accessed ski area never came to fruition. Instead, Mount Bailey remains a remote outpost of powder skiing. With more than 5,000 acres of terrain and 600 inches of annual snowfall, Bailey’s bounty is reserved for those who hop aboard Diamond Lake Resort’s snowcat for a ride that starts at the resort and ends somewhere in backcountry nirvana above Bailey’s seemingly endless chutes and glades.
Photo Sebastian Folz
One of the oldest ski-touring companies in the west, Cat Ski Mt. Bailey is just two hours south of Bend near Crater Lake in the Umpqua National Forest. Roughly 100 miles from the nearest population center, Mount Bailey is no secret, but its location and lack of amenities has kept it off the radar of most casual skiers.
Assuming you can ski powder on expert terrain at your home mountain, then you’re at least a candidate for Bailey. There are no prerequisite skill tests, but Mount Bailey’s crew isn’t in the babysitting business. It pitches its services to advanced and expert skiers and boarders in plain language. The resort’s website advises would-be visitors to “leave intermediate skiers at home.”
For those who seek the steep and deep, Cat Ski Mt. Bailey’s expert guides and varied terrain offer an experience unlike anything available at traditional resorts. Mount Bailey can provide a once-in-a-lifetime type of day that is savored among each small group of skiers and boarders. (The operation limits its groups to twelve skiers or riders per day.) Powderhounds fortunate enough to load the snowcat after a winter storm lays down a fresh layer of snow can expect a day full of powder “whoops” and snow-eating grins.
“Every day is different, every run is different,” said guide Ryan Oswald, son of the legendary late guide Rick (Oz) Oswald.
Guests can typically expect around six or seven runs in a day, totaling roughly 15,000 to 18,000 feet of vertical drop, according to lead guide Ross Duncan. And while storms are frequent, the durable snowcats and varied terrain mean there are always turns to be had.
Even on storm days when the lifts close at Bachelor, Mount Bailey offers protected tree runs. “Stormy days are great—we love skiing them,” said Duncan.
Cat skiing is typically offered daily from December to early April—conditions dependent—for $385 per person per day. Group rates and ski-and-stay packages are available, with accommodations at Diamond Lake Resort.
Photo Sebastian Folz
Stay and Play
If extreme backcountry adventure isn’t your thing, Diamond Lake Resort also has a variety of family-friendly activities.
“The beauty of being in the mountains in the snow—there’s not many places in Oregon that can offer everything we have,” said Diamond Lake Resort operations manager John Jonesburg.
He’s called the resort, established in 1922, home for twenty-eight years. “I just love it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he said.
The lakeside resort added a new 470-foot “wonder carpet” conveyor lift to its tubing hill last year and offers an extensive network of groomed cross-country and snowmobile trails. It’s even possible to snowmobile to Crater Lake.
Lodging options range from motel-room-style to a full seven-bedroom cabin, added just three years ago. Prices vary from $105 to $1,099 per night. The resort also offers lodging, snowmobile and cat ski package rates.
A mountain molded into the bottom of a pint glass took off like wildfire—and Mount Bachelor is the next peak in line to be pressed forever into glass from North Drinkware.
Photo North Drinkware
On February 1, 2015—Superbowl Sunday—Leigh and Matt Capozzi and their family kicked back to watch TV in their Portland home. On the screen wasn’t the game, however, but a live feed of the Kickstarter campaign they’d launched that morning. The goal was to raise $15,000 to begin production on a pet project they’d dreamed up with their friend Nic Ramirez: a hand-blown pint glass with the shape of Mount Hood molded into the base.
“Our hope was to be able to produce maybe 200 glasses to fulfill Kickstarter orders and gift the rest to friends and family,” recalled Matt. Fate had another plan for the founders of North Drinkware. Instead of the projected thirty-two days, $15,000 was raised in five hours and fifteen minutes. Within forty-eight hours, North Drinkware was 600 percent funded. The campaign ended with $531,000 in pre-orders of The Oregon Pint from more than 5,500 backers.
“We achieved our five-year business plan day one,” recalled Matt. “It was blistering,” agreed Leigh. “We thought, wow, this is a much bigger idea than we thought it was.”
What the North team loved about the handcrafted vessel—the way it celebrated both Oregon craft beer and the state’s beloved and tallest mountain—turned out to be only part of what attracted others. “We fielded hundreds of emails in those early days,” said Leigh. Some interested buyers were Oregon ex-patriots, missing home. Some were one-time visitors seeking a souvenir. Some loved the idea of supporting the art community. Others appreciated the 100 percent locally sourced business model. Overall, the glass hit a serious chord of connection to Oregon and the mountains.
Photo North Drinkware
“What’s great about Kickstarter is that it’s a platform for authentic connection with consumers,” said Leigh. “You can put your idea out to the mass community and see what people really think.”
The team was blown away by the feedback they received, both aesthetic and financial. But challenges were still to come. Taking USGS data of a mountain from 3-D imagery to tangible, detailed design was its own trial. Next was the search for a mold medium that could withstand the 600-degree temperatures of the hand blown glass process. Several very expensive graphite molds (as well as a lot of pint glasses) were destroyed before they arrived at the stainless steel mold currently in use. It took eight months to fulfill the original 12,000 Kickstarter orders and another to launch an online store, which promptly sold out.
These were all good problems to have, and anyway, the trio had come to North Drinkware with a combined powerful skillset. Leigh and Matt met in the late 1990s while working for Burton Snowboards, Matt in product management and Leigh in public relations. Matt and Nic both presently work for Cinco Design in Portland, a product and brand design agency with huge clients such as Nike, Smith Optics and Microsoft.
“All three of us have had the opportunity to work for world-class brands and agencies through our careers,” said Leigh. “Launching a brand and having to manage everything from logistics to development and production to marketing to finance has been an amazing growth opportunity.”
Like so many entrepreneurs, the team has found that what makes this experience stand out in the arc of their careers is that it’s personal. “Doing great work is fulfilling, but doing great work and seeing results for your own brand is super rewarding,” said Leigh.
Matt and Leigh moved to Bend in 2016, fulfilling another dream to raise their two daughters closer to their long-term “personal playground,” Mount Bachelor. Nic and Matt now put in a day or two each a week for North, while Leigh concentrates full-time on the company. Glass blowers create custom pints and tumblers five days a week at Elements Glass in Northwest Portland; warehousing and shipping is all out of Portland, too.
Photo North Drinkware
North Drinkware currently produces glasses featuring mountains from Washington, Colorado, California and Vermont, in addition to Oregon. Custom wood coasters featuring USGS topographic data complement each glass. This February, North will launch a new collection featuring a second mountain from a state for the first time. Not surprisingly, the peak they chose for this distinction is their own most cherished, Mount Bachelor. “We’re excited to honor our local mountain and offer a glass to our hometown,” said Leigh. The Mount Bachelor pint and tumbler will be available at Ginger’s Kitchenware and Lark Mountain Modern in Bend, as well as online.
More mountains should appear in the bottom of your glass in coming years, though maybe not as quickly as that Kickstarter campaign that got everything started. “We have a team mantra of wanting the company to be ‘just big enough,’” said Leigh. “We want to grow responsibly and authentically.”
Check out new page-turners recommended by Sara Q. Thompson and Paige Bentley Flannery of the Deschutes Public Library.
The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True stories about facing the unknown edited by Catherine Burns; foreword by Neil Gaiman
Forty-five memories from forty-five different voices curated by the creators of The Moth storytelling series (and podcast). We meet the English hairdresser who gave David Bowie his first dye job. We stand in the rubble of a catastrophic earthquake with an engineer and his team. We hold our breath with refugees as they board a plane with their children, hoping against hope that this flight will save their lives. We share an awkward family dinner with relatives who have just met for the first time. Reading these moments of honesty and reflection called to mind the old saying, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” —Sara Q. Thompson, adult services manager
New People by Danzy Senna
Maria, a young graduate, is living in New York with her fiancé and college sweetheart, Khalil. Everything seems normal as we follow Maria through libraries while she works on her dissertation and Khalil works though his dot-com adventures. But is she ready for marriage? The biracial twenty-somethings are being filmed for a documentary about “new people” like them who are at the forefront of a new generation. But it’s a young poet who upends Maria’s world, as her interest in him veers into obsession. Danzy Senna, the bestselling author of Caucasia, weaves a story of cultural issues with dark humor. It’s a captivating novel with discussions of race, marriage and family that readers will continue to ponder. — Paige Bentley Flannery, community librarian
Colors of the West: An artist’s guide to nature’s palette by Molly Hashimoto
For the outdoor and art enthusiast in your life, this book can serve as travel book, nature guide, artist manual and coffee table display. Hashimoto weaves beautiful pen and watercolor sketches from national parks, monuments, vistas with flora
and fauna notes, artist profiles, location-specific palettes and painting technique tips. There were many pages that I savored with pleasure. The color palette for the Yellowstone thermal pools took my breath away. Central Oregonians will recognize favorite regional haunts Smith Rock, the Badlands and Crater Lake. The chapters are arranged by color, and the book is so luscious you will likely find yourself flipping through the pages just for the joy of it. —SQT
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
Anna’s family is living in New York City during the 1930s when her father disappears, leaving them without an explanation. Anna begins her journey searching for answers. Her strength is beautifully shown as she takes care of her sister and mother and works in the Navy Yard. There, her independence shines as she becomes the first female diver and works a dangerous job repairing ships to support the war. Readers will appreciate the rich atmosphere in this historical fiction as the heroine rides her bike through alleys, visits Brooklyn waterfront saloons an
d mixes with the gritty characters who earn their living on the water. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan captures the essence of New York City in this magnificent novel filled with survival, war, mystery and romance. —PBF
Five chefs show us how to stave off the winter chill with the stories and recipes behind favorite comfort food dishes on their restaurants’ menus.
In the dead of winter during long, cold nights, our minds dig deep for the familiar dishes that leave us feeling warm, satisfied, nostalgic. Central Oregon has a healthy relationship with comfort cuisine, from traditional recipes to the avant-garde. Several of our chefs have elevated the concept to create flavors that bring us back to grandma’s cooking—that is if your grandma was Julia Child—and conjure up memories of childhood around the table.
Seafood Pot Pie
The Porch | Chef Jon Hosler
“This dish is such a hit because of how it makes you feel when you eat it—like a warm hug to your soul on any day.” — Chef Jon Hosler
The entire menu at The Porch in Sisters fits the definition of comfort food. Meatloaf, chicken and waffles, three cheese mac. The seafood pot pie, a take on the classic chicken pot pie with a Pacific Northwest twist, also easily fulfills the “haute” side of haute comfort. A light cream and vegetable base coats shrimp, scallops and smoked salmon. Puff pastry on top adds texture as well as a mechanism to soak up the delicious sauce.
Cooking tips: Cook down a base of roughly chopped onion, celery and carrots in olive oil and add a splash of white wine. Add seafood and just enough heavy cream to cover the ingredients. Season and let simmer until reduced by one-quarter or veggies are tender. Top with puff pastry (even store-bought will do).
Mac & Cheese Flight
The Blacksmith | Chef Bryan Chang
“To me, comfort food should bring back memories of our younger days and hearty, homecooked meals. I like to combine both modern and classic techniques and ingredients to bring dishes to life for our guests, and I feel our food accentuates our cozy and comfortable atmosphere.”
— Chef Bryan Chang
What’s better than rich macaroni and cheese made with the best ingredients and cooked to perfection? Three kinds! Blacksmith’s flight of three mac and cheese recipes—smoked, bacon and truffle smoked—are arguably the best in town. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but, at Blacksmith, you fortunately don’t have to.
Cooking tips: Tillamook smoked cheddar plus heavy cream equals flavor. Never use skim or low-fat dairy products in mac and cheese.
Ramen Carbonara
5 Fusion | Chef Joe Kim
“On a cold day, there is not much more that I want than tomato soup with oyster crackers or a grilled cheese sandwich, because that is what my mother would cook for me as a child on a cold day. When I was in Japan, ramen was always my comfort food. I think everyone’s comfort food is probably different. It is something that takes you to a place you loved, a person you loved or time you loved.” — Chef Joe Kim
A stunner of a dish, 5 Fusion’s ramen carbonara combines the satisfaction of a hearty soup with the perfect dashes of refinement and balance that place it high among the impressive creations from James Beard-nominated Chef Joe Kim. This dish, topped with a quail egg and bathed in a broth that has an unexpected richness, will get you through a long winter night.
Cooking tips: 5 Fusion’s ramen broth is made in-house with pork bones, shallots, garlic, miso and tamari. The process takes about two days of boiling the pork bones to extract flavor, a method that might be overwhelming for a home cook. Any soup base can be used; instant miso soup is a great substitute.
Trophy Elk Chili
Joolz | Chef Ramsey Hamdan
“People crave comforting dishes and keep returning to them when they offer a more exotic flair that they don’t usually make at home.” — Chef Ramsey Hamdan
Joolz’s trophy elk chili embodies the restaurant’s theme “where the Middle East meets the Wild West.” Garbanzo beans, rose harissa, crumbled feta and Middle Eastern spices are combined with traditional chili beans and ground elk, representing the West. An instant hit when it was added to the menu, this dish provides all the heartiness of a stick-to-your-ribs chili, but is lighter and has a surprising flavor profile that may outshine the original.
Cooking tips: Top it off with Fritos like they do at Joolz to add crunch and offer a taste of childhood.
Fried Chicken Dinner
900 Wall | Chef Clifford Eslinger
“This dish provides a good perspective of the balance we strike at 900 Wall. We have an extensive wine list, yet pour Rainier on tap. We have a seasonal menu that highlights local ranches and farms. While our burger is one of our best sellers, we sell out of fried chicken every Sunday. I think the fact that we are able to offer so many aspects and styles of dining at a consistently high level speaks to our commitment to not doing anything halfway.” — Chef Clifford Eslinger
When it comes to comfort food, it doesn’t get more straightforward than fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. But look a little closer at 900 Wall’s fried chicken dinner, served Sundays only, and you’ll find a perfectly crispy crust, not too greasy; the highest quality locally sourced chicken; a heap of creamy potatoes and gravy without a hint of a lump in either; and sautéed greens with onions and pancetta. It’s the ultimate rendition of the classic.
Cooking tips: Marinate chicken in a buttermilk base, dredge in seasoned flour and refrigerate for eight to twenty-four hours—a key step in drying it out to make for an extra crispy final product. To ensure a crispy crust, fry chicken in small batches to keep the oil temperature from dropping below 300°F.
The up-and-coming skiers and snowboarders from Bend who have a shot at gold and history in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
Gabe Ferguson, Olympic Halfpipe Hopeful
When the Winter Olympics commence this February half a world away in PyeongChang, South Korea, some fans here in Bend will be watching the games with a little more at stake than national pride. They will be rooting for homegrown and hometown athletes that they’ve known as students, classmates, friends and neighbors. They are the latest local hopefuls who have run the gauntlet of amateur and professional competition for a shot at Olympic gold and a place in history.
It’s rarified air, to be sure. Only a handful of athletes make it to the top. But this year’s games hold promise for a select few, including downhillers Laurenne Ross and Tommy Ford and snowboarder Ben Ferguson. Look a little deeper and you’ll see a number of local skiers and riders in the Team USA pipeline who have their sights set on 2022. Take another step back and you will see a community that is chock full of former Olympians such as speed skater Dick Hunt (’60, ’64) and cross-country skiing great Suzanne King (’94, ’98). Yes, the Games are an international spectacle, but the fingerprints of Bend athletes are all over them. And for those about to compete, We Salute You!
The Current Cast of Olympians
Kent Callister
Age 22
Sport: Snowboard Park and Pipe
A hometown kid with an international pedigree, Callister rode to a surprise ninth place overall finish in the men’s halfpipe at the 2014 Games in Sochi. A Bachelor product, Callister took a side door into the Olympics by joining the Australian team thanks to dual citizenship. His father is Australian, and Callister spent his younger years living in Australia, where he took up skateboarding. The family relocated to Central Oregon when Callister was just nine. He transitioned quickly to snowboarding and showed an aptitude for big air theatrics. Callister followed up his ninth place finish with a third place podium at the World Cup in 2015 at Park City and a sixth place spot at the World Championships in Austria that same year. In 2016 Callister qualified for the X Games halfpipe finals in Aspen, but withdrew after sustaining a concussion during a first-run fall. Several strong subsequent finishes have Callister well positioned for 2018. He remains a member of the Australian Park and Pipe team and is positioned to qualify and compete again in PyeongChang, bringing a dash of Central Oregon freestyle to South Korea.
Laurenne Ross
Age 29
Sport: Alpine Skiing
The Olympics run in the blood of alpine ski racer Laurenne Ross. Her father was a professional ski racer in Canada, and her grandfather was on the 1952 Canadian Olympic hockey team. But Ross has made a name for herself in women’s downhill and super-G on the U.S. Ski Team. Born in Canada and on skis by two years old, Ross has dual citizenship and moved to Bend when she was 7. She earned her stripes racing at MBSEF and made the U.S. Ski Team when she was 17. Now 29 and based in Bend, she’s ranked the sixth best downhill skier in the world and is aiming to make her second Olympic appearance. She made it to Sochi in 2014 and placed eleventh in the women’s downhill, but she’s only gained speed and skill since then. A traumatic knee injury during the last race of the 2016-2017 ski season prevented her from skiing for six months, but the multitalented athlete (she’s also an art student at University of Oregon) is determined to make it to the Olympics again this year. For Ross, it all comes down to the mental game, and if the last few seasons are any indicator, she’s got that part down.
Tommy Ford
Age 28
Sport: Alpine Skiing
Tommy Ford recently landed in the top ten at a World Cup giant slalom race in Colorado—a career best—putting him on the path for a career high in the 2017-2018 ski season. It’s been a long road back for Ford who suffered a serious injury while skiing in France in 2013, but one that Ford hopes leads to the slopes of PyeongChang and another shot at Olympic glory. A graduate of Summit High School and Bend resident since the age of 2, Ford, 28, skied with MBSEF at Mt. Bachelor and made the U.S. Ski Team in 2008. After a storied amateur career that included a second place finish at the World Junior Champioships in 2008, Ford defied critics and punched a ticket to Vancouver in 2010 in giant slalom, one of his specialties along with super-G. A freeskiing injury scuttled his hopes for an Olympic encore at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, but a major comeback in 2015 catapulted him to a second-place finish in giant slalom at the U.S. Alpine Championships at Sugarloaf in Maine last year.
Bend’s Olympic Dreamers
Ben Ferguson
Age 22
2nd place SuperPipe, 2016 X Games Aspen
Ben’s ascent into snowboarding’s elite began at age six on the curvy slopes of Bachelor. A knack for big, stylish airs gradually appeared, and Ben stacked up wins as a junior. By 2013, he had made the U.S. Snowboard Halfpipe Team and became a respected name in the world of professional snowboarding. Soft-spoken and mellow, Ben nonetheless works hard on every angle of his career, and is self-competitive as an athlete. This explains his new-found fascination with freeriding in Alaska, where his truest instincts as a snowboarder come into play. Catch a glimpse of Ben’s chops in his latest film, Hail Mary.
Gabe Ferguson
Age 19
5th place Halfpipe, 2016 X Games Aspen
Little brother of Ben Ferguson, Gabe belongs to the up-and-coming younger generation of mind-blowing snowboarders. Bachelor’s terrain, like a mountain of natural halfpipes, raised Gabe from age 4. Now a U.S. Snowboard Halfpipe Team member, Gabe is rewriting the way tricks are done, like frontside 540 nose grabs. On and off the hill, Gabe is too relaxed to worry much. He keeps his stress level low. Gabe’s riding style looks slow-motion, while brother Ben’s is explosive. No wonder the two took first place for their doubles run at the 2015 Red Bull Double Pipe event in Aspen. Gabe’s career has just taken off.
Hunter Hess
Age 19
2nd place in Halfpipe, 2016 Calgary NorAm
As a U.S. Ski Team Freeski Rookie Team member, Hunter starts the season in 2017 ranked fourteenth in the world for halfpipe. Bachelor’s natural transitions and an MBSEF upbringing helped shape him into a freeskier on the verge of Olympic fame. His confidence draws on a deep love for skiing, and a devotion to the halfpipe, where he’s busy perfecting right-side double corks and learning new grabs. A competitive nature, methodical training and a keen sense of comic relief have Hunter on track to take podiums and Olympic medals in the near future. Beyond that, Hunter plans to debut soon in major ski films, and to spend more time street and powder skiing.
Anna Gorham
Age 17
5th place in Halfpipe, 2016 Alpine Snowmass Freeskiing Open
The youngest of Bend’s U.S. Freeskiing Rookie Halfpipe team, Anna is a soft spoken high school student who has quietly risen the U.S. freeskiing ranks. She has plenty of opportunity ahead to impress judges. Before she was old enough to drive, Anna snagged a halfpipe bronze medal at the 2015 FIS Junior World Championships in Italy. Now she’s looking to enter the top twenty as a women’s halfpipe skier. Anna trained independently on Bachelor to become a professional skier, a testament to her work ethic and inherent talent. A happy-go-lucky attitude and polished manners make Anna a great ambassador, while her freeskiing speaks fiercely for itself.
Jake Mageau
Age 20
4th place in Halfpipe, 2017 Aspen Snowmass Freeskiing Open
Jake brings a free-spirited style to the U.S. Ski Team. An early childhood spent in Hawaii explains his flair. Unique grabs and a whole lot of flow put the spotlight on Jake’s skiing, although his humble nature shies away from hype. Heading into his third year as a Rookie Halfpipe Team skier, Jake looks set to represent his Bachelor roots with plenty of podium finishes. MBSEF coaching focused Jake’s incredible athletic ability and talent, while his originality as a freeskier bodes well for a future of filming and pushing the evolution of his sport.
Jacob Beebe
Age 18
Overall Halfpipe Champion, 2014 U.S. Revolution Tour
Jacob’s halfpipe skills and confidence are high enough to win titles. He proved this as overall champion on the Revolution Tour in 2014 and by making the U.S. Ski Team Rookie Halfpipe squad last season. Although Beebe trained in Sun Valley, he also attended Bend’s Summit High School where he was an honor student. Bachelor’s natural features taught Jacob how to blast airs, and a twelfth place finish at the 2016 X Games in Oslo proved he could compete at freestyle skiing’s premiere events. When he’s not traveling the world to ski pipes and powder, Jacob studies business at the University of Utah.
Artist Dawn Emerson used her past life in the circus as inspiration for her latest art.
When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus closed in 2017, it revived memories of Terrebonne artist Dawn Emerson’s summer of 1975. “I loved elephants and wanted to run away with the circus,” she recalled. “I joined a third-rate, no maybe fourth-rate circus with crusty clowns as a synchronized swimmer between my sophomore and junior years of college.”
The pools were dirty, and she nearly drowned in four feet of water. “We were never really synchronized,” she said with a laugh. She left the circus and returned to school as planned but never forgot the mood and vibrancy of life under the big top.
Four decades later, Emerson recreated images of this bygone era in “Cirque d’Art,” a body of work exhibited last fall at the Bend Art Center. The program guide stated that by “using simple cutouts, textured materials, layers of color and different printmaking processes, Emerson captures a time, place and feeling that lives on in our imagination.”
Emerson sees the circus as a metaphor for life. “It’s serious, magical and humorous,” she said. “We all have to learn to juggle, take leaps of faith and figure out what’s in our own tents.”
Photo by Alex Jordan
Emerson’s own tent turned out to be art and the creation of mixed media pieces, printmaking, book writing, illustration and pastel paintings inspired by French Impressionist Edgar Degas. She also discovered a love for teaching children and adults how to express themselves through art. She spent five years as an artist in residence in the local public schools in the early 1990s, designing an art curriculum for kindergartners through twelfth graders. “Kindergartners are the hardest to teach,” she said, “but they taught me how to make art come alive.”
In 1992, she started painting with pastels and enrolled in workshops to learn from the best pastel artists in the country. She won awards for her pastels and exhibited in galleries across the country, including at Bend’s Mockingbird Gallery where she still shows her work.
Photo by Alex Jordan
In 2008, she met mentor and printmaker Pat Clark, founder of Atelier 6000 studio (the education component of the Bend Art Center). Clark introduced Emerson to monoprinting, a process that results in a single print made with ink and a roller, often called a “painterly print.” After years of working in pastel, Emerson said the new medium caused her to “throw everything out and start anew.”
“The studio inspired a different voice in her work,” said Clark. “She conquered everything that was thrown at her in methods and media.”
Instead of working in small format, the two women created huge plates and then “ran over them” with steam rollers like those used in road building. Clark said Emerson became so skilled with ink that she created her own mixed-media techniques, combining monoprints with pastels. “She’s in the top two percent of American artists who work in pastels. She’s sought after as a workshop instructor and an art show juror,” said Clark.
Today, Emerson continues to challenge and reinvent herself as an artist. Her husband, Bruce, built her a large studio adjacent to their home in Terrebonne. She wrote and illustrated the book Pastel Innovations. And with a growing national reputation, she teaches about ten workshops a year across the country. But unlike her summer with the circus, the spotlight is on her and helping others find their own tents.
Local running experts Lauren Fleshman and Lucas Alberg share the best routes and trails for running around Bend this winter.
Lucas Alberg running in the winter at Horse Butte near Bend.
Bend is known for its abundance of running trails that are popular in the spring, summer and fall. But in the winter with snow on the ground, there are fewer trails from which to choose. We turned to local running experts Lauren Fleshman and Lucas Alberg to share some of their winter running routes around Bend. The takeaways: If you plan on running this winter, you’ll want a pair of Yaktrax. Or go east.
Lauren Fleshman: former competitive athlete, co-owner of Picky Bars
Columbia Park-Skyliner Loop
From Columbia Park in Bend, head through the neighborhoods toward 17th Street. Most of the streets are quiet and groomed. Then cut over to Galveston Ave., where you pick up the groomed path that follows Galveston Ave./Skyliner west. Turn left on Skyline Ranch Road, left on Metolius and then left again on Mount Washington to take you back to Skyliner. She said the paths are usually groomed enough to run with Yaktrax on. “Basically, if you can find low traffic roads that are plowed, and run during low traffic times, it is very pleasant,” said Fleshman. The whole route is about eight miles and gets you off of some of the busier roads in town.
Old Mill District
Fleshman said that she also likes to run loops in the Old Mill District. From Farewell Bend Park, this stretch of the Deschutes River Trail is mostly paved. Three bridges that cross the river mean you can make the loops as short as a mile or as long at three miles. Fleshman recommends bringing Yaktrax, clamps that attach to the bottom of your shoes, to use if the trail has some snow on it.
Lucas Alberg: avid trail runner, author and PR & Communications Manager at Hydro Flask
Oregon Badlands Wilderness
“I really like the Badlands because of the solitude and the beauty,” said Alberg. The region is relatively flat, with wide and sandy paths. The Flatiron Trailhead is sixteen miles east of Bend, and the whole trail is around six miles, but there are lots of connecting loops for you to choose how long you want to run. “It’s somewhere that you’d never want to run during summer with the heat and sand, but come winter the sand packs hard, there’s not a soul in site, and there’s a perfect stillness and beauty that can’t be matched,” said Alberg.
Horse Butte
Also east of Bend, the Horse Butte area is popular with mountain bikers and runners. “I also enjoy Horse Butte, especially in early winter as you still get some of the color from the sagebrush turning,” said Alberg. The whole loop is ten miles long with one steep section of switchbacks. “Combined with the red lava rock of Horse Butte, it makes for a spectacular combo,” said Alberg.
At Trattoria Sbandati, an almost decade old restaurant on Bend’s west side, Chef Juri Sbandati serves polpette, a traditional Tuscan meatball dish inspired by his grandmother.
Photo by Alex Jordan
Chef Juri Sbandati traces his earliest culinary memory to his grandmother’s kitchen in Florence, Italy. A small stove emanating wonderful smells, cluttered with an array of little pans. A white refrigerator, the kind from the 1950s that you had to open with a floor pedal. A classic red Gaggia espresso machine that chu gged along for decades. “Her house was perfect,” said Sbandati. “Her food full of love.”
For Sbandati, food is comfort. Food is family. Nowhere is that more palpable than in one of his signature dishes, Polpette. Three ground beef meatballs with a texture that cooks dream of achieving are topped with beautifully balanced tomato sauce and melted mozzarella, served with a side of sautéed spinach. Hearty, unfussy and impeccably executed, it’s honest food and is clearly made with love. For Sbandati, cooking this dish, as well as so many others on his menu, is “poetically personal” and you can taste it.
Trattoria Sbandati, an intimate restaurant located at the bottom of NW College Way in Bend, has been serving carefully handcrafted pastas and other authentic Tuscan dishes since 2009. The Polpette has never gone off the menu.
When asked about his meatball secrets, he offered four morsels. Number one: Share them with people you love; number two: Put some bread in the mix; number three: Add Parmigiano-Reggiano, not parmesan; and number four (the cardinal rule): Never mix them with spaghetti! (Go ahead and ask for spaghetti and meatballs if you dare, and incur Juri’s wrath.)
Before she died a few years ago, Sbandati’s grandmother would speak with him on the phone. During those conversations, she would ask him what he was cooking and how he was making it. Inevitably, he was doing something wrong and would get an earful. “I wish I could get yelled at again,” he said. “I miss her every day.”
Instead, he cooks in honor of his most cherished memories of her and for the chance to make his family and others feel those moments through his food.
Believe it or not, the holiday season has arrived. This weekend find traditional holiday events throughout Central Oregon. For those who aren’t quite ready to get into the holiday spirit, there’s also jazz performances and a chance to stock your pantry with local food for the winter. And for the snow lovers, Mt. Bachelor will officially open for the season on Saturday.
Photo courtesy of Mt. Bachelor
Holiday Food & Gift Festival
November 17-19 | Deschutes Fair & Expo Center, Redmond
Each year, Redmond’s Holiday Food & Gift Festival draws thousands of attendees. While you shop booths from more than 120 local vendors selling their handmade and artisan goods, fuel up with gourmet food samples. Now in its seventeenth year, the festival is one of the largest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest.
Jazz at the Oxford
November 17-18 | 10 Below at the Oxford Hotel, Bend
In the second installment of the Jazz at the Oxford series, the Peter Erskine Trio will be performing two shows on November 17 and 18. Jazz at the Oxford brings world renowned jazz musicians to Bend for a weekend of performances throughout the year. On Saturday, the Oxford will also host a free music education workshop, where members of the Peter Erskine Trio will share their musical skills and knowledge.
Mt. Bachelor Riverhouse Jazz
November 17-18 | Riverhouse on the Deschutes, Bend
Legendary New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison performs with the Terell Stafford Quintet in a rare joint appearance for these two contemporary jazz giants in the Riverhouse Jazz Series. Together these modern jazz masters have amassed a stunning resume that includes collaborations with Miles Davis, pianist McCoy Tyner and be bop pioneer Art Blakey.
Mt. Bachelor Opening Day
November 18 | Mt. Bachelor, Bend
Powderhounds, rejoice. With almost 100 inches of snowfall already this season, Mt. Bachelor will officially open to the public on Saturday, November 18. Find your balaclavas and get your skis and boards tuned up so you’re ready for the big day. Pine Marten, Skyliner and Sunshine Accelerator lifts will all open at 9 a.m., as well as the Nordic Center.
Santa’s Workshop
November 18 | Carey Foster Hall, Prineville
Kids ages 3 to 9 are invited to spend an afternoon making crafts and holiday gifts at Santa’s Workshop at the County Fairgrounds in Prineville. With unlimited access to arts and crafts, kids can make projects for gifts to give throughout the holidays. The event costs $5 per child, and they’ll have unlimited access to create as well as time to get a picture with Santa.
Fill Your Pantry
November 18 | Pleasant Ridge Community Hall, Redmond
Fill Your Pantry is a bulk-buying farmers market from Central Oregon Locavore. Stock up your pantry and freezer for the winter with local grains, meat, produce and more. This is the second year for the event, which benefits local farmers and is a chance to get to know more about Central Oregon’s local food system.
Grand Illumination
November 18 | Great Lodge, Sunriver
Families will enjoy the Grand Illumination tree lighting party and ceremony at Sunriver Lodge, which will have children’s activities, visits from Santa, train rides, sleigh rides and more. Live music will entertain throughout the evening. There will also be pony rides and a petting zoo from DD Ranch. Local food vendors will be on site at this free event.
High Desert Chamber Music Annual Benefit Gala
November 18 | Bend Golf and Country Club, Bend
Support the High Desert Chamber Music and its community education programs by attending the Annual Benefit Gala, which has become a holiday season tradition in Bend. The gala includes a performance from the Spotlight Chamber Players, dinner and a silent auction with items from local businesses.
Beerfest season isn’t over yet. This weekend, head to NorthWest Crossing for the Bend Ale Festival. There’s also events for runners, literary enthusiasts and lots of live music to choose from.
Run the Rock, an endurance race at Smith Rock, will take place this weekend.
Live Music
November 9, 10, 11 | Various locations around Bend
There’s plenty of live music shows to fill up your social calendar this weekend. The Resolectrics, a classic rhythm and blues band, will be at McMenamins on Thursday. Also that night, catch Sam Bush, a mandolin icon, at the Tower. R&B favorite Curtis Selgado will also be at the Tower on Friday. The New Mastersounds and Kung Fu will be at the Domino Room on Friday night. At Volcanic this weekend, check out Polyrythmics and The Cutmen on Friday night, and Foxy Lemon, North by North and Tango Alpha Tango on Saturday night.
