I have been working on it off and on (mostly off) for over 10 years, and I can see the end in sight.  It’s called “Stompin’ Grounds”.  It starts when I moved to Oregon, and continues until the present day.  It’s mostly about the places I have visited, and my musings about them.  Here’s a sample.

This is from the introduction.

            ““Go west, young man,” My wife said, “Oh, and take me with you.”  It did not exactly work out that way.  She had left before me, and traveled west in a U-Haul truck with her father while I finished up my Army commitment at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  Then, it was my turn.  I left Pennsylvania in a rusting pickup truck that I had named “Entropy” (after Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that everything in the universe tends toward disorganization and decay) with a ration of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, salted sunflower seed, and cigarettes, heading toward this unfamiliar place called Oregon.

            I rolled across Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois while watching the scenery change from familiar to strange.  I flew through the Central Lowlands of the Midwest, with its long, straight stretches of highway, followed by Great Planes in Nebraska.  On the third night I watched shooting stars in Wyoming, and understood for the first time what “Big Sky” meant.  I remember not wanting to go to sleep.  The next day I drove into a tiny, but determined downpour that started with a single, menacing thunderhead looming over the road like a hellish ‘V’ in the distance.  Eventually, it stormed so hard that I had to pull over, but it lasted for only a lightning-singed minute or so, and then I drove on under a crystal blue sky.  I had never seen anything like that before.

            Entropy took the miles in stride.  The anticipated steady stream of truck parts in the rear-view mirror never materialized.  It helped that I had replaced quite a number of those parts in the previous 6 months.  I rode her hard every day, and put her away wet every night, sleeping in the cab because I could not afford hotel rooms.

            The landscape of the American West, known to me only from old movies and Road Runner cartoons, passed by my windows mile after mile, state after state, leaving me awestruck by the rugged beauty of mountain and plain.  Entropy ascended the Rocky Mountains with zeal, floated down into Utah, and strutted past Salt Lake City like a cheap date in an expensive dress, and finally cantered into Oregon’s Blue Mountains on September 21, 1991.  Being the end of summer, the flora shifted to golden grasses and tumbleweeds.

            Pennsylvania lies in the humid east.  The grass grows green there all year, and the billion-year old mountains, clothed in deciduous forests that strip nekkid every autumn, have eroded into nubs of their former selves.  The mountains I knew best were the Appalachians.  Having hiked the its famous trail on many occasions, wind in the leaves and the smell of the soil were my companions.  Needless to say, my concept of terrain was altered by the Rockies, but eastern Oregon, with its semi-arid expanse of white oak, ponderosa pine, treeless hills, and dormant grasses seemed like wandering on an alien planet.  I was pleasantly surprised when I hit the Blue Mountains.  There, at least, it was green.

            I pulled into a rest stop east of Pendleton near noon the next day.  A middle-aged couple told me that they saw my PA license plate, and wanted me to know what awaited me a few hours west.  Having been past Baker City and into the Blue Mountains, I was skeptical that the scenery could be much more intense.  They told me, “If you’re from Pennsylvania, “You’re going to love the Columbia Gorge.”  I had never heard of it.  We talked about my drive across the country in a 1981 Ford F-150 pickup truck, what brought me to Oregon, and the beauty of Oregon (the little of it I had seen).

            I had to get going, so we said goodbye.  I resumed my westward trek, knowing that I would make it to my new home in Portland by evening.  My wife was there, and we had not seen each other for months.

            Shortly after I left the rest stop, I passed a sign that read, “Deadman Pass”.  A fine, Western name, I thought.  I was atop what locals called “Cabbage Hill”, and was about to be hit in the windshield by a large chunk of Oregon.  Imagine if you will, an angel choir singing a long, rising note as the road emerges from the top of a mountain and into open air what seemed like a mile or so above the valley floor, and the heavens opening up for me and my rusty pickup to reveal the scope of creation.  Think I am overstating it?  I am, but try it sometime.  Cabbage Hill is one long, treeless vantage point that unveils the farmlands east of Pendleton, splayed out in a dusty checkerboard in a 180-degree view.  That grand sweep of Earth with scant trees, and distant plumes of dust from wheat harvest perched on this East Coast kid’s chamber door of consciousness, and would not leave.”

Here are a few of the pictures:

Keep an eye on this post for more information if you ar interested.  I will be selling it at the Portland saturday market, and at summer art festivals.

Thanks for looking!

–Gary L. Quay