Just what we don’t need

Thanks to Randy Smith for sending me a link to a New York Times online story that is exactly what Laurel and I feel central Oregon doesn’t need right now: a glowing description in a widely read national newspaper of the Sisters/Camp Sherman area. We love our (shared) cabin on national forest land bordering the Metolius river in Camp Sherman. We also love going to Sisters, about fifteen miles away, whenever we visit the cabin.

About the only thing we don’t love about the area is how fast central Oregon is growing. So hopefully readers of the New York Times will remember Oregon Governor Tom McCall’s adage from the 1970s: “Visit but don’t stay.” Of course, Laurel and I visited back in that era, and we both ended up staying.

But that was us, and that was then. We’re perfectly comfortable with our admitted hypocrisy, wanting to keep people out of Oregon now that we’re here. If you’re not a resident, you should know that it rains all the time west of the Cascades, while east of the Cascades it is either hellishly hot or chillingly cold. Portland traffic is a nightmare. You have to wait and wait for someone to fill your tank, because you can’t pump your own gas.

Lastly, you’ve got a choice between two wussy college team mascots, a beaver or a duck, while on the pro level there’s just the unlikable Jailblazers (a team that has, though, jettisoned some of its most deviant players, who, unfortunately, also were their best players).