By Madeline Lau
The summer is winding down in Joseph.
Knobbly-kneed baby horses are nearing their awkward teenage phase, fields of shimmering grasses are drying into dusty clods of crackly weeds, ranchers and cowboys alike shuffle wearily into town to run errands as the heat begins to phase sharply into mountain cold.
Fall is upon us, and with it, my return to the Willamette Valley. It’s been more than a successful summer.
Since I last wrote we’ve experienced the intensity of Chief Joseph Days Rodeo week when the county swells to nearly triple its size, people can be seen camping on the side of the road, and horses are as common as tourists down Main Street.
We completed the Kokanee Festival at Wallowa Lake State Park during the late August salmon spawn run, with dozens of vendors and hundreds of visitors arriving for the event under the shared goal of protecting and appreciating the special fish that help make Wallowa Lake so famous (we have the world record kokanee catch several times over).
I’ve climbed around the Wallowa Mountains, thrown myself into the lake in the middle of the night, joined two bands, performed in the middle of town, and had more than a few truly spectacular breakfasts around town.
Most recently I watched as my first ever Wallowa Lake State Park Triathlon: Race to End Abuse was successfully and safely completed by more than 115 athletes, despite being planned by a nervous race director (yours truly) who had very little knowledge about large scale sporting events. Nobody drowned, so I was more than happy!
But now, with everything winding down and only a few more days in this glorious county, I find myself seized by the exhaustion of a first real job’s summer worth of 40-hour weeks, overtime, and near-constant networking.
Driving through the glorious Zumwalt Prairie elk sighting with a friend, I fell asleep in the car seat in the middle of conversation with crazy grasshoppers jumping frantically into the vehicle and onto my pant legs.
I felt like a super lame oversized toddler and had to go home for a nap, but what can you do? With everything that’s happened in the last six months I have a mixed feeling of satisfaction and bewilderment. Is this what it’s like to work full-time? Will I always be so tired? Am I a spoiled brat?
Or has this just been one of those life-changing, career-marking summers where you feel yourself turning into the kind of person you want to be and you push yourself past the limits of comfort and procrastination to reach a new phase of productivity? Hmm, tough choice there, but I’m pretty sure it was the latter.
With this summer’s worth of experiences under my belt, and a new-found love of chicken gizzards fostered at the Imnaha Store/Tavern, I’m ready to roll my wagon wheels back into Stayton for a winter of adventure, travel, and (being the baby I am) hanging out with my family and old friends.
As I mentioned over breakfast with the cowboys this morning, talking to a farmer formerly of Hillsborough, I love living in Joseph but Stayton will always and forever be “home.”
Maybe sometimes I like somewhere else better, maybe sometimes Stayton does some weird stuff that makes me raise an eyebrow, but it is always home and it is always the end of the dusty trail. It’ll be good to be back.