Literary Events
November 9 and 12 | Bend
On Thursday, Molly Carroll, a licensed therapist, educator and writer will be at Roundabout Books to talk about new newest book, Trust Within. The book is an investigation into intuition—what it means, how to use it, and stories about people who followed it and those who didn’t. Also that night, don’t miss the annual Cowgirl Poetry night at the High Desert Museum, where local poets will be sharing writing about the West. On Sunday, Benjamin Percy, an author who grew up in Central Oregon, will be at Roundabout Books to talk about his latest novel, The Dark Net. Set in Portland, the book blends horror and fantasy genres into a fast-moving thriller that’s perfect for fall reading.
Snowball
November 10 | Great Hall, Sunriver
Support Mt. Bachelor Ski Education Foundation at its annual Snowball, now in its thirty-first year. The annual ball will include a gourmet dinner, dancing, and live and silent auctions.
Bend Ale Festival and Bend Ale Run
November 11 | NorthWest Crossing, Bend
Join the half-marathon or 10k races in the Bend Ale Run, which will start and end in NorthWest Crossing. A free beer awaits runners as they cross the finish line, in addition to a free ticket to the Bend Ale Festival. Find twenty craft breweries and tasters of more than forty beers at the festival. There will also be live music and local food vendors at this all ages festival.
Veteran’s Day Parade
November 11 | Bend
More than 120 organizations will participate in Bend’s annual Veteran’s Day Parade. The parade starts at 11 a.m. in downtown Bend and winds through the streets of Bend’s west side. This is the eighteenth year of the parade, which is one of the largest Veteran’s Day parades in Oregon.
Run the Rock
November 11 | Smith Rock State Park, Terrebonne
Endurance runners will want to take part in Run the Rock at Smith Rock. Test your limits on the fifty-mile, 50k or half-marathon courses that wind through Smith Rock and Crooked River National Grasslands.
Warm Springs’ Elizabeth Woody on life, loss and becoming Oregon’s poet laureate.
Elizabeth Woody. Photo by Amy Castano
Driving along the winding highway between Portland and Warm Springs on a cloudy day in early April, Elizabeth Woody saw her cell phone light up on the passenger seat. Recognizing the number, she pulled her dusty silver SUV off to the side of the road and picked up, wondering why they would be calling her—she hadn’t worked with them in years.
The unfamiliar voice on the other end introduced himself as Adam Davis, executive director of Oregon Humanities; he told her he had good news. After reviewing her nomination and submitted writing samples, the statewide selection committee was ready to nominate Oregon’s next poet laureate. Appointed by the governor, the poet laureate position is presented to a single author who has made a significant contribution to the state’s literary canon. The recipient spends two years promoting poetry across the state through the written word, as well as their presence at literary events. The committee thought Liz was the right person for the role.
“She has some national presence; when she was selected I heard from people around the country congratulating us on her appointment,” said Davis. For Woody the nomination came at a time when personal events were overshadowing her professional life.
“I was surprised, delighted, honored—and very hesitant to accept,” she remembers, her face filling with emotion. “My first thought was of my mother.”
Beginnings
Photo by Amy Castano
Sitting on a small gray sofa in her mother’s house in Warm Springs, Woody tilts her head to slip on a pair of earrings, pale discs that dangle playfully against strands of her long black hair. While her face shows fatigue from months in mourning and a recent bout of bronchitis, her eyes still light up when she laughs.
Tribal masks with hollow eyes watch over a bookshelf filled with picture frames, hints of Woody’s heritage that color her work and inspire her actions. Amid statuettes of Jesus and a Buddha, the visage of her great grandma Charlotte Edwards Pitt stares off into the distance wearing two long braids, her neck adorned in beads of the Wasco tribe. Portraits of Woody’s grandparents, Elizabeth and Lewis Pitt, sit alongside a snapshot of a smiling Woody with her sister Jolene and aunt Lillian Pitt that was taken at the American Book Awards when she was a finalist. In all these photos, one person is missing. Observing tribal traditions for mourning, Woody has removed all photos that include her mother and, for a year, she won’t even speak her mother’s name.
Surrounded by her heritage, Oregon’s newest poet laureate pays tribute to the lives and landscape that have shaped her literature by sharing her words and connecting with communities, one small town at a time.
Born in Ganado, Arizona in 1959, Woody moved to Central Oregon when she was four years old to her mother’s childhood home in Warm Springs, fifteen miles north of Madras. Created by treaty in 1855, the Warm Springs Reservation is home to the descendants of the Wasco, Walla Walla and Paiute tribes that unified as the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in 1938. As a child, Woody lived with her grandparents in a house near Madras where she and her sister grew up with a strong sense of connection to the Central Oregon landscape.
“Some things have changed, but mostly what I loved about growing up here was going outside,” she recalled. “My grandparents would take us on these long drives to the lava beds and the start of the Metolius River, which now is all a big park but back then it wasn’t anything. We were involved with people who were hunters, fishers and who gathered food, people who knew this land well. It’s the land that became ‘home’ to me.”
After hearing family stories on these long drives, five-year-old Elizabeth started telling stories of her own, written and illustrated on paper with her grandfather’s fountain pen and organized in a three-ring binder.
As a teenager, Woody’s interest gravitated toward images instead of words; she clocked countless hours in the darkroom at Madras High School trying to build up a portfolio for photography school and actually failed an English class. To her, classic literature lacked relevance. That was until a troupe of Shakespearean actors from Ashland performed at Madras High. The scenes were improv, not Shakespeare, but one Hispanic actor caught her attention by making an effort to involve Native students.
“I think that opened a door in Liz’s mind,” said Kim Stafford, a Portland writer and longtime family friend, relating the experience. “It made her think that ‘someone like me could do art’ and now she can open doors for other people because she has a bigger sense of what it’s about.”
In 1978, at end of her senior year, Woody’s English teacher asked her to enter a contest to attend the first Oregon High School Writers Workshop held at Lewis & Clark College. Never having written a poem before, she went home that night and wrote two because, as she explained it, she wanted to meet a living author. That summer, Woody got her wish and was chosen as one of four students to study creative writing with Sandra McPherson and James Welch at the weeklong workshop where she learned to play with words and lyrical rhythms, and discovered her own—previously unconsidered—path.
“When I was in high school, I wanted to be a photographer. My mom wanted me to go to law school, my uncle wanted me to go into natural resources and my aunt wanted me to be an artist,” she said with a laugh. “I could have chosen a lot of different ways to go, but writing seemed to be the thing that happened—the positive in my life came from writing.”
Inspirations
Unsnapping the latches on the worn black case, Woody uncovered the old Royal typewriter. Carefully placing it on the kitchen table, she tapped a key with one finger as a smile spread across her face. Pretty soon she was clicking away until—DING! She laughed as the carriage reached the end of a row, clearly tickled to bring out the tool she used to type her first manuscript. It’s a relic that she hadn’t touched in years. Splotches of whiteout still speckled the machine’s front, leftover evidence of past revisions. Tucked in back is a memo made in her mother’s handwriting to an attorney, a reminder of her mother’s activism and the politics that percolate into Woody’s poetry.
“My grandfather was a translator, secretary treasurer and one of the co-authors of the first tribal council. So Indian rights and tribal treaties—that’s what we grew up talking about at our kitchen table,” Woody said. “This is what we learned in the home, in my home. Not everybody has that, but my family lived in that climate.”
A destitute alcoholic during her and her sister’s childhood years, Woody’s mother turned her life around through social activism. She became a counselor for the Native American Rehabilitation Association in the 1970s and pushed for American Indian freedoms across the state, writing grants to build sweathouse treatment centers in Corvallis and supporting fishing rights struggles on the Columbia River, including the imprisonment of David Sohappy during the 1980s.
Trips to the library to research court cases from microfiche and typing up notes for her mom taught Woody to research her questions and write about them. After studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1980 to 1983, Woody returned to her mother’s typewriter in Portland and started reworking her school assignments into a manuscript, written over coffee and conversations.
“I would type draft after draft, then we would go to a little café around the corner and get a cup of coffee for 25 cents,” Woody remembered. “We’d sit for hours and hours; I would read her the poems and she got it. She understood this whole universe of poetry because it came from my roots, which were her roots, too.”
Many of the poems in Woody’s first book, 1988’s Hand into Stone, centered around the Columbia River and American Indian culture, including the loss of tribal fishing areas at Celilo Falls, near The Dalles. (Celilo was one of several historically and spiritually significant spots lost when the lower Columbia dams altered the landscape.) This debut book, which went on to win the American Book Award in 1990, almost almost never was. In 1987 as she was finishing writing, the briefcase containing her first manuscript was stolen in northeast Portland.
“Maybe a week later the police called me, I went in to the police station and there was my briefcase stuffed with these papers, covered with great big cop boot prints and gravel holes—I wish I had saved it,” Woody said with a laugh. “I had said when I lost it: ‘If this ever comes back I will submit it; I will quit holding onto it.’”
And she did just that. Hand Into Stone gained Woody national attention and was reprinted as Seven Hands Seven Hearts, along with another writing collection called Luminaries of the Humble, originally released in 1994. In addition to writing three books in six years, she also earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 1991 and continued to write numerous poems, as well as short stories and essays.
Although personal and rooted in her tribal upbringing, Woody’s words also speak to a larger audience.
“One thing I find in her writing is that I need to surrender some of my habits of the rational and get ready for the mythical,” said acclaimed writer Kim Stafford, describing Woody’s works.
“It’s ‘look close and you will see’ rather than ‘let me tell you what it’s all about.’ She makes you work for the mysterious, it’s not all spelled out in neon and requires patience. It’s more challenging than some writing, but she’s not showing off, not even showing–she’s singing,” said Stafford.
Speaking with an honesty that is sometimes considered harsh, Woody recalled audience members walking-out at early readings and claims her writing was “not in its time.” If some found her words abrasive, there is a reason: her works tell the realities of American Indian life, including poverty, homelessness and domestic violence.
“It’s not a manifesto, not a call to arms—what I’m writing about is life,” Woody said of her style and subject matter. “I love complexity; I think that’s what I want to communicate about my experience as I get older. I don’t care if people like it; I do it for people who need my work.” One of those people is her.
Once, Woody called her aunt, artist Lillian Pitt, on the phone to read a draft.
“She would call me and read her new poems,” remembered Pitt. “One time I was exhausted and I said ‘Oh honey why can’t you write happy puppy poems?’ And she never forgot that. But Liz is intellectual, very intelligent and she feels things very intensely.”
Pitt went on to explain that while Woody’s writing has known success, she has known great tragedy: her mother’s alcoholism; a house fire when she was thirteen; layoffs when she was a professor in Santa Fe and most recently, her mother’s death.
In some ways the tragedies and tumult fed her creativity.
“She went through that, kept it all to herself,” Pitt said. “A person does need help to get through traumatic experiences like that. I think her writing has been part of that process.”
Homecoming
Photo by Amy Castano
The news came last September, after Woody had received a call from her mother complaining about pain. Studying X-rays of her mother’s lungs that day at the doctor’s office, Woody said the tumors looked like dark little berries on her lungs. “You don’t have pneumonia,” the doctor told them. The diagnosis had arrived suddenly, but Woody didn’t hesitate to put her life on hold to come to her mother’s side.
With an M.A. in Public Administration from Portland State University, Woody has lived the last eighteen years in Portland, where she directed the Indigenous Leadership Program at Ecotrust, a nonprofit environmental organization, and developed programs at Oregon Health & Science University as well as the Meyer Memorial Trust. As soon as she learned about the cancer, she moved back to Warm Springs to care for her mother, who was gone just weeks later on October 1.
The loss left Woody, her sister and all of Warms Springs to mourn for a mother and counselor who could’ve gone to Harvard (Woody’s mom applied and was accepted to the school in 1973) but instead returned and devoted the last years of her life to helping the people of the reservation. For Woody, the traditional yearlong process of mourning means she won’t gather first fruits or attend celebrations and powwows. But even in sadness, she said the memory of her mother helped her answer the call to accept the poet laureate position, which she illuminated with a story.
“When I was a girl, we would go with my mother all over Oregon and Washington—she wanted us to see everything and everybody,” said Woody. “We supported Grande Ronde when they had their first powwow and all they had was a cassette deck.
“Our uncle Leslie Thomas was the emcee and they only had four dancers, these little kids. But mom said ‘It’s really important. These people need our support. They need to be recognized as who they are.’ We told her ‘But mom there’s nobody here!’ and she said ‘So? You get out there and dance!’”
The message of outreach and solidarity stuck with Woody and in some ways inspired her most recent undertaking.
As Oregon’s poet laureate, Woody is tasked with making more than twenty appearances and presentations at literary events across the state. Her goal is to reach beyond the writing centers in Portland and Eugene to rural communities like the one she came from.
“I felt like I had to pay homage to that spirit of going and supporting people and looking—just looking,” said Woody. “How many people go to these places and spend any time, or have the ability and capacity to try and build some bridges for them?”
In her proposal for the position, Woody outlined a plan to cultivate relationships with border towns, reservations and rural communities. She aims to support the humanities in smalltown schools and libraries by sharing the support that she has experienced. Despite the high school career counselor who discouraged her from going to college, Woody cites many more mentors who have encouraged her to write, including teachers, writers, tribe members and one Madras shopkeeper who was happy to hear she had become a poet.
“The community has always been supportive,” said Lillian Pitt about the impact of the arts on places such as Warm Springs. “The elders have said to us, ‘Keep doing it. By letting people know our culture, it lets them know we’re still here.’”
Walking onto the porch of her mother’s yellow house, Woody listened to the world in Warms Springs—crickets and bees, dogs barking, and the faint sounds of Shitike, her favorite creek in the world. Off in the distance stands Mt. Jefferson, its summit capped in clouds.
Tomorrow, she will return to Portland but will travel back each week to connect with people in places that are important to her. In a few months, when the fires have died down and the wooden fence posts around the cemetery have been replaced, Woody will wait for her mother’s spirit to return in the form of an animal, to assure her and her sister that she’s okay. But that evening, she crossed the highway into the Museum at Warm Springs to attend an opening for her Aunt Lillian’s art exhibit.
Passing under the inscription TWANAT (meaning “to follow the ancestors”), she walked through the doors and watched friends and family sing and dance until it was her turn. The gathering went quiet as she stepped up to the microphone and began to read in a clear and calm voice. Evidenced by the hush, the group seemed intent on hearing what she had to say.
The holidays are upon us—cue the annual family drama and overindulgence. I’ve been known to book a post-holiday cleanse as soon as I feel the first signs of autumn. I sat down with my favorite mindfulness teacher, Cynthia LaRoche, to discuss ways we can avoid the old pattern of holiday stress, carb-loading and the subsequent guilt-induced cleanse.
So, Cynthia, are there ways we can build up our emotional immunity to holiday stress? I’m asking for a friend.
Alignment is the theme of all my work lately. We get pulled by drama, external stimulus and other people’s emotions when we aren’t grounded in our own alignment or haven’t defined what it is we want to feel. Crazy Uncle Larry probably won’t ever change his politics and you may not be able to say no to a third helping of mom’s homemade mac and cheese, but you can change your relationship with these things. This begins by being clear on how you want to feel, then beginning practices that align with this.
You offer a Step Into Stillness retreat down in Mexico every October. Why is this an ideal time?
It’s the ultimate pre-holiday reset. It allows us to step away from our every day, to separate from our current condition, examine it, set new intentions for how we want to be, and then go back into the holidays and our lives with more clarity.
Are there other ways people can find stillness a little closer to home? Again, asking for a friend.
A regular yoga/meditation practice is an amazing way to keep your sanity. Groove Yoga offers a holiday special on class packages each year. I will also be offering two yoga nidra classes over the holidays. November will be a special intention-setting, healing session. December will be a “Holiday Relief” class with comedian Shanan Kelley. If the busyness of the season has you stretched thin, book a private yoga session to learn how to practice on your own.
When that annoying, overly opinionated uncle is sitting across the table, how do we not sling mashed potatoes in his face or tell him to shut his pie hole?
This is exactly what I meant by our alignment work. We have the ability to change our relationship with situations we don’t like. Here’s a practice I learned that really helps me in times like this: Before the family arrives, take a sheet of paper and write “If this situation were different I would feel…” and write how you would feel if the situation were more to your liking. Keep writing the words that come to mind until you begin to feel that way. It’s about taking your power back and not being so swayed by what is going on around you.
Even with all these tips, some of us will still fall off the mindfulness wagon and overindulge this holiday season. So how do we repent?
Falling off the wagon is always worse when it’s filled with guilt and regret. We’re human; ease up about this. Just get back on. Make a choice that moves you closer to alignment next time. Remember, you are in control of you.
EDCO’s Tech Industry Coordinator Teri Hockett on workforce challenges in Bend and the importance of diversity in tech.
Teri Hockett
Teri Hockett spent much of her career recruiting for tech, helping companies find talent and helping talented people find job opportunities. Now she’s using her experience and expertise to strengthen Bend’s tech community. Hockett moved to Bend after winding down her own recruiting firm, What’s for Work, which aimed to specifically help women transitioning back into tech careers after raising families.
After taking a year off, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work as the tech industry coordinator for Economic Development of Central Oregon (EDCO). She’s since repositioned to be the Central Oregon director for the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO), a statewide nonprofit supporting the technology companies. We caught up with Hockett to learn more about her work, her passion for supporting women in tech and her hopes for our business community.
First, what brought you Bend?
After thirty years in the Bay Area, raising our two daughters and launching our respective companies, we were ready for the beauty and serenity of Bend. We love the mountains and we wanted a small town. Boulder had always been on our short list, but it’s not the same Boulder it was thirty years ago. Also, our youngest daughter is at the University of Oregon, so we were coming up to Oregon to visit. You’ve been involved in the tech industry for a long time.
What challenges do you see here?
Primarily the workforce pipeline. Bend employers have long been able to rely on the fact that they live in this great place—that was enough to recruit people. They haven’t had to offer nationally competitive wages or benefits. Now that’s changed. With remote workforces, you’re competing for talent with employers all over the world. Our companies have definitely recognized that and have made some really great hires. But recruiting is still tough.
Speaking of workforce development, can you discuss your STEAM initiative?
TAO STEAM is an effort to help grow the pipeline of women in science, technology, engineering, art and math careers. Most of the tech company executives here want to see more women applying for jobs. That work starts long before you ever see a job posting. We need to see ourselves in those positions and then see the path. Our STEAM events in Bend are giving young girls and women the opportunity to do that.
You’ve helped expand TAO’s presence in Central Oregon. Why is it important for TAO to have someone here?
The first day I started, Skip Newberry, the TAO executive director, took me over to meet the current TAO advisory board members in Bend. They said right away, “We don’t want to do everything that TAO in Portland is doing.” Central Oregon has its own unique community and needs. They were really focused on workforce development, which was a natural fit for my experience with career development. Tech has become an integral part of all business, so we’re helping companies here figure out how to grow the pipeline of potential talent.
What resources does Central Oregon need to help encourage more women in STEAM?
We’d love to have a diversity inclusion program at OSU-Cascades—that’s something that is already underway. TAO STEAM launched a formalized mentorship program specifically for women interested in STEAM careers in October. And then it’s about working with the youth, such as getting more girls into coding and encouraging the state of Oregon to offer high school credits for computer science courses and coding education.
What do you hope that Bend’s tech community looks like in five years?
I’d like diversity and inclusion to no longer be hot topics—because we’ve made them a non-issue. I’d like equal pay to not be a tough conversation that we have to have. For the tech community in general, I think that OSU’s Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship has the chance to help entrepreneurs and companies know that they can come here and start their businesses with all these resources available to them. If you look at the broader business landscape, I think we can be a destination place, known for being an open-arms, inclusive community with opportunities in outdoor, biosciences, technology and more.
Based in Oregon, SMART is a nonprofit that encourages early childhood literacy and fosters a love of reading in children.
In a perfect world, every child would have a parent to sit down with them at night and read Green Eggs and Ham. The reality is that many children don’t get the support or resources they need to fall in love with reading.
In Oregon, a literary program is tackling the problem by leaning on volunteers, many of them retirees, to step in as surrogate teachers for a few hours per month. These volunteers dedicate their time as reading buddies and mentors, allowing students to explore the world of reading at their own pace with a captive audience.
Founded in 1992, SMART (Start Making A Reader Today) is an Oregon-based nonprofit organization that encourages early childhood literacy and fosters a love of reading that kids carry with them throughout their lives. SMART works to improve literacy and cultivate an early love of reading that builds stronger readers by the time kids are in third grade, which is the critical point of education for kids, said Sue Stephens, the senior program manager for SMART.
The program pairs students with volunteers to read one-on-one for the school year. Each student takes home two free books each month that they can keep to start building a personal library. Teachers benefit from reduced reading class sizes since SMART program kids leave the classroom, resulting in more individualized attention for all students.
In Central Oregon, SMART has twenty-two programs in preschools and elementary schools throughout Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson and Grant counties. Jeri Coffin, the site coordinator for SMART at Roslund Elementary School in La Pine, said that giving out the free books is one of the best ways to keep kids reading at home.
“There are families who don’t have the funds to buy books or may not be able to go to a library to get books,” said Coffin. “Kids get to pick the books they take home. If they fall in love with the book, they are more apt to read it with their parents.”
One of the problems that SMART can run into, which happened with two Central Oregon elementary schools in 2014, is overcrowding in schools, which can mean a lack of space to run the reading the program. With new elementary schools recently added to the Bend-La Pine School District, Stephens doesn’t anticipate having a problem with overcrowding in the future.
Most of the volunteer readers are retired. Stephens said the bond that the pairs form is a crucial to the program’s success. “There’s that magic that happens between the older generation and the kids,” said Stephens.
The short, storied life and demise of Pilot Butte Inn, Bend’s iconic chalet.
Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
Maybe today, the story of Pilot Butte Inn would have ended differently, with the iconic building standing stately as a piece of living history. In a different time, it might have followed in the arc of the Tower Theatre, as a restored landmark and centerpiece of downtown Bend. Instead, the Swiss chalet-style hotel on the banks of the Deschutes River lives on in memories and photographs.
In half a century, the building went from being the community hub and pride of Bend to a neglected shell of its grandeur. Even a designation on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 couldn’t save it. Less than a year later, Pilot Butte Inn was demolished. A headline from a Bulletin article on the day it was torn down in 1973 read, “Bend era ends with inn’s destruction.” Today, a bank, burrito joint and bakery stand in its place at the corner of Newport Avenue and Wall Street.
Using three-foot thick pine from the nearby forests and the river rock from the Deschutes River that ran just steps away, skilled carpenters and masons built the Pilot Butte Inn in 1917. The inn followed the opening of the two sawmills in 1916, solidifying Bend’s place as more than a homestead community. (Philip R. Brooks, a relative of the Brooks family of Brooks-Scanlon, Inc. financed the construction of the inn.) Designed as an alpine-style lodge by John E. Tourtellotte, Pilot Butte Inn was a destination for travelers, living out its best years in the heyday of motor tourism.
The inn was built with sixty guest rooms, additional construction over its lifetime added about one hundred more. The first floor had a large fireplace, private dining rooms for men and women, billiard and card rooms and a secret wine cellar. A picture window in the main dining room framed a panorama of the Cascade Mountain Range. Oregon was technically a dry state at the time of its construction, but the grand opening party had “no shortage of spirits” and brought people from all over the state, according to contemporary accounts. Famous guests at the inn included Oregon governors such as Oswald West. In 1934, Eleanor Roosevelt stayed at the inn and reportedly ate a planked trout in the dining room.
Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
Bend historian Ila Grant Hopper described Pilot Butte Inn as the center of the town’s social life, with balls, banquets, conventions and weddings held there throughout the years. “But more than any other service, it provided community identity: it was Bend to outsiders, whose surprise and pleasure at encountering a hostelry of such excellence amid reaches of the interior were translated into grateful and lasting memory,” she wrote. “Should its familiar outline vanish from downtown Bend, something vital to the community spirit will be irrevocably lost.”
Beginning in the 1960s, the hotel went through a series of owners and fell into disarray. Local architecture student Jean Anderson was one of the strongest advocates for saving the hotel, but efforts to preserve the building were ultimately unsuccessful.
A piece of the inn does still remain in Bend, though. When the inn was demolished, the iconic stone fireplace was dismantled first, each stone carefully preserved so that one day the fireplace could be reconstructed. The fireplace now stands in the foyer of the Athletic Club of Bend, surrounded by historic photos and available for visitors (club members and non-members who come to dine at Bistro 28) who want to take in a genuine piece of some building blocks of Bend’s history.
Bend Beer Yoga is a new event that brings together two of Bend’s favorite pastimes: drinking beer and doing yoga.
Bend Beer Yoga at 10 Barrel in Bend, Oregon. Photo by Alex Jordan.
“They tell you to ‘be present, be here.’ For me, when I take a yoga class my mind tends to drift,” said Bend Beer Yoga creator Cady Lindsey. “When you’re holding a beer, and trying to balance at the same time, you can’t help but be present because otherwise you’re going to spill your drink.”
Lindsey said she’s no yogi, but yoga was the most helpful thing she tried while recovering from a car accident. After reading about beer yoga in Germany, Lindsey eagerly looked for a class in Bend.
“When I realized it wasn’t being done here, I thought that it should be,” she said. “It was an ‘If you build it they will come’ sort of situation. Bend people are active. They want to do more than just sit at a bar.”
A successful kick-off class of twenty people at Worthy Brewing in September turned into a full autumn schedule booked at watering holes around town, including 10 Barrel’s new location, GoodLife and Bendistillery. Bend Beer Yoga classes are taught by one of four local yoga instructors. Each instructor brings their own music and style, so classes can range from restorative to flow.
“It’s meant to be pretty beginner and accessible to anyone [who is over 21 years of age],” said Lindsey. “It’s interactive. There’s a lot of ‘cheersing’ and laughing going on.”
So far, class demographics have matched Lindsey’s vision: all levels of yogis, a variety of ages and a ratio of at least one male to every three females. Attendees can even borrow a cup holder to avoid party fouls.
How Mecca Grade is pumping the flavor back into malt.
Photo courtesy of Mecca Grade
Up on the High Desert plateau, just outside Madras, a century farm connects the region’s agricultural past and its present. Owners Seth Klann and his father, Brad, know their history. Their family has been here making a living off the land for generations. Now they are betting they can also see the future. If they’re right, this family farm could be the key to the next step in the evolution of craft brewing: high-end estate malt.
Malt is the backbone of beer. The germination of barley in a controlled environment, followed by the roasting of the grain at its starchiest and most saccharine point, creates beer’s complexion, alcohol content and sweetness. It also, like with hops, contributes flavor and mouthfeel. Yet only a few strains of barley supply most of North America’s maltsters, a ripple effect of bland flavor profiles that dates to Prohibition. Mecca Grade Estate Malt is trying to bring back the nuanced flavors of old European malts with its estate-grown, estate-malted barley varieties bred in partnership with barley scientists at Oregon State University.
“It takes a lot of malt to make the world go ’round,” said Seth Klann, whose family has owned the farmland since 1905. “We’re always looking for a way to keep the farm in the family for another generation. Wheat price goes up and down. Artisanal malted barley is an untapped market with huge potential.”
Photo courtesy of Mecca Grade
Seth, an OSU graphic design graduate who also studied ag business, was sourcing malts from Germany for his homebrews when he had a lightbulb moment. Already growing wheat on his family’s 1,000 acres, he experimented with malting that grain before turning to barley. He convinced Brad to get on board and they headed to malting school in Canada, where 80 percent of barley comes from the same parent strain, much like in the United States.
To the Klanns’ surprise, no one else was trying to turn specialty barley into premium malt and they recognized the novelty in what they wanted to achieve.
“Trying to make a luxury product out of something that’s been a base commodity for so long means that every step of the process, from the field to the finished product, has to be unique,” said Seth. “OSU bred Full Pint, a flavorful barley varietal that grows well in Central Oregon. Through our partnership with them we are continuing to crossbreed Full Pint with old European barleys to create heirloom varietals. Because of this, we are a decade ahead of anyone else in the malt business.”
The father-son duo set to work in 2014, creating a rotational crop schedule where they can gradually add spring and rye barley to a rotation of wheat and Kentucky bluegrass, plus other cold-season crops such as winter peas. Brad and his father were early adopters of water-saving irrigation techniques decades before most farmers, foresight which is helping Mecca Grade during the salmon-safe certification process.
Foresight is a family forte. An Oregon manufacturer accepted the Klanns’ pitch to have a custom malting machine built that now churns out 24,000 pounds of malt per month in the farm’s estate warehouse. They built the zero-waste facility with scaling in mind, leaving room to install three more machines down the road. Last winter, Seth completed an industrial barn-style tasting room that offers client’s beers and Seth’s homebrews on tap.
Three-quarters of the company’s product is a pilsner malt, the lightest form. “It’s a true rustic farmhouse malt: sweet and nutty with a little bit of grassiness to it,” said Seth. “Our malts that we roast longer bring out more of a graham cracker flavor.”
Photo courtesy of Mecca Grade
Using Mecca Grade’s artisan malt costs brewers about twenty cents more per pint than the standard malt, so customer acquisition requires a selling point to brewers and distillers that reaches beyond the “buy local” angle. Thus far, feedback from clients is positive. One of the company’s California brewery clients reports improved flavor character using just 20 percent Mecca Grade malt.
Being in the artisanal libation business also necessitates patience, as the products are typically barrel aged. Oregon Spirit Distillers in Bend and House Spirit Distillers in Portland currently have whiskeys in barrel malted with Mecca Grade. At The Ale Apothecary, Bend’s “vintage batch oak barrel” brewery where bottles go for upwards of $30 each, they like the malt so much they now use Mecca Grade exclusively.
“By developing obscure varieties and malting in-house, our process produces the only flavors like this in the world, all estate-grown on our family farmland,” said Seth. “Our goal is to show people how better quality malt is the next step in the evolution of the craft beer industry.”
A brazen bombing remains at the heart of a ninety-year-old mystery that rocked Bend at the height of Prohibition.
Prineville Sheriff Stephen Yancey (holding a rifle) rests of the bumper of his automobile with his deputies at his side. Yancey served the county between 1925 and 1929 at the height of prohibition. The sheriff was on the front lines of the effort to stamp out the moonshine business in Crook County.
It is three o’clock in the morning and the burgeoning mill town of Bend is asleep. The first blow of the mill whistle won’t sound for another four hours. A dog barks, breaking the silence that envelops the tightly knit neighborhood around Hood Place and Congress Street, just blocks from Bend’s commercial center.
Suddenly, an explosion rips through the Congress Apartments. The ground shakes as bricks fly like cannonballs from the back of the one-story building where a massive hole has opened. Inside the small apartment, two state prohibition agents scramble, alive but shaken. The explosion was no accident, rather a hit ordered by outlaw moonshiners on the agents who worked as enforcers of unpopular prohibition laws.
Welcome to Bend circa 1926, where lawlessness and old school retribution put even lawmen in the line of fire. The brazen bombing is believed to have been payback for the killing of a local moonshiner just a few weeks earlier east of Bend. Despite much publicity at the time, the crime remains unsolved to this day.
Ninety-one years later, Bend Police cold case detectives Sgt. Devin Lewis and Lt. Jason Maniscalco are looking at crime scene photos from the dynamiting of Congress Apartments in downtown Bend.
“Look, the whole back wall is gone,” said Lewis. “I’ve never heard about this case before.”
Although there were never Al Capone-Elliot Ness styled shootouts between the police and moonshiners, Bend was a rough and tumble town in its early days. Loggers and blue-collar millworkers supplied a ready and thirsty market for moonshiners eager to skirt the state and federal laws banning the production and sale of alcohol. State and federal agents were never far behind, and for several years a game of cat and mouse played out across the High Desert.
Confiscated booze was flushed into the gutter during pouring parties. This “party” took place outside the courthouse in Prineville.
According to contemporary accounts in the local newspaper, the attempted hit on the two state prohibition agents was believed to be retribution for the killing of a suspected bootlegger during a raid on a clandestine distillery between Brothers and Burns. Since no one was killed in the explosion, the statute of limitations has long expired. The century-old case is too old for law enforcement to prosecute or even pursue. It is the coldest of cold cases.
Like many local policing agencies around the country, the Bend Police Department does not have a dedicated cold case unit. With limited resources and new cases popping up daily, most detective resources are dedicated to solving the latest crimes since evidence and memories are fresh.
That’s not to say that cold cases are ignored. They might appear to be dead, but they’re just dormant, waiting for the right clue to emerge or witness to come forward. Sgt. Lewis is supervising detective. He assigns the caseload to one of the eight detectives in the unit.
“Everyone has read up on their cases. It’s just easier if we get a great tip or new evidence comes to light,” said Lewis.
A case may never be solved unless a tip comes in or crucial evidence is unearthed.
“It all comes down to the solvability factor,” said Lewis. “You could spend hundreds of hours working on a cold case and not get any further.”
Time is the enemy and the ally in cold cases. It may be years or decades before a citizen decides to provide a clue to police.
“A witness may come forward. It may not be an eyewitness, but maybe a family member who remembers something from the past,” said Lewis. “They tell us, I remember when I was ten years old, my brother was talking about his involvement in the case. I really didn’t think about it until yesterday.”
Lewis stressed it may not be the best information, but it gives the detectives a point of reference to other leads, which could crack the case.
Modern forensic technology has changed the amount of evidence collected. A murder case may contain binders of written evidence, interviews and transcripts. It is not uncommon for a case file to contain 600 pages.
“A fifty-year-old murder case may be captured in a two-inch-thick folder,” said Maniscalco.
In the case of the Congress Apartment bombing, time has erased all but a few historical records. Today, the case is a piece of local lore. Still, the brash act fascinates, offering a window into the Wild West mentality that endured in rural outposts such as Bend well into the 20th century.
A view of the Congress Avenue apartment building on the corner of Hood Place and Congress Street in Bend circa 1926.
