From The Dry Side

Desert Conference 25

It used to be at Malheur Field Station,
with hospital beds, communal showers, water laced with arsenic.
We went as penance for living high on the hog somewhere else.

There were no comfortable chairs, no air conditioning,
we sought refuge outside and gathered late at night
and early morning in the Greasewood Room to tame our addictions.

Though we suffered long lines in the cafeteria, there was bird watching
at refuge headquarters,  and rendezvous at the flagpole
to plan strategy or head off together up Coyote Butte.

There were arguments about wilderness,
ranchers raging about coyotes,
and management plans that killed one animal to multiply another.

I always fell in love, with some handsome man whose
eyes glittered in sunset and words were passionate
about something living with sagebrush

I always stopped at Glass Butte for obsidian,
at Safeway for snacks, and at the first sightings
of yellow headed blackbirds or sandhill cranes.

I saw big horn sheep up Home Creek canyon,
I piled into a car for Malheur hotsprings at midnight
and woke at dawn to see sage grouse at their lek.

This year the conference was held at Big Muddy Ranch,
lately owned by Young Life, formerly by the Bhagwan.
I tried not to feel menace in the swarms of teens cheering their food.

But when we hiked out towards the John Day river,
into the tan September grass and the scrolling hills
I could not fault our location.

In the desert our handiwork is most obvious,
each road or radio tower or fenceline
is our fault and job and joy to remove.

I came from New York, informed only by a song
about home on the range where deer and antelope play.
All these years, it still sings to me.