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Healthy Escapism
“A Year in Oregon’s High Desert” offers escapism you can feel good about Feeling stressed? A dose of natural beauty could help. Studies have shown that spending time in a natural setting, or even viewing scenes of nature, can lower stress level, heart rate and blood pressure and make people feel more trusting and...
Read MoreSteens Next 20
by Senior Attorney Mac Lacy Steens Mountain is an extraordinary place. Known to the Northern Paiute as Tse’tse’ede, “the Cold One,” the mountain covers an ecologically distinctive, half-million acre landscape replete with specially protected public lands and rivers and a diversity of habitats essential to hundreds of species of fish and wildlife. Twenty years...
Read MoreSutton Mountain Dazzles, Inspires in Equal Measure
By Matt Wastradowski The Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument sees roughly 200,000 visitors per year, almost all of them dazzled by the brightly colored hillsides, arid landscapes, and explosive ecological history of the John Day River Basin. But just east of the Painted Hills sits Sutton Mountain, rising...
Read MoreInspired by the Desert
Even if you are not an artist, you’ve probably wished you could somehow capture the way that sunlight paints the desert in subtle hues. For the six artists profiled below, Oregon’s high desert has proved to hold endless inspiration. Read on to get to know more about their lives, their work and how they...
Read MoreSummertime Strategies
Wow, it’s hot out there in the high desert! At least much of the time … not so much at night … and not every day either. (I can clearly recall July 4, 2010, when, camped out on the West Little Owyhee River, we got 4” of snow overnight and all our water was...
Read MoreWalking the High Desert
A new book about the Oregon Desert Trail debuts this month: Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail, written by Ellen Waterston, published by University of Washington Press. In this book, Waterston, an ONDA member and former high desert rancher, writes of a wild, essentially roadless, starkly beautiful...
Read MoreWhat Can I Do?
Last Updated: April 14, 2020 It’s mid-April 2020 and we are seeing a positive response to Governor Brown’s stay at home order that is helping to keep Covid-19 cases at levels hospitals can handle. The stay at home order allows us to get outside to exercise and enjoy nature, and doing so is important...
Read MoreA Thru-Hiker’s Message – Stay Home
An Oregon Desert Trail Thru-hiker Recounts a Decision To Get Off the Trail post by Riley Manning It’s a scary time right now. As the flowers bloom and the days grow long, hikers who had spent months and years preparing for their thru-hikes: quitting jobs, ending leases, selling off furniture, are now canceling their...
Read MoreWhy We’re Nominating Whychus Creek
The following Wild and Scenic River nomination was written by the Bend Senior High School Environmental Club. Whychus Creek: a Nomination as a Wild and Scenic River We rely on our watershed. It provides unique habitat, gorgeous scenery, historical connections, and gives life to the towns and cities of Oregon. In order for Oregon...
Read MoreHow to nominate a river for Wild and Scenic protection
Oregon can already claim to be the state with the most Wild and Scenic Rivers, and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has a not-so-secret goal to make Oregon the state with the Most Designated Miles, too. (Right now, that honor goes to Alaska.) Earlier this fall, Sen. Wyden announced a new effort to protect more...
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