To understand the Congress Apartments’ attack, one requires a bit of historical context. In 1916, the temperance movement managed to squeak through a referendum that made Oregon an alcohol-free state—four years before the rest of the country. The dry years were a boon for moonshiners and bootleggers in Central Oregon, but the law and practice didn’t always square, according to Prineville historian Steve Lent with the Bowman Museum.
“Enforcement was pretty lax, particularly up until the Prohibition,” said Lent.
The Volstead Act, which kicked off federal prohibition, made everything containing alcohol illegal and marked the start of a more deliberate enforcement approach. Yet, the laws of supply and demand dictated that moonshiners would fill the void left by shuttered commercial distilleries. These alcohol outlaws made their living by circumventing the liquor ban while avoiding the much-feared state and federal prohibition agents. Stills popped up all over the High Desert, with production facilities hidden in lava caves and backyard sheds.
“There were not enough law enforcement officers to cover all of Central Oregon,” said Lent.
Janelle Alameda remembers hearing stories about her grandfather, “Buck” Mariott, who served as a sergeant in the Marine Corps in World War I. In the early 1920s, Mariott became a state prohibition officer. Stationed in Eugene, Mariott patrolled the Central Oregon high desert together with his partner, “Mac” McBride.
“My grandfather would go out in the wilderness and look for stills,” said Alameda. “It was a dangerous occupation, and he always carried a gun.”
Back in 1926, McBride and Mariott worked for the Oregon Bureau of Prohibition, a sort of local version of the federal ATF. They worked in cooperation with the police and sheriff’s departments in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and Madras.
It was a risky proposition to go after moonshiners who were often armed and eager to avoid losing their investment. But that was exactly what Mariott and McBride decided to do on February 17, 1926. Based on a tip from an informant, the agents travelled to an alleged moonshine operation outside of Hampton, Oregon.
Crime scene photos show the damage from the explosion that ripped through the back of the Congress Apartments where two prohibition agents were living.
The agents reached the area in the afternoon and found a stilling operation stashed in a primitive shelter constructed of juniper logs and dirt. Peering through a window, they found ten barrels of mash brewing over a simmering fire, two fifty-gallon stills and another twenty-four barrels of mash. McBride and Mariott pried open a window, crawled inside and waited.
The following morning, Vayle Taylor, a homesteader from nearby Alfalfa, arrived on horseback. What happened next is a matter of historic record and based on the agents’ recollection.
According the agents, it was Taylor who got the drop on them after spotting their tracks outside his hideout. He turned the tables on the waiting agents by jamming the door, locking them inside. According to the two agents, Taylor then struck a match and brandished a rag. Clearly the bust was not going as planned, with Taylor seemingly ready to burn down his operation with the agents inside. According to Mariott, the desperate agents broke down the door from the inside. In the process, McBride’s gun accidentally discharged, instantly killing Taylor.
Both McBride and Mariott were cleared at the coroner’s inquest in Prineville the following day. Taylor’s associates, a group known as the Bear Creek and High Desert Gang, weren’t ready for a truce. They were looking to settle the score. They didn’t wait long. Just eighteen days later, the violent blast shook the Congress Apartments where Marriot and McBridge were living.
Local blasting experts speculated the criminals had used either fifty sticks of dynamite or twenty five to thirty pounds of TNT. The police eventually linked the explosion to members of the Bear Creek and High Desert Gang based on information from an informant.
Although the crime was investigated by the Bend Police and the Deschutes County Sheriff’s departments, it was never solved. The county court even offered a $1,500 reward to anyone who could identify the criminals who blew up the building. In this case, the mystery is more a matter of historic curiosity than justice.
Everybody connected to the case is long gone. Vayle Taylor is buried at the Pilot Butte Cemetery in Bend beside his mother, Mildred, who died in 1920. There is no gravestone marking the site. Alvie “Buck” Mariott and his wife Myrtle are laid to rest at the Willamette National Cemetery. “Mac” McBride disappeared from the gaze of history in 1932, the last time his name was mentioned in the Bulletin. And the criminals who dynamited Congress Apartments never stood before a judge.
Within five years after the bombing the eighth amendment had been repealed, formally ending prohibition. With the stroke of a pen, President Roosevelt undid seventeen years of prohibition in Oregon. The Bureau of Prohibition and its agents were relegated to history. The first truckload of legal beer rolled into Bend on April 24, 1933.
Still, it would be years before the moonshine business dried up in Central Oregon. It seemed that some locals preferred the cheap backyard brand of booze to the highly taxed bottles in the store. But the heyday of moonshiners had come and gone—with a boom.
How Travis Yamada, aka “the most humble dude ever,” became the unofficial ambassador of surfing and skating in Bend.
The Travis Yamada story picks up in the present tense, as he hovers over a surfboard-shaped piece of foam in the middle of a small, blue-walled room that serves as his workshop and corporate headquarters. Working deliberately, he saws out the rails, planes in the rocker and regularly pauses to pick up the blank, examining his work with the critical eye of a confident perfectionist.
Not far away, wetsuit-clad river rats are surfing Yamada’s boards at Bend’s Whitewater Park, stoked on the smooth green wave and on the laid-back scene. Just a few miles east, a new generation of skateboarders are ripping around the polished concrete bowls and ramps in the Ponderosa 2 skateboard park off Wilson Avenue. The riders may or may not know Travis Yamada, but his fingerprints are all over their urban playgrounds.
To understand that you must go back to where Yamada’s story begins—way back to the early 1980s in California’s Central Valley. It was there that Yamada, whose mother traces her roots back multiple generations, developed his cowboy work ethic, code of responsibility and his love of mountains. Those traits carried him through a stint as a professional snowboarder, fueled his drive to start his own businesses and saw him evolve from a skate punk to a skateboard ambassador, giving voice to a population that was often overlooked by the mainstream.
Photo by Jon Tapper
Jump back to Yamada’s latest enterprise, a freshwater and saltwater surfboard shaping company, dubbed Cubicle. Like Gerry Lopez, another Bend icon, Yamada has taken his talent for carving lines into cornices and curling waves and turned it into a passion for creating unique products that allow others to do the same. On the blue walls hang a master craftsman’s quiver of templates, saws, planers, calipers and sandpaper, all testifying to the complexity of building surfboards. “I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel,” said Yamada. “Surfers figured this out a long time ago.” He’s too modest to admit it, but Travis has also helped pioneer the evolution of river surfboards and river surfing, especially in Bend.
Innovation has followed Yamada ever since he first stood on a skateboard as a kid in the early 80s. His charisma and business acumen, combined with his skilled hands and his experience as a former pro snowboarder, have led Yamada to pursue a lifestyle rooted in surf, skate and snow. The Bend community has supported Yamada for more than twenty-five years, and in return Yamada has made this place more fun, in a sideways-riding fashion.
Photo by Joey Hamilton
Yamada grew up on a cattle ranch in Sonora, California, a rural town in the gold rush foothills of the western Sierra Nevada, where skateboarding was culturally a crime. The son of a Japanese-American father and a mother whose family homesteaded Sonora, Yamada followed his own line early in life. Around sixth grade, Yamada discovered snowboarding in the back pages of Thrasher skateboard magazine. So his dad rented him a board and drove him up to Boreal, where Yamada wrapped his Air Jordan skate shoes in plastic grocery bags, stuffed them into his moon boots and slid down the hill. “I was hooked from there.”
Yamada’s commitment only gained momentum, and he let his life follow it. His evolution from rider to ambassador was, in some ways, as natural as a backside carve. In the early 2000s, Bend skaters had eyed up a plot of dirt under an overpass at Division Street, where the construction of the Bend Parkway had created an urban vacuum of sorts in the neighborhood just north of downtown. Inspired by places like Portland’s Burnside skatepark, Bend skaters envisioned a true grassroots skatepark. Eventually, to make it happen, a handful of skaters organized under the name PUSH, Promoting Urban Skate Habitats. Yamada served as PUSH’s de facto leader. “He’s a great ambassador,” said Christopher “Topher” Laws, a Bend skater and snowboarder who joined PUSH early on. “Travis knows how to read people, and he knows how to get his point across in a very professional way.”
By 2009, PUSH held its first of four fundraisers—actually huge parties downtown, with food, beer, live music and an auction of 100 skateboards painted by local artist friends, all proceeds going to the cause. In total, they raised close to $40,000. Though the Division Street project stalled, the seed had been planted. Led by Yamada and other veteran skaters, PUSH approached Bend Park and Recreation District about a collaboration.
Yamada’s diplomacy paid off, and his argument convinced people like Matt Mercer, the district’s Director of Recreation Services. “The most important thing Travis did was to challenge everybody, including the Park and Recreation District, to consider skate parks as essentially just another amenity in the development of a park, like playgrounds, tennis or basketball courts. And that’s just what we’re doing now,” explained Mercer. Ponderosa 2 finally opened in 2014, and Bend’s newest skate park, part of Rockridge Park, which opened this fall, included skateboarding from the start.
Meanwhile, work had begun on Bend’s Whitewater Park, which included a wave for river surfing. Yamada and friends had been riding standing waves in Central Oregon irrigation canals for more than a decade, a common, though illegal, practice. Hopes were high for the new whitewater park when it debuted in September 2015. Despite much fanfare, the wave, like other elements of the $8 million dollar whitewater park, was not performing as advertised. While some grumbled and kvetched, Yamada and others pushed back, urging the park district to rework the primary features for a better experience.
Ryan Richard, the Bend Park and Recreation District’s wave shaper, has worked with Yamada and the Bend Surf Alliance for more than two years now. “Travis’ best role in talking with Park & Rec is his levelheadedness. He’s always even-keeled, he doesn’t get amped up like a lot of other guys do,” Richard said.
Yamada doesn’t take credit for developing the river wave. But he did help organize the surf community, “to convey our message,” he said, “and not come off as a bunch of whiners.” Just as he did with PUSH, Yamada proposed collaborative solutions.
Scott Huggin, a surfer who worked with Yamada on the whitewater wave, likewise gives Yamada props. “Without Travis, I don’t know where the wave would be right now in terms of a surf wave. I don’t know if anyone would be surfing. Travis wanted a successful wave for the community, but also for himself!”
Yamada is proud of the role he’s played in the projects and he’s excited about the prospects for his company. Still, he keeps things in perspective. “There are people in life doing important stuff. This isn’t important; this is fun. Doctors are saving lives, and I’m making toys, basically.”
Photo by Joey Hamilton
For all he has done, Bend is paying Yamada back in an indirect, double-edged way—by ordering so many boards that Yamada said he hardly has time to do product testing. Ryan Richard, who rides one of Yamada’s Cubicle boards, laughed at this: “I look over my shoulder and always see him creeping from the Colorado Avenue bridge! Still, when he surfs, he rips, man. He reminds me of a bee flying across the face, super agile, super fast.”
Yamada has focused himself on building his brand, which has him working such long days into the night. He has a problem with trying to do everything himself. It’s a weakness he’s aware of, a lesson he said he’s learned, but still hasn’t implemented. As Josh Dirksen put it, “He’s definitely not working at factory speed. He’s doing every board perfectly, how it should be done.”
Rewind back to Yamada’s pro snowboarding days. He’d been working construction during the summers to make ends meet so he could ride all winter. Then his knees got in the way. After two ACL reconstuctions, Yamada knew it was time to let the dream go. “It kinda fizzled out. But I was okay with that. I never thought being pro was sustainable anyhow.”
So he adapted to the new reality, shifted his focus to business and applied his skills in equally successful ways. First, Yamada started Deck Tech, a deck restoration outfit with a loyal following. Next came Paint Tech, a partnership with childhood friend Brent Rankin, who noticed Yamada’s “insane attention to detail.”
“I think Travis adopted his grandfather’s old cowboy ways of doing right by people,” said Rankin. “And that transfers into all aspects of business. Travis respects the people he works with and the clients he works for. It’s partly his boyish charm, his country gentleman style mixed with hip skateboard and snowboard kid.”
Photo by Jon Tapper
Around Bend, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with a bad thing to say about Yamada. To his friends’ kids, he’s Uncle Travis. But Yamada himself readily admits that it’s not all parties and powder days. “I can be stubborn as hell. I like challenges, to a fault. And I’m really good at making things more complicated or difficult. I think I’m a bit of a masochist in that way.”
Yamada considers himself overly meticulous, “OCD-style,” yet he finds the positive in this like he does with whatever else he’s involved in. “I think that’s what has allowed me, in a short amount of time, to make these boards to surf shop quality. But I haven’t mastered it, and I’m not even close.”
Obsessive perfectionism may slow Yamada down, but the final product honors the countless hours spent designing, shaping, glassing and sanding a board. “Travis loves making things he can put his name on and be proud about,” said longtime friend Rankin. “He does things the way he wants, the way he’d want them done for himself.” Which is why fellow rippers like Josh Dirksen and Curtis Ciszek, who has a Cubicle pro model, ride Yamada’s boards.
“I think Travis’ genuine, legitimate drive for doing what he does is sharing what he loves. Being an ambassador of the sport, making amazing surfboards—he does it because he wants to share that experience with other people. He’s the most humble dude ever,” said wave shaper Richard.
Starting his own surfboard brand has provided Yamada with a welcome challenge, despite the requisite sacrifices. “Figuring out what somebody needs to surf better, being able to execute it, and then delivering something that will improve their surfing is more rewarding than going down to the wave and getting better myself,” Yamada said. “The best part is changing someone’s surfing—they couldn’t be happier. I’ve seen it a bunch. I love that, and I want to continue doing that.”
A modern home in Shevlin Commons is designed to embrace the natural elements that surround it, with function, style and comfort in the details.
Two years ago, when Allen and Traci Clautice-Engle set out to design and build a custom home, they came to the process with some very specific ideas. The couple had lived in Central Oregon since 1998. They’d been married for more than thirty years and raised two children together. This would be their third Bend home. Allen and Traci knew themselves, the community and how they wished to live in it.
But their desires weren’t identical. Allen explained succinctly: “I’m an engineer, and she’s a doctor.” Allen, who is retired, was looking for energy efficiency, low-maintenance landscaping and a location closer to Mt. Bachelor, where he is a ski patroller. “I wanted all LED lights, built-in solar and to spend less time landscaping.”
His wife, Traci, who works full-time as a radiologist at Central Oregon Radiology Associates, nurtured more interior desires—in terms of design, that is. “Not many people have the opportunity to create a custom home to perfectly fit your life,” she explained. “I wanted to spend plenty of time on details and design.”
Both were avid outdoors lovers and travelers who wanted their empty-nester home to be incredibly comfortable and beautiful. Both wanted a special place to display the large collection of art and photography they had gathered from travels around the world. Each wanted a location “in town, but out of town—close enough to downtown to bike in if we wanted,” said Allen. A place near nature trails would be a bonus.
Shevlin Commons was the answer. The community, four miles west of downtown, sits adjacent to Bend’s signature open space, Shevlin Park. The Clautice-Engles purchased a lot with a view of the park and of the Cascade Range. Then they hired builder Doug Young and longtime Bend architect Karen Smuland to craft their home from scratch.
“The first thing to attend to was layout and orientation,” explained Smuland, who has been designing homes in Bend for fourteen years. The lot wasn’t overly large, but offered a few key opportunities. “We oriented the house to best use photovoltaic solar, create one-level living with plenty of natural light, take advantage of the predominant views and create unique outdoor living spaces,” she said.
The Clautice-Engle home is a stunning, contemporary 3,400-square-foot structure with exterior materials of cedar, stone and stucco, and views of Mt. Bachelor and Mt. Jefferson. A U-shaped footprint shelters a south-facing courtyard, which is private, absorbs sun and avoids wind. A combination of shed and flat rooflines is not only visually attractive but also allows more natural light into the home.
The visitor’s eye is drawn to the front door by a cantilevered roof. The entry hall is tile, lined with art niches for the Clautice-Engles’ collection. At the hall’s end is the great room, which boasts three walls of windows with storefront glazing to maximize view and motorized windows to allow in fresh air.
The kitchen, adjacent to the great room, was Traci’s domain. Working with Bend interior designer Kirsti Wolfe, Traci created a room well planned for the traffic patterns of an avid home chef and her guests. “We fine tuned everything on her wish list,” said Wolfe, who has been an interior designer for twenty-eight years. “We wanted the kitchen to flow with Traci’s personality and how she functions.”
The kitchen includes ‘work stations,’ one of which is a beverage bar. A wide counter space is home to tea, coffee, wine and the like, flanked by two roll-up storage spaces housing kitchen gadgets. “It’s a gathering space away from the main cooking area, so that not everyone ends up in the same space,” explained Wolfe. Island seating at two levels—a round eating area at a lower level and bar-height stools—create additional gathering spaces. The counters are black granite, and all woodwork is Sapele, sometimes referred to as African mahogany.
“The flow of the house is outstanding for entertaining,” said Traci.
Allen got his wishes in terms of energy efficiency. The home is Earth Advantage Certified, and a combination of photovoltaic solar, double stud walls, excellent insulation and a heat pump add to the sustainable footprint. Active management of workable windows means that the house is extremely efficient. “I expect we’ll be net zero or positive this year,” said Allen, meaning the home will create as much energy as it consumes.
Perhaps the home’s best features—and the owners’ favorites—are its patios. An enclosed sunroom of wood and glass faces south, absorbing sun and heat in colder seasons and cooler times of day. “Our indoor patio faces the park and is a great place to have a glass of wine or relax,” said Allen.
The outdoor patio is accented with a waterfall, visible from the kitchen window, which becomes a stream that crosses the expanse. “You step over the stream to access the patio,” explained Smuland. “The patio is really the masterpiece of the home.”
Wolfe feels that the patio, like the house, achieves beauty by “using all of the elements—wood, glass, metal and water. All are combined to achieve a more peaceful environment. It’s an extremely serene, comfortable home.”
Within a few years, Blackstrap went from another Bend outdoor startup to being one of the essential—and most popular—pieces of equipment on the mountain.
Photo by Alex Jordan
It seems you can’t get on a chairlift these days without seeing at least one of the colorful Blackstrap balaclavas cinched under a helmet. Indeed, the facemask/headcover is to the mountain what the Hydro Flask water bottle is to the hiking trail—essential equipment.
Coming off an epic winter that saw more than 600 inches of snowfall locally, Blackstrap is hitting its stride. The company is now taking its winning winter formula beyond the ski hill with a line of river-oriented gear, though Jim Sanco, Blackstrap’s brand manager, admits that the company’s employees are still glued to the snow reports throughout the winter season.
Blackstrap manager Jim Sanco. Photo by Alex Jordan.
Blackstrap released its spring and summer line in 2015 with a line of lighter-weight facemasks aimed at anglers but suitable for anyone who spends time on the water or is exposed to sun for prolonged periods. Sanco said it’s more of an insurance policy than a change in business philosophy.
“You have those unforeseens, whether it’s a bad winter or a really good winter—it could go either way,” said Sanco. “If it snows and it’s cold, we’re all geniuses, everyone rejoice. But then you have a bad winter … You get that fluctuation when you’re in an industry that’s bound by the weather.”
Recently, the company released a line of gloves for steelhead anglers to protect their hands when they are stripping fishing line, bringing consistent year-round business into the company.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Blackstrap’s commitment to an entirely domestic production process—from milling fabrics and printing custom facemasks to quality control and shipping. It’s a point of pride for the company that has managed to grow at a steady rate without losing sight of its original mission.
“Our end product is still really where we started,” said Sanco. “We’ve never had this massive influx of capital to do whatever we want. We’ve had to be very strategic about all these things.”
Like others in the industry, Sanco, 32, came to Bend for the mountains. He met Blackstrap founder, Abe Shehadeh, also 32, through mutual friends, and decided to join him, building the business from Shehadeh’s Sunriver home. (Though Shehadeh is the founder, he prefers to stay behind the scenes.)
Blackstrap has remained a small business, with only ten full-time employees (nine men and one woman) who work in the office and warehouse. Sanco describes Blackstrap’s marketing efforts as “guerilla” and credits the widespread success of Blackstrap to its attention to detail in the product, in addition to personal relationships built with resorts and retailers throughout the country.
Blackstrap is currently sold in more than 500 retail locations nationwide. In the 2016-2017 winter season, Blackstrap became the fifth-bestselling facemask in the United States, according to Snowsports Industries of America. “It might be cheaper [to outsource], but we would be going batshit crazy not knowing what’s going on everyday with all that stuff,” said Sanco.
At Powder House Ski & Snowboard in Bend, owner Shanda McGee said that Blackstrap has developed a cult following, with everyone from construction workers to athletes buying the product.
“It’s a great technical product without being out of reach,” she said. She estimates that the ski shop easily sells about one thousand Blackstrap products each winter.
McGee said that working with the team is easy, too. “They’re just a great group of guys,” she said. “Their passion is what makes it fun, too. They’re out on the mountain; they’re talking to people; they support the community.”
Unconventional collaboration defines the work of artists and twins Lisa and Lori Lubbesmeyer.
Photo by Alex Jordan
To spend an hour with Lisa and Lori Lubbesmeyer is to glimpse into the world of identical twins. It is a window into challenges of being separate within the undeniable pull of inseparableness. Four paintings that hang in their Old Mill District studio tell their remarkable story: two acrylic paintings that reaffirmed their collaboration and two darker expressions of today’s political and social climate.
Known nationally for their serene and colorful fiber art “paintings,” the Lubbesmeyers were once so professionally competitive that they didn’t speak. But on their thirtieth birthday, they agreed that they needed to be together and that art was the path.
The creative partnership was not necessarily intuitive; Lori was a painter and Lisa a printmaker. Compromise was in order. They decided to give up their own disciplines and agreed on fiber as their new medium. The sisters learned to sew, and over the years found their way to an unconventional collaboration. Their process involves taking turns working on the same piece without discussing it, without looking over the other’s shoulder, and without critiquing or redoing the work. Each piece takes about a month to complete and contains a dozen to as many as thirty layers of fabric.
Dave Webster and his wife, Liz Fancher, have spent many hours with the sisters and collected several pieces. “They have the twin vibe, a shared consciousness that brings the rest of us into their world,” Webster said. “A lot of their pieces take me to a place, and I’m really there, even though it may not be a real place.”
In 2011, Lori was diagnosed with a disease that damages the nervous system, compromising her ability to work in fiber and altering the collaboration with her sister. Lisa worried about creating without her and wondered whether they should try another medium or just work alone. “I was acutely aware that we may have limited time,” Lisa said.
Photo by Alex Jordan
Lori suggested they consider painting and asked Lisa to try an experiment. They set up two easels, back to back, and painted for an hour without looking at the other’s work. No rules, just paint whatever came to mind. The moment they turned around and saw the other’s canvas—almost identical pictures—it was an ah-ha moment that affirmed their creative connection. “It was thrilling and made us both cry,” Lisa recalled. Not long after that, the sisters added painting to their professional repertoire, employing the same collaborative, back-and-forth technique that worked so well in fiber. As with fiber, each piece takes about a month to complete, with the pair finishing about seventeen projects each year.
Today, the Lubbesmeyer studio showcases fiber art and acrylic paintings that portray their sought after whimsical, layered renditions of nature and hardscapes. Their work is often acquired before it’s finished and has been collected around the globe.
Now 48 years old, the sisters continue their collaboration in fiber and acrylic and hope to begin printmaking together. “We’ve realized there’s a lot of meaning in showing up, slowing down, paying attention to the natural environment,” said Lisa. And after nearly two decades of shared creations, they say they’re on the same track—it just happens to lead in more directions.
Summer Lake Hot Springs is a year-round rejuvenating retreat south of Central Oregon. Flow is the primary theme at Summer Lake Hot Springs. Whether it’s hot mineral water flowing into the bathhouse and pools or the geothermal heat flowing into rustic cabins, the soothing natural energy seems to permeate all things at this back-to-basics retreat tucked in the rugged Oregon Outback southeast of Bend.
While Summer Lake is no longer the secret that it once was, the pace remains easy and visitor pressure remains relatively light. On a recent weekend, a gathering of Central Oregon families made camp around an RV and a row of tents. In the bathhouse, their teenagers shifted nervously in the corner of the bathhouse pool, trying to keep their voices hushed as etiquette decrees, while the parents luxuriated in the healing waters. In an outdoor pool, a California couple soaked. They landed their small plane at nearby Paisley airport and rode their bikes over for one of their regular weekend getaways. Yveline Wilnau drove six hours to stay here during her days off.
“For ten-plus years, I’ve made Summer Lake Hot Springs my annual post-Burn pilgrimage for open sky, majestic nature and healing, sacred waters. I always depart feeling more at home within myself and centered in gratitude,” said Wilnau, who lives in Eugene, but spends two months each summer working for the Burning Man organization at the Nevada event site.
“People will go to the edges of the earth for boutique experiences,” said owner Duane Graham, who saw potential when he bought the rundown chicken and cattle ranch that charged passersby a quarter to soak in the bathhouse. Graham fell for Summer Lake on a road trip to the Steens, long before Highway 31 was named Oregon’s Outback Scenic Byway.
“I’d always been into topographical maps. We came this way because there was a clear point of interest on the map with the vertical drop of Winter Ridge,” he said.
When Graham, a Portland contractor and home renovator by trade, discovered that the hot springs property was for sale for the first time since the 1950s, he made a down payment. For his first nine years of ownership, Graham kept a hands-off approach, leaving the management to a couple he hired to live onsite.
Once he was finally able to move to Summer Lake full-time in 2006, he began cultivating his vision, heeding the advice of a friend: “Just set the table and don’t worry about it. If you have the right setting combination, people will come.”
This was sage advice for creating a culture of healing on 145 acres of playa and sagebrush in south-central Oregon’s Lake County, where the sun casts a pastel filter on every moment of daylight. Walking through the scrubland you’ll experience nature’s Easter palate in eggshell white brushed with muted blues, greens, pinks, purples and yellows, complete with the occasional jackrabbit. After the sun sets behind Winter Ridge, the coyotes announce the arrival of the stars that salt the night sky, a scene pleasantly devoid of light pollution. Lounge sans swimwear (after 9 p.m.) in the comfort of the 106- to 118-degree mineral water pools and allow all your senses to embrace a long winter’s night.
Graham knows that the natural world is the draw here and he lets the landscape speak for itself with simple, well-designed infrastructure. Since the Great Recession, business has steadily risen, giving Graham enough capital to build new cabins and two delightful, Southwest-style duplexes made of Pumice-Crete. A road realignment and a relocation of the tent and RV sites will be complete by next summer—more evidence of Graham’s continued quest to “set the table” for an idyllic retreat that is accessible for anyone who seeks its healing waters.
“I never want to regulate my customers through the price,” said Graham, who charges less than $150 per night for each cabin (a large ranch home is available for groups), $20 for camping and $50 for RVs. “I’m not really going for more numbers, really more for quality experience. With me, I always see the potential in things, what it could be. Who knows what causes me to do that, but I like that diamond in the rough.”
Take a Scenic Drive
Experience the high country in Fremont National Forest on paved NF-290, which offers views from Winter Rim.
Eat & Drink
Grab a bar stool at the Pioneer Saloon in Paisley and ask about Oregon’s oldest bar.
Ancient Art
See some of the finest examples of Neolithic petroglyphs in North America at Picture Rock Pass along the Oregon Outback Scenic Byway.
In March, U.S. Ski Team member and Bendite Laurenne Ross sustained a traumatic knee injury on the last day of the racing season. Just a few months later, she’s aiming to get back on the snow in time to qualify for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang.
Photo courtesy US Ski and Snowboard
Laurenne Ross was at the starting gate for her first run in a giant slalom at the U.S. Alpine Championships at Sugarloaf in Maine. It was late March, and the last race of the 2016-2017 season. Though the season had started shakily, a string of top five and top ten finishes had given her momentum. Just two days earlier, she won the super-G course title, cementing her place as one of the top speed skiers in the world and America’s number two downhill and super G racer behind Lindsey Vonn.
Ross felt confident at the gate, but a combination of sleet and snow the night before this race had created a slick surface on the course, and a strong wind was blowing downhill. “It was a really awful weather day,” she recalled. “I remember being at the start thinking this is crazy.”
On the sixth gate, she slipped out on a right-footed turn. As she started to transfer the weight from her hip back to her feet, her uphill ski caught an outside edge, twisting and pulling her knee into a barrage of devastating injuries.
Photo courtesy US Ski and Snowboard
Six months later, Ross walked into Dudley’s Bookstore & Coffee in downtown Bend. She had biked there from her house just a few blocks away. She walked with only a slight limp, the only evidence of her injury. “I’ve actually been trying to bike everywhere in town recently,” she said as she sat down. “Just trying not to use my car and save gas and save on the fumes.”
Ross, 29, is a renaissance woman. In addition to being a member of the U.S. Ski Team, a member of the 2014 Olympic team at Sochi and a 2018 Olympic hopeful, Ross is working toward her bachelor’s degree in fine arts at University of Oregon. She is an avid film photographer and plays three instruments.
“I don’t think that I will ever be somebody who is focused on one thing. I don’t think even when I’m done with skiing I will only do art or only do school,” she said. “Sometimes it turns into a negative thing when I start spreading myself too thin. But I can’t do it any other way. When I’m not doing something, I don’t feel fulfilled.”
The constant need to be doing and creating has been a part of Ross since she was young. Born in Canada, Ross learned to ski when she was two years old. Her family moved to Klamath Falls when she was seven, and she spent weekends skiing and racing at Mt. Bachelor with Mt. Bachelor Ski Education Foundation. At seventeen, she got the call that she had made the U.S. Ski Team while she was on her way to the state solo soprano singing competition.
Kent Towlerton, an alpine racing coach for forty years, was Ross’ coach while she was in high school. He described her as motivated and smart, pointing to natural athletic ability (her dad was a ski racer in Canada and her grandfather was on the 1952 Canadian Olympic hockey team) as well as her drive to succeed.
Artwork by Laurenne Ross
“When you’re doing what she does, it’s very risky, because the failure is real, and the failure is traumatic,” said Towlerton. When you get to the top level of the sport, Towlerton said that it comes down to focus and determination, which is what Ross has. “You knew that when she was younger,” he said.
Ross climbed the ranks on the ski team, going to her first World Cup in 2010 and then on to Sochi in 2014. The next season saw Ross gathering momentum, consistently posting top twenty finishes. Ross started the 2016-2017 season slowly, but found her groove in February, earning top ten finishes, including the super-G title, days before her fall. It was the last day of her racing season and she was ranked as the sixth best downhill skier in the world, the best ranking she’s ever had.
Ross remembers that day vividly, and she’s honest and candid about her experience, from the initial fall to the surgery and recovery process. “I’ve been through a few injuries, and this was just so much worse,” she said. A knee surgeon in Vail performed the surgery and she spent five days in the hospital there before coming back to Bend, her home base for the last six years where she lives with her boyfriend Tommy Ford who is also on the U.S. Ski Team, for the majority of her recovery. She spent six weeks in a straight-leg brace. For someone who is used to constantly moving, she described that time as hell. A breakthrough came in July, when she was finally allowed on a bike outside.
Ross figures that if she can ski again this year, she’ll have about five years left as a ski racer. She knows she needs to get back on snow by the end of the year if she wants to have a shot at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in February.
“It’s been a very slow progression,” she said of her recovery. “It takes weeks for me to relearn all the skills I’ve learned before.” She’s aware that some people will question how quickly she’s coming back to racing, maybe not as strong as she could be if she holds out another season to recover. But for her, that’s not what skiing is about.
“It’s not the person who can squat the most or has the most symmetrical strength. They’re not winning. The people who have an internal drive and the people who have the mental game are the ones that are getting gold medals and winning World Cups,” she said. “I can’t take my time,” said Ross of her recovery timeline. “I feel like if I were to take it really slow and do everything perfectly, I feel like I would have regrets. I couldn’t live with that.”
When we talked in September, the first snow had just fallen on Mt. Bachelor. “It’s amazing when it happens this early. Everybody always kind of freaks out and gets really excited,” she said. “But there’s always ups and downs. It never really lasts. It’s probably going to melt, and then it’ll come back, and then it’ll melt and then it will come back.”
“But,” she added, “it does make me really excited to go skiing.”
The Dark Net, the most recent novel from the award-winning author, blends thriller, horror and fantasy genres into a fast-moving plot that is filled with the quick-witted prose for which Percy is known. The novel is especially prescient in today’s political climate, with villains that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, wreaking havoc through binary code.
“There are so many things we fear right now, but cybercrime is chief among them. I wanted to take a knife to the nerve of the moment,” said Percy. “We can’t build walls that can keep those people out.”
Percy hones in on today’s political and social anxiety, but brings in an element of fantasy that engages, rather than making you feel like flipping the channel to escape the news cycle. Percy described The Dark Net as a “fairy tale for the digital era.” It’s a book that can be devoured in a weekend, but it will stick in your head much longer than that and make you question yourself each time you pick up your phone to mindlessly scroll and click. Those who’ve spent any time in Portland will appreciate the references tucked into each page, from slices of Hot Lips pizza to a heart-racing scene that captures the specific anxiety of driving through the Terwilliger curves in the rain.
Though he lives in Minnesota now with his family, Percy, 38, grew up in Oregon. Born in Eugene, his family moved to Hawaii for brief stint then to Central Oregon when he was in fourth grade. He graduated from (the now-closed) Sunriver Preparatory School in 1997. He describes the town at that time as “in the process of being Californicated.”
Photo by Arnab Chakladar
Percy went to Brown University with the idea of becoming Indiana Jones, majoring in anthropology. He described his parents as “obsessive rockhounds,” and the family spent weekends exploring Central and Eastern Oregon for fossils, geodes and petrified wood, where he caught the bug for archeology. They were all voracious readers, too. Percy describes a typical evening scene at his house, the entire family sprawled out reading: his dad, science fiction; mom, westerns; sister, astrophysics; and him, horror. “That appetite for books carried on through adulthood,” Percy said. (His sister, Jennifer Percy, is an award-winning journalist for the New York Times Magazine.)
