A Canoe on the Deschutes
There are larger rivers than the Deschutes, and wilder, and some better
for the canoe; many shelter more ducks, and a few more trout than does
Oregon's "River of Falls." But if there are any more beautiful or varied
I have yet to make their acquaintance.
The Columbia is, of course, a continental stream whose very mightiness
prevents any adequate comprehension of its entity; it must be enjoyed by
sections, in small potions. The Willamette is almost pastoral, a sterner
Western edition of the English Thames, with a score of rollicking
tributaries, rough as the mountains that breed them. The Sacramento,
like linked sweetness, is long drawn out, and the boisterous brooks of
the Sierras seem rather upland freshets than substantial rivers.
Superlatives are risky tools on the Pacific Slope where they appear
appropriate so often, but even so, with no apologies to the Pitt, the
Snake, the Williamson, the Rogue, and other neighbors, greater and
lesser, the Deschutes appeals to me as the richest of them all in
scenery and pleasurable attractions. From the snow banks of its birth to
the Columbia I have played companion to its waters on horseback, in
canoe, in automobile, driving, afoot, and on a train, and with
familiarity has come no contempt, but ever-increasing admiration.
The Deschutes is a river of many roles: it roars and rushes in
white-watered cascades, it sparkles gently in a myriad rippling rapids,
it is sedate as a mill pond; sometimes its banks are fields flanked with
flowers, sometimes steep slopes with black pools below and great trees
above, sometimes lined with alders or with the needle-carpeted forest
marching out to the very water's edge. Such it is for the first hundred
miles. Below, leaving the land of trees and meadows, it plunges for a
second century of miles through a spectacular canyon, walled in by
cliffs and abrupt hillsides, often rising almost sheer a thousand feet.
"The Grand Canyon of the Northwest," those who know it call this stretch
of the Deschutes. Above, billowing back from the rim, is a great
golden-brown land of wheat fields, with a marvelous mountain westerly
skyline.
On the river's western flank, between it and the Cascade Range, is a
playland of beautiful pine timber, crystal lakes, and mountained
meadows, bounded on one hand by snow-capped peaks and on the other by
the broad plains that sweep eastward to Idaho.
One August we foregathered in this happy hunting ground with our canoe
and our grub, near the headwaters of the Deschutes, in the heart of a
region of sunshine, mountain prairie, glorious trees, and laughing
water. One hundred miles of liquid highway lay before us, and we envied
no one.
Crane Prairie is a broad mountain meadow, hemmed in by timbered
foothills that climb to the snow mountains, glimpsed here and there from
the prairie land. The Deschutes divides into three streams, each
meandering down from little lakes tucked away in the timber at the base
of the snow slopes that feed them. All around the prairie is a
delightful region intersected by trails, dotted with lakes and meadows;
altogether a pleasant place for ramblings, either on foot or horseback,
with fishing, hunting, and mountain climbing as tangible objectives.
The first stage of our outing was a stationary one, so far as the canoe
was concerned, for a week was devoted to expeditioning here and there
upon and around Crane Prairie. There was excellent fishing, and we saw
just enough of the trails and the mountains to realize something of
their possibilities.
Then one morning, before the sunlight had filtered over the hills and
down through the pine boughs, we launched the _Long Green_, our canoe
which had made the transcontinental trip from Oldtown, Maine, and
started it upon a more venturesome, if less lengthy trip. Ours, by the
way, was an equal suffrage outing. Its feminine better-half paddled as
strenuously, cast a fly as optimistically, and "flipped" hot cakes as
diligently as did the male member. Altogether, she demonstrated beyond a
doubt that the enjoyment of an Oregon canoe trip need not depend upon
one's sex or previous condition of servitude.
[Illustration: Canoeing and duck shooting may be combined on the
Deschutes]
[Illustration: On a backwater of the Deschutes]
Comfortable canoeing is the most entirely satisfying method of travel
extant. It is noiseless, it is easy, and there is enough uncertainty and
risk about it to lend a special charm. Just as the best of fishing is
the unknown possibility of the next cast--your biggest trout may rise to
the fly!--so it is when you drift down stream in a canoe, for every
turn discloses a fresh vista and behind every bend lurks some rare
surprise. It may be an unsuspected rapid, requiring prompt action;
perhaps a tree has fallen across the river, necessitating a flanking
portage or a hazardous scurry beneath it; mayhap a particularly inviting
pool will appear, when one must "put on the brakes" and "full speed
astern" ever so hastily before a fatal shadow spoils the fishing
chances. There are other possibilities without number, some of them
realities for us, as when we came face to face with a deer, to our vast
mutual astonishment, or, quietly drifting down upon a madam duck and her
fluffy feathered family, gave them all violent hysterics. The little
birds were unable to fly, and the mother, who would not desert them and
lacked courage to hide along the bank, herded her family down stream for
many miles with heartbreaking squawks and much splashing of wings.
