You Couldn’t Pay Us To Do This Job

Brewing coffee in our RV, Maxine

Eric wakes up around 6:30 am, makes coffee and wrangles our livestock – Sophie the cat, Lexi the dog - while Lynn fries a couple of eggs, slices oranges and sizzles a muffin in a little olive oil. By 7:45 or so, Eric is walking to the Crane’s Nest Nature Store to open for the day; first, to feed the resident red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds, the drop-in finches and warblers, chubby quail and towhees along with a passel of fat Belding ground-squirrels who are already lined up at the feeders (a bunch of freeloaders getting by on their looks).

By about 9:30 or so, Lynn has walked Lexi down our back road to the Blitzen river, flushed a flock of ducks, and scared up a klatch of kildeer. 

She walks to work at the store, giving Eric relief dealing with the late morning rush of one or two customers. Our patient and merciful “boss”, Janelle, is usually buried in one project or another in her office or out barnstorming the community, so it is up to the two of us to mind the store.

There are always things to do in the store– restocking, pricing, and best of all, meeting the visitors. Lynn jots notes on their maps – a Swainson’s Hawk nest is near the highway to Burns, and here is a good spot for watching waves of Snow Geese roll over farm fields, and, oh, don't miss the Eagle with her chick near the P Ranch. 

Noon-ish, Eric goes back to the wagon train (our RV camp) to fix himself a lunch. Around 1pm he is back with a mini-lunch for Lynn – half a sandwich and an orange to get through the afternoon. We trade off and Lynn has an hour play date with Lexi while Eric palavers with visitors. Everything winds down around 3:30 or so, and by 4:00 we close the store, count the cash and walk back together to the wagon train.

Dan, Eric, and Jo share a laugh

Evenings are always good times with our volunteer mates: Dan, Jo, John, and Sally. Jo could have stepped right out of a western. She showed up in a big 4x4 pick-up truck with a horse trailer and her Red Heeler, Juniper. She’s a walking library of area history, geology, and zoology along with being an accomplished artist and horsewoman. Dan is a professional photographer who is generous with his time and kind with his critiques and suggestions. John, who styles himself as a curmudgeon, is anything but. He is, instead, a careful thinker and good conversationalist with a slightly off-kilter sense of humor - though one gets the feeling he does not suffer fools lightly. Sally, a former schoolteacher, is big-hearted and has, in many ways, been the glue that has cemented us together over the weeks with lovely wines to sample and tasty contributions at communal meals.

Dinner at the Frenchglen Hotel

Many nights we socialize while fixing our own evening meals. It is a swirl of talk and laughter. We debate various issues pertaining to the Refuge, the surrounding ranches and communities, crack jokes, review the photos of the day, puzzle over the weather surprises we’ve had and compare notes on RV living in the high desert. Around 9:00 pm or so, we hit the sack. The shades are drawn; the coyotes howl and owls hoot; the stars, more than we have ever seen, save for our kayak trips, wallpaper the sky. The pets jostle for warm sleeping spots over, under, and around us.  And that’s it. Such is our work day.

You couldn’t pay us to do this job.

Days off we’re exploring. We locate new birding spots, venture out into the desert, rattle along the back roads around the awesome Steens, read maps, take pictures, hike, drop by the hotel at Frenchglen for coffee and sandwiches if we happen to be down that way. There is no end to discovery and learning here.  

Lynn, ever the intrepid photographer, eschews any caution vis-à-vis her new Toyota RAV4 and seems bent on placing her car in various extreme attitudes as we pound around some of the less than perfectly maintained back roads. Eric, a one-time race car driver, is often reduced to hyperventilation and panic attacks accompanied by strange, but well intentioned, bits of advice like Gaaahh and Noooo.


All in all, somehow, we manage without any real plan. We just pick a direction and drive. Wonder and beauty ensue.  Mountains, snow, desert, shy pronghorn, sarcastic ravens, bounding jackrabbits, casual deer, imperious hawks, fluttering kestrels all come and go. We stop and hike, eat lunch and take pictures. It is as if we were astronauts silently probing some alien Edenic landscape.