Percy finally “hung up his fedora and Indiana Jones fantasy in my mind” when he worked for a summer at Glacier National Park. He was writing love letters to his girlfriend, and now wife, who told him he should become a writer. He replied, “OK.”
The Dark Net is Percy’s fourth novel. He writes short stories as well as essays and nonfiction. Most recently, he writes the Green Arrow and Teen Titan comic book series for DC Comics and the James Bond comics for Dynamite Entertainment as well as screenplays. Percy will be at Roundabout Books on November 12.
A Michelin-star chef joins The French Market, a new neighborhood French bistro in the heart of Old Bend.
Take a 31-year-old with Michelin-star restaurant experience and Northwest farm-culture roots, blend with a couple of small-business veterans who’ve lived in southern France, pour in a timber-era building with a checkered history and, voilà, you have the perfect mise en place for a dish that Bend has been craving.
At The French Market, Chef Luke Mason executes artistic renditions of bistro classics built around our region’s current harvest. Ingredients are his muse, first and foremost—a mindset born from a childhood in Sandpoint, Idaho, where locally sourced meat, fish, fruit and vegetables have always been the way of life, not a lifestyle.
“You’d go to Mr. Johnson’s down the street for apples and squash. All the meat was local because hogs and cows were butchered within a few square miles,” said Mason. “If you went outside and picked a strawberry, it tasted super good, with those flavors that just linger.”
It was his desire to earn money for a car, though, that drove him to get a job at age 13 (legal in Idaho) as a dishwasher at the athletic club where his mother, a teacher, would swim. It suited him. He progressed to cooking, working his way through high school. Buying an ’86 Chevy truck reinforced a work ethic that carried through college in Santa Barbara, eclipsing his political science studies twelve units shy of a bachelor’s. He moved to Portland, then San Francisco, to a Moroccan restaurant called Aziza, which possessed a coveted Michelin star.
Professional kitchens have a military-style structure, but Mason likened working at Aziza to becoming a Navy SEAL. “My first year there, it was a constant struggle to survive,” he said. “It opened my eyes to—if you want to cook at this level—what it really takes. Like so many other cooks in the world, you dedicate your life to the chef completely for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.”
He learned haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy techniques, elevating dishes into artful works as beautiful as they were delicious. (Think twelve-dish, $140 tasting menu.) Mason rose to chef de cuisine, and Aziza kept winning its Michelin star during the two years that he ran its kitchen.
He left in mid-2014 to try to earn his own star at Lincoln Park Wine Bar in San Anselmo, Calif., and the restaurant was successful, but Mason and his fiancee left for Bend eighteen months later. “We thought, ‘Can we buy a house here? Have kids here?’ No,” he said, referring to California. Bend offered a lifestyle similar to that of Sandpoint, with the benefit of having a significant part of the community hailing from major cities.
At The French Market, owners Judy and Phil Lipton said they were lucky to find Mason after their extensive renovation of the former Riverside Market, a popular watering hole and convenience store, which had drawn the ire of surrounding neighbors for its lively and sometimes rowdy clientele. Long before that it was one of Bend’s first gas stations, built circa 1910.
“We like giving Luke creative freedom in the kitchen, because … it keeps you passionate,” said Judy, who has opened eight restaurants and a catering business in San Francisco.
With Mason, they favor a menu with many small plates, so that guests can dine in a more European fashion, sharing a few dishes and experiencing a range of flavors at a reasonable price. For instance, in fall, a duck liver mousse with sautèrnes gelèe, brioche and almonds was $11, (with foie gras, $16); halibut brandade with chicories, pickled shallots, smoke and corona beans, $11.
Mason said he was excited for a winter menu with beef short ribs, pork shoulder, cassoulet, winter squash and root vegetables—just the je ne sais quoi worthy of a bistro beside a river called the Deschutes.
Not to be confused with the fluffy dessert pastry popular at Mediterranean restaurants, the balaclava is the all-purpose helmet liner and face mask in one. Part beanie, part bandana and the savior of storm-chasing powderhounds across the Pacific Northwest, the Blackstrap Team Hood Balaclava ($39.99) has quickly become the go-to gear to combat the howling winds and biting snow that accompany so many of Central Oregon’s frequent winter storms. Say goodbye to wind burn and hello to extended powder slashing sessions. Find them at Powder House, Aspect Boardshop and online at bsbrand.com
Bend Rock Gym Day Pass
Whether perfecting your top roping skills off-season, tackling that one tough route until you get it just right or spending a day scrambling up boulders with the kids, Bend Rock Gym has you covered this winter. Day passes ($14-$18) make terrific hostess gifts, stocking stuffers and coworker gifts. Go big and gift your favorite people with a yoga workshop series, an after-school program or an anchor-building 101 workshop. Bend Rock Gym is open seven days a week all year long.
Cairn Subscription
What do you get the outdoor-gear junkie that already has it all? The answer is simple; don’t get them anything at all. Rather, leave the shopping, and the shipping for that matter, to the experts at Cairn, a Bend-based subscription service that makes it its business to discover the latest and greatest in outdoor gear and related products. A monthly subscription to Cairn (from $29.95) will give them a chance to try out a curated mix of the best new gear hitting the market.
Grit Clinics
For someone ready to take their mountain biking skills to the next level, Grit Clinics (from $100) are a great gift. Held around the country, clinics range from half-day private lessons to two-day camps that connect you to a community of mountain bikers.
Free Range Equipment Backpack
Photo by Ely Roberts
Like the Patagonia puffer, the Free Range Equipment packs were made for the mountains, but you’ll also see them just as often around town. The Canvas Series Backpack ($149) is a collaboration with local artists that features vibrant designs of mountain landscapes. Made in Central Oregon, the packs do just as well commuting on a bike as they do scaling rocks and skiing in the backcountry. freerangeequipment.com
Bähko Eyewear
With the sun shining all year long, a good pair of sunglasses is a must in Central Oregon. The Polarized Wayfarer sunglasses
($35) from Bend’s Bähko Eyewear are durable and will keep eyes protected from the bright rays while driving, walking around town or hiking on the trails.
SnoPlanks
It all began when Bend entrepreneurs and longtime friends James Nicol and Ryan Holmes created a unique new snow-riding board in their garage several years ago. Since, SnoPlanks has generated much buzz on the snow and in the
venture capital realm. Made of a solid bamboo core that is laminated with fiberglass and carbon fiber, SnoPlanks are strong, light and perfect for Mt. Bachelor’s powder. SnoPlanks makes snowboards ($849), splitboards ($995), skis ($899) and custom snowboards. Its newest venture is Gerry Lopez endorsed skateboards. A gift of these beauties under the tree will thrill your snow-loving loved ones.
Black Diamond Traverse Poles
Whether you’re snowshoeing deep in the backcountry, skinning the cinder cone on a dawn patrol mission or just carving turns under Cloudchaser, the ultra-strong and lightweight Black Diamond Traverse Poles ($100) are the go-to poles for your Central Oregon adventure. These collapsible poles are easy to adjust, thanks to Black Diamond’s patent FlickLock system and guaranteed not to slip when you need them most. Find them at Pine Mountain Sports.
At Ponderosa Forge, a group of modern day blacksmiths are bringing back the traditional craft with raw power and subtle artistry.
When Jeff Wester opened his blacksmith and custom ironworking shop in Sisters, he also built a hitching rail out front to shoe horses, which he had been doing for the last decade, just in case his new custom forging business didn’t work out.
“I went out on a limb, borrowed money to buy this lot,” said Wester. “I had it all penciled out, so if something didn’t work with my business plan, I could shoe horses and pay for the shop.”
It’s been twenty-six years and one Great Recession since then, and he never did have to go back to shoeing horses.
Ponderosa Forge is on the industrial side of Sisters. It’s a blend of old and new. On one side, there’s a computer-operated machine that automatically cuts steel. On the other, there’s a hammering machine that was built in the 1880s. The 14,000 square-foot shop is lined with hammers and tools on the walls, and anvils are scattered throughout. A handful of employees, modern day smiths, work in the shop where they forge high-end hardware and ironwork, most often for custom homes.
It’s deliberate hands-on work, a combination or raw power and subtle artistry. On a recent visit to the shop, Wester turned on a coil forge and pulled out a piece of steel to demonstrate. He placed the raw steel in the superheated coils and waited for it to turn orange at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He carried the glowing steel to one of the oldest machines in the shop, and used his foot to power the hammer that flattens the steel. Then he took the flattened rod to an anvil, and started hammering. Striking the steel with the precision of a metronome, he guided the steel to the cone of the anvil, and wrapped it around with the hammer. Within seconds, he had a perfectly rounded scroll, similar to the edge of a staircase railing.
“He’s just really good at what he does,” said Chris Corcoran, Ponderosa’s manager who’s worked there for eleven years. “I remember starting here and Jeff would [work a piece], and it would look so easy.” It took Corcoran years to approach Wester’s mastery with hammer and metal. “It’s a lot of trial and error and observing, picking up on the subtleties of where he’s holding the hammer, where his head is when he’s swinging.”
“It’s probably one of the best blacksmithing schools you can go to,” he added.
Wester landed in Bend in 1981. He picked up blacksmithing as a way to make money, running a small operation out of the back of a truck with a forge and an anvil, shoeing horses to pay his way through school, but found an affinity and a love for blacksmithing. At the time, traditional blacksmithing was a dying art.
Throughout the 20th century, “every ranch and mill had a blacksmith,” said Wester. Today, only a handful of traditional shops and artisans remain, with just three in Central Oregon. Part of the decline came when welding was modernized, and traditional forging wasn’t necessary. Ponderosa Forge is one of the only shops that does this work on a large scale.
Wester found success in the custom homes market, where his designs have the rustic elegance that complements the mountain-style lodge homes found throughout Central Oregon. Today, everything from fireplace screens and staircase railings to overhead pot racks and cabinet knobs are all made using a traditional forging process, meaning the pieces evoke 19th century craftsmanship.
Wester’s residential work is mixed in with commercial jobs. Ponderosa also designed and forged all the metalwork in the Deschutes Brewery downtown Bend pub, including hundreds of metal hops and hop leaves, strung together on a thin iron line. Each hop cluster and leaf was hand forged and hammered, and the intricate details give a sense of lightness and movement to the iron plants. Work such as that is a testament to the time and patience that it takes to learn blacksmithing.
Wester usually has around four to six employees in the shop who joined to learn the traditional trade. “There’s been lot of interest the last few years in the craft,” said Wester. “There’s a trend of people going back to the original crafts, and I hope it continues because we need way more people in all the crafts.”
The work of Ponderosa Forge stands out in the market of cookie-cutter homes. One blacksmith is assigned to a project from beginning to end, ensuring a unity in the pieces that are created. Corcoran said that the skill comes from being able to see the details.
“With blacksmithing, there are tapers and scrolls and shapes that you can’t really detail out on a plan, that requires a craftsman’s mind and eye,” said Corcoran. Every part is made from scratch, hammered at just the right temperature and time, with the just the right force, to create something that lasts centuries.
Wester ends the workweek each Friday at three o’ clock, but opens up the shop to his blacksmiths who can work on any project they want. Wester said they all stay, sometimes late into the evening, working on their own projects and honing their skills. It’s something Wester is proud of.
“Who gets to say they’re a blacksmith?” asked Corcoran. “Not many people.”
In Central Oregon, hiking season is year-round. When there’s snow in the mountains, head to these lower elevation trails throughout the region. Closer to town or in canyon country, these trails usually stay clear of snow throughout the winter months.
Photo by Jon Tapper
Deschutes River Trail, Awbrey Reach
When it comes to urban trails around Central Oregon, few are as visible or iconic as the Deschutes River Trail. Really a patchwork of multiple trail segments and, in some cases, streets or sidewalks, the river trail more or less connects Sunriver to Awbrey Butte on the north side of Bend. Within the city, a good portion of the trail is located in, or above, the scenic Deschutes River Canyon. The riverside segments offer views of tumbling whitewater, old growth ponderosa pines and a bevy of wildlife.
The most heavily traveled section upstream of the Old Mill District can see as many 12,000 visitors in peak months, according to the Bend Park and Recreation District, which manages most of the trail systems around Bend. Come late fall, however, the number of visitors drops off sharply. This is a great time to get out and explore in the crisp autumn air, and maybe work off an extra serving of holiday dessert.
If you really want to ditch the crowds, head to Sawyer Park where you can pick up the most northern segment of the river trail, known as the Awbrey or Archie Briggs stretch. Begin the hike by crossing the footbridge in Sawyer Park where you’re likely to spot woodpeckers, quail, ducks and more. From there, head northwest on the gravel and sand trail as it climbs gently around the base of Awbrey Butte. The trail crosses Archie Briggs Road and continues to climb, offering views of the middle Deschutes River below. The trail continues north, opening to a panoramic vista of the Three Sisters and Black Butte. Once inside Archie Briggs Canyon, the trail edges close to the canyon rim, offering dramatic views of the Deschutes River hundreds of feet below. The trail continues along the canyon rim for almost another mile before it terminates at Kirkaldy Ct. near Awbrey Glen Golf Club.
The park district already has plans to connect the trail to its Riley Ranch property to the north via a bridge over the Deschutes River, but trail construction is several years off. “Long term the plan is for [Bend Parks] to make a connection from Sunriver clear down to Riley Ranch and on to Tumalo State Park,” said Brian Hudspeth, development director for Bend Park and Recreation District.
For now, the Awbrey Reach of the river trail is mostly used by nearby residents for a morning or afternoon stroll or run. And while there is no loop option, the spectacular scenery and urban solitude make the out-and-back hike well worth a short trip to experience this lesser known gem.
Background: The Awbrey Reach is the most northern section of trail, connecting Sawyer Park to the trail’s terminus near Awbrey Glen Golf Club. The section was developed more than a decade and a half ago when Tumalo Irrigation District (TID), working with the Deschutes River Conservancy, piped more than two miles of TID’s main feed canal. Beginning at First Street Rapids, the route created the perfect alignment for a river trail along the old canal route.
What to Know: The out-and-back trail measures a little less than two miles from Sawyer Park to Kirkaldy Ct. on Awbrey Butte with impressive river canyon and mountain views. The trail is a soft surface for the entire stretch, making it ideal for trail runners and walkers and features only moderate climbing.
Flatiron Rock Trail, Badlands Wilderness
Photo by Alex Jordan
There are dozens if not hundreds of miles of hiking trails in the Badlands Wilderness area east of Bend. The most popular destination is within the southeastern section of the 19,000-acre high desert wilderness where abundant rock formations and ancient juniper trees speak to the area’s volcanic history. While lacking some of the dramatic alpine vistas associated with other Central Oregon hikes, the Badlands offers a relatively close escape that’s accessible to hikers and trail runners when most of the high country is not, making it a perfect late fall hike.
The Oregon Natural Desert Association’s (ONDA) Gena Goodman-Campbell recommends that new visitors begin their desert explorations by parking at the Flatiron Trailhead and following the eponymous trail that forms a roughly six-mile loop. The trail winds through the native juniper forest providing visitors a chance to glimpse the old growth juniper trees, some of which are more than one thousand years old. (Old growth juniper are distinguished by their expansive and non-symmetrical tops, whereas younger trees tend to have a conical shape). Hikers will also see the signature Badlands Rock, one of the more visually dramatic features of this understated landscape.
The culmination of a years-long wilderness campaign led by ONDA, the Badlands was formally designated by President Barack Obama in 2008. Today, the Badlands is a place of quiet contemplation where the vastness of the Eastern Oregon desert and the forces of geology meet just minutes from Bend. Other notable features around the area include the large dry riverbed canyon, which can be glimpsed from Highway 20 just east of Horse Ridge. Explore the Badlands Trails and numerous lava tubes that some 20,000 years ago transported lava from the nearby Newberry Crater, creating the unique volcanic features seen today.
Background: The Badlands was once a BLM grazing area and ad hoc dumping ground, but restoration and education efforts along with a federal wilderness designation have restored the area to a pristine state. Today, the area is maintained by staff from the Prineville BLM office and a cadre of volunteers known as the Friends of the Badlands, or, as they are affectionately known, Fobbits.
What to Know: With roughly 19,000 acres available for exploration, there are multiple trailheads and parking areas that offer access to different areas within the wilderness boundary. BLM trail maps are available and can be downloaded. Note that it’s easy to make a wrong turn in the crisscrossing network of trails. If you plan an extended excursion, a map and GPS will serve you well.
Scout Camp Loop, Crooked River Ranch
Photo by Greg Burke
It’s been more than a decade since the Bureau of Land Management formally developed the Scout Camp Trail in Crooked River Ranch, but the spectacular hike into the heart of the Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area has been eons in the making. Today’s hikers and anglers are just the latest in a long line of visitors to this dramatic canyon that shows signs of inhabitants reaching back several thousand years. Cliff paintings, primitive cave shelters and shell middens all speak to the role that this rugged and beautiful area has played as a source of food and shelter throughout the ages. Today, the area is accessible via several primitive trails located on the far edge of Crooked River Ranch, a sprawling residential community that straddles a peninsula hemmed in by the middle Deschutes River to the west and Crooked River to the east.
The Scout Camp Trail is the northernmost of the developed trails in the Steelhead Falls Wilderness. Depart from a small parking area at the end of a short dead-end street on the far northeast side of the ranch, about half an hour’s drive from downtown Redmond. Hikers proceed through a rather unspectacular juniper forest for about a quarter mile before reaching the edge of the canyon where the landscape parts dramatically. The Deschutes River courses below, framed by Cascade mountain peaks above the opposite side of the canyon.
“It’s pretty obvious how special this place is. You see millions of years of geologic history, and it’s just breathtaking,” said Gena Goodman-Campbell, who has spent as much time in the canyon as about anyone else around as the wilderness coordinator for Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA). The Bend-based organization has been seeking permanent protection of the area by formally designating roughly 18,000 acres within the canyon as federal wilderness. Despite local support, that work remains stalled in Congress, which has been reticent to expand the inventory of designated wilderness. Congressman Greg Walden, who represents Central Oregon, has proposed a bill that removes some of the existing protections to loosen regulations around fire suppression in the area. Goodman-Campbell said the proposal, which has been developed with little input from stakeholders like ONDA, is an example of why additional protections are warranted.
Politics aside, it’s obvious to anyone who visits that Scout Camp and the Deschutes Canyon are gems of Central Oregon—the kind that take a little extra work and perseverance to discover, but reward the effort with a tantalizing glimpse into the region’s rich geologic history.
Background: The Scout Camp trail was developed by the BLM and is one of several trails that provides access to the rugged canyon where the Deschutes River cuts through the desert landscape. The thousand-foot-deep canyon is part of the Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area. ONDA proposes permanent preservation of the area as the Whychus-Deschutes Wilderness.
What to Know: The Scout Camp Trail is a three-mile loop that descends steeply into the heart of the Steelhead Falls Wilderness Study Area. The trail requires that hikers scramble over a rockpile at the edge of the river. The move is semi-technical and not marked. If you find yourself near a small antennae and solar panel, you’ve reached the obstacle.
Chimney Rock
Photo by Greg Shine, Bureau of Land Management
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, you’d be hard pressed to find an open campsite on the Crooked River near Prineville, especially on a weekend. Come late fall, things begin to slow as cool weather moves in and crowds thin. There is still plenty to enjoy, however. Anglers, hikers and just about anyone with an affinity for the outdoors are drawn to this picturesque river canyon for its great fishing and Instagram-worthy backdrops. Towering basalt walls soar up to 600 feet, framing a blue-ribbon trout fishery that tumbles through the canyon. Bald eagles, osprey and dozens of species of waterfowl are common sights.
While there are limited hiking options within the twelve-mile federally designated wild and scenic portion of the river canyon, the relatively short, if steep, hike to Chimney Rock is a great out-and-back trek. While there is some sustained climbing involved, the level of difficulty is relatively low, making this a hike that can be enjoyed by multiple generations, including young children who can usually be cajoled or bribed if necessary into completing the two-and-half-mile roundtrip.
There is ample parking at the trailhead on the east side of the river. Pack some water and a light snack that doubles as collateral when negotiating with reluctant children. The trail follows a narrow draw in the canyon wall, switchbacking up the side of the canyon for about a mile. Eventually the trail grabs the west facing canyon wall, affording hikers views of the river and terrain below. Follow the trail as it climbs to the top of the canyon, skirting the rimrock along the way to your final destination, Chimney Rock. At this large basalt postpile outcropping, hikers can scramble out to a narrow perch that offers views of distant Cascade peaks and the twisting river canyon below.
Background: Hudson Bay trapper Peter Skene Ogden was the first European to leave written accounts of his travels and explorations along the Crooked River in the 1820s. White settlers arrived decades later after the land was ceded under the treaty of 1885 by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to the federal government. The tribe retains hunting and fishing rights in the area.
What to Know: The Chimney Rock day use area is roughly seventeen miles from Prineville, but can also be reached directly from Bend via Alfalfa Market Road. There are nine developed campsites in the Lower Crooked River Wild and Scenic section, including the Chimney Rock campground adjacent to the day use area.
A fifth-generation Oregonian who has been in Bend for more than thirty years, Sally Russell has raised two daughters while contributing to a host of civic and cultural institutions, including serving as the executive director of Cascade Cycling Classic and the Cascade Festival of Music. She has served on the Bend City Council since 2012. Russell recently spoke with Bend Magazine‘s Theresa “Teafly” Peterson about Bend’s evolution.
On Roots
I grew up in Portland. My family is from Portland. We have deep roots in Oregon. My father’s family came across on the Oregon Trail. I have a set of maps my mom and dad found, as a matter of fact. My family built a cabin up at Elk Lake in 1932. My sister and I would bum as much time as we could from our relatives who were staying there. Then, I followed a boyfriend here in 1984. He left. I stayed.
On What It Means to Be Local
The thing I loved best when I moved to Bend—we still have some of it—is that we always waved to each other. We always knew everybody’s name. There was always this sense of place and belonging. Really, Bend still is a place where there is a sense of belonging, of being accepted and being drawn in, I hope, for everyone in our community. That was very much what drew me to Bend in the beginning. We knew each other and if we didn’t, if we were passing each other at an intersection, we still waved. There was this sense that “We’re in this together.”
On Bend’s Growth
With the new influx of people, there are so many opportunities! One is the opportunity to meet people you have more in common with. The music offerings, culture and art offerings are now so much broader. If you look at food, art, culture and music, all of that is really rich. When I first moved to Bend, we only had country western music—and that’s okay! I can listen to country western music, and my daughters love it, but there comes a moment where you want a little change. Now we have that.
On Philosophy
I’m a girl of diversity, not necessarily favorites. When I walk into a room, I will always choose a different seat if I can, so I can sit with different people and learn different things.
On City Council Life
I always played with the idea of participating in a way where I could contribute to the policy-making of the city where I live and raised children. I served on the planning commission for a while, so I had a really good understanding of what it could be like. Believe me, when you are standing underneath that cold political waterfall, you are never quite ready for it—no matter how much you prepare.
On Legislating
To get to really good policy, I’m looking at what is happening on the ground. Tiny little shifts are actually big shifts in terms of quality of life.
On Bend’s Economy
Bend goes through all these boom and bust cycles and you have to reinvent yourself and be very flexible. The hardest bust was for sure the one that began to manifest in 2006-2007 and then really locked-in by 2008. That was tough. We lost businesses, we lost people. It was tough, tough. Bend in some ways has recovered. One of my goals in terms of my leadership role in this community is to try to really look at these boom and bust cycles over time and to look at strategies to stabilize our community to be more resilient.
On Perspective
Many people don’t know, but I was a formidable mountain bike racer. I won a bike marathon in Germany, like eight hours on the bike. I have an endurance factor. I played piano for ten years, so I have a huge appreciation for music as a way to communicate. I’ve taken all these passions—my passion for the outdoors, my athleticism, my appreciation for the written word and my appreciation for people who have different values and points of view—and put them together to solve the puzzle, and I love these kind of puzzles.
The third annual conference for creative thinkers will take place in Bend on October 26 and 27.
Bend Design Conference
With an emphasis on sparking conversations that drive social change, the annual Bend Design Conference is hoping to reach more than designers in its annual event.
Bend Design Conference returns for the third year on October 26 and 27 with the theme “Shape Our Future.” The two-day event, presented by Scalehouse, brings designers, writers, architects, business leaders and more to Bend for a conference that will explore how art, design and ideas can spur conversation and action.
“Bend Design has evolved this year with a more focused theme of how design thinking can impact social change,” said Bend Design co-producer René Mitchell. “Our speakers have diverse design backgrounds—architects, graphic designers, writers, and business leaders—yet they are applying their skills and experience to solve social and business problems.”
Bend Design begins with a series of talks from keynote speakers on Thursday, October 26 at the Tower Theatre. Presentations cover a range of topics, from women in the design field to how design can be used for social change. That evening, attendees can sign up to participate in Hosted Conversations, where speakers and attendees share a meal and conversation at local restaurants.
During the second day of the conference, attendees can choose from a range of workshops led by the speakers as well as community leaders. These interactive sessions are designed to be engaging and thought-provoking.
“We hope people will come away with new ideas on connecting and collaborating, new ways to use their talents to make a difference,” said co-producer Martha Murray. “Creative-thinking and design-thinking can be applied to most any situation or issue. The result is new options, new solutions, new perspectives.”
The conference brings creative people from around the country to participate. It’s one of a growing number of cultural and business-related gatherings that showcase Bend and Central Oregon as more than just an outdoor playground.
“We’ve gotten really positive feedback about the Bend community,” said Murray. “There’s been a hunger for what Bend Design is offering. Outside of Bend, we’re becoming known as a place to come and look for talent. That’s pretty cool.”
For more information and to sign up for the conference, visit benddesign.org
The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy edited by John Brehm
Buddhism has seen a resurgence in book sales the past few years by publishers focusing on mindfulness, the practice of fully experiencing the present. This compilation of poetry adds two other Buddhist concepts: impermanence (acceptance of change) and joy (unselfish happiness in spite of circumstances). The editor has compiled more than 125 short poems he feels exhibit those three ideas—from East and West, old and new, known and unknown poets. No larger than an outstretched hand, it’s the ideal size for carrying around and dipping into throughout your day. It works well as a sampler for those who want to read more poetry but don’t know where to start. The last quarter of the book includes tips on mindful reading and bite-size biographies of each poet, making this a perfect gift to yourself or another. — Josh
Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms by Amanda Steinberg
Amanda Steinberg is the founder and CEO of the financial website dailyworth.com, which currently has more than one million subscribers. In Worth It, her first book, she writes about the relationship women have to their finances and self worth. Dave Ramsey, David Bach, Robert Kiyosaki, and Suzy Orman all have valuable, sound advice for addressing your finances but Steinberg has honed in on an element that hasn’t really been covered by those greats. With a lot of personal stories and some simple exercises, she leads you through identifying your “Money Story” and your “Money Type,” and equips you to easily take the wheel of your financial life. — Heidi
Goodbye Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up inspired many to clean up their messes in recent years and this book, also from Japan, expands on that trend. I’m not a full minimalist (I like my stuff!), but I do try to practice “less is more,” and I found this to be a compelling, personal book. Once a packrat obsessed with possessions and others’ perceptions, the author Fumio Sasaki now owns nothing but the bare necessities to live. As a result, he’s gone from depressed to content. The book starts with a section of photos ofvarious Japanese minimalist rooms and one world traveler’s complete possessions in a single small bag, followed by fifty-five tips for how and why to be minimalist, then some bonus motivations. It only took an hour to read, thanks to its spare, serene prose. Every nonfiction book should be this digestible. — Josh
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
“Grief is a demanding companion.” After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg (CEO of Facebook) finds herself navigating life in the completely unfamiliar, and unwanted, Option B. Through her own journey of loss and grief to get her feet back under her, she and her writing partner Adam Grant, who wrote the bestselling books Give and Take and Originals, have beautifully composed a companion to help those who are grieving from any of life’s myriad losses as well as for those who are witness to someone else’s grieving. We will all face loss of some kind, and this is a relevant guide back to resilience. — Heidi
“No Man’s Land” will have two primetime screenings along with moderated discussions at the fourteenth annual BendFilm Festival.
Film still from “No Man’s Land,” a documentary that will have two primetime screenings at the fourteenth annual BendFilm Festival.
Hindsight really is 20/20. Today, watching “No Man’s Land,” a documentary about the forty-day occupation at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in early 2016, it’s easy to say that the event was a precursor to the results of the presidential election just ten months later.
But at the time, the occupiers seemed like a fringe group of libertarian cowboys.
Filmmaker David Byars had the fortuitous timing to have been working on a film about the public lands debate in the West for a year and a half leading up to the occupation. When news of the stand-off broke, he was on a plane and at the refuge just three days later.
Save a short fundraising break at his homebase in Colorado, Byars captured the entire occupation, from the initial takeover as the occupiers settled in to the aftermath of the death of LaVoy Finicum, the Nevada rancher who was shot by federal agents when he left the refuge. Byars slept in his car most nights through the bitter cold, and spent his time on the refuge with the occupiers. The result is a telling look into the day-to-day lives of the occupiers on the refuge. The footage is broken up with commentary from journalists, (former Oregonian reporter Les Zaitz, who grew up in Eastern Oregon and owns a ranch there is particularly interesting), the Harney County sheriff and judge and one of the occupiers.
Byars rarely inserts himself into the eighty-one minute documentary, letting the protesters and residents of Harney County, who were bitterly divided over the occupation, including the sheriff and county judge, tell their story.
“It’s not an easy film and it doesn’t choose sides,” said Byars in an interview with Bend Magazine. In fact, Byars added, “I’ve taken a lot of heat from both sides.”
Watching the film today, it’s impossible not to compare it to the events that paralleled the occupation and trial and what’s happened since.
“People are confused about American identity,” said Byars, “and they’re grieving about that confusion. They’re trying to come to terms with what it means to be an American.”
The film has been making the rounds at independent film festivals, showing at the Tribeca Film Festival and now at BendFilm, where it will be shown on Friday and Saturday nights at the Tower Theatre, followed by discussions moderated by Bend-based OPB reporter Amanda Peacher.
BendFilm executive director Todd Looby said that one the festival brings out a different type of conversation around the community.
“You’re talking about stuff that you typically don’t talk about year-round,” said Looby. “Now you’re really talking about what’s going on in the world and what’s here. That’s what I really like about ‘No Man’s Land.’”
The festival brings local, national and international films (some that are fresh off wins at Cannes) to Bend for the four-day festival. More than a chance to watch films you won’t find at big cinemaplexes, BendFilm is about starting conversations in the community.
“It’s four short days but I think it has a lasting impact,” said Looby. “It’s a vital thing for this town to keep pushing, because culture is what gets people out and gets people talking more than anything else, really.”
Byars will be at the Saturday night screening to participate in the discussion that follows, and he’s prepared for a conversation that might be animated given Deschutes County’s politically diverse population.
“No Man’s Land” is a powerful and important documentary about an event that put Oregon at the center of the nation’s attention for more than a month. It’s a timely and important film that shouldn’t be missed.
In August, Bend’s state representative Knute Buehler announced he was running for governor in 2018.
Knute Buelher
It’s not the kind of odds that Vegas likes, but if Oregon voters opt to install a Republican in the governor’s seat, the state’s new chief executive would likely come from Bend.
It’s been a quarter-century since Oregon voters leaned to the GOP, but if they do so this year it’s likely that Bend’s Knute Buehler would be the next governor, at least that’s the early consensus among politicos after Buehler announced in August that he was throwing his proverbial hat in the race to challenge Democrat Kate Brown, who is expected to seek election in 2018. (Brown won a special election in 2016 after serving as interim when former Governor John Kitzhaber resigned amid an ethics scandal.)
An orthopedic surgeon at Bend’s The Center, Buehler has served as Bend’s state representative since 2014. During that time Buehler has built a solid record as a moderate Republican, which has included voting to expand access to birth control and limiting the influence of corporate dollars on state politics.
If Buehler faces off against Brown in 2018, it will represent a rematch of their 2012 race in which Brown defeated Buehler in the race for secretary of state. If elected, Buehler would be the first Republican governor in Oregon since Vic Atiyeh left office in 1987 and the first with Central Oregon ties since Governor Tom McCall was last elected in 1970.
The Ochoco National Forest Service faces legal challenges to its Ochoco Summit Trail System Project.
Ochoco National Forest
A proposal to create an official motorized trail system east of Prineville is drawing fire from environmentalists and state wildlife managers.
In June, Ochoco National Forest leaders signed a decision to designate and build 137 miles of off-highway vehicle trails, prompting legal challenges from the Bend-based environmental watchdog group, Central Oregon LandWatch, along with other environment protection organizations Oregon Wild, the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians. At the end of August, the Oregon Hunters Association also filed a lawsuit against the Ochoco National Forest, claiming that the trail system would hurt the elk population in the forest.
Opponents, including LandWatch, allege Ochoco National Forest managers did sufficiently account for impacts on wildlife and habitat when they developed the proposed trail system.
LandWatch President Paul Dewey said that Ochoco Summit Trail System, as the project is officially known, was developed in order to cater to a small group of motorized users. Ochoco National Forest staff have been working on the project for about a decade with the Ochoco Trail Riders, a club of fifty-five members who have been advocating for more trails in the Ochoco National Forest.
“As far as we can tell, the Forest Service just felt politically compelled to create this system,” said Dewey.
Larry Ulrich, president of the Ochoco Trail Riders (OTR), has been riding dirt bikes and ATVs in the Ochoco National Forest since the 1960s. He said the forest hasn’t changed much since then, which is exactly why off-road vehicle users like riding in the Ochocos.
