Author: Eileen O'Keeffe McVicker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
For Eileen O'Keeffe McVicker, born in 1927 to an Irish immigrant sheep rancher and a school teacher, growing up on a homestead in the West made for "a hard, happy life with layers of riches." McVicker's memoir of a childhood spent on the southern slope of Steens Mountain offers a real-life, personal account of eastern Oregon history.An "outdoor child" all her life, McVicker tells stories that revolve around life on the ranch-tending sheep, picking wildflowers, doing chores-and describes everyday adventures: a rabid coyote threatens the family; a wild mustang stallion tries to kill her father; a Merino buck sheep leaps through the schoolhouse window. Images of Steens country-wild sagebrush and juniper country, with rugged vistas in every direction-are woven throughout her recollections, which share the profound sense of place found in the best Western memoirs. While vividly describing ranch life, Child of Steens Mountain also explores universal issues of parenting, making a living, and growing up. The homesteading life built a child's character and confidence, and as she reaches adulthood, McVicker, raised to be independent and responsible, ultimately defies her parents to follow her own path.McVicker's neighbor and friend, Barbara J. Scot, edited and organized the narration while preserving the author's distinctive voice. In an afterword, Scot reflects on McVicker's experiences and describes the collaborative process-including a visit to the old homestead site-that led to this book. Historian Richard Etulain, whose own childhood was spent on a sheep ranch in the West, provides an overview of sheep ranching and homesteading in Steens country in his foreword.Whether intrigued by Oregon history, the high desert country, or memoirs of homesteading life, readers will be unable to resist these appealing stories of growing up amid the natural beauty of Steens country.
Author: Edwin Russell Jackman
Publisher: Caxton Press
ISBN: 9780870040283
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Award winning photography and lithography sets this "coffee table" book apart from others of its type.
Author: Bette Lynch Husted
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
"Like her father before her, Bette Husted grew up on stolen land. The benchland above the Clearwater River in north-central Idaho had been a home for the Nez Perce Indians until the Dawes Act opened their reservation to settlement in 1895."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: William Ashworth
Publisher: Northwest Reprints (Paperback)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Part mountaineering adventure story and part spiritual memoir, The Wallowas recounts a young man's search for the challenges and the solace that wilderness offers. As a student, William Ashworth discovered the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon and they became an obsession. His weekends and vacations were dedicated to exploring this rugged country - roughly the size of Los Angeles and home to 126 peaks, each over 8,000 feet high. In language vivid and precise, Ashworth describes attempts to ascend Eagle Cap, Pete's Point, Sacajaweja, and the Matterhorn. Climbing and camping in summer rain and winter blizzards, he faces the challenge of the Wallowa high country and the humility it teaches. The book tracks the author's coming of age in the wilderness - from a need to conquer mountains to an awareness of the redemptive qualities found in these wild places and the need to preserve the last of them.
Author: Oregon Historical Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Northwest, Pacific
Languages : en
Pages : 692
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Book Description
Author: Jarold Ramsey
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295803517
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
The vivid imagination, robust humor, and profound sense of place of the Indians of Oregon are revealed in this anthology, which gathers together hitherto scattered and often inaccessible legends originally transcribed and translated by scholars such as Archie Phinney, Melville Jacobs, and Franz Boas.
Author: Ellen Waterston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870715921
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 142
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Book Description
"Ellen Waterston's new book is a slug of juniper air, a breath-taking view of a rough-edged land, as bracing and taut as October morningsùpart celebration, part elegy all love and the wisdom that grows from deep roots in basalt rock. Like Wallace Stegner and Ivan Doig, Waterston writes masterfully about what it meansùwhat it really means -to live in the West."-Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort There is an otherness to the high desert, something momentous and sacred in the purity of the silence. In this compelling collection of personal essays, award winning poet and author Ellen Waterston illuminates the people, places, and landscapes of central Oregon's vast high desert. In Where the Crooked River Rises, Waterston reveals the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that has been, and remains, her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Waterston's teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit blush.
Author: William L. Sullivan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780967783093
Category : Hiking
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A complete guide to hiking and traveling in Eastern Oregon, including the Wallowa Mountains, Steens Mountain, and the high desert country east of Bend.
Author: Barbara J. Scot
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870717406
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this engaging new memoir, a loose sequel to her earlier Prairie Reunion, Barbara Scot explores her reluctance and longing to reconnect with a much-loved brother, lost to alcoholism for thirty years. Scot uses long, meditative walks on the "clothing optional" beach of the idyllic Sauvie Island near Portland, Oregon, to explore family responsibility, time's passage, and faith. She weaves entries from her notebook--a record of the island's wildlife, descriptions of the "Odd Ones" she encounters on the beach, and stories about the native people who once lived on the river--with the main narrative, tracing her search for her brother, her close friendship with a fellow writer, and daily life on the houseboat moorage where she lives. The Nude Beach Notebook highlights the importance of place as a means for exploring and interpreting one's own story. In the end, Scot's walks on Sauvie Island lead to her own redemptive journey. She considers the uses of fiction and non-fiction in memory and in writing, the brevity and beauty of human existence, and the inscrutable, enduring mystery of death.
Author: Lynda Lanker
Publisher: Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon
ISBN: 9780871140999
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Features portraits of female ranchers and cowgirls who live in the American West, and anecdotes about their daily lives and thoughts about the disappearance of their lifestyle.
