Century Farms

Outtakes #11 – A Place of Her Own

Janet Fisher

This post comes from an opening for another of my personal chapters for A Place of Her Own, a segment describing Wildcat Canyon, a remarkable cleft on the mountain. The chapter title was “The Death of Dreams.” The scene leads into a discussion of divorce, some of which was retained in an Interlude. But most of this was cut. Clip…..

Wet-Oregon-06On our walk through Wildcat Canyon, my son-in-law, Robin Loznak, captured a stunning image of this exquisite mushroom goblet, as it drank up the rain.

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The canyon, November 2010. A canyon could close in on you, give you a sense of entrapment. It could be a place of danger, haunted by cougars and rattlesnakes and unnamed fears. As I walked through Wildcat Canyon, the deepest cleft on the property, I felt a mix of unease and adventure. I was here. I accepted the challenge. A bristling sensation crossed my flesh, as if alerting me to every element around me.

Drips of rain filtered through the canopy of trees, the thick evergreen boughs offering some cover against the shower that surprised us. Lured out on this November morning by a feeble sun after days of rain, my son-in-law and I had decided to take this walk today. A light drizzle started before we even reached the Tree Farm Road up to the west hills pasture, and by the time we approached the mouth of the canyon, rain had begun to fall in earnest. We were glad for the tree cover and hoped the shower would soon pass.

Our two dogs hurried ahead, oblivious to the weather. I had asked Robin to go with me into the canyon, believing it one place Martha would surely want to explore. Her sons would, as Robin and my grandson Alex did when they learned of the place soon after they moved here. With recent cougar sightings in the area, I wasn’t comfortable going alone. The dogs would help scare off big predators, but another person would help too. Robin was happy to come along. He brought his big camera, ready to get some good nature photos.

We tramped uphill along the old logging road that cut through the canyon, not much more than a trail now, overgrown with grass and brambles, fungi scattered over the spongy ground. Unusual mushrooms, like orange goblets, lifted their heads as if to gather nectar pouring from branches above.

Towering Douglas firs helped dim the scattered light reaching this narrow gash in the earth. A high rock wall loomed on our left, just beyond the deepest cut below the road. I tipped my head back to see the top of the wall, up to the twisted trees lining the upper edge. The yawning mouth of a small cave opened deep in the rock near the top. Jagged ledges and holes marked the entire cliff face. Places for predators to hide? Ferns draped from the rock wall and covered the canyon floor, where moss carpeted rocks, tree trunks, stumps.

We scrambled down to the base, nearer the cliff. Should we? We found game trails. Cougar? Or just deer, the cougar’s favorite food? Would we surprise something we wouldn’t want to stir? No cougar would be unaware of our presence as we stomped through brush, snapping twigs, the dogs dashing from one curiosity to the next.

The overhead boughs could no longer hold back the rain that began to pour steadily, drenching us and everything around us. I pressed through the waist-high ferns, clinging to their giant wet fronds to keep from falling on the steep slope strewn with fallen branches, logs and rocks. A thick mulch covered the earth, the debris of ages. I couldn’t see a game trail anymore. As I plowed forward, I tried to imagine traipsing through this in long skirts.

Brambles tripped me. How like life. I could feel Martha’s sense of entrapment, her desperation, as she plunged through her own canyon of challenge. Divorce. It had seemed a foreign word to me. Something other people did. Yet how much worse for Martha in her day. Although not unknown in 1860, especially in the West, divorce was still rare. How could she do it? But how could she not?

I had asked myself the same questions. Shaking my head, I walked on, thinking about her. Why did she stay with him as long as she did?

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Outtakes #10 – A Place of Her Own

Janet Fisher

This Outtake comes from one of my personal chapters in A Place of Her Own, a segment leading to a Tribute to My Father that I’ve already used for a post. The scene describes a day my daughter Carisa and I walked up my father’s mountain and found ourselves in bear country. Most of my scenes were cut to focus on Martha’s story, including this and the tribute, but maybe you’ll enjoy this, and if you haven’t seen the tribute, you can visit that here. Clip…..

Bear-TrailcamRobin Loznak caught one of our bears with his trail-cam one night in October last year, a nice black bear posing for its portrait on the mountain. I prefer to see them this way.

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The west hills, September 2010. The golden grass stood so high the dogs couldn’t see their way. One a yellow lab, the other a black lab mix, they weren’t small dogs, but the grass came well over their heads. Heavy rains last spring had produced rich forage for the cows this year, and they hadn’t been on this pasture lately, making our walk difficult, except for a few beaten trails. Deer probably. Maybe elk. Or bear.

The scent of rain filled the air now, and a soft sprinkle started again after scattered morning showers. My daughter Carisa and I tromped through the thick, damp growth behind the dogs. I wanted to check out the most recent timber planting to see how it was doing, and I wanted to check out this part of the farm, wondering if Martha had done the same in her first year here.