“It’s so much different than the Deschutes [National Forest],” said Ulrich. “It’s beautiful. It has a lot of grass, a lot of water,” compared to the volcanic dust that covers the trails in the summer in the Deschutes National Forest trail system, where there are currently 343 miles of off-highway vehicle trails. Those trails were designed for off-highway vehicle recreation and are considered “multi-use,” which allow for off-highway vehicles such as ATVs, quads, Jeeps, side by sides and certain types of motorcycles.
There is currently one official off-highway vehicle trail in use in the Ochocos, the Green Mountain Trail, which is 8.5 miles long. That trail represents just a fraction of the total ad-hoc OHV trail network, which LandWatch and other opponents of formal expansion say is already in-use and inadequately monitored.
Those critics say that adding more than one hundred miles of new off-road vehicle trails would disrupt vulnerable wildlife populations and diminish wildlife habitat. Ochoco Trail Riders’ Ulrich said that’s not the case, citing the environmental impact report that the Forest Service published in 2016, which looked at some of those potential impacts.
“The Forest Service did their homework,” said Ulrich. “They did everything right when they did their environmental impact statement,” which was originally conducted in 2014 and revised in 2016.
Not everyone agrees with Ulrich and the Ochoco National Forest findings. The report drew more than one thousand critical responses from the community, about one hundred of which the Forest Service responded to and published in its revised Environmental Impact Statement in 2016.
Environmentalists aren’t the only ones raising objections.
ODFW wildlife biologist Greg Jackle said that the trail system would disrupt the habitat of vulnerable populations such as Rocky Mountain elk and redband trout.
Jackle said that the trails would have a “pretty hefty disturbance” in elk summering habitat in the Ochocos along with stream disturbance that would impact the trout population.
ODFW has been in negotiations with the Ochoco National Forest about the potential conflict but is not part of any of the legal challenges. Jackle said his agency is concerned that users will not respect the legal trails.
“We’re not on the same page I guess,” said Jackle. “We don’t buy that if you design a designated trail system that [off-road vehicle users] won’t go off road and go to these other places, too. The monitoring is very critical.”
ODFW is working to find a compromise with the Ochoco National Forest, and Jackle said the concern now is getting preliminary data prior to trail construction in order to monitor any changes in wildlife populations.
Ochoco National Forest Service Superintendent Stacey Forson declined to comment on the legal complaint, but a representative for the Ochocos said that despite the legal challenge, the Forest Service would move ahead with its plans for the system.
However, Ochoco Trail Riders’ Ulrich said that his group continues to wait for the Forest Service to implement its plan and doesn’t expect much to happen until the legal challenges are resolved.
Our picks for the weekend include a German-style festival, a musical and grabbing the last of the region’s harvest at a farmers’ market.
Oktoberfest
September 15-16 | Bend
Dust off your dirndls and lederhosen and grab your stein’s because Bend’s Oktoberfest is back. The German-inspired festival is celebrated locally over one September weekend in downtown Bend. The event is free and family-friendly, with fun activities to watch or take part in all weekend, including tricycle races, live Oompah music and weiner dog races. Local breweries will pour German-style ales and there will be Bavarian-style bites to try.
Rock of Ages
September 15-23 | Bend
Relive the 80s through its most iconic songs. “Rock of Ages” is a rock and roll musical featuring the music of Queen, Journey and more. The musical is produced by the local production company, Thoroughly Modern Productions and is staged at the Tower Theatre in downtown Bend.
NorthWest Crossing Farmers’
Market September 16 | Bend
This is the last weekend to catch the NorthWest Crossing Farmers’ Market before the farm stands close for the season. Get the last round of harvest from local farms and support the local food producers of the region. The farmers’ market has activities for kids while parents shop at the local vendors.
Grapes and Golf
September 14-16 | Black Butte Ranch
Grapes and Golf is the annual couples golf tournament at Black Butte Ranch. The weekend tees off with a wine reception at the resort, and the tournament play begins Saturday on the Glaze Meadow golf course. The event brings in renowned wineries and chefs that prepare a four-course wine dinner Saturday evening. On Sunday, the tournament continues on the Big Meadow golf course and ends with a barbecue lunch. Winners of the tournament receive a trip to the 2018 Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Ride Row Run
September 16-17 | Maupin
Ride Row Run is Maupin’s version of a triathlon. Participants start with a cycling race up and down the hills of Maupin, then row or paddle down a stretch of the Deschutes River and finish a race with a sprint to the finish line. The event can be done individually, in pairs or in teams. End the race with a party on the lawn at the Imperial River Company. The event kicks off with a pre-registration as well as a day of fun, family oriented activities on Saturday, including a SUP race, BBQ and trike races.
A Bend sushi veteran makes a quiet but impactful return to the town’s culinary scene with Kusshi NW.
When Chef Ian Skomski left Bend’s Kanpai in 2011 to open Boxer in Portland, a collective tear was shed by sushi addicts all over town. If you were lucky enough to catch him during his tenure, you know why. Thoughtful and artful, he was a highlight in Bend’s culinary world at the time.
Boxer, a high-end omakase (chef’s choice) restaurant, went on to become a great success, amassing a dedicated following over its two-and-a-half-year run. Fortunately for us, Bend kept calling Skomski back, and he found his way home. Portland’s turn to mourn.
Enter Kusshi NW, Skomski’s latest project. Much to the relief of his extensive fan base, after a brief hiatus from the kitchen, he unpacked his knives in late 2015 to test the waters with a string of pop-up dinners. Both a classically trained master sushi chef and an undeniable natural talent, Skomski combines an impressive depth of knowledge with creativity and originality. He also cuts no corners, taking immense care in procuring fresh, premium seafood and the highest quality ingredients from the Northwest and beyond.
Kusshi, meaning “precious” (and the name of one of Skomski’s favorite oysters), couldn’t be a more appropriate name. His creations are inspired. Think Hamachi sashimi with ponzu, smoked strawberry, strawberry “sriracha,” and Thai basil or salmon with white soy, fennel, lemon and horseradish. Vegetables, often an afterthought elsewhere in the sushi world, are far more than a garnish and treated with the utmost respect, possibly house-pickled or marinated with bright flavors. Nigiri is beautifully cut and the rice is perfectly seasoned and cooked. Rolls have just the right combination of textures and tastes. It’s as pleasing to look at as it is to eat.
The pop-up omakase dinners were so well-received—easily selling out every time—that Kusshi NW instituted a semi-regular Poke pop-up at White Water Taphouse on Bond Street in downtown Bend. Prepared in a Japanese style rather than Hawaiian, Poke bowls might feature fresh, line-caught Oregon albacore, king salmon or organic sprouted tofu. Dressed in traditional ingredients, including poke sauce, ginger, scallion and hijiki—combined with Skomski’s creative touches such as lime-marinated onion, salsa verde or candied Serrano—each bite is a celebration for your palate. Poke is generally accompanied by a small selection of other equally good offerings such as rolls or sashimi.
The success of these pop-ups has cemented Skomski’s return to a place among Bend’s culinary best—to the point that it’s highly likely Kusshi NW will put down roots in a more permanent home. In the meantime, check Kusshi’s Facebook page for where Skomski is popping up next. And wherever it is, be sure to get there early. His pop-ups are often “while supplies last,” and they usually don’t last very long.
On Seed to Table’s (S2T) wellness education-focused farm plot, Sisters’ students and adults participate in farm based education covering nutrition, science, art, business management, the basics of growing ones’ own food, the importance of supporting local farmers and physical activity. Through growing its own food and sourcing food from Oregon farmers, the nonprofit provides fresh produce to families through affordable produce shares, plus distribution to Sisters Kiwanis Food Bank, Bread of Life Food Bank and the Sisters School District.
Seed to Table farm in Sisters. Photo by Joshua Langlais
20,000 pounds of S2T farm-grown food will go to the Sisters community this year.
1,300 students from Central Oregon schools receive S2T farm education each year, totaling 10,000+ hours of student involvement on the farm.
400 hours of adult participation in S2T community presentations.
12,500 pounds of nutritious, locally grown and processed foods have gone to the Sisters schools, brought in by S2T from Oregon farmers and distributors.
Established in 2012 by Deschutes Brewery alum Paul Arney, The Ale Apothecary is Bend’s deliberately anachronistic ale maker, offering a variety of “new Old World,” spontaneously fermented, small-batch beers. The brewery is located at Arney’s home in a patch of national forest near Tumalo Creek, west of town. This past spring, Arney opened up a new tasting room to the public on Bend’s west side.
Photo by Alex Jordan
“Wood” is one of the dominant themes behind The Ale Apothecary. From the beer’s inception in a modified-barrel mash tun (or a hollowed-out spruce tree, in the case of Sahati, Arney’s interpretation of a Finnish-inspired spruce beer), through fermentation and aging in more barrels, wood touches nearly every stage of the beer’s life.
The wild yeasts that inoculate the brew develop a distinctive rustic, semi-sour character, something of a terroir that the barrels harbor from batch to batch and that Arney relies on when blending his creations.
Photo by Alex Jordan
Once bottled, there is one final stage in the beer’s wood-infused lifecycle: drinking it at the new tasting room.
Adorned in handsome, handmade, wooden furniture, barrel-themed fixtures, an exposed beam ceiling and even the original kuurna (hollowed-out log) used to brew Arney’s Sahati, the tasting room celebrates the brewery’s woodsy legacy. It’s located in The Ale Apothecary’s little-known barrel facility next door to the Century Center (home of GoodLife Brewing). Visitors will discover an experience more akin to a winery than the typical brewery tasting room.
The open floorplan offers ample glimpses of the barrels located throughout, and there is an artistic aesthetic that underscores the brewery’s artisanal roots.
Corked bottles are available to purchase for on-premise consumption, and select beers are available in single pours on a rotating basis—but never on draft, and no guest beers. Arney wouldn’t have it any other way. “If you want RPM IPA, Cabin 22 is right across the street,” he offered, coolly.
A conversation with local sustainability pioneer Sarahlee Lawrence.
Rainshadow Organics owner Sarahlee Lawrence. Photo by Joshua Langlais
You grew up on this property. What is the biggest change that’s occurred?
I returned home after a couple degrees in environmental science and ten years of international river guiding to take over my family farm. Committed to raising food for Central Oregon, I converted the farm to certified organic and began my journey toward raising a “full diet.”
You said once that you hadn’t planted a seed or really eaten vegetables before jumping into this endeavor. What ever possessed you to take this up?
I read an essay by Michael Pollen that stopped me in my tracks. Food as we know it was doomed. Farmers were growing old. Farmland was being developed. With my family land, I knew I could make a difference.
You rely on a fair amount of student labor to make things work. Can you talk about the role of education in the operation?
It would be easier to hire staff for the farm and probably about the same financially, but I believe we need more farmers. I believe that food security lies in the working hands of young people that need skills, field experience, learned perseverance and awareness. I open my farm to people committed to learning how to farm, with the intent of farming themselves, or who are at least raising their awareness about food and want to be more informed, conscious eaters. They are part of a seven-month intensive curriculum through the Rogue Farm Corps.
This is a quiet and remote place, at least by Central Oregon standards, yet it feels very connected to the community. Is that deliberate?
We are dedicated to our community, both in the immediate Central Oregon region and beyond it. We depend on people who are committed to eating seasonal food, organically grown, right here. This is a culinary adventure. It is not the way people are used to shopping for specific recipes with all ingredients available to them. This is preservation. This is honoring each ingredient as it comes. This is longing. This is patience. This is cooking as a daily act. The people who eat our food bring their families together to cook and to eat. It is community and conviviality. We eat the food we grow as a crew every day. We celebrate the first of everything. We get creative as plants keep on giving. We try to inspire those that shop at the farm with recipes posted regularly to our website, and we’ll soon be hosting cooking classes.
Photo by Joshua Langlais
Speaking of community, September 16 marks the grand opening of your market and beautiful commercial kitchen. How are these additions going to fit into your existing operation and what are a couple of fun surprises that people might find?
We are so excited about our new kitchen and store. We are cooking through this first season, learning to preserve everything. You will of course find our full fresh market array of veggies, pork, beef, chicken, buckwheat and wheat flour. We’re drying and pickling and fermenting like crazy. This is an everchanging place. We’ll be posting specials and new products regularly. The kitchen completes the circle, allowing us to get more of our food into the hands of our community, especially people who aren’t used to cooking with farm fresh food. We believe in food access, so we also accept Oregon Farm Direct Nutrition Program vouchers and we will soon take SNAP benefits.
The CSA has been the cornerstone of your business. What are some new and exciting things happening there?
Our CSA has grown into a full-diet, year-round offering. We have both small and large, meat and veggie shares for summer and winter. We have classic veggies that people love, but being a member exposes you to new and fun varieties, too. It is a culinary adventure through the season. We offer two pick up locations in Bend, downtown on Wednesdays and NorthWest Crossing on Saturdays, or you can pick up your CSA at the farm. CSA members often get things first in the season, and we share the abundance of the season as it comes. The farm kitchen is a new and unique aspect for the CSA. We’ll be sharing recipes of all the creative, culinary energy that is surrounding how we enjoy, store and preserve this food.
By practicing “regenerative” ranching, Blue Mountain Ranch is improving the land that its cattle grazes on.
Blue Mountain Ranch in Paulina, Oregon. Photo by Joshua Langlais
“My grandfather owned a dairy for sixty years in Arizona and the whole time he dreamed of becoming a cattle rancher,” said Sarah Teskey, who bought Blue Mountain Ranch in Paulina with four generations of her family in 2006. “These 23,000 acres had a running water source, contiguous land next to BLM with forest permits and enough property for cattle to support several families. My grandfather lived his last years with everything he had hoped and dreamed for in a ranch.”
Everyone in the family had farm or ranch experience prior to the move from Arizona to Oregon but not on this scale of raising cattle and managing grass. The relatives threw themselves into learning both on the rangeland and on the pages of the latest ranching literature. When they began to learn about holistic management, things clicked.
“‘Regenerative qualities.’ It’s a buzz word in ranching now,” said Teskey. “It’s past sustainable. We don’t just want to maintain land with holistic practices, we want to improve it.”
Blue Mountain operates on the principle that grass-fed and grass-finished beef provides the best benefit to the consumer because there are no additives or feed other than local forage. Beyond the consumer, the overall health of their 1,000 head of cattle and the land they graze are equally important priorities for the ranch.
“We believe that a holistic outlook will eventually become what’s best for the pocketbook over the long arc,” said Teskey who, along with her husband, is raising two boys on the ranch.
Their grazing practices maximize growth of nutrient-dense forage, which in turn promotes the soil’s microbial functions and regenerative processes. Blue Mountain times the start of their calving season later in the spring than many ranches do, in order to “reduce the loss that can happen with winter calving and maximize high-energy protein intake by grazing cattle on grass instead of hay when they are about to give birth,” said Teskey.
“The key is to evaluate what you’re doing,” she said. “Is it because it’s the way it’s always been done or because the neighbors do it or because it’s what’s best for our operation, our land, our specific location? It’s a paradigm shift.”
Blue Mountain’s beef is available for purchase by quarter, half or whole animal.
Bikepacking takes mountain biking from excursion to adventure status.
Tom Karren was a respectable member of society. He had a day job. Slept under the same roof most nights and enjoyed the occasional afternoon and weekend road bike ride. That was before he strapped on his first frame bag and became another bikepacking convert. These days Karren works when it allows, usually sleeps under the stars and uses roads primarily to move from one bikepacking adventure to the next.
Since taking up bikepacking just three years ago, Karren has completed the Continental Divide Trail, a bruising two-wheeled bisection of the United States along its most arduous terrain. He has bikepacked across British Columbia, completed the 400-mile Smoke ‘n Fire backcountry race in Central Idaho and finished the grueling Tour de los Padres trail in California. Karren’s major regret: that he didn’t discover the sport sooner.
“If I’ve been off my bike in the last year, I doubt it’s more than a one- or two-day stretch,” said Karren.
Yes, he’s an extreme case, but Karren is on the forefront of a recreational revolution that is winning new adherents by the day. While there are no ready measurements of the amorphous sport—the very definition of bikepacking is as fluid and mutable as the DIY routes that riders create—the anecdotal evidence is mounting for bikepacking as the next sport to capture the imagination of outdoor minded adventurers. In a certain respect, it’s almost surprising that it hasn’t happened sooner. The sport combines hugely popular activities of biking, camping and backcountry hiking.
With the advent of new lightweight gear and ever more access to trails and roads, this has become a popular sport for adventurous intermediate and advanced riders. Oregon has some outstanding opportunities to explore the wild and remote areas of the state with some planning and strategic investment.
We asked veteran bikepacker and local shop owner David Marchi of Crow’s Feet Commons to show us the ropes locally. David and his gang of merry bikepackers helped us navigate an easily attainable local route that incorporated the Metolius-Windigo and Mrazek trails. From there we connected to the Peterson Ridge trail system with an overnight stay at Three Creeks Lake.
Stellar views and wildlife abounded. Our evening included an Osprey snagging a fish in the evening and a more graceful bald eagle doing the same the next morning. We rode out the next day for what bikepackers dub a “sub-24,” feeling we had wrapped a whole weekend of adventure in just a matter of hours. As it turns out, losing track of time is one of the happy casualties of a successful bikepacking adventure.
Oregon’s Expanding Trails
The newly minted Oregon Timber Trail connects remote Lakeview to Hood River, putting Central Oregon square in the middle of the bikepacking revolution. With nearly 700 miles of remote trails, half of which is singletrack, the Timber Trail is now a bucket list item for Northwest bikepackers and provides some of Oregon’s best riding. The Three Sisters Three Rivers trail is a great option that begins in Bend and encompasses several renowned local trails, including Peterson Ridge and the McKenzie River trails. Riders connect to the Oakridge system and the North Umpqua trail, ending in Roseburg. This 300-mile, mostly singletrack route has some incredible and challenging riding, with the added bonus of access to hot springs where you can soothe your aching muscles.
Gravel Grinding
In far Eastern Oregon, the Wallowa and Blue Mountains boast fantastic scenery and friendly people. Due the area’s remoteness, there is also incredibly light vehicle traffic. A growing list of rideable routes has this region on many bikepackers to-visit lists. Local gravel options abound in the Ochoco Mountains and guided tours are available with Good Bike Co. in the heart of Prineville.
Good Bike’s staff is knowledgeable and ready to help outfit just about any bike for a backroads or backcountry adventure. Owner James Good opened the shop in 2014 after relocating from Utah where he had worked at Petzl, an outdoor accessory company.
Good said he knew that Prineville had the potential to develop as an oasis for road bikers because of its proximity to several state scenic bikeways and its positioning on the TransAmerica Trail, the nation’s original coast-to-coast bike route, which begins in Virginia and ends at Astoria. What Good didn’t know is how fast interest would grow around bikepacking and gravel road riding.
The shop now sponsors an annual 100-mile gravel road race held in August and is expanding its offering of overnight tours that combine gravel riding and some little-known single and doubletrack routes east of the Ochocos.
“A lot of what we will do this fall is going to be two-night bikepacking trips where everybody is self supported but we provide the food,” said Good.
With fewer potential conflicts between motorists and riders on these lightly traveled routes, the rides can take on a convivial air and tend to be very social affairs.
Whether it’s a DIY route that riders map out with friends or a shop-supported ride, there’s a strong sense of ownership in a bikepacking experience.
“Once you’ve completed a route like that you feel a lot of gratification. You’re creating your own adventure, if you will,” Good said.
Finding the Right Gear
“I look at bikepacking as two things, one is bikepacking on mountain bikes and this other segment, which is more geared toward road aspects and to deserted doubletrack,” said Eric Power, owner of Bend Velo, a local shop that specializes in bikepacking and touring gear.
Power said he has seen huge growth interest over the past couple of years around bikepacking, from gear purchases to route building and guided tours. Bike shops and adventure outfitters can help riders choose the right bike and gear for any type of adventure, but they also can provide touroptions with catered meals, allowing riders to enjoy the best of both worlds—a backcountry tour with meals that include fresh ingredients and perks like cold beer and hot coffee.
If you’re going it alone, pack light. Bikepacking calls for small handlebar and seat bags to keep the ride balanced and nimble. Whatever frame you prefer, most gear can transfer from one type of bike to another, allowing riders to experiment as they evolve in the sport.
The other issue is technology. Phones and GPS devices have made it possible for riders to plan routes and make real time updates on trail conditions, sharing information and insight with other users. It also allows riders to move more confidently in remote areas without the fear of taking a wrong turn. But just how much technology is too much? Power, who takes half a dozen or so multiday trips per year and mixes in several more overnight rides, said it depends on the route and the rider.
“Part of the reason we are doing this is to get away from the computer and life as we know it. I want my [GPS] to beep at me if I’m off course, but I don’t want it beeping at me the whole ride,” he said.
Resources
Bikepacking.com is a popular bikepacking blog that has evolved into a comprehensive journal of all things bikepack related including gear reviews, bikepacking routes and stories from bikepackers around the globe.
Oregontimbertrail.org contains maps, photos and information on the newly minted Timber Trail, a 670-mile ride that bisects the state of Oregon, beginning in Lakeview and ending in Hood River. The route is more than fifty percent singletrack and includes some of the state’s most highly rated mountain bike trails.
One of the most popular and universally adopted web programs, Ride with GPS allows riders to research and plan routes that can be saved on GPS devices and smartphones. Routes can be saved, shared and updated in real time, allowing users to create a growing library of bike routes available to the public.
Tracy Treu is a Nebraska girl who believes in Midwestern values such as good manners, authenticity, being neighborly and having a strong commitment to family. She is also a yoga teacher with a colorful vocabulary and perfect comedic timing. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to take one of her classes, you have probably heard her spin on yogic philosophy “do no harm, but take no s#@t.” I sat down with Tracy over gin and tonics to discuss football, yoga, teenagers and giants.
You have some experience with football and yoga. Which came first?
The football came well before the yoga. I started dating Adam (Treu) in college. When we first met, I thought he was a weird giant and I didn’t know much about football other than Nebraska always won. I went to every one of Adam’s college games and then watched him play for the Oakland Raiders. I surprise my sons with what I know about football. Adam played in around 200 NFL games. You pick up a few things.
So when did you first discover yoga?
Adam actually practiced yoga before I did. He had a strength coach who was pretty forward thinking and incorporated it into their off-season program. It wasn’t until we moved to Oregon in 2009 that I began to practice and then teach at Groove Yoga.
And now you teach yoga to high school football players. How did that come about?
Our neighbor and friend Kevin Boss is another former NFL player who owns Boss Sports Performance. He roped me into it.
Smart man. Why is yoga a good compliment to football training?
True strength is strength plus flexibility. Yoga is a chance to work muscles in a new and different way. It gives them a chance to improve their movement so they can move anywhere, at any time, during a game. It also calms their minds. How do the boys like the yoga? The boys are super responsive, which I’m grateful for. By far their favorite part of the class is savasana. Most of them snore during it.
Are you able to slip in a little mindfulness?
I wouldn’t teach yoga unless I could slip mindfulness into it. Having a teenager myself, I know they are in a constant state of distraction or semi-controlled chaos. Stillness and breath bring them back to their essential nature.
You also helped prep a young player for NFL draft. Share a bit.
Again, Kevin roped me in. He asked Adam and me if we’d help get Oregon State player Dustin Stanton ready for Pro Day. Kevin worked Dustin hard on his speed, strength and fitness, and Adam worked with him on overall offensive lineman work. I did twice weekly yoga with him.
What was the outcome?
He’s in training camp with the Cincinnati Bengals right now.
That’s a good outcome. What lessons from yoga could the NFL benefit from?
Yoga teaches self-awareness and non-reactivity to stress, and keeps your body healthy and young. It would be a dream for every college and NFL team to have a yoga and mindfulness curriculum.
I’m pretty sure if anyone could make that happen, it would be Tracy Treu.
It might be a stretch to call a place as vast and rich in history as Eastern Oregon “undiscovered,” but you won’t find any crowds out there yet, either. Close to Bend, the John Day Territory allows you to pack multiple adventures into one weekend.
The Paradise Cove trail at the Painted Hills in Eastern Oregon.
Looking for solitude? Wide open spaces? Natural wonders that draw more wildlife than tourists? Consider pointing your wagon east, where a landscape brims with history and Western charm. Just an hour or so east of Prineville, the opportunities begin to unfold. From fossil hunting to horseback riding, it’s easy to pack multiple adventures into just a weekend. Though with low crowds and stunning scenery, you’ll probably start looking for excuses to extend your trip.
History in the Hills
The Painted Hills will evoke a lot of questions upon first sight. Mainly, what? and how? The softly carved rolling hills are, in fact, seemingly painted with a dramatic patina of ochre and emerald hues, a stark contrast to the golden, rocky hills that surround them.
If you can peel your eyes away from the natural wonder, you’ll learn that the Painted Hills are 40 million years in the making, the result of the ever-changing floodplain of the region. The Painted Hills are one unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, three separate geological wonders that are time capsules of North American natural history. The entire monument is filled with well-preserved fossils, and is considered one of the most complete fossil records in the world.
Traveling east, the Sheep Rock Unit includes the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center. Perched on a bluff overlooking the towering green claystone rock formation along one side of Highway 19, the center is a museum featuring the dynamic history of the floodplain. Inside, watch scientists at work as they study the immense trove of fossils that continue to be found throughout this region.
Going west again just past the small town of Fossil, the Clarno Unit trails bring you up close to the rocky spires of volcanic mudflow that hold fossilized remains of plant and animal life. These ancient markers are remnants from a time, long ago, when the region was a tropical rainforest, a fact than can be hard to wrap one’s head around today in the present desert landscape where fewer than fourteen inches of rain falls annually, on average. As a matter of perspective, that’s less precipitation than Los Angeles receives in any given year.
Each unit has a handful of short hikes, none longer than three miles, that bring you to diverse views of the landscape. Plan your trip to visit in the evening around sunset to catch the last rays of sun illuminating the red, orange and green rocks.
Small Town Living
Mitchell, Oregon
Mitchell is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of town. Just nine miles up Highway 26 from the Painted Hills, it would be a mistake to miss Mitchell. The town of a little more than one hundred people has had its fair share of misfortune, getting ravaged by three floods in the twentieth century.
The Sidewalk Cafe in Mitchell.
But it always comes back, refusing to be labeled as another Oregon ghost town. This time around, though, Mitchell is determined to do more than just survive. With a local craft brewery, a new biking hostel and several local businesses in various stages of renovation, Mitchell might be (dare we say it?) happening.
Tiger Town Brewing
Stop for breakfast or lunch at the Sidewalk Café or Little Pine Café. They’re both places where you’ll end up chatting with the locals, learning about the best swimming holes and getting directions such as “turn right at the leaning rock.”
In 2015, a new local watering hole popped up in the form of Tiger Town Brewing, the name a reference to the rough and tumble history of Mitchell’s main street, where loggers and miners once descended to spend their hard earned wages with predictable results. It’s set in a gravel lot, with picnic tables and a food truck serving up some of the best wings in recent memory.
Hunters and fisherman know the town well as a gateway to local outdoor recreation, but a lot of people who visit the Painted Hills, especially from out of state, aren’t aware Mitchell is just up the road. Though it’s small, the town is ideally located for exploring this region.
The Painted Hills Vacation Rentals, a triad of colorful cottages in a garden-like oasis, are a charming home base for a weekend visit. Aruna Jacobi and her mother, Barbara, run the Painted Hills Vacation Cottages and are committed to boosting tourism to the region. Aruna and Barbara, along with others in town with a vision for Mitchell, are hoping that the latest successes are just the beginning of bigger things for the town.
A cottage at the Painted Hills Vacation Rentals.
Still, most residents will continue to joke about the presence of rattlesnakes around town, just to keep it from getting too crowded.
Don’t Call it a Dude Ranch
Horseback riding at Wilson Ranches Retreat in Fossil.
The John Day Territory is quickly becoming a draw for road cyclists and motorcycle riders who are drawn to the scenic roadways. That said, the best way to see the region might be from the saddle of a horse. It’s a slower pace, which is fitting for the lifestyle here.
Horseback riding at Wilson Ranches Retreat in Fossil, Oregon.
At Wilson Ranches Retreat in Fossil, grab cowboy boots and a straw hat, hop on a horse and lend your hand. The working cattle ranch (as opposed to dude ranches, which are just resorts) sits on 20,000 acres in Fossil and traces its roots back six generations to the Oregon Trail. Kara Wilson and her husband Brian run the ranch now. They opened a bed and breakfast in 2000.
Wilson Ranch is set in a valley surrounded by golden hills. It feels like a secret, as does most of Eastern Oregon, but Kara is clear that locals don’t want to keep it to themselves. There’s enough room out here for everyone, she said.
When she talks about why more people should visit this region, it’s clear why travelers are choosing to make it a destination.
“You get to be the one hiker on a trail. The one rider on a horse going into the high desert hills, the one kayaker on the John Day River,” said Kara. “You get to be in a pristine, untouched place of Oregon. And you get to be the one.”
The Dirt Divas is all-female mountain biking program run by Pine Mountain Sports.
The term diva is more closely associated with the glitz of Hollywood than the grit of a Central Oregon trail, but don’t let the name fool you. Bend’s Dirt Divas aren’t scared to kick up a little dust. An all-female mountain biking program run by Pine Mountain Sports, Dirt Divas meets twice a month to grind gears and bomb singletrack across Central Oregon.
Created in 2010, the program also provides workshops for women who mountain bike or are interested in getting started, including sessions for bike maintenance and gear selection. Jane Quinn, the apparel buyer at Pine Mountain Sports, serves as the program coordinator for Dirt Divas. She took over in 2011 after moving to Bend from Big Sky, Montana and experiencing firsthand what being a woman in a male-dominated sport can feel like.
“You definitely feel like the underdog a little bit of the time,” said Quinn. “You definitely don’t get the respect men get in the sport.”
Part of Dirt Divas’ mission is promoting a positive mountain biking culture for women, who, said Quinn, can be deterred from the sport because of the macho stereotype it has.
“The program, I felt, had a lot of potential,” said Quinn. “It goes beyond getting together and going riding.”
Dirt Divas offers women of all riding abilities the opportunity to get on the trail, learn new skills and find a community among other female mountain bikers. It’s growing in popularity, too. Last year, more than 100 women showed up for one of the rides, though the program typically sees thirty to fifty women attend each session.
The program kicks off annually in April when mountain biking season typically begins in Central Oregon. The program is open to women of all riding abilities, from first-time riders to elite racers (a group that includes Quinn, who won the twenty-four-hour mountain bike race in Bend in 2014 and set the record for the women’s course time). The rides are free and women can join for one ride or all of them. Plus, you get to use a free rental bike from the Pine Mountain Sports shop. Women break out into groups based on abilities and ride trails around the area in groups.
Kimm Svoboda moved to Central Oregon two years ago and picked up mountain biking. She joined Dirt Divas that summer. She said the program has helped her build confidence on the trails.
“At first, I was kind of intimidated because it’s pretty male dominated and a younger person’s activity,” said Svoboda. “[Dirt Divas] is very friendly and encouraging.”
Agricultural Connections is a local organization that centralizes local food shopping for individuals and restaurants.
Liz Weigand, left, co-owner of Agricultural Connections. Photo by Joshua Langlais
Farmers’ markets and CSAs (or “community supported agriculture,” a direct-to-consumer subscription model for individual farms) are the most common ways people buy local food. Agricultural Connections centralizes local food shopping with one online marketplace, working with dozens of regional food producers to offer consumers more variety in one convenient platform. After the godfather of local food sourcing, Jackson’s Corner, signed on as Ag Connect’s first commercial partner in 2010, it was clear that restaurants and individual consumers alike were seeking local food from one streamlined source. Today, Ag Connect supplies more than twenty-five commercial partners (mostly restaurants).
CSAa
Orders are available for pickup or delivery across most of Central Oregon. Shoppers either subscribe or make a one-time produce box purchase up to two days before the weekly fulfillment, or go online and fill their digital shopping cart, ordering any item in any quantity.
Year-round Supply
When Liz Weigand bought Ag Connect before the end of its first year in 2010, an existential question hovered over the business: How can this become a year-round resource in the High Desert? “There was no way for the local food system to grow, evolve and flourish without the integration of the rest of the state,” she said. “We are completely committed to our network of producers here but if people are going to create local food habits, they need consistency. Supplementing with producers from the Willamette Valley was necessary to create the momentum to keep the business alive. Partnerships are invaluable. It’s Oregon food. We are all in this together.”
Dynamism
While the variety of offerings in the online store doesn’t rival a supermarket, Ag Connect does work with at least thirty Oregon producers at any given time, which means that customers can order everything from produce and dairy to meat and pantry items. We’ve been told we’re like a lubricator for the food system,” said Weigand, “developing channels for our suppliers and helping our customers get multiple offerings.”
Farm to Screen
Manya Williams is Weigand’s new business partner and she is laser focused on the company’s e-commerce. “I’m seed to plate—building relationships with producers—and she is plate to seed, looking at things from the customer’s point of view,” said Weigand. Having a smooth, web-based platform will help with logistical ease as their team builds out more delivery routes. (Current deliveries in Bend three times a week; Prineville and Sisters once a week.)
Transparency
As long as we are communicating the practices of each farm, we’ve seen success,” said Weigand, when asked about whether Ag Connect has a policy on their suppliers’ farming practices. “Most is sustainably grown with organic practices, whether certified or not. The customer can make the decision if they have the information. For example, we had cherries that were conventionally grown this year and if the shopper added it to their shopping cart online, they were notified about the farm’s practices.”
Symbiosis
The symbiotic relationship between Maker’s District grocer, Central Oregon Locavore, and Ag Connect began the year they were each founded, in 2010. Combined, the two companies buy and sell more Central Oregon-grown foods than anywhere else in the region. Locavore looks to Ag Connect for much of their sourcing and Ag Connect buys eggs from Locavore to sell to their customers.
DrinkTanks meets a growing demand for craft beer containers.