Burrowing Owl tucked into a grassy field

Other days we try to scratch the surface of the community here. Always we feel welcome, even appreciated. We chat with a local restaurant owner who is funny and dour all at once. You can see, in her set jaw and straight-to-the-eye look, that she has a fair bit of hard bark on her, but also that she is exuberant and kind. A cowboy gentleman sits at a table and quietly sips his coffee as he listens to his wife. Imagine some idealized old cowhand: burning blue eyes, handlebar mustache, boots, jeans, wool checkered shirt, red bandana and of course, a wide-brimmed hat. His leathery hands, wrapped around his cup, must be holding 60 years or more of stories. Any drugstore cowpoke would weep with envy. You can’t buy that look; you can only earn it.

Eric & Lexi stroll through Burns

 Eric decides to get a haircut at one of the local barbers calling it his “Burns disguise”. There are two

predominant style choices here: short and real short. The lady barber is chatty and once we reveal that we are from Portland, she lets it be known that she is not a fan of big cities. She relates, as her scissors snap over Eric’s scalp with increasing ferocity, that she has heard “…there are vans, funded by us taxpayers, who give drug addicts needles and a place to shoot up, RIGHT THERE IN PORTLAND…” she slaps shaving cream on the back of Eric’s neck and hauls out a straight razor. Eric, who was about to mention that he had not heard of such a program there, but knew of something similar – the so-called Harm Reduction program - initiated in Seattle, thinks the better of saying anything AT ALL as the razor slides down the back of his neck. Eventually, after she’s set the razor aside and begins thinning his eyebrows, he squeaks out a cowardly, “I’ll be darned…”

Refuge staff works with Burns students on a bird art project

Some days later, back at work, we scurry about in preparation for the Migratory Bird Festival. The store traffic has increased dramatically and by the time we close on the first day of the celebrations, we are dog-tired. So, of course, it is the perfect time for an interview from an OPB radio reporter who wants to know what we like about the area, what we enjoy about the volunteer experience, how we felt about the occupation and so on. Lynn, as always, offers insightful, charming answers. Eric mentions he is particularly interested in the local geology. Taking his cue, the reporter asks for a quick description. In his tired brain, Eric composes a quick explanation of Basin and Range, fault blocks, pluvial lakes, and so on, but somehow it comes out as something like, “Me like big rocks Steens. Broken. Fault block. Lava is real purty.” The OPB reporter apparently realizes she is interviewing a Neanderthal and quickly turns to Lynn for the remainder of the interview.

The reporter has a young boy in tow who has been given the job of handling the recorder. She turns the mike over to him so that he can ask questions as well. He asks about out favorite birds, but seems particularly interested in telling us that his favowite biwd (he is having some trouble with his R’s) is an “Amewican Bald Eagle”. Lynn responds, do you mean a bald eagle? He shakes his head no. He describes an eagle with “wed and white stwipes and blue wings with staws (stars) underneath. We both say we have never seen such an eagle. He seems disappointed, puzzled, but also… certain. The OPB reporter gently pries the microphone out of his hand and thanks us for the interview.

It isn’t until a few days later that it dawns on us what he meant. He was talking about the eagle shield, that well-known symbol of America. THAT was his favorite bird. Yes, of course, we have seen it all of our lives, and it certainly does live here. It’s been here since Teddy Roosevelt established the refuge in 1908 at the urging of wildlife photographers William Finley and Herman Bohlman to save precious migratory species from plume hunters. It is has lived here since the young men of the CCC clambered out of their barracks and tents to build the headquarters, our store, and other outbuildings. It has been here through the period of stewardship by local farmers and ranchers. It has been here since various collaborations, private and public, have wrestled with best management practices. Here through the occupation and on and on until today. The bird has never left. We can feel its presence throughout the whole story of this amazing place. For us to be part of that story, as small as our contribution may be, is a privilege.

You couldn’t pay us to do this job.