A portage is either one of the interesting events of a canoe trip or its
most despised hardship, according to the disposition of those
concerned--not to mention the length, breadth, and thickness of the
portage itself! Regarded in its most pessimistic light, a portage is a
necessary evil, and, like a burned bannock, is swallowed with good grace
by the initiated. In Eastern Canada, the land of _patois_ French, a
portage is a portage. In Maine, and elsewhere, it is apt to be a
"carry." West of the Rockies, one neither "portages" nor "carries," but
"packs" the canoe, for on the Pacific Slope everything borne by man or
beast is "packed," just as it is "toted" south of the Mason and Dixon
line. But portage, carry, or pack, the results are the same. Reduced to
their lowest equation, it usually means a sore back and a prodigious
appetite--there should be a superlative for prodigious, as all camping
appetites are that; dare one say "prodigiouser"?
Our hundred miles of river included but two portages of consequence,
both around falls. Fortunately in each instance the packing was across a
comparatively level stretch, free from underbrush, as is almost all of
this great belt of yellow pine that follows the eastern slopes of the
Cascades from the Columbia to California. There were minor carries, once
over a low bridge, where the bands of sheep cross to the mountain summer
ranges of the forest reserves, and several times an easy haul, with
canoe loaded, around the end of a fallen tree or crude forest ranger's
bridge made of floating logs held together for the most part with baling
wire.
Now and again the river was bordered by nature-made fields, knee-deep
with flowers; there were purple lupin everywhere and vermilion Indian
paint-brush, and a score of other gay blossoms. Often for the pleasure
of tramping through this pretty outdoor garden, we would let the canoe
follow its own sweet will at the end of a rope, while we walked down the
bank, perhaps intimately investigating the households of beavers or
casting a royal coachman along the shadowed water close beside the edge.
The special delight of camping, as anyone knows who has tried it, is
that life all at once becomes so simple away from the high-pressure
world of telephones, time-tables, dinner engagements, and other
necessary evils. That is the essence of outing pleasure. The fishing,
the canoeing, the hunting, climbing, or what-not are really relegated to
obscurity in comparison with this one great boon. When our physical
system runs down, we take medicine; when our mental system gets out of
gear, we crave a dose of the open, which means of simplicity.
A canoe trip is simplicity personified. In the first place, you are
launched into the wide world of out-of-doors with your entire household,
from dining table to bed, concentrated in a couple of bundles that
repose amidships in the craft which is the beginning and the end of your
transportation possibilities. The rest is "up to you." If you would get
somewhere, it is necessary to paddle, always exercising due diligence to
keep the craft right side up and escape fatal collisions with vexatious
rocks and snags. In that department--locomotion--there is just enough
active responsibility to keep it thoroughly worth while, and more than
enough relaxation, as the current carries the canoe along with only now
and then a guiding dip of the paddle, to make it all a most pleasurable
loaf.
Every stopping place was a new experience, and, it should be said, each
seemed even more beautiful than its predecessor.
"There's a bully place. See--there under the big pine."
[Illustration: Along the Deschutes, the "River of Falls." "It roars and
rushes, in white-watered Cascades"
Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.]
With a stroke or two of the paddles the _Long Green_ arrived gently at
the bank beneath that pine, and out would come the box of grub, the
gunny sack of pots and frying pans, and the rolls of bedding. Then the
canoe was drawn from the water, and, inverted, pressed into double
service as a table and a rain shelter, in case of need. Our waterproof
sleeping-bags were supposed to do as much for us, and on two occasions
showers dampened our slumbers, if not our spirits.
The important work of camping, which is not work at all, but play, is in
the commissary department. It has four stages: lighting the fire,
cooking, eating, and cleaning up; the third is, by all odds, the most
popular.
Concerning fire making, volumes have been written. It is quite possible
to learn from these incendiary publications exactly how to prepare the
proper, perfect kind of a fire under any and all circumstances. Study
alone is required to master the art--on paper! But in reality, making a
quick and satisfactory camp-fire, like creating frying-pan bread, is a
subtle attainment that can be mastered only by practice. No two people
agree; it is easier to start a dispute over the details of a camp-fire
than about anything imaginable, not even excepting the "best trout fly
made"--and that, every fisherman knows, is a matter of piscatorial
preference that has disrupted humanity since the days of Izaak Walton.
Camp cooking is another art. There, again, place not all thy faith in
books, for they are deceivers when it comes to a bit of bacon, a frying
pan, some corn-meal and flour, and a pinch of baking powder. The only
satisfactory rule is to have as few ingredients as possible and to have
plenty of them. Flour, corn-meal, bacon, dried apples, butter, hardtack,
sugar, salt, coffee, baking powder, beans--those form the essential
foundation. There is an endless list of edibles that may be added, which
run the gastronomic gamut from molasses to canned corn. But the way to
learn real camp cooking, and by all odds the best procedure for
happiness in transportation, is to take a small variety and keep each
article in a cloth bag, which insures few troublesome packages and no
disastrous leaks.
"Cleanin' up" is no trick at all, when there is a river full of water a
dozen feet from the fire, and it is simply a matter of two pots and two
tin plates. There, indeed, the joys of camp life come home to the
feminine member of the expedition most forcibly of all.
"Isn't it heavenly! Only two plates to wash!" expressed the essence of
her satisfaction.
Two plates to wash, two paddles to manipulate, two healthful, happy
weeks of out-of-doors, all as enjoyable for a woman as for a man--that
was our Deschutes River canoe trip. And there are a score or more of
other Oregon outings as delightful.