DrinkTanks team in their Bend workshop. Photo by Alex Jordan
DrinkTanks, founded in Bend in 2013, strives to meet a growing demand for premium craft beer containers. Two years of research and development had gone into the company’s growler that doubles as a personal keg, designed to preserve the freshness, temperature, carbonation and overall quality of your favorite premium craft beer. The company, which has thirty employees, imports stainless steel, vacuum-insulated bodies for the growlers and personal kegs, which are powder coated, laser-engraved and assembled by hand, one at time, in Bend.
Nicholas Hill worked on starting the company with his father, Tim Hill, a retired professor at Central Oregon Community College, who died in 2011. Drinktanks have two distinguishing characteristics: a truly leak-proof lid and the ability to hold sixty pounds of pressure to preserve carbonation. The keg cap accessory kit allows drinkers to also dispense from the growler while preserving carbonation up to a week.
A 2013 Kickstarter campaign for DrinkTanks raised about $240,000 from nearly 2,000 backers. Two years later, a second campaign for the Kegulator Cap and The Juggernaut, a 128-ounce growler, raised more than $300,000 from more than 2,000 backers.
In June 2016, DrinkTanks moved from Bend’s west side to triple its footprint at a 17,250-square-foot facility off Empire Road in Bend.
The company has recently been moving into the coffee-drinking arena, too, launching a line of vacuum insulated cups earlier this year. The line won the Best New Product award at Coffee Fest, a large specialty coffee trade show in Nashville.
“A few hundred breweries across the country are selling our products, as well as several dozen large retailers including REI and backcountry.com,” said marketing director Jackson Esselman.
Sales are growing, and being in Bend has played into the company’s success, he said. “Bend is a hub of craft breweries and one of the most sought-after outdoor towns in the country, so being based here gives us instant credibility. It’s what started our company and fuels us, so rather than outsourcing labor and production, maybe it’s not the most profitable, but it’s true to our roots.”
Tribe Pilot is an app that will make planning multiday outdoor adventures easier.
Tribe Pilot founder Matt Smith
Last summer, after a five-year bender in startup land, Bend’s Matt Smith took some time to regroup and play. The biggest adventure of the summer was a mountain biking trip into the backcountry of British Columbia with a group of friends. In planning it over months, the friends sent hundreds of emails—maps, gear lists, pack lists, mountain bike reviews—amid tons of useless banter. Locating the map? That was a twenty-minute affair.
By the end of the trip, photos were spread across four platforms and the email string had 250 messages. It was on that trip, cranking up and down the mountains of B.C., that Smith found his next adventure: finding a way to solve that problem of decentralization, one likely shared by many lovers of the outdoors.
Smith’s app acts as a trip dashboard, compiling critical trip details in one location for easy access to trip dates, locations, pack lists and assignments.
Tribe Pilot is largely a virtual company, relying on outside contractors for much of the work. It has been self-funded so far, and at the Outfound startup festival in Hood River in June, it won the popular vote in the concept-stage startup competition. (The prize was essentially bragging rights.)
The app was in beta during the summer, and the official launch is set for September 15. Smith said he has some great launch partners that will give them a rapid growth curve out of the gate.
“Several million users would be spectacular, at some point, but currently we are focusing on making our first 1,000 extremely happy,” he said. “If we can do that, then a million users are around the corner. If you pinned me down and tickled my feet, I would have to tell you that by the end of 2018 we are targeting 100,000 users who are constantly planning adventures and inviting their friends.”
His strategy is to collect user feedback metrics to rapidly iterate the product next year. By year three, they are looking to have a loyal user base that considers Tribe Pilot an integral part of all of their outdoor adventures that uses it as their tribe’s indispensable platform.
LeadMethod is a software startup based in Bend that closes the gap between leads and sales.
LeadMethod founder Justin Johnson
For businesses grappling with the steps between leads and sales, a Bend startup has the solution. LeadMethod’s eponymous software platform helps this along, generating feedback about lead status, expected close dates, pipeline projections and other data that can increase sales, especially for companies that sell through distributors and independent representatives. Founded by Justin Johnson in 2014, the company is poised for growth.
“The market continues to tell us that we are a great product-market fit and there is a big opportunity for us,” said Johnson, a veteran software product manager.
In the last two years, the startup doubled its revenue and number of staff. The team of ten is seeking to hire more sales, development and client services staff. In the last year, the company has been investing in its technology to better integrate it with other software products, something that large customers require.
The next six to twelve months are key to growth. The company has the technology, talent and a strong customer base, so taking it to the next level likely requires fundraising, a larger office space in Bend, and a second office in Portland.
“The good news is we have fantastic current investors and many other investors that want to be a part of the new raise,” said Johnson.
He has the background for the endeavor, too. For fifteen years prior to LeadMethod, he was in a software product management position, with experience in startups and large companies.
“Dozens of times I have identified good market opportunities and built software products to fit,” he said. “I applied the same best practice to understand our target market, test the market with the idea, then finally build the market to sell. It worked. It worked through lots of interviews, research, and looking at what other companies have tried and failed or succeeded with in this market.”
LeadMethod’s silver bullet is that it addresses a specific customer need, a software problem that no one else has solved, said Johnson.
“In the first two years we solved the problem, and now it is time to apply the same model at a much larger scale. There are more than 30,000 companies in the U.S. that should be using our software, and five times that globally.”
Another distinguishing factor is that while many people have good ideas, not all have the ability to execute them.
“Our team at LeadMethod are masters of execution, and that is the reason for our success,” said Johnson, who, while crediting his team, also possesses the confidence that startup leaders need.
“We’re in a very good position … this will be one of Oregon’s next great companies.”
Cairn will deliver the best new outdoor products to your door once a month so that you can always be ready for your next adventure.
Cairn is a monthly subscription box service of products aimed at inspiring and equipping people for outdoor adventure and discovery. As such, it offers consumers an introduction to brands and their products, and brands gain exposure and data from the market.
Last year, the Bend-based company raised $2 million in funding to expand its offerings, team and community. Since then, it has brought on an outdoor-products veteran to guide its curated selections of gear, and digital specialists to analyze how best to attract and serve customers online. The company now has a team of seventeen and has shipped more than 1.5 million products in its four-year history.
Jared Peterson and Rob Little; Photo by Talia Galvin
Rob Little and Jared Peterson co-founded the company, having met while pursuing MBAs at the Wharton Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. They discovered they shared a passion for the outdoors as well as startups. Peterson’s background was in operations and tech. He was a part of the team that launched the Apple watch, while Little, an aerospace engineer, worked on deep-space vehicles and stealth fighter jets.
They said they like how flexible and nimble a startup can be, with the ability to be able to react and engage the brand without having to sit back to gain approvals from higher-ups. For example, Cairn, which began as a monthly subscription service ($29.95 per month), introduced Obsidian, a premium outdoor subscription box, in December 2015. Obsidian is a quarterly subscription box service priced at $199 per quarter (including domestic shipping), filled with gear valued at more than $300, and including anything from packs and cooking supplies to outdoor electronics.
“The decision to launch was quick,” said Peterson. “It was clear it was in the market’s interest, with the brands of the core product at a higher price point than the monthly service. It took a few months to execute it.”
Little offered the following advice to anyone aspiring to startup-dom or struggling with it: “Surround yourself with incredible people who motivate and inspire you to help your business, from your partner or co-founder to investors and advisors. It’s not something you do alone.”
When it comes to bikepacking gear, less is more. But that doesn’t mean bikepackers don’t go all in on their equipment. To the contrary, traveling light often means putting more thought into your gear. The bulk of your gear should be essential, multipurpose and preferably both. We asked the experts at Mountain Supply to give us a short list of must-have gear for any weekend warrior looking to get the most out of a multiday backcountry tour.
Small, lightweight water filter that can fit in your stash pocket. Use it to drink right out of the source or fill up other reserves. With a quick, one-hand pump and easy to clean parts, this will keep you going and on track.
A dry sleeping bag is a warm sleeping bag, period. This compression dry sack makes sure of that with its durable fabric, roll-top closure and ability to purge air to compress your sleeping bag to the smallest size possible.
Have some spare room in the pannier or pack? This two-pound cot keeps you warm, off the ground and provides a luxury sleeping experience whenever you have just a few spare minutes for setup.
A little rain and a little wind won’t phase this hoody. Lightweight, versatile and extremely breathable, you’ll find yourself reaching for this piece for almost any condition at any time of the year.
Satisfy a sweet tooth and get a much needed energy boost. Real ingredients, healthy fat content and a little creativity highlight these little amazing creations that come in small, two-ounce pouches.
Ultralight, roomy option for one person on the move at only two pounds. When crawling into camp, a quick setup gets you into a great three-season shelter for anything mother nature throws at you.
Blue Mountain Ranch cattle in Paulina, Oregon. Photo by Joshua Langlais
Born in the Forest
Most of a cow’s energy requirements are in the third trimester of pregnancy and during lactation. Blue Mountain calves later than many traditional ranches, with mothers giving birth from May 1 until the end of June, so the ranchers are moving the cattle up to BLM and forest lands as calving begins.
There in the high meadows, grasses with high-energy proteins flourish naturally by late spring so Blue Mountain doesn’t have to feed hay during calving. This is more economical for the ranch and provides the cattle with the best high-energy nutrients at the most important time of the year.
Summer on Public Lands
Blue Mountain’s permit allows them to graze cattle on forest land through the end of September before the cattle are driven back down to Blue Mountain’s private range grounds for the remainder of the year.
Cattle in the grass finishing program spend sixty to ninety days on the lush irrigated meadows of the ranch to give them the best natural finish and flavor for customers.
Every Last Bite
“The cattle are not real high energy in the fall,” said Teskey. “It’s more of a maintaining time.” Calves are weened. The cattle are made to graze certain parts of the property’s range country, “strip grazing” all the available grasses from one area before being allowed to move on to another plot.
Newer and older grasses are drier by fall but “it’s still quality forage that we didn’t cut and bale. We boost with minerals and salt to supplement the grass.”
Why strip graze? “We want to keep as much nutrients on our ground as possible. Using cattle instead of equipment to harvest grass allows for a natural nutrient cycling through grazing, hoof impact and natural fertilizing.” said Teskey.
“Also, when the cattle eat everything, not just the young tender grasses it helps regenerate native species which flourish the next spring—as long as water is in sufficient supply.”
The Coldest Season
Cattle eat native grass and alfalfa that was grown primarily on the ranch and baled in the summer.
Extend the outdoor living season with a fire feature that is built in to your landscape or patio.
Photo by Ross Chandler/Chandler Photography
It’s 3 a.m. on a chilly winter night and neither husband nor wife can sleep. They bundle up, pour a cognac and head for the fire pit. About thirty minutes later, they both feel the dreamy pull of sleep, the magic of a warm fire beneath an orchestra of stars.
This impromptu pajama party is one of countless ways Central Oregonians are drawn to the flame made easy by a match or an on-off switch. The homeowners said they didn’t know when they built the home that they’d use the fire pit all the time, even in the dead of night. The fire pit, which sits apart from the house on the forest’s edge, complements a nightly light show, a parade of wildlife and a view of Broken Top.
The gas-fueled fire feature is cupped inside a rocky outcropping, with four weather-resistant chairs arrayed around it. The homeowners say their friends always want to be in front of the fire.
Jeannie Legum, interior designer and owner of Legum Design in Bend, said that more and more homeowners are seeing fire features as less of a novelty and more of a necessity for entertaining and just relaxing at home.
When designing a fire feature, she considers the size of a client’s home and strives to complement its style. She’ll ask whether they want it for entertaining large parties or gathering in small intimate groups. Do they want the fire in the middle of an existing outdoor living space or is there a better place, away from it all?
As temperatures drop in fall and winter months, Legum says people can add overhead heaters, outdoor drapes to close off a space and weather-proof fabrics for furniture. Contrary to popular belief, creating an outdoor gathering space can be done on a budget. Legum works with homeowners whose properties range from $300,000 to multi-million dollars. “If it’s important to the homeowner, there’s a fire pit for any style or size of home and budget,” she said.
With a showroom full of fire pits and fire tables, Mara McCloskey-Becker of Fireside in Bend proves the point. Wood-burning, portable fire pits start at $199; high-end gas-fueled models can cost thousands.
She cautions that wood-burning models must be placed far from flammables and advises the use of spark-arresting screens. Smoke can be an issue to neighbors, and buyers should know whether their neighborhood allows outdoor wood-burning fire pits. While there is nothing like the crack of a wood fire on a chilly night, the campfire smell lingers in clothing long after the last log is extinguished. Plus, in wildfire-prone Central Oregon, natural gas and propane models are far more popular.
Trending now are gas or propane fire tables with a ledge for setting out snacks and cocktails, and glass guards are used to prevent overheating of people and food. If a gas line isn’t available, the fire feature can run on a propane tank hidden within the device. For more versatility, some manufacturers sell covers to convert a fire table into a coffee table—just the kind of double duty that Central Oregonians love.
McCloskey-Becker said styles range from sleek, minimalist rectangular and powder-coated models to faux wood and natural stone versions for a traditional or Northwest look. Flames are adjustable—just a few inches for ambiance or higher for warmth, and those who like the look of wood can buy a fire pit with a log set.
Bryan and Angie Azur have three fire pits in their Westside Bend home. One is an ultra-contemporary “fire and ice” feature that starts on the inside of the home and continues through the wall to a flat-roof covered patio. The other is a round, concrete fire pit, also under the covered patio, with furniture arranged around it in an L-shape where the family cozies up to watch the sunset, “until the first stars come. Then it’s time for the two boys to go to bed and for us to hang out,” said Bryan.
Designed by Eric Meglasson of Pique Architecture, the home has tall glass sliding doors that create a seamless space between inside and out, making it easy for as many as 100 guests to mill about, even in the winter when the hosts can fire up all three features. “We’re very social,” Bryan said with a laugh. When they’re not hosting a crowd, the fire pit “serves as our family’s TV. Last night we watched shooting stars, and occasionally, we see a breeding pair of great horned owls fly by.”
After more than a decade glazing tile, it’s still a mystery to Bend tile artisan Justyn Livingston. But to her, that’s part of the art.
Justyn Livingston lays out tile in her Bend studio.
There’s an aspect of unpredictability to glazing tile. Variations in the clay can reveal a gradient of colors that come out differently each time they’re fired. After more than a decade glazing tile, it’s still a mystery to Bend tile artisan Justyn Livingston. But to her, that’s part of the art. Predictability doesn’t really suit Livingston, anyway. Her career has taken her from international fashion houses in San Francisco to rural villages in Romania and, eventually, Central Oregon.
Bendites and visitors may recognize her work from the soaking pools at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, where she designed the tiles in the style of a Budapest bathhouse. Her craft, under the name Metolius Ridge Tile, is featured in commercial properties and private homes.
Justyn Livingston hand glazes tile in her Bend studio.
“My intention for this is to choose something [my clients] are going to love for a lifetime,” she said. “While I pay attention to trends and fashion and stuff in a way, I hope that this comes off as really classic.”
In the case of McMenamins’ Bend soaking pool, Livingston said the highest compliment she received about the project is that it feels old; she aims for her tile work to be long lasting and sustainable.
The irony is that Livingston was previously a textile designer for the international fashion brand Esprit, where trends and fast fashion were the modus operandi. She landed at Esprit in San Francisco in the early 1980s, after leaving home at 16 and then living in Paris for a year teaching ice skating at 19 and making her way back to the Bay Area in her twenties.
Livingston eventually became the head of the textile design department at Esprit, where she designed textiles for all the company’s products, including men’s and women’s clothes and bedding. A combination of burnout, freelance opportunities and lower living costs brought her to Camp Sherman in the 1990s. She was able to freelance for Esprit and Pottery Barn and made ends meet by working at the Kokanee Café.
Then, Livingston was recruited to work as a design consultant for Aid to Artisans. Her first job with them was in Tonga, working with basket weavers. The work took her around the world throughout the decade. She worked in Mexico, Romania, Guatemala and Chile to help indigenous artisans continue their traditional craft in a way that was sustainable and profitable in the modern economy.
Back in Central Oregon, she started working with clay and tile and collaborated with Susanne Redfield of Kibak Tile in Sisters. The collaboration was the jumping off point for Livingston to pursue her own business, Metolius Ridge Tile. In 2004, she landed the McMenamins gig that has served as a springboard.
From her studio in Bend, she cuts the tile, hand glazes each piece and fires them in her kiln. She uses only red quarry tile because “it enlivens glazes like no other color,” she said. “Because of the minerals in the quarry, it has this sort of chemistry, this alchemy, with the glazes, which is mostly fabulous, sometimes unpredictable.”
The unpredictability is a key element in her work that makes it stand out in a sea of assembly-line products. She aims to create an overall product where each tile pattern looks the same, but not manufactured.
“One of the biggest challenges is creating consistent inconsistency,” she said. “That’s part of the beauty, right?”
A Bend couple personalizes a semi-custom design to make their house a bright and modern home in the Tartan Druim neighborhood in Tetherow. (Photo by Eilish and Eric Canady inside the kitchen of their Tetherow Home.)
It’s a sad truth that the home we want to love is just not always worthy of our affection. Such was the case for Eilish and Eric Canady who had lived in their NorthWest Crossing home for ten years. Purchased before their second daughter was born, the house’s 1,700 square feet had become progressively too snug for the family. While looking for the best fit for their family, they found the Tartan Druim neighborhood in Tetherow.
Tartan Druim is made of semi-custom homes, all built by the same developer, Bend-based Arrowood, and designed by architect John Muir. “We streamline the process for the homeowners,” explained Femke van Velzen of Arrowood. “We have a team already in place that relieves a lot of the stress of building a custom home. It gives you a place to start.” Muir developed twelve plans with optional casitas. Homeowners’ can modify the plans to suit their specific needs, tastes and building site. Arrowood also provides help with interior design.
“With this development,” said architect Muir, “Arrowood is exploring more contemporary architecture rather than just offering the more traditional rustic design seen in Bend. Tetherow wants to stress individuality, and every home will be a little bit different.” Beyond Tetherow’s architectural requirements, Muir strongly feels that “people deserve to have what they want.”
Located between the Scottish links-style golf course and a canyon, the gated community affords unobstructed views of the greens and the Cascades. Tartan Druim perks include a common area with a clubhouse, landscaping and snow removal. There are also social and golf club memberships at the David McLay Kidd designed Tetherow, a Golf Digest Top 100 golf course. Other draws include the proximity to downtown Bend, schools, and Century Drive, the gateway to the Cascade Lakes and Mt. Bachelor.
The Canadys were shown a number of home plans that had already been approved for construction by Tetherow, but then saw a 3,500-plus square-foot, one-story, three-bedroom spec design that had not yet been given the go-ahead. Working with van Velzen and Muir, they were able to get the plan approved and make their wished-for modifications. The most visually significant alteration was changing the roofline from a traditional pitched roof to one with shed and flat planes.
Other changes requested by the Canadys included adding a casita and, due to their building site, changing the garage entry from the side to the front of the home. The couple also opted for wood-burning fireplaces, rather than gas. With that switch, they changed the fireplace walls to an exposed wood-form with poured concrete. Visible from both the interior and exterior, the concrete walls provide textural detail and nudge the home closer to the contemporary yet timeless styling the Canadys wanted to achieve.
Making it their own both in design and purpose, the original study will be used as an additional bedroom, and a wooden floor will go down in the garage to provide a practice space for their elder daughter’s Irish dancing troupe.
Besides these small modifications, Eilish Canady said the inside was perfect the way it was designed.
“I really like the indoor/outdoor feeling of the house. I love how the kitchen and living room form one big room, and that the living room wall is a LaCantina [folding] door that opens to the outside. The master is also at the back and has the same views as the living room,” she explained. “We tried to keep all the colors in light, neutral tones so the design and our choices would last a long time.”
“I know the house really well. I visited every day during construction,” said Canady. “Seeing the whole process and knowing the siding guy and the guy who builds the cabinets makes you know your house in a more intimate way.”
“It’s all been pretty easy,” she said of the decision to build their home, “and I’m really excited about us living there.”
EMW Fusion is a seasonal food cart in Bend that serves inventive pandos with locally sourced ingredients.
East Meets West food truck in Bend. Photo by Joshua Langlais
It started with a wedding invitation and turned into EMW Fusion. Sun Valley native Brandon Walsh was marrying Seoul native Yoonmee Chang (now Chang Walsh). Both designers, they wanted a creative theme for their wedding and East Meets West seemed appropriate. The pair of creatives took that theme with them into their married life, hosting big fusion-style barbecues (that got bigger each time) and creating mashup designs.
“Mashup is compelling, it’s fun, nothing too serious,” said Walsh, describing their designs of cowboy shirts with Hawaiian fabric contrast and prints of Japanese anime superimposed over Western scenes. “Our philosophy: Never be too serious.”
Brandon Walsh and Yoonmee Chang in front of their food truck East Meets West. Photo by Joshua Langlais
The couple also rewrote traditional Korean street food recipes with American twists and experimented. A lot. They planned to retire early from their corporate product and graphic design jobs in Portland, turning their passion for cooking into an exit strategy. A food truck in Bend fit the bill.
“Yoonmee grows a huge garden and we’ve made farmers’ market shopping our habit for years,” said Walsh. “We like to know where our food comes from. Especially with protein-based products, the animal must have been raised humanely, not just sustainably and organically. We knew if we got into any food business, that was the plan.”
Still, it took almost a year after they moved to Bend in 2015 to get the food truck ready and transition their foodie lifestyle into a business. They had to figure out how robust a menu their mobile space could handle and find producers in their newly adopted town who could supply EMW Fusion’s needs.
Brandon Walsh serves a pando at the East Meets West food truck. Photo by Joshua Langlais.
The winning combination? A pando, the organic love child of a Korean wheat-based pancake and a sando (Japanese for sandwich), sold from their truck for $3-4 a pop. Talk about a low barrier to entry for locally sourced food.
“We want to source all our protein and vegetables from Central Oregon and we’re about eighty percent of the way there,” said Walsh.
Even with all their planning, the young business learned one lesson the hard way: winter and EMW don’t mesh. Business was “slowwwww” and it was tough to maintain their commitment to local ingredients.
Before the truck closes for the season at the end of October, catch EMW slinging pandos at one of many locations around Bend (check emwfusion.com for the most up-to-date info). One of their stops is the up-and-coming 9th Street Village. “As makers and east side Bend residents, we are excited to see a cool, non-chain maker destination on the east side,” said Walsh.
To really get to the source, make a trip to the EMW’s beef and pork supplier, DD Ranch in Terrebonne, where the truck will be posted up during weekends in October to feed hungry pumpkin patch pickers.
For some Central Oregonians, the competition for housing and living wage jobs is more than an inconvenience, it’s an obstacle that can trap them in a cycle of poverty and homelessness.
Executive director Gwenn Wysling with Walter Eggleston, a resident checking out of Bethlehem Inn. Photo by Alex Jordan
Executive director Gwenn Wysling cites that struggle as one of the key factors in people needing Bethlehem Inn, a nonprofit emergency shelter in Bend. “It is just one bad break, sometimes one bad break after another,” she said.
Each year, Bethlehem Inn helps more than one thousand people who are experiencing situational, or temporary, homelessness. The nonprofit opened its doors in 1999 and has occupied its current space, a renovated motel on old Highway 97 in Bend, since 2007.
Bethlehem Inn can currently feed and house about ninety people a night, including up to five families. It also is the only shelter of its kind in Central Oregon, which has seen an increase in homelessness—up thirty-one percent in two years—according to the most recent Point-in-Time homeless count conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This past summer, the organization broke ground on the first phase of expanding their facility, which will increase the number of beds, be more accessible for an aging homeless population and add a commercial kitchen where volunteers can prepare meals onsite. With modern upgrades such as solar panels, it will help the organization operate at a lower cost per resident.
Soon, Bethlehem Inn will begin a second campaign to raise the rest of the funds to finish the expansion, which will double the amount of families they can support.
Above all, Wysling highlights the empathy and support that is found in the community at Bethlehem Inn. “We’re that place that can really offer that respite and that place of hope and renewal,” she said.
The potato has a long history in Central Oregon, and some local festivals such as the Deschutes County Fair trace their roots to the humble spud.
Redmond Potato Show on Deschutes Avenue, circa 1965. Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
The humble Russet, the Yukon gold, the fingerling, the baby red and—had history been a little kinder—the Deschutes Netted Gem. Once the major export crop of Central Oregon, the Netted Gem occupies a special place in local lore, if not on dinner plates. Think of it as the Oldsmobile of spuds—a brand that once led an industry, but fizzled in a changing economy heavy on mass production, subsidies and cheap imports.
Yes, before Central Oregon emerged as a hub for craft beer production and an outdoor recreation destination, it was known as the potato capital of the West. At the peak of production in the 1950s, Central Oregon had an estimated 5,000 acres, or roughly seven square miles, dedicated to its internationally award-winning variety, the Deschutes Netted Gem.
The Central Oregon potato crop gained fame in 1906 when the first Redmond Potato Show was held. Fred Stanley, a leader in the Central Oregon Irrigation Company, founded the show to promote the varieties of potatoes grown in the region. People traveled on horse and buggy for the event, which showcased twenty-six varieties of potatoes its first year. The show continued annually each fall, and Bend and Redmond grew to be friendly rivals in the potato industry.
For the better part of a century, the show was a highlight of community and civic life, the culmination of a year’s worth of toil in the fields and a celebration of the region’s bounty. Held each fall, the Potato Show helped spur the creation of the Deschutes County Fair in the early 20th century and was incorporated into the larger celebration.
In the late 1950s the festival became a standalone event again in downtown Redmond with an attendant celebration that included firefighters engaging in a downtown water fight, a community barbecue and revelry. The dollop of sour cream on top of the celebration was the coronation of an annual Potato King and Queen that reads like a who’s who of Redmond civic figures.
But success didn’t come easy to Redmond’s pioneering tuber farmers. In 1912, the potato crop began to spiral into “chaos,” according to a 1922 issue of the nationally distributed Potato Magazine. The problem was too much diversity in crops and a lack of consistent supply.
Just two years later, the market rebounded with the introduction of the Deschutes Netted Gem, which “produced an excellent quality of potato under the peculiar climatic conditions of Central Oregon.” Potato Magazine wrote that by 1922, the crop was in an “enviable position” due to the “value of standardization, advertising, and organization when applied to an industry carried on by progressive farmers.” The potatoes grew in popularity and won awards at international potato shows.
Over time, the region became the small fry in Oregon’s potato crop, with production peeling off to the east where processing plants in nearby Eastern Oregon, cheap land and ample water took Oregon’s production to a new scale. With the decline of the potato crop, there was little left to celebrate in Redmond but the memory of a once thriving economy. By 1970 the Potato Show was no more. The festival was revived briefly in 2006 in honor of Redmond’s Centennial celebration.
Today, the legacy of the Netted Gem and Potato Show live on in the Deschutes County Fair, celebrated each August in Redmond with plenty of pageantry—even if the former star of the show, the Netted Gem, hasn’t attended for some time.
Man with a dog digging in a potato field. Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
Two men on a tractor digging potatoes in Central Oregon. Photo courtesy of the Deschutes County Historical Society.
New building at 6th and Deschutes Avenue in Redmond, circa 1918. Photo courtesy of the Deschutes County Historical Society.
Large crowd near display of potatoes at the Redmond Potato Show. Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
Second annual Remond Potato Show in 1912. Photo courtesy of the Deschutes County Historical Society.
Float for Potato Show parade, circa 1914. Photo courtesy of the Deschutes County Historical Society.
1920s truck loaded with potato bags. Photo courtesy of Deschutes County Historical Society
Shevlin Commons homeowners design a modern kitchen that takes advantage of the Cascade mountain views.
Photo by Ross Chandler
On Bend’s western edge, large windows, dramatic angles and open floor plans are featured in homes that showcase views and Central Oregon’s outdoor culture.
Such is the case with Bill and Cheryl Davidson’s new Shevlin Commons custom-built home. Priorities for the new kitchen included function and overall fit. It had to work with the overall floor plan and take advantage of the site’s stunning Cascade views.
“Glenn Dietrich [of Sun Forest Construction] really captured what was in our imagination,” said Cheryl Davidson.
Dietrich chose materials that complemented the house’s contemporary design and the couple’s mid-century modern furniture.
Photo by Ross Chandler
The kitchen’s integration starts at the top, where clear hemlock paneling in the coffered ceiling echoes the use of the same material in the adjoining living room. The use of wood continues in the clear vertical-grained fir cabinetry that, at one end, backs up to the dining room to allow shared serving space.
Cabinets and drawers open and close with rectangular, stainless steel bar pulls; the stainless is repeated in appliances and in the backsplash behind the cooktop.
Lower cabinetry around the room’s perimeter has counters and a backsplash of large-format porcelain tile accented with diagonally set stainless steel tiles. As a material contrast, the couple chose a cement and recycled glass composite to top the vertical-grained island.
Abundant storage is provided in the many cabinets and drawers and underneath the island. Cookbooks and foodstuffs are kept in the pantry, while wines are housed in the designated wine room.
“When we were newly married,” said Bill Davidson, “my uncle, who did a lot of entertaining, told us everyone gravitated to the kitchen, and he was absolutely right.”
A new generation of Ultimate players is moving the sport slowly into the mainstream.
Name the fastest-growing sport in the world. Since you’ve already cheated and looked at this article’s photo, the answer is Ultimate. As in Frisbee or disc. (True players say, simply, “Ultimate.”) Just don’t dare confuse this sport with disc golf.
Oregon has been a hotbed of this nascent sport since its bootstrap beginnings. The University of Oregon has qualified for five of the past six NCAA Ultimate Final Fours prior to the team being suspended in 2016. (More on that later.)
In the last few years, though, the sport has migrated from college dorms to high school hallways as a new generation adopts the sport and blazes a competitive trail in the process.
Nowhere is the sport’s emergence and fast track to sanctioned legitimacy more apparent than in Central Oregon, where the Bend Senior High School team makes its official debut this fall, joining Summit and Mountain View in the formal high school ranks with High Desert bragging rights on the line.
“Sideline drill, gentlemen!” shouted Bend High School Coach Joel Pitney. “Jog, don’t walk!”
Played in at least forty-two countries and in the running to be an Olympic sport as soon as 2024, Ultimate typifies why youth football and baseball are losing talent and interest so rapidly. Just show up; sneakers and an interest are the sole requirements. You’re soon on the ground floor of an exploding sport that blends true teamwork with finesse, quickly (and literally) grasped skills, self-policing for fouls and one helluva workout.
Only thirty minutes into practice and already winded, Bend High players are sweaty yet eager to learn and perfect each defense and hurl. Ultimate’s playing field size is eighty percent of soccer’s pitch. Kiwanis Park in southeast Bend is merely adequate for practice. BNSF trains rumble by loudly, black tankers in tow, but the players don’t notice—their focus is on this rather addictive sport.
“Nice work, gentlemen! Grab a drink of water!” declared the coach, clapping his hands in encouragement. “A quick drink! Jog, don’t walk!”
Pitney has played Ultimate for twenty years on all levels, having learned in college and coached professional teams. He frames Ultimate’s present position in the pantheon of competition in terms of other sports. “Ultimate is like baseball in the 1890s, or football during the 1980s, when the USFL was competing with the NFL,” said Pitney. “We are still figuring things out, school leagues versus clubs, coed teams, but the interest just keeps growing.”
According to USA Ultimate, the sport’s official sanctioning body in the United States, membership numbers at the adult level have been growing at almost nine percent annually over the past six years. Youth participation has grown slightly faster than that with an estimated 14,500 members in 2016. That’s likely just a fraction of the sport’s actual participation numbers, thanks to the DIY and ad-hoc nature of Ultimate, where teams tend to eschew things such as leagues, uniforms and, sometimes, clothing. (The University of Oregon team was suspended for playing in a scrimmage with no shorts—or underwear—during an, ahem, exhibition in Corvallis last year. The bawdy shirts and skins game was witnessed by a female university official at OSU who filed a complaint with campus officials there.)
Incidents like this have added to Ultimate’s lore, but have also prevented it from gaining the mainstream acceptance of many other sports. Its popularity is an enigma; players both bemoan the sport’s relegation and relish its outsider image.
In Oregon, Ultimate’s relevance depends on the region. The state has ten total teams, yet Portland has only one; meanwhile, Bend now has three. Summit has had a team for nearly ten years, Mountain View a few, and Bend High’s entry, which begins play this fall formally, features a motley crew of freshmen through seniors, emerging stars that their coach continually refers to as “Gentlemen.”
“I have to leave at four,” informed a rather new recruit.
“Okay,” acknowledged Coach Joel, scanning the field and his fourteen total players, knowing they wouldn’t have enough for a true seven-on-seven scrimmage after this young gentleman left. “Just practice your throws.”
“I will.”
“I practice my throws in my mind!” laughed another “gentleman” player. Bear in mind that these are teens. However new to the sport and gentlemanly, they must be kept busy—attention spans fleeting, energy incalculable.
Smiling, Coach Pitney shouted, “Okay gentlemen, line up for end-zone drills! Don’t walk—jog!”
And they did, sprinting into position. Veterans, after only a handful of practices, guiding the rookies. They showed the newest recruits how to force a backhand hurl, counting, “1-2-3-4-5…” because, once you catch the disc and set your pivot foot, you must pass it within ten seconds or it’s a turnover; the same with a dropped disc.
Push an opponent or slap his or her hand during a throw and it’s a foul. Infractions in Ultimate are called by the players, giving the game a self-directed feeling that is almost democratic, but hardly casual. It’s rather beautiful, too.