When I was a kid we called this pasture Horse Heaven Hills. I didn’t know why the name. Maybe because the grass grew so sweet here, the animals experienced the place as their own heaven? It always seemed a bit sublime to me. For a long time I planned to build my house over here, but when my dad cut the timber that would have circled behind the house, I began to look elsewhere.

Turning, I could see how the pasture meandered up the hill in steps and ridges, down to the bluff on one side, up to Wildcat Canyon above–a deep slice into the forested ridgetop. The land was more rugged on this side of the property than the softer ridge where my house sat. A middle ridge ran between this and my house, beyond our view now.

While I found hills and hollows in the parts of Missouri and Illinois where Martha lived and traveled, there was nothing you could call a mountain, nothing to prepare her for the terrible mountains of the West she had to cross, nothing to prepare her even for the hills of her own farm. This wasn’t anything like the rugged crests of the Rockies or Cascades. I doubted it was technically a mountain, though I hadn’t found a clear definition of the term. This rose about eight hundred fifty feet from the valley floor to the top. But to my dad this hill on our farm was always the mountain. His mountain. Maybe that was because Martha saw it as a mountain and the designation continued with the family. Hills to her would be like the gentle rises in Missouri and Illinois. The farm’s elevated land of sharp slopes and sweeping ridges was in her eyes a mountain. Before my dad, Martha’s mountain.

Dipping under a hot wire to reach our newest timber planting, Carisa and I found new firs growing well despite competition. We approached a mound of blackberry vines crouched on the land like a huge thorny web, and took advantage of its better part. Something had cleared the way into the bush. We had a little snack of the delicious berries. Then I saw a pile of scat full of berry seeds. Big scat. “What’s this?” I asked. We peered closer. Goose bumps rose on my skin. “It doesn’t look fresh.”

We stood taller and looked around. A bear had been here, a large one, but not recently. With all our noise and our two dogs, it probably wouldn’t come back now. We shrugged and happily continued our snack.

Photo by Robin Loznak And of course there’s this all-time favorite Robin Loznak photo of other wildlife on the family farm, one of several photos included in A Place of Her Own. The Roosevelt elk herd ranges across the mountain, and on rare occasions even slips down to the river bottom.

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Portraits of a Century Farm ~ Threads of Light

Janet Fisher

Robin Loznak took this picture one September morning a couple of years ago along the hill road of our Century Farm–the Martha A. Maupin Century Farm named for my great-great-grandmother, subject of my new book A Place of Her Own. I imagine Martha walking this road before us, thrilling to the same kind of morning light. Below, I share some reflections.

web-morning-1

Threads of Light

Threads of light weave through a warp of branches,
A living tapestry along a border of dusty tracks
That wind down the quiet mountain.

Seasons pass, summer into fall,
September into October,
And the fabric changes.

Washes of new color gild the fibers,
While rivulets mark the verge
With sinuous patterns.

Leaves drift, scatter.
The weave opens,
And the weft expands as gathering clouds allow.

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Portraits of a Century Farm ~ Making Scents

Janet Fisher4 Comments

Many beings large and small live on our farm Martha Maupin bought years ago. I couldn’t resist adding this to “Portraits of a Century Farm,” the new series combining Robin Loznak’s photos with my words. This busy family surprised Robin one day when he was out taking pictures on the hill road. He held very still when they ambled near. I wondered how he had the presence of mind to get such clear focus of his subject, but he said he just let the camera focus. The little fellows never expressed alarm. Only curiosity. One even left nose prints on the camera lens.

Making Scents

Web-SkunksPhoto by Robin Loznak

Dust lingers on the air like a memory of rich, loamy soil,
While crackling leaves recall lush spring days
And the sweet bouquet of their youth.
But what is this?
Something smells different.

“Something big, Mamma. And it’s looking at me. What is it?”

Whiffs of blackberry and wild mint ride past on a quiet breeze,
And grasses, thirst long unquenched, add a pinch of must.
I know those smells, but not this one.

Put my nose on it. Sniff it.
M-m-m. Smooth. Very smooth. And cool.

“What is it, Mamma? I can’t make any sense of it. But I won’t be afraid. Not today.”

COMMENT

Portraits of a Century Farm ~ Grace With Lace

Janet Fisher

Robin Loznak’s photographic portraits on our family farm are often of very small critters. He has an eye for their personalities sometimes missed by the rest of us. I particularly like this new photo that made me want to imagine how the world might appear to this graceful mantis in its whimsical pose. So here is “Grace With Lace,” the second in our “Portraits of a Century Farm” category combining a little poetic prose and select photos taken by Robin on the Martha A. Maupin Century Farm.

Grace With Lace

web-mantis-2Sometimes I like to recline while I eat,
Sigh, and enjoy something sweet.
When the world’s upside down
I wear a frivolous green gown,
Flick my long, slim fingers this way and that,
A picture of grace, don’t you see?

And I really don’t care
If the ground’s up there
And the sky’s down below,
When the dappled shade of a lacy umbrella
Makes me the coolest creature
You could ever know.

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