Ultimate is mashup of soccer, football and Frisbee that friends casually invented in 1968 and has now become a fully sanctioned sport. It was on the short list for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo games and nixed only at the final hour this past summer by Olympic officials. Born on a New Jersey college campus, Ultimate has grown at the collegiate level rapidly, particularly in the 2000s when Ultimate registrations more than doubled. That participation has expanded to youth and adult leagues nationwide, as former college players foment interest in recreational leagues.
Coach Pitney has been part of Ultimate’s growth, and his Bend High team’s progress has been impressive. “Our first scrimmage with Summit, we got annihilated. Then, the next scrimmage, we won nine to eight.”
Natural talents are emerging, and their coach wasn’t exaggerating when he pointed out that a few of his players may be national, even Olympic, superstars in only a few years. These gentlemen are learning fast, and a newcomer who kept dropping the disc just made an impressive diving catch in the end zone—“SCORE!”
Sam Powell with one of his bikepacking frame packs. Photo by Alex Jordan
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. That’s certainly the case with Sam Powell, who started sewing frame packs and bikepack accessories a few years ago because he needed them for his own commutes. The creations soon turned into a small side business for Powell, who runs the sewing shop at Bend’s Gear Fix. He sews the hanging bike bags in his home studio and markets them under the name Three Sisters Threadworks. We talked to Powell, 34, about his side business and the allure of bikepacking.
You have a small business sewing/making frame bags and accessories. How did you get started?
I started just making bags for myself and my bike. I would then make new ones and sell the old ones at the Gear Fix, where I run the sewing shop, and then at some point I started making them directly for other people. Since then I’ve put together a little production shop in my garage so I can work when my son is napping and at other odd hours.
Have you seen much growth in demand for your products?
It seems like there is quite a bit of growth in interest, but I’ve only been doing this a couple of years so I don’t have a real long-term perspective on it. There definitely is interest though. We’ve done a couple of intro to bikepacking clinics at the Gear Fix and they were well attended.
Is it like Hairclub for Men, are you the owner and a customer, too? How often do you get out and use your creations?
I am my first customer, for sure, and, yes, both in the sense that I enjoy making the bags and also enjoy using them. I use the bags I make for daily commuting and I typically get out for four or five bike overnight trips each year.
How long have you been involved in the sport and what is the primary appeal for you?
I’ve been riding bicycles and camping for my entire life but only put them together a couple of years ago when I started making the bags. I started making the bags primarily because it looked interesting and then started camping with my bike after that. Making bags is a side business, so I try to only take on projects that are both interesting to me and for people who really appreciate it. I’ve really enjoyed having a consistent creative outlet beyond my day-to-day of repairing gear that other people have designed and built.
How do we reduce the average distance a piece of produce travels from farm to consumer in the United States from 1,500 miles to a country mile? High Desert Food and Farm Alliance may have the answer.
Photo by Joshua Langlais
“Produce starts to lose nutrients as soon as it’s harvested,” said Food & Farm Director Jess Weiland of High Desert Food and Farm Alliance (HDFFA). The seven-year-old, Bend-based organization focuses on programs—from consumer education to marketing for farmers—that facilitate community access to fresh food that is grown sustainably within the local food system. “We want to make nutrition as easy as possible,” said Weiland. “We want to meet people where they are and be responsive to the community.”
Get a Taste
Taste Local Thursdays highlight a restaurant’s relationship with local farmers and ranchers, shining a spotlight on local ingredients. “Over and over we hear that people care about local food,” said Weiland. “It’s availability in Central Oregon is a thing of pride here.”
Food and Farm Directory
It’s free and it will whet your taste buds. The High Desert Food and Farm Directory, available in print and online, has sprouted from a trifold into a deeply rooted, 147-business strong resource for where to buy food grown locally.
Sixty-two producers and eighty other food-related businesses filled last year’s guide and Weiland said more are signing up. Farmers and businesses can enroll annually for a nominal fee to become an HDFFA partner. For partners who do online sales, the web directory links consumers directly to that producer’s e-commerce.
“So many—I would say around half—of local farmers also have other jobs. They are so busy,” said Weiland regarding the value of the directory as a centralized marketing tool for producers.
“Farmers are really producing a lot but they may not have time to market it and develop distribution avenues. Providing more consumer access points is key.”
Cheap + Healthy = Possible
Preparing meals from scratch can be both healthful and economical with the right set of skills and some fresh ingredients.
Part of a national curriculum implemented through state funding and carried out regionally by HDFFA using chef and nutritionist volunteers, Cooking Matters classes are available to food insecure families across Central Oregon this fall in six-week sessions.
“Cooking with families naturally lends itself to a conversation about nutrition and food budgeting,” said Weiland. “There is an important link between food and health. This is preventative care.”
Food For All
The local food bank is fresher thanks to HDFFA’s Grow and Give program, an initiative benefitting NeighborImpact. At farmers’ markets in Bend patrons can donate to the program in $5 increments and be entered to win a prize at the end of market season. The Madras, Redmond and Sisters markets also take donations. HDFFA then buys the equivalent amount of food from farmers at the end of the market, curating purchases based on food bank needs.
“Food insecurity is a prevalent issue but it can be a bit ‘out of sight, out of mind,’” said Weiland, noting that farmers’ markets play a vital role in our community and provide a good space to facilitate discussion of the issue.
Statistically, one in five people in Central Oregon is food insecure—meaning they might not know where their next meal is coming from. The program represents a new frontier of food recovery (a term meaning food waste mitigation).
“Farmers see it as a value add,” said Weiland. “They harvest more than they may need to be sure they fill demand at farmers’ markets throughout the region. The funds help to support the farmers’ bottom lines, aid in food recovery and shore up the region’s food bank supply.”
An anticipated 15,000 pounds of food recovery will go to NeighborImpact this year.
Going through the Bend Venture Conference with two different startups, Ryan Andrews was intimately familiar with the state’s largest angel conference. Becoming the manager of the BVC’s first social impact fund, which debuted last year, offered Andrews another way to get involved with the conference—and exercise his investment expertise. Andrews wears many hats, but most of them involve finance. In addition to managing the newest BVC fund, which requires him to both solicit investors and evaluate investable startups, he’s also a partner in Trueline Capital, a Bend-based real estate fund. We recently caught up with Andrews to learn more about the BVC’s social impact, the interest in socially responsible investing and his new side project, a series of letters written to thoughtful investors.
First, how do you describe the Bend Venture Conference’s Social Impact Fund?
The fund invests in for-profit, early-stage companies that have a social or environmental impact as a core part of their business model. We purposely made the definition broad; we wanted to open the floodgates and then be able to decide who had a stronger or weaker social impact proposition. More than thirty companies applied last year. One of our two winners, Hemex Health, creates a portable, inexpensive device that can be used to screen for malaria and sickle cell disease in developing countries. Their social impact was off the charts as well as their potential revenue and market share.
What misconceptions do people have about social impact investing?
I sometimes get pushback that social impact startups aren’t viable or that they generate lower financial returns to investors. But the evidence is stacking up that there’s a strong business case for social impact startups that solve real, societal problems. Society at large is willing to reward these companies with revenue and market share.
The Bend Venture Conference takes place in October. Is there anything new or different about this year’s social impact track?
We have a lot of momentum coming off of last year. People are excited, especially after watching Hemex Health go on to raise another $1.7 million in a Series A round. Our fund was the first investor in the company. Last year, we raised $110,000 for the fund, about half from institutional investors. This year we’re aiming for $150,000. We’re also doing a Reg D 506(c) offering for the fund, which allows us to advertise publicly for investors.
You also manage investments for your day job, a partner at Bend-based Trueline Capital. What does Trueline do?
Trueline Capital is a boutique real estate investment fund focused on residential construction and development in the Pacific Northwest. After the last recession, most community banks stopped lending into the residential construction market, even as the economy came back, leaving a lot of these projects without a good source of capital. We manage the fund on behalf of our investors, investing in smaller, in-city and infill residential developments, usually projects that are too small for a large, private investment and not eligible for bank financing. We’re currently invested in more than thirty-five projects, valued at $32 million.
Lastly, tell us about your Thoughtful Investor series of letters.
I found myself having a lot of one-on-one conversations with investors about how money and monetary systems really work. I started writing about these conversations in a serialized letter format at thoughtfulinvestor.co. The goal is to write sophisticated, but accessible, letters to investors. Recent topics include the role of central banks, the importance of hard assets and whether we’re in a bubble. I also plan on writing about cryptocurrencies, the coming artificial intelligence/machine learning labor revolution and the innovations occurring in real estate finance. It’s pure thought leadership and a chance for me to start these conversations.
Artist Courtney Holton honors ancestral Native American photos with bold colors and contemporary designs.
The familiar, proud faces of native people resemble black and white photos of an earlier time. But familiarity quickly fades to curiosity. Big splashes of color give Courtney Holton’s large canvases a contemporary twist, and, yet, why are the portraits striped with the American flag? Do those patchwork blocks behind the elegant woman shape the state of Oregon?
Part of the answer lies with a cache of turn-of-the-twentieth century photos and prints Holton obtained as a student at the University of Oregon in the 1980s. He held onto the archival material for thirty years while his life and the love of a French woman took him to Paris and later the Loire Valley.
He initially sold abstract paintings on Paris streets and sometimes exhibited in bars and restaurants. The owner of the Galerie Expression Libre in Paris saw Holton’s paintings in a theater and began exhibiting his work, leading to shows in Turkey, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States. “Art is everywhere, and can be a wonderful tool in communication, history and thought,” said Holton.
Born and raised in Eugene, Holton spent winters skiing at Mt. Bachelor. In 2016, he decided to spend more time in his home state, and Bend was a good fit. He rented studio space at Cindercone Clay Center where he began to develop this portrait series, enlarging old black and white images onto canvas through industrial ink-jet technology, and then hand layering the canvas with colorful oil paints. Each painting takes about a month to complete.
“With a heartfelt compassion for his subjects and a sincere commitment to accuracy in depicting and painting these subjects, Courtney lends his remarkable talent to his larger-than-life, beautiful oil paintings of the mid-to-late-1800’s Native American occupants of northeastern Oregon,” said Billye Turner, a local art dealer who facilitated a recent show, “Remembrance,” at Bend’s Franklin Crossing.
The exhibit included a painting with the American flag imposed over the photo of a native man. Holton’s intent was to honor the patriotic service of all Native Americans who served in World War II, including “code talkers” whose job it was to transmit secret messages in code. In a painting of a native woman, he created a facsimile of Oregon counties in the background, a nod to their tribal lands both ancient and current.
“Each portrait tells a story of the beauty and power of these photographs—the desire to remember and respect,” he said of the exhibit. He donates ten percent of sales on the portrait series to the Warm Springs Community Action Team.
Today, he splits his time between Bend and the village of St. Sauveur where he owns part of a 500-year-old convent, that serves as his home and studio. He’s working with a master printer there to create wood-block prints that are more attractive to collectors.
“It’s daunting to start over again in a new place,” he said. “With art, it’s something you grow over the years.” But proximity to family and ski slopes will make his re-entry to Central Oregon a lot easier.
Doug MacFarland is the executive chef at Brasada Ranch and is committed to bringing locally sourced food to the kitchen of the Powell Butte resort.
Chef Doug MacFarland. Photo by Joshua Langlais
What aspects of your background led you to local sourcing?
My career started to take off in San Diego at The Lodge at Torrey Pines with Jeff Jackson. He was a huge proponent of supporting and sourcing local. That’s where I got the bug before working at Wildwood in Portland with Corey Schreiber. There I really started to hone in on what it means to utilize what you’re surrounded with, the bounty of Oregon. It was an integral experience in my culinary career before my move to Central Oregon two years ago.
How do you address food seasonality at Brasada’s restaurants?
There is such an influx of visitors and residents to the area now, and with that comes even more discerning palates. There is a certain expectation and need for dining at any resort. We get to really focus on seasonality in warmer months—especially at Range, which is just open for dinner and closes for the season September 30. Gigi at Windflower Farm is who we use primarily since it’s right down the road but we’ve worked with Agricultural Connections, too. They are an integral part of the local movement.
What’s a challenge facing the local food chain?
Buying farm direct is tough for restaurants to keep up with. It’s all grown here but the channels are still growing. Distribution coordinating is time consuming … so what Agricultural Connections is doing is so great for the future of “going local” in Central Oregon.
Tell us about outdoor dining during your Feasts from the Fire series.
That’s our summer series and each of the events is coordinated with live music. We typically feature meat from different local ranches off our outdoor spit and Argentinian grill, combined with produce from an area farm. It’s a chance to showcase what they’re doing and get it to a new audience. Really every Wednesday and Thursday throughout the summer we narrow the local lens in some way.
What’s your secret weapon in the kitchen, outside of the usual growing season?
We’re lucky here at Brasada, having our own butcher department with a bandsaw where we can breakdown whole animals that we source from Laney Family Farms outside of Maupin. They raise grass-fed cattle and heritage pigs. Especially in winter, we braise meats and source what root vegetables we can from Central Oregon. We also work with purveyors from Portland that come this way on a regular basis.
The No-Bake Cookie Co. went from a project for a family-owned deli to one the next great Bend companies.
Tom, Carol and Eric Healy, owners of the No-Bake Cookie Co. Photo by Alex Jordan
Mmm. Cookies like grandma used to, well, not bake. Carol Healy started making old-fashioned, no-bake cookies for her family-owned Expressway Corner Market & Deli in Bend, and soon the nostalgic recipe dovetailed with one of the hottest food demands: gluten-free products. The wholesome treats, made with natural nut butters, premium certified gluten-free whole-grain oats, butter, Madagascar vanilla, cane sugar and milk also boast no preservatives, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, wheat flour or genetically modified anything.
The cookies developed a fervent fan base among the market’s customers, mostly from the Southeast neighborhood, who head there for burgers and other housemade dishes at the cafe-convenience store-gas station at the Reed Market Road and 15th Street roundabout.
In 2011, Healy and her husband, Tom Healy, created the No-Bake Cookie Co., and it took off quickly that year after she presented the sweet goods to Nordstrom. The high-end retail department store’s buyer and her team had grown up eating no-bake cookies and loved them. The gluten-free certification fit Nordstrom’s demographic and the timing was perfect because demand was building, yet not many products had been certified as gluten free. Stores were looking for them.
Now the cookies are in thousands of stores nationwide—from Whole Foods, Kroger stores and Fred Meyer to Alberstons, Safeway, Market of Choice and Newport Avenue Market—plus convenience stores, including Sheetz, with 550 stores. The growth prompted the Healys to recruit their son, Eric, as chief operating officer, who left his ten-year career as an aerospace mechanical engineer for Boeing and other big corporations. All twenty employees work in the 5,000-square-foot facility in Bend, except for a Los Angeles-based national sales director.
Entrepreneurship is also in the family’s blood. Eric’s grandfather, Bill Healy, founded the Mt. Bachelor ski area in 1957, and his uncle, Cameron Healy, founded Kettle Chips, now an international manufacturer of potato chips, tortilla chips and nut butters in Salem.
The company hit its goal on funding the recent growth with a summer funding round on CircleUp, a crowdfunding platform that serves consumer brands seeking to raise money from accredited investors.
Eric Healy said manufacturing in general has its challenges. Shipping from Bend, in particular, can be challenging, especially last winter, when big snowstorms slowed semi-trucks delivering ingredients. A local advantage has been working with FoundersPad, which is selective in funding and mentoring early stage companies.
“They have been very instrumental, helping with all aspects of the business, working on margins, supply chain, fundraising and branding,” said Eric.
How to turn a bad 1980s kitchen remodel into a space that is modern and usable.
Photo courtesy of Neil Kelly Company
Barb Macomber and Richard Ross’ 1920 bungalow in the Old Town Historic District was perfect—except for a kitchen that was suffering from a bad 1980s remodel. The room’s dominant features were a too small window, a too big refrigerator, and too little storage and style.
The couple enlisted Kathleen Donohue at Neil Kelly to redo the space. “We went to one of her demonstrations,” said Macomber. “She just really resonated with us.”
Confined by the kitchen’s galley configuration, the object was to create an efficient, light-filled kitchen while respecting the bungalow’s Craftsman history. Donohue, who relishes combining creativity with the more technical and practical demands of design, removed everything except the original floor.
To bring light into the eleven-by-ten-foot room, a new thirty-six-square-inch window was placed above the kitchen sink and under-cabinet lights and historically accurate ceiling fixtures were installed. Donohue added light-reflecting white quartz counters and subway tile to the mix.
Photo courtesy of Neil Kelly Company
To increase storage, cherry cabinets were fitted with deep, self-closing drawers and pullouts, and a built-in cream-colored hutch was added as a pantry.
The biggest cure to the kitchen’s ills was the use of smaller apartment-sized, or European, appliances: Installed were an eighteen-inch wide dishwasher, a thirty-inch wide range and a twenty-four-inch wide refrigerator.
Small details such as black pulls and knobs on cabinets, glass shelving, trim work on the hutch and cabinets, and a mosaic above the range connect the kitchen to its history, while the use of eye-popping red paint and red range knobs take the newly-functional room from sedate to warm and inviting.
“It’s a nice room now,” explained Ross. “It wasn’t that way before.” “It was awful,” added Macomber, “but now it’s like a beautiful functional jewel box.”
Flyte Camp, a vintage trailer restoration company in Bend, breaks the mold in the camp trailer industry with its new line of trailers that look vintage, but have modern luxuries.
It all started with a 1958 Shasta Airflyte. To some, a heap of aluminum and rubber tires rusting in an overgrown junkyard. But to Anna and Justin Scribner, it was a piece of living history that deserved a second chance. Their work to restore the vintage trailer to its former gleaming glory spawned a successful business and a popular TV show, but, more importantly, it marked the beginning of their crusade to restore American craftsmanship to camping trailers.
Almost a decade and close to 100 renovations later, Flyte Camp is embarking on a new adventure: designing and building their own model of trailers. Dubbed the Neutron, the trailers are high-end and designed in mid-century vintage style but with modern amenities.
Justin said that the idea came when the trend of vintage trailers picked up and other companies started putting out their own models that looked vintage. But those trailers “missed the mark” when it came to the craftsmanship that is the hallmark of the trailers made in the mid-twentieth century.
The Neutrons are made-to-order, three-at-a-time at Flyte Camp’s Bend shop. Designed and made using all the knowledge they’ve gleaned from years working with vintage trailers and racking up insight into their craftsmanship, the Neutrons are dripping with nostalgia.
Adding the Neutron felt like the logical next step to Anna and Justin, who wanted to make their mark on the retro camping trailer market. Even as they drive the business forward, they do so with one eye on the rearview mirror of history and that first trailer that marked the beginning of a lifetime infatuation with classic design. Anna recalled seeing that Shasta Airflyte when Justin brought it home, almost a decade ago now.
“Man, the first time I saw that thing, I walked through it and fell in love,” she said. “I loved all the mid-century detailing and the quality that was in the small things.”
Justin, a contractor by trade, echoes that sentiment when he talks about what sparked the idea for the business.
“We’re preserving a piece of Americana,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be rotting out in a field somewhere.”
Like many upstarts, success didn’t come overnight. The work grew slowly and organically in the first few years. In some ways, they didn’t know they had a business at all. The couple spent several years buying, restoring and selling vintage camp trailers as a hobby before officially launching Flyte Camp in 2009. Less than a year into it, their renovations caught the attention of a television producer. He offered them a spot on Extreme RVs, then their own show, “Flippin’ RVs,” which is now in its third season on the Travel Channel.
Justin grew up camping in trailers around the Pacific Northwest, and has a passion for all things nostalgic, but especially vintage camping trailers.
“[Vintage trailers] all need to be saved, in my opinion,” he said. “We’re too much of a throwaway society anymore. They should be out on the road.”
One of the reasons the business has been so successful is that they know how to capture the look and feel of an era through their restorations. They also capitalized on a trend that has swept American culture in the last decade.
“People just want that experience of stepping back in time, escaping to an earlier era,” said Anna. “That’s one thing we try to do, is make sure that our restorations are era correct, are the real, true look and feel of the year.”
The business has turned them into experts in the field, and the couple is sought after around the country for their design and craftsmanship.
Despite the TV show, the business and building the new trailers, Justin and Anna are still out camping as much as possible. Though today, they’ve traded in the vintage trailer for the Neutron, taking it camping to places around Central Oregon such as Crescent Lake and Paradise Campground.
Justin and Anna are hoping the Neutrons will stand the test of time like the vintage trailers that they restore.
“Hopefully, we’re putting out something that will last another sixty years,” said Justin.
Mahonia Gardens is a one-acre farm in Sisters that is focused on sustainability and farming by hand.
Benji Negal and Carys Wilkins at their farm Mahonia Gardens. Photo by Joshua Langlais
Most commercial gardens are not biologically thriving ecosystems. At Mahonia Gardens in Sisters, birds, lizards, snakes, bunnies, and a manner of beneficial insects live amid floral perennials and rare plants. Oh, and fifty crops, which all prosper on just one acre.
“We really like doing things by hand. That is sustainability, not using oil and machines,” said owner Carys Wilkins. “Also the noise, the aesthetic of it. It’s such an art. And a conscious choice that we can make at this point because we are able to sustain economically.”
With this year’s harvest marking their fifth growing season in Sisters comes a confidence in their hand scale technique. “We’ve been honing in on what grows best in our climate,” said Wilkins. “Lots of crops don’t like Central Oregon’s big swing in diurnal temperature. Broccoli is a good example—they like stable temps through day and night.”
It’s also a balancing act between what grows well and what sells well. “Sometimes that means sacrificing crops because of space,” said Negal. “We’ve adapted within our space.”
Jess Weiland of the High Desert Food and Farm Alliance spoke to Mahonia’s model. “Carys and Benji have put so much effort into diversifying what they’re growing,” she said. “They really stay true to what they deem as a sustainable model for them. It’s so easy as a farmer to get pulled in a lot of directions and scale up. They are really clear with themselves about what they want to produce and prioritize, maintaining some amount of a work/life balance.”
Of course, for a farmer that means mostly working from spring through winter’s first snow. The couple prefers working in the field over managing people.
“We’ve said from the beginning: Let’s do it by hand as long as we can. We think it works to our benefit to grow more within a small space,” said Negal. “Our motto: Let’s grow inward rather than outward. Within the confines of our space, let’s continue to get better. Better soil, every corner gets watered, every piece of land gets attention.”
Benji Negal at Mahonia Gardens. Photo by Joshua Langlais
Wilkins and Negal live on a property they bought with Negal’s father just a half-mile from Mahonia and only a couple blocks from the Sisters Farmers’ Market, which Wilkins runs. They keep their cost of living low and didn’t take out any loans to start Mahonia (they raised $9,000 on Kickstarter to fund the business). Benji is also a musician, a talent which also happens to supplement their income. When the couple decided to move to Negal’s hometown after stints in Southern Oregon and Northern California, proximity to family was the primary driver.
Mahonia sells out its CSA (community-supported agriculture) memberships each season, which capped at forty members this year.
“CSA is great because you already know it’s sold when you plant the seed,” said Wilkins.
The other three-quarters of their business comes from farmers’ market sales and a bit of surplus crop sales to Agricultural Connections.
“This is the ‘abundance mentality’ idea. If people try another farm’s CSA or grow their own garden, we feel good about that,” said Negal. “It’s a small town and we’re very much a community,” added Negal, recognizing the work of educators, residents and new farmers to expand the local presence of fresh food. “Of course, that’s a benefit for the business but more than that, growing food becomes purposeful and meaningful.”
These trails are perfect for a late summer or early fall hike with views, wildflowers, refreshing lakes and waterfalls.
Backpacking on the Pole Creek Trail | Photo by Brandon Nixon
Pole Creek
In the Three Sisters Wilderness, Pole Creek is less popular than Green Lakes for hiking, but you will probably still run into other hikers on the trail. The Pole Creek Trail leads to Camp Lake, an alpine lake tucked between South Sister and Middle Sister Mountains. This hike is best done as a two-day backpacking trail, as Camp Lake is about 13 miles from the Pole Creek trailhead. The trail is rated as difficult but has stunning views along the way.
Canyon Creek Wilderness
The Canyon Creek Meadows hike in the wilderness area below Three Fingered Jack is an easy four-and-a-half-mile loop for families with kids and is known for its colorful array of wildflowers. The hike is only open in late summer through October, so get there before it closes for the season.
Doris Lake
Off Cascade Lakes Highway, Doris Lake, about six miles from the Six Lakes Trailhead, is a moderate hike since there isn’t much elevation gain, but the out-and-back trail will still cover about a dozen miles for one day. The trail is popular with backpackers, who will hike in and pitch a tent next to the lake for the night.
Tam McArthur Rim
In the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, Tam McArthur Rim is about five miles round-trip, but has plenty of elevation to make it a climb. At the rocky peak, you’ll find expansive views. A portion of the hike is bare of trees, so bring lots of water. Back at the bottom, a small shack sells ice cream. Enjoy a refreshing treat while you soak your feet in Three Creek Lake.
Teddy Lakes Trail
The Teddy Lakes Trail, about four miles from the Winopee Lake Trailhead, is a lesser-known trek in the Three Sisters Wilderness. Access the trail from the popular Cultus Lake Campground adjacent to the Cultus Lake Resort. You’ll soon escape the throngs of tourists jet skis and power boats. You can continue along the loop for a longer hike. Teddy Lakes is also a good spot for backpackers who overnight in the area.
Paulina Creek Falls
Just north of La Pine near Wickiup Junction is the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Here you will find Paulina Creek Falls, one of the least trafficked waterfalls in Central Oregon. The five-mile out-and-back trail doesn’t offer much in the way of elevation gain. Paulina Falls is about eighty-feet tall, and is a refreshing place to dip your feet on a hot day. Up the trail a little further, you can hike to Paulina Lake. Along the Paulina Lake Loop Trail, you can find natural hot springs—the ultimate reward after a hike.
On the hottest days of the summer, here are seven ways to beat the heat in Central Oregon.
Photo by Adam McKibben
Central Oregon is known for its almost unnaturally cool summer evenings, but the days are another story. Come July and August, the High Desert begins to live up to its name. If you don’t have air conditioning, it can be tough to beat the heat. (And who wants to sit inside, anyhow?) Thankfully, our wealth of rivers, streams, reservoirs and high alpine lakes offer boundless opportunities to soak, splash and even surf.
Hit the Lakes
Dozens of lakes are scattered across Central Oregon, and are popular hangouts on hot summer days. At a lower elevation than other alpine lakes, Suttle Lake is perfect for swimming. Just up the hill is tiny Scout Lake, which is typically brimming with floaties because its small size means warm water (for high lake standards). Off Cascade Lakes Highway, Elk Lake has a large beach area with views of Mt. Bachelor to boot. Further down the road you’ll find Cultus Lake and the charming, old school Cultus Lake Resort. Keep driving and hit Wickiup and Crane Prairie reservoirs, popular spots for camping, swimming and fishing. You can also get away from the crowds by hiking to a lake. Lucky Lake is only a short hike from Cascade Lakes Highway. Park at the Senoj Lake Trailhead and hike just over a mile to reach the lake, and solitude.
Relax Poolside at Sunriver SHARC
Indoor and outdoor pools and a disc golf course make SHARC (Sunriver Homeowners’ Aquatic & Recreation Center) a fun place for families to spend an afternoon, or a day, and are easy ways to cool off in the heat. You can buy passes for the day, or get a multi-day pass for a deal. When you’re ready for a break, check out some of the great food options that families will enjoy, such as Sunriver Brewing or Blondie’s Pizzeria.
Float the River
Floating the Deschutes River is almost a rite of passage in Bend. On hot days, you’ll see crowds of people on the water. If you don’t have your own floatie, you can rent one at Riverbend Park, where you begin the float. Skirt the dam in the newly revamped safe passage adjacent to the Whitewater Park before the final stretch down a calm bend in the river brings you to Drake Park. There’s a shuttle you can ride back to Riverbend Park for a small fee. There are also a few rules about life jackets, alcohol and what you can float on, so look for signs at Riverbend Park to be in the know.
If you don’t want to battle the throngs in Bend, there are a couple of other options within a short drive that allow you to escape the crowds. Tumalo State Park offers access to a lazy float on the Middle Deschutes River that meanders past downtown Tumalo and offers a great excuse to hit The Bite, Tumalo’s cozy food cart pod. If you’re willing to venture south, the Sunriver area offers access to several floats on the upper Deschutes river and a chance for an apres float beer and appetizers in Sunriver.
Go Rafting
When an urban innertube float isn’t enough adventure, book a raft trip on the Deschutes River. These guided day trips are unforgettable, and take you to parts of the river you can only see by raft. Seventh Mountain Resort, Sun Country Tours and Ouzel Outfitters are based in Bend. In Maupin, a hub for whitewater rafting less than two hours north of Bend, you can book trips with All Star Rafting, High Desert River Outfitters, Imperial River Company, Sage Canyon River Company, Deschutes River Adventures and River Drifters and spend a day rafting with the experts.
Find a Waterfall
Central Oregon has no shortage of waterfalls. Most are accessible and have close-in parking and paved pathways to viewpoints, where you can cool off with the mist from the falls and hike along the water. Close to Bend, Tumalo Falls is one the most popular and photographed viewpoints in the region. After you take in the ninety-seven-foot falls from a couple viewpoints, you can extend the adventure into a hike. Dillon Falls and Benham Falls are a little farther from town. The hiking trail that leads to both falls is easy for families. Paulina Falls is probably the least trafficked of the bunch. The falls is about eighty feet tall and is inside the Newberry National Volcanic Monument.
Jump off the cliffs at Steelhead Falls
Speaking of waterfalls, on the hottest days of the summer, jumping off the twenty-foot cliffs at Steelhead Falls into the cold water is one of the most refreshing and adrenaline-pumping experiences in the region. Jump feet first into the water (do not dive) and consider climbing down the cliffs to test the water first. There’s also no shame in wearing a life jacket, which will help you get back to the surface of the water more quickly. Wear water shoes to help you with the climb back up the cliffs.
Catch a Wave
Bend’s whitewater park offers locals and visitors a chance to catch a surfable wave without leaving town. Hardcore surfers and kayakers can be found playing on the standing waves at the Colorado bridge almost anytime of year. Come summer, the series of curling whitewater drops draws kayakers, surfers and boogie boarders in droves. If surfing isn’t your thing, you can watch the thrills and spills as they unfold from the nearby footbridge where spectators gather for photo ops and the occasional catcall.
Summer wouldn’t be complete without that burger-milkshake-fries trifecta from classic Central Oregon drive-ins. Nothing says, “Summer is here!” like a burger hot off a sizzling grill with a side of piping hot fries, preferably served with a milkshake. No Central Oregon summer vacation or staycation is complete without a stop at one of several nostalgia-rich, drive-in burger joints sprinkled around Central Oregon.
Tastee Treet
If you venture east, the Tastee Treet in Prineville is a mandatory stop. The drive-in feels like a historic landmark, with the old-fashioned sign intact and a drive-up window. The burgers and shakes on the menu don’t change, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Tastee Treet is a great stop in Prineville while you’re on the road, but it also serves as a destination itself.
493 NE 3rd St., Prineville
Jody’s Drive-In
When in Redmond, the place to be is Jody’s, where it’s almost always standing room only. The classic burger is always a win, but the specialty burgers are inventive and won’t disappoint. The outdoor seating adds to the classic ambiance of this place.
807 SW 14th St., Redmond
Sno Cap Drive In
The perpetual line outside of Sno-Cap in the summer may seem daunting, but it’s there for good reason. Sno-Cap has some of the best burgers and fries in the region that satisfy after any day hiking in the Three Sisters Wilderness or swimming in one of the nearby lakes. The milkshake list is long, so it may require a few repeat visits to make your way through it all.
380 W Cascade Ave., Sisters
Dandy’s Drive-In
With covered drive-up stalls and waitstaff zipping around on old-school roller skates, Dandy’s is a true throwback to the days of muscle cars, drag racing and pop crooning. Dandy’s keeps it simple with burgers, fries, milkshakes and few other drive-in worthy items. The burgers are made to order and served up with a side of piping hot fries, the perfect treat on a long summer day.
Here’s our guide for how to make the most of Bend Brewfest weekend.
Photo by Lasala Images
Bend Brewfest (#BendBrewfest ) takes place August 10 to 12, and is one of the best events in Bend each summer. Held at at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in the Old Mill District along the Deschutes River, Brewfest brings in dozens of craft breweries from around the region to show off their latest brews. Here’s our guide for how to make the most of the Brewfest weekend.
How it works: $20 gets you a tasting mug and five tokens. Each token is one taste. You can buy additional tokens (5 or $5) at the information booths. All ages are welcome until 5 p.m. (after that it’s 21-and-over), but the party keeps going well into the night.
Best way to get there: Walking. There’s a lot of traffic around the Old Mill District during Brewfest weekend. Avoid the traffic and walk, bike, or take and Uber (new users get $10 off with the code BENDBREWFEST) of Lyft to and from Brewfest.
Best day to go: Well, that depends on you. If you’re there for the beer, particularly the specialty and small batch runs, and would rather avoid the big crowds on the weekend, Thursday is your day. Sure, you might be a little late for work the next morning, but if you get there on opening day, you are sure not to miss your favorite beers (because they can run out). The crowd isn’t as large as Friday or Saturday night, so you won’t have to wait in long lines to taste. On the other hand if you’re looking for a party, Saturday is the big blowout. Tons of people. A raucous crowd and a deejay pumping a dance heavy mix into the night. Afterward the party pours into the streets and nearby bars where drinks continue to flow and the good times continue to roll.
Look out for: ABVs. The alcohol by volume number can sneak up on people. Some of the specialty brews can have ABVs of seven percent and higher, which will catch up to you quickly if you aren’t careful. Bring a water bottle—they are permitted and there are places to fill it up with water throughout. If you’re planning a thorough tasting tour, make sure to have a plan to get home safely.
Don’t miss: X-Taps. Each brewery brings two to three regular beers to pour for the event, and then a speciality, small-batch brew that you’ll only find at Brewfest. Those brews will only be poured during certain times in the Brewtality tent. Find the schedule of the X-Taps so you don’t miss out on some spectacular experimental batches of beer and cider.
Fun event to try: Stein Hosting. Large mugs filled with three pounds, and people compete to see how long they can hold them up. Test your skills by signing up for the competition that takes place throughout the day on Saturday.
Beyond Brewfest: When you need a break from the festivities.
Since you’re already at the Old Mill, you can stay cool by floating the river or renting a kayak or paddleboard and play on the water for a few hours. There are also places to rent bikes and explore town on wheels. Tumalo Creek and Kayak rents from their shop on the river which provides convenient parking and float out, float in access. You can also rent tubes riverside from Sun Country Tours which operates a stand at Farewell Bend Park.
You’re also a few steps away from the Deschutes River Trail, and you can find miles of urban hiking or mountain biking in the area. From the Old Mill you can walk along the paved path to Bill Heally Bridge where primitive gravel path parallels the Deschutes River for a two-mile loop that features a wooden boardwalk and pedestrian bridge that allows users to hike the short route as a loop.
If you’re looking for a place to sit down and eat, you can find a few of our favorite patio dining options within walking or biking distance. No visit to Bend is totally complete without a burrito or wrap at the iconic Parilla restaurant on Galveston that can be washed down with a house margarita or $2 PBR. Across town, El Sancho is the go-to place for street tacos that can be scarfed on their patio.
And if you haven’t had your fill of beer yet, you can head to Immersion Brewing and brew your own batch of beer. You can also head to Crux, one of Bend’s newer and more popular craft breweries, whose fermentation program is overseen by Larry Sidor, former Deschutes Head Brewer, and Crux founder. The brewery is tucked away in and old industrial area in a converted automotive shop and features a large and popular lawn and patio, where friends coworkers and families gather to on weekends and after work to sip ale and play cornhole or toss a frisbee.
Need to get your family outside this summer? Here are five of the best family activities in Bend and Central Oregon.
Sun Mountain Fun Center
Race around the go-kart track
Known for its family-friendly bowling, Sun Mountain Fun Center expands its offerings in the summer months to include batting cages and mini-golf. Best of all is the go-kart track that beckons would-be racers of all ages. The banked track snakes around the north end of the Fun Center in looping ribbons of concrete hemmed in by ubiquitous crash barrier tires. Side bets are encouraged.
Putt-putt at Sunriver’s minigolf course
What happens when you cross a putt-putt course with Sunriver’s Crosswater? If you’re golf architect John Fought, you create a one-of-a-kind bentgrass putting course that melds the family fun of mini-golf with the meticulous conditioning of Sunriver’s championship golf courses. The result is a fun-for-all-ages putting course that challenges and delights while serving as the perfect after-dinner diversion for resort guests.
Visit the local farmers’ market
On farmers’ market days, you’ll find the whole community browsing the stands for farm fresh fruits and veggies. From chefs scouring for the best last-minute ingredients to families plucking produce for the dinner table there is something fresh for any dish. If you miss the market but still want to find local produce, check out Locavore, open year round, or Paradise Produce, a farm stand open every day in the summer on Bend’s Westside. Rainshadow Organics outside Sisters has also opened a small market to complement their CSA’s and farm to table lunches and dinners.
Take a family staycation
Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing and recharging, but the hassles of air travel or prolonged road trips can add stress to any itinerary. The answer: a staycation. With so much to see and so many different options for overnight lodging, Central Oregon is the perfect place live like a tourist, if just for a long weekend. There are plenty of great staycation options, but for a more dollars consider spoiling yourself at one of the many world class resorts in the region, including Sunriver, Black Butte Ranch and Pronghorn and Tetherow. Looking to the east, Brasada is usually near the top of our list for its mix of casual luxury and family fun. Tucked into the base of Powell Butte, Brasada is just a half-an-hour’s drive from Bend, but it feels a world away. A kids’ game center and family pool area, complete with lazy river and waterslide, make for hours of fun. Add in a world-class spa, 18-hole championship golf course, horseback riding and four-star dining and you’ve got a recipe for memories.
Spend the day at Sunriver SHARC
Indoor and outdoor pools and a disc golf course make SHARC (Sunriver Homeowners’ Aquatic & Recreation Center) a fun place for families to spend an afternoon, or a day. You can buy passes for the day, or get a multi-day pass for a deal. Make a day of it by adding meals and shopping in the Sunriver mall. The growing village has eighteen miles of paved paths through the woods and near the Deschutes River for biking and walking. When you’re ready for a break, check out some of the great food options that families will enjoy, such as Sunriver Brewing or Blondie’s Pizzeria.
The BendFilm 72-Hour Filmmaker’s Scramble is a whirlwind filmmaking event for professional and amateur film buffs in Bend.
You don’t have to be a professional filmmaker to take part in BendFilm’s 72 Hours Filmmaker’s Scramble. In fact, Todd Looby, the executive director of BendFilm, encourages people to enter and make a film with their phone camera.
“Since everyone is limited in resources and time, you’re basically just really exercising creativity and using everything that’s around you at your disposal,” said Looby. “There’s no hurdle to entry. Anyone can do it.”
The Filmmaker’s Scramble does have one hurdle that each filmmaker who enters would have to jump over: the 72-hour timeframe to conceive, shoot and produce a movie. But that’s all part of the fun.
The event is produced by BendFilm, the organization that also produces the annual BendFilm Festival in October, and Scalehouse, a nonprofit organization that encourages creativity and collaboration in Bend.
Now in its third year, the Filmmaker’s Scramble will take place on July 20, kicking off with a workshop from Looby about no-budget filmmaking. Then, each team receives the theme for the film contest, and the clock starts ticking. Filmmakers then have 72 hours to complete a film, from writing the screenplay to casting the actors to shooting and editing.
Looby said that local Central Oregonians usually enter the competition, but he encourages people from outside the region to come for the event. About ten groups have entered each year, from people who have worked on Hollywood feature films to people who have never picked up a camera before.
“Even someone who is really well versed in this is kind of thing is at the same mercy of luck as someone just starting out,” said Looby.
For those who want to watch the entries, the films will be screened on August 7 at the Workhouse. A panel of professional filmmakers will judge the films, which range from documentaries to narratives, and the winning films will be screened at the BendFilm Festival in October.
Tetherow Resort revamped its dinner options with Solomon’s, a fine dining restaurant that upholds the resort’s atmosphere of unpretentious luxury.
In 1845, looking for an alternative to the Oregon Trail, Solomon Tetherow led a wagon train through Central Oregon on the infamous Meek Cutoff route. The journey was perilous and much of the company’s travails were lost to history, but the name stuck as a symbol of a pioneering spirit.
This spring, Tetherow Resort revamped its dinner options by adding a fine dining experience, aptly named Solomon’s. Thankfully, the ambitious new restaurant and menu will not lead you astray.
Erin van der Velde, managing partner at Tetherow, said that though the space has undergone an elevated refurbishing and an extensive menu change since it was previously known as Tetherow Grill, the experience of eating at Tetherow hasn’t changed much at heart.
“It’s a little more elegant Tetherow experience with the same amazing view,” said van der Velde.
Perched on a hill overlooking the resort’s 700-acre property, Solomon’s boasts expansive windows that frame picturesque Central Oregon views. From each table, find sights of the Scottish-style links that stretch out toward mountain peaks in the distance.
Inside, the restaurant provides a warm, comfortable atmosphere for intimate meals, as well as enough space for a group.
Though the tables are topped white tablecloths, the restaurant doesn’t feel stiff for fine dining standards. Across the room, you’ll find couples sharing a romantic meal, as well as groups just coming off the golf course or trails.
Solomon’s menu is Pacific Northwest-inspired with surprising and welcome twists. It’s not often that you find elk, boar or pheasant on a menu, but those are the dishes with which Chef Rian Mulligan’s creativity and talent shine.
Mulligan, 34, has been working in Bend restaurants for almost a decade. He brings experience working under chefs and creating his own menu from scratch, as well as three years working at Solomon’s predecessor, the aforementioned, Tetherow Grill.
“We knew when he was ready he would be the right chef for this experience,” said van der Velde. “He has the talent.”
Mulligan has studied everything from European to Southwestern to Asian cuisine. “I take techniques from all those different style and make it my own,” he said. “I may take something Japanese and add southwestern flavor and use a French technique to cook it.”
“I can’t describe my style,” he said. “It’s always changing and growing.”
On a recent summer evening, my dining companion and I were admiring the view from our table next to the window. We each ordered a glass of wine from the carefully curated wine list that features a variety of Oregon bottles and varieties.
We started our meal with steamed manila clams, bathed in a light sauce that wasn’t too buttery with just a touch of chili spice; we eagerly mopped it up with the grilled, cheesy French baguette that accompanied it. The asparagus was also a delicious starter for the early summer evening, sautéed in a light sauce of garlic, white wine and drizzled with bleu cheese and balsamic vinegar.
For our entrees, we were both drawn to the dishes that have already emerged as favorites among Solomon’s regular guests, according to Mulligan. The risotto-stuffed poblano pepper immediately caught my eye. It’s always a joy to come across a chef willing to give a vegetable a leading role instead of a supporting one as a side dish. Indeed, most chefs can sear a steak and bake a chicken, but can they elevate a poblano pepper to the level that a risotto requires, or find a way to pair oyster mushrooms and fennel? Mulligan can, and did, with delicious results. Though the pepper was about as large as my hand, and risotto can often be heavy, the meal wasn’t dense or overwhelming. A simple Romesco sauce covered the dish and was a perfect pairing for the pepper.
My dining companion was equally impressed with his Steelhead Vera Cruz. Served on a bed or fingerling potatoes, the delight of Pacific Northwest fish was perfectly cooked. The dish was finished with a cilantro and lime broth that was light and refreshing, perfectly complementing the already rich flavor.
Dinner was topped off with a duet of desserts: crème brulée and a flourless chocolate torte, each with a raspberry accent.
As the “unpretentious luxury” (as van der Velde describes the Tetherow experience) of our meal ended, we sipped port and watched the early summer sunset from the window.
With a rotating menu based on the seasons, regional bounty and the chef’s whim, Solomon’s aims to always have something new to try. I’m eager to see where Mulligan takes the menu next.
Solomon’s is open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday, beginning at 5 p.m. Reservation are encouraged and can be made at tetherow.com
From jumping off waterfalls to watching a live show by the Deschutes River, our summer cheat sheet includes the 25 best Central Oregon summer activities to make the most of the season.
Photo by Adam McKibben
1. Take a Dip in a Lake
Dozens of lakes are scattered across Central Oregon, and a quintessential summer day here usually finds its way to at least one of them. Sure, you could paddleboard or kayak or hike while you’re there, but you could also relax by the water and bask in the warm sun, which is what makes a day at the lake idyllic. At a lower elevation than other alpine lakes, Suttle Lake is perfect for swimming. Just up the hill is tiny Scout Lake, which is typically brimming with floaties because its small size means warm water (for high lake standards). Be sure to check out The Suttle Lodge, which recently underwent a renovation. Minimalist, rustic-meets-urban décor blends into the log cabin-style lodge, and elevated food and cocktails mimic the aesthetic. Off Cascade Lakes Highway, Elk Lake has a large beach area with views of Mt. Bachelor to boot. Further down the road you’ll find Wickiup and Crane Prairie reservoirs, popular spots for camping, swimming and fishing. You can also get away from the crowds by hiking to a lake. Lucky Lake is only a short hike from Cascade Lakes Highway. Park at the Senoj Lake Trailhead and hike just over a mile to reach the lake, and solitude.
Summer doesn’t really start until you’ve pulled your tent out from the corner of your garage, thrown sleeping bags and s’mores ingredients into the trunk, and packed the family and dog into the car to sleep under the stars for a night. For those new to camping, try a resort-supported site. Family-friendly spots include Tumalo State Park and Cove Palisades State Park. If you’re ready to get a little more off-grid, campgrounds at Paulina Lake near La Pine and on the Metolius River in Camp Sherman are secluded, but still have amenities that make camping easier for families.
4. Watch the Eclipse
One million people are predicted to flock to Oregon for the once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse that will pass through the state on August 21. About 200,000 of those people are expected in Central Oregon for the event and the festivals that lead up to it. Campgrounds and hotels in the path of totality have been booked for more than a year, but you can still get a near-perfect experience watching it from as far south as Redmond and as far north as Fossil. Wherever you go, plan to arrive early and stay late to avoid the attendant traveling headache.
5. See a Show Outside
Photo by Nate Wyeth
On select Sunday afternoons in July, Bend Memorial Clinic hosts Free Summer Sunday Concerts on the lawn at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in the Old Mill District. Pack a lawn chair and enjoy live music from local acts. You can also find free shows at Munch & Music on Thursday nights in July and August. National acts come to Bend all summer for outdoor shows at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, Athletic Club of Bend and the Century Center. Check online to get tickets for Bend favorites such as Michael Franti & Spearhead, the Avett Brothers and more.
6. Watch the stars from Worthy’s Hopservatory
Photo by Alex Jordan
The newest addition to the ever-expanding Worthy campus (that already includes the brewing facility, the pub, an expansive patio and a hop garden), the Hopservatory has a telescope for viewers to catch some of the best sights of Central Oregon’s night sky. Sign up for a tour to make sure you don’t miss out on a clear, starry night.
7. Minigolf Like a Pro
What happens when you cross a putt-putt course with Sunriver’s Crosswater? If you’re golf architect John Fought, you create a one-of-a-kind bentgrass putting course that melds the family fun of mini-golf with the meticulous conditioning of Sunriver’s championship golf courses. The result is a fun-for-all-ages putting course that challenges and delights while serving as the perfect after-dinner diversion for resort guests.
8. Join the Pet Parade
This is one of Bend’s oldest (and weirdest) traditions. Dress up your dog, turtle, goat, horse, or other family pet that can handle large crowds and join the 4th of July Pet Parade in downtown Bend. The streets are lined with people watching the furry, feathered and scaled pets of Bend dressed up to celebrate.
9. Hike a New Trail
Photo by Brandon Nixon
Get out of your hiking rut (and find some trail solitude) with these trails that you won’t find on any “Top 10” list. The Canyon Creek Meadows hike in the wilderness area below Three Fingered Jack is an easy 4.5-mile loop for families with kids, and is known for its colorful array of wildflowers. In the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, Tam McArthur Rim is only five miles round-trip, but has plenty of elevation to make it a climb. At the rocky peak, you’ll find expansive views. A portion of the hike is bare of trees, so bring lots of water. Back at the bottom, a small shack sells ice cream. Enjoy a refreshing treat while you soak your feet in Three Creek Lake.
10. Float the River
Photo by Jon Tapper
Floating the Deschutes River is almost a rite of passage in Bend. On hot days, you’ll see crowds of people on the water. If you don’t have your own floatie, you can rent one at Riverbend Park, where you begin the float. Skirt the dam in the newly revamped safe passage adjacent to the Whitewater Park before the final stretch down a calm bend in the river brings you to Drake Park. There’s a shuttle you can ride back to Riverbend Park for a small fee. There are also a few rules about life jackets, alcohol and what you can float on, so look for signs at Riverbend Park to be in the know.
11. Visit Local Farmers’ Markets
Photo by Alex Jordan
On farmers’ market days, you’ll find the whole community browsing the stands for fresh picks, from chefs scouring for the best ingredients to add to the menu to families picking out produce for that night’s dinner. If you miss the market but still want to find local produce, check out Locavore, open year-round, or Paradise Produce, a farm stand open every day in the summer on Bend’s Westside.
12. Try Backpacking
Photo by Adam McKibben
There’s no better way to really get off the grid than backpacking. While trekking miles with pounds of gear on your back can seem daunting, there are lots of trails around Central Oregon to get you started. Off Cascade Lakes Highway, Doris Lake, about six miles from the Six Lakes Trailhead, is a good adventure for beginners since there isn’t much elevation gain. The Teddy Lakes Trail, about four miles from the Winopee Lake Trailhead, is a lesser-known trek in the Three Sisters Wilderness. You can continue along the loop for a longer hike before (or after) setting up camp.
13. Visit the Ochocos
It might be a stretch to call the Ochocos a secret, but this low-elevation mountain range and its namesake national forest are just far enough off the beaten path to escape the crowds that gather at other popular Central Oregon destinations. There are hikes aplenty, just a few miles east of Prineville, that include iconic destinations such as Steins Pillar. For those seeking a more adrenaline-charged experience, the Lookout Mountain bike trail system offers one of the premier shuttle-based rides in Central Oregon. Lookout features forested singletrack with bomber straightaways and hairpin curves for seven, white-knuckle miles. Maps and information, including shuttle services, are available at Good Bike Co. in downtown Prineville.
14. Find a Waterfall
Photo by Brandon Nixon
Central Oregon has no shortage of waterfalls. Most are accessible and have close-in parking and paved pathways to viewpoints. Close to Bend, Tumalo Falls is one the most popular and photographed viewpoints in the region. After you take in the ninety-seven-foot falls from a couple viewpoints, you can extend the adventure into a hike. Dillon Falls and Benham Falls are a little farther from town. The hiking trail that leads to both falls is easy for families. Local’s hack: Don’t go around sunset or you’ll be eaten alive by mosquitos. Paulina Falls is probably the least trafficked of the bunch. The falls is about eighty feet tall and is inside the Newberry National Volcanic Monument.
15. Take a Staycation
Need a long weekend to rest and recharge? There are plenty of great staycation options in Central Oregon, including Sunriver, Black Butte Ranch and Pronghorn, but Brasada is usually near the top of our list for its mix of casual luxury and family fun. Tucked into the base of Powell Butte, Brasada is just a half-an-hour’s drive from Bend, but it feels a world away. A kids’ game center and family pool area, complete with lazy river and waterslide, make for hours of family fun. Add in a world-class spa, 18-hole championship golf course, horseback riding and four-star dining and you’ve got a recipe for memories.
16. Follow the Ale Trail
Tyler Rowe
The Bend Ale Trail is the official way to get to know Bend’s craft breweries. For visitors, it’s a good way to experience the diversity of beer being brewed in Central Oregon, with more than two dozen breweries and counting. For locals, it’s a good way to get out of your beer-comfort zone and find a new favorite pint. Pick up the official passport and map at the Visit Bend office downtown, and collect stamps at any ten breweries to earn a souvenir. If you can’t decide on who’s going to be the designated driver, most of the breweries are within walking distance of each other.
17. Pedal for Pints
Bend is known for its breweries and its cycling scene. But why choose when you can do both at the same time thanks to thanks to The Bend Tour Company’s Cycle Pub, a rolling, person-powered bar that functions as a guided tour of Bend’s beer scene for groups of four to fourteen people. Plan your trip on the fly with your guide as the tour rolls out. The only required stop is at Cycle Pub’s sponsor, Silver Moon Brewing on Greenwood Avenue. Not to worry—this classic pub is a must-stop watering hole anyway.
18. Catch a Wave at Sunriver SHARC
Indoor and outdoor pools and a disc golf course make SHARC (Sunriver Homeowners’ Aquatic & Recreation Center) a fun place for families to spend an afternoon, or a day. You can buy passes for the day, or get a multi-day pass for a deal. Make a day of it by adding meals and shopping in the Sunriver Mall. The growing village has eighteen miles of paved paths through the woods and near the Deschutes River for biking and walking. When you’re ready for a break, check out some of the great food options that families will enjoy, such as Sunriver Brewing or Blondie’s Pizzeria.
19. Race Around the Go-Kart Track
Known for its family-friendly bowling, Sun Mountain Fun Center expands its offerings in the summer months to include batting cages and mini-golf. Best of all is the go-kart track that beckons would-be racers of all ages. The banked track snakes around the north end of the Fun Center in looping ribbons of concrete hemmed in by ubiquitous crash barrier tires. Side bets are encouraged, and remember, rubbing is racing.
20. Kick up Some Dust at a Rodeo
The Sisters Rodeo in June is just the beginning of the season that celebrates the region’s Western culture and heritage. Don’t miss the Jefferson County Fair & Rodeo in Madras in July and the Deschutes County Fair & Rodeo in August. Find carnival rides, 4-H shows, live music, festival food, games, rodeo performances and more. Concerts at the Deschutes Country Fair are always a good time as well.
21. Jump Off the Cliffs at Steelhead Falls
Photo by Adam McKibben
On the hottest days of the summer, jumping off the twenty-foot cliffs at Steelhead Falls into the cold water is one of the most refreshing and adrenaline-pumping experiences in the region. Jump feet first into the water (do not dive) and consider climbing down the cliffs to test the water first. There’s also no shame in wearing a life jacket, which will help you get back to the surface of the water more quickly. Wear water shoes to help you with the climb back up the cliffs.
22. Eat at a Classic Drive-In
Nothing says, “summer is here!” like a burger hot off a sizzling grill with a side of piping hot fries, preferably served in wax paper. No Central Oregon summer vacation or staycation is complete without a stop at one of several nostalgia-rich, drive-in burger joints sprinkled around Central Oregon. In Bend, Dandy’s Drive-In is without peer. The place retains its vintage A & W feel, complete with drive-up stalls. Wash the grub down with a fountain soda or, even better, a handmade shake (choose from 23 different flavors). If you venture east, the Tastee Treet in Prineville is a mandatory stop. When in Redmond, the place to be is Jody’s, where it’s always standing room only.
23. Play Cornhole at a Brewery
Photo by Alex Jordan
It’s only a dirty word if your mind is already in the gutter. So grab a cold beer, a few friends and get ready to, er, toss off. When it comes to cornhole, these breweries have ample space in which to partake in one of the few sports where holding a beer during competition isn’t frowned upon, it’s encouraged. Breweries with cornhole and other lawn games include Crux, Goodlife, Worthy, Bridge 99, and Atlas Cider.
24. Opt for a Natural Soak Outdoors
Photo by Jon Tapper
Spend a day soaking in the mineral-rich, soul-revitalizing pools of a hot springs. Within Central Oregon, you can find the Paulina Lake Hot Springs off the Paulina Lake Loop Trail in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. It takes a moderate hike, but the reward is entirely worth the trek. The temperature of the water is usually around 95 degrees. You can also dig your own soaking pool at North Beach, just a short walk away. If you want to venture farther, Breitenbush Hot Springs to the west and Summer Lake Hot Springs to the east are both within a two-hour drive from Bend and Redmond and offer resort amenities.
25. Go Big at Mt. Bachelor
Central Oregon is a mountain bike mecca. Numerous routes have been added in the past decade, but none are more dramatic than Mt. Bachelor’s Bike Park, where familiar winter ski runs such as Leeway are transformed into daredevil dirt routes with names such as Rattlesnake and Rockfall. With chairlift access from Pine Marten and Sunshine Accelerator, the park features dozens of miles of banked singletrack, whoop-de-doos, bridges and other competition-worthy features. A mix of terrain and difficulties opens the experience to riders of all abilities. Bike, helmet and protective gear rentals are available at Mt. Bachelor.
Big Story owners Josh and Heidi Spencer are hoping they can finally live that bookstore owners’ elusive dream: actually having time to read.
Big Story is on the corner of Greenwood and NE 3rd Street in Bend.
The Bookmark, the longstanding used bookstore on the corner of Greenwood and Third Street in Bend, is getting a sequel. Josh and Heidi Spencer, who live in Bend and own the iconic The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, bought The Bookmark in February, renovated the building and renamed it Big Story.
Heidi and Josh Spencer, owners of Big Story.
With Big Story, the Spencers are hoping they can finally live that bookstore owners’ elusive dream: actually having time to read.
Heidi and Josh are married with two small children. Though they moved to Bend two years ago, Josh still spends a week in L.A. each month at The Last Bookstore. The two didn’t have plans to open a bookstore in Bend until The Bookmark came up for sale. Josh described buying the used bookstore as “a little challenge for me to take on.”
Beginning in February, they began renovating everything, including the shelving, by hand. “That means something to us,” said Heidi, “to create something that we want to be in.”
The Spencers are also dedicated to building a community with the bookstore, hoping to keep the previous owners’ loyal customers coming in to buy and sell books. “People have been very open to the changes that we’ve made,” said Heidi.
Big Story is the second independent bookstore that has opened in Bend within the last year; Roundabout Books opened in NorthWest Crossing in the fall. But Central Oregon isn’t the only place where bookstores are having a renaissance. Despite competition from Amazon and e-readers, indie bookstores are thriving across the United States. Between 2009 and 2014, independent bookstores rose by 27 percent, according to the American Booksellers Association.
The Spencers made all the shelving by hand for Big Story.
Big Story is a new chapter for the Spencers. “It is a challenge,” said Heidi. “It’s a real juggling act,” she continued, referring to their challenge in figuring out how to run this bookstore versus their L.A. bookstore, which is a cultural destination in the city as the largest new and used independent bookstore in California (by square footage and the number of books sold). “Our heart is to be a local, independent bookstore,” she said.
“It really is a family-owned, family-run business,” she added. “[Big Story] is this manageable, fun thing in a small community.”
Amy Hazel has been called the “Second Mouth of the Deschutes River,” but she couldn’t care less. She’s just here to fish.
“Can you feel that?” asked Amy Hazel. “This is it.”
We were hiking along the riverbank of the Deschutes River in Maupin, waders on, fly rod in hand. Green foliage was just starting to crop up along the bank, a striking contrast to the golden grass and red and brown rocks that painted the canyon walls above us. A blue sky brushed with hazy white clouds stretched seemingly forever beyond the canyon.
Hazel’s feeling was something only a fisherman knows. It’s how the water flows and how the wind blows, what the foam on the water looks like and where the bugs are. They call it “reading the water.” It seems like more of a hunch. Hazel felt it, so we climbed down the bank through the brush and stepped into the water.
We were knee-deep in the river, close to the bank and wedged between rocks and grass that stuck out of the water. After tying a stonefly pattern on the line and throwing a few casts, Hazel explained how an angler knows where to cast the line, something done by feel as much as anything else. It was mid-morning, and a slight breeze was starting to pick up.
A few minutes later. No bites yet. Evan, our shuttle driver and one of her guides, had told her this spot had been fishing well that week. “We’ll blame Evan,” she said jokingly. “He was lying; this place is shit.”
Then, of course, the line tightened. Fish on.
Small Town, Global Sport
Hazel is a formidable presence on and off the water. At five feet nine inches tall, dressed in waders and a Deschutes Angler baseball cap and with a boisterous voice and a firm handshake, Hazel could be an intimidating figure. But any intimidation is immediately tempered by her kind face. She laughs easily and, in turn, so do the people around her.
Maupin is a hamlet of about 400 people on the Deschutes River between Madras and The Dalles. It’s a place built around the river. In the summer, the population swells to a few thousand people, nearly all of them here to raft and fish. Hazel landed here nineteen years ago at age 28, recruited by John Hazel—considered one of the masters of fly-fishing and spey casting—who wanted her to work for him as a guide. They met at a convention in Portland. He also wanted to date her and, after a few months, he landed her. Eventually, they got married and opened Deschutes Angler, a fly shop in Maupin.
This was the late nineties. Hazel had just come off a yearlong journey traveling around the world to fish. One of her shticks is rattling off the countries, in order and in one breath: NewZealandAustraliaIndonesiaMalaysiaSingaporeThailandLaosVietnamNepalIndiaIrelandEnglandScotlandWalesFranceZimbabweZambiaSouthAfricaArgentina. The only continent she hasn’t fished on is Antarctica.
Hazel grew up in Minnesota and learned to fish in the lakes and creeks near her home. She didn’t pick up fly-fishing until she went to college at Middlebury in Vermont. Leaving school, she had offers to work on Wall Street, but decided to take some time off instead. She traveled to Thailand, then spent some time working odd jobs in the Pacific Northwest before embarking on her backpacking trip around the world.
It’s probably fair to say that by the time Hazel got to Maupin, she had reached her 10,000 hours of fly-fishing (the time it takes, per Malcolm Gladwell, to master something). John Hazel brought her in as a guide in his fly-fishing guiding service. The only female guide in the group, and in a sport that’s male-dominated, Hazel did encounter some sexism. But it didn’t take long to prove her skills.
The culture of sexism continues to pervade some aspects of the sport—especially for those making a living at it—and social media compounds the issue, she believes. Hazel said she’s grateful that she came of age as an angler before the advent of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Women today who show interest in fly-fishing get mocked for being try-hards or get accused of getting sponsorships without earning them. It’s a brand of misogyny that’s common in outdoor sports. Sometimes the aggression is more direct. She encounters men on the water who yell or put up a fight over a spot she’s fishing. ‘He’ll yell at me, ‘It’s a big river’ and I say, ‘Yeah, it is.'” As in, he can find somewhere else to fish.
She and her husband live on a 300-acre property on the outskirts of Maupin on a cliff overlooking the river. They have two dogs, and Hazel has a couple of horses. They don’t have children, but she calls the guides who work for them, “my boys.” It can be easy to romanticize a life on the river, but the days are long and the pay isn’t great. Deschutes Angler, their fly shop, doesn’t see a lot of customers in the winter. They rely on times like the salmon-fly hatch in late spring that brings anglers from all over the country and on repeat clients of their guiding service. She and John travel all over the world to fish now, but after almost two decades on the Deschutes, Hazel doesn’t have a desire to move anywhere else. “You can’t get this kind of fishing anywhere else in the West,” she said.
Fighting for the Future
Her passion for the Deschutes River is also why she’s playing an active role in the politics of it. In 2013, she joined a group of fisherman, scientists and activists to form the Deschutes River Alliance, or DRA. The nonprofit is aimed at addressing and correcting issues they say have arisen on the lower 100 miles of the river since the installation of the Round Butte-Pelton Dam Complex fish passage facility in 2009. The DRA has waged a public relations and awareness campaign about the issue and is currently suing Portland General Electric (the current owners of the dam complex) for violating the Clean Water Act. PGE tried to have the lawsuit dismissed earlier this year, but that was denied, allowing the DRA’s suit to proceed. The case is currently pending in the United States District Court.
Hazel isn’t often serious, but when she talks about the lawsuit and the DRA, her frustration is visible.
“I just don’t want to see this river turned into a shithole,” she said, in characteristic frankness.
A Day’s Work
Hazel promotes the organization and its primary cause: getting clear, cold water back in the lower river. She’s not shy about sharing her opinions. She’ll talk about it—along with any other thoughts, good or bad, she has that day—in her shop and on the blog she writes almost daily on the fly shop website. It’s what earned her the nickname “The Second Mouth of the Deschutes River” on an online forum, made by an anonymous poster. She shrugs off the ill intent, though, chalking it up to just another encounter that happens when you’re on the river.
Hazel talks the whole day while we’re on the water, mostly unprompted, though she’ll constantly interrupt herself to identify the bird in the water or one that’s flying overhead. Identifying birds and bugs is a hobby she picked up from endless hours on the river guiding and teaching people how to fish.
With most of her time spent in the shop, Hazel doesn’t get a lot of time on the water these days. A day like the one we spent together, where she just gets to fish, is rare. But she rattled off tips and tricks all day without hesitation.
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m always teaching.”
“Yeah, but this time you’re the one that just gets to fly fish all day,” I said.
She looked out at the river toward her line in the water. A small, knowing smile broke out across her face.
Common craft corners are usually relinquished to an existence behind closed doors. Hidden from view, they are disassociated from the airy, less cluttered parts of the home and are often neglected. “She sheds,” with an admittedly kitschy name, are gaining popularity as a dedicated space where crafting materials can be organized and find their purpose. These small buildings outside the main home are named in the same vein as the “man cave” and are often built by and for women. The outbuildings offer a sanctuary of sorts, plus a dedicated space to pursue hobbies and crafts.
Valerie Yost, who lives in Bend, had the idea for her shed when she picked up sewing again after having kids. “I love to sew, and I have accumulated a lot of fabric and miscellaneous craft things throughout the years,” she said. “There was absolutely no space in the house for that, and you know, if it’s not handy and practical, you don’t use it.”
Built on a rarely used side yard on her property, the ninety-six-square-foot building houses all of her sewing materials in creative and efficient ways. Building the shed inspired Yost and her husband to use the rest of the side yard in a new way. “We’ve kept adding on,” she said. “This was basically a dirt side yard that was never used. We added grass and the fire pit, and it’s a more usable space.”
She sheds are growing in popularity right now. Rick Lovely, who owns Tamarack Sheds in Bend, said that he’s seen an increase in people, especially women, looking for these kinds of spaces outside the home. They’re easy to put together and can be designed to fit each person’s need or style.
Though Yost is aware of the she shed trend, she doesn’t think of her space that way. She just calls it “The Shed.”
Small spaces
White walls and a natural wood paneled ceiling keep the space from feeling small. “I knew since it was such a small space that I wanted it to be a white interior, but I love color so I wanted to have pops of color,” said Yost.
Hiding clutter
Repainted lockers salvaged from Craigslist hide yards of fabric and other sewing supplies. “This rug is really fun because it adds color, but it also hides thread really well,” she said.
Thrifty finds
She purchased bamboo floors on clearance from Lowe’s. The table was another Craigslist find. Colorful ribbons are stored in clear glass containers, and a repainted frame turned into a pegboard to hold tools. The shed is dotted with “lots of things I’ve collected, and find pretty ways to use,” said Yost.
Modern Comfort
Central Oregon has a wide range of weather and temperature. “We decided to add a little wall heater and an air conditioner, so I should never have an excuse for not being out here,” said Yost. With that addition, Yost began also using the space as an extra guestroom.
Creative inspiration
A framed picture of her grandmother, who originally taught her how to sew, sits on a shelf in the shed. “My grandma, she was a really important person in my life and was a master seamstress,” said Yost. “[My grandma] being able to sew anything for me—I wanted that for my own kids.”
