Horse Heavens

I've received several comments about my blog on Retreating to the Safety of Hills, so I thought maybe I'd expound on that a little.
 
Horse Heaven Hills.  Yes!  Doesn't it sound wonderful?

It used to be just miles and miles of rolling hills covered in sagebrush, wildflowers, and tall grasses, as in the picture I posted.  But now it's miles and miles of rolling hills covered in wheat and corn, which has a beauty all it's own.  Especially right now, on these spring days when the sky is so blue, the puffy white clouds are hanging effortlessly in the sky, and the fields are so green.  

Years ago, when it was just sagebrush and wildflowers and family farms scattered miles and miles apart, herds of wild horses roamed freely.  Our neighbor (on the next farm, four miles away) wrote a book about the history of the area and she used to tell my mom stories (she was quite elderly and in a frail state by the time we knew her and so my mom wouldn't take us over there) about when she was a little girl and about the horses. 

Most of the horses had gotten loose from farms or from the indians (before they were all packed off to reservations themselves) and ended up in these huge herds.  Periodically the farmers would track down a herd and try to catch a few of the horses and break them in again so they could be ridden.

Nerdy geological digression:  The hills themselves are anticlines.  Two plates of earth (in this case, basalt), pushing up against each other, one gets subducted beneath the other, pushing the other up, creating a hill with a gentle slope up one side and a sharp drop on the other.  I find the geology fascinating.  The anticlines around here take up such a huge amount of land, if you approach from the south, you don't even really notice that you're going up...people really only notice the drop-off.  Hmmm...there's a metaphor for a lot of things. 

I love the hills.  My dad used to climb with me to the top of the grain elevator, where we could see for miles and miles and miles.  Watching the hawks soar.  Watching tractors moving across the fields.  Watching the clouds float across the sky.  Watching "dust devils" (similar to a tornado, but with nowhere near the force) spiral their way across the landscape, picking up tumbleweeds, spinning them around for a while, and dropping them. 

But landscape is always changes.  In places, the wheat and the corn are being replaced by vineyards since the establishment of the Horse Heaven Hills American Vinticultural Area.  If you ever buy a bottle of Columbia Crest wine, it was bottled one mile away from the elementary school I attended. 

But back to the horses that give this place it's name, the idea of herds of wild horses roaming through the high plains desert...that makes you smile, doesn't it?  Close your eyes...can you hear them stampeding?  Can you smell the dust and the sage and the horseyness of them? 

There are no more wild horses these days.  I can't remember when the herds disappeared, but I'm sure our neighbor down the road could have said.  She's gone now, too, with the horses. 


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Suggestion for anyone interested in visiting this little corner of the world.  To get a better idea of what things were like in the Old West...well, really, the Old Inland Northwest, there are two little towns around here that really try to preserve the whole Old West history.

Pendleton, Oregon is across the river from the Horse Heavens.  Take the Pendleton Underground Tours, which is an enlightening look at the lives of the Chinese men who built the western railroads, prohibition, and prostitution (the last bordello in Pendleton didn't close until the 1960s).  Also of interest would be the Tamastlikt Cultural Institute on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation where you can sit in the darkness of a model long house and listen to the elders tell stories about the antics of Coyote.  In September, there is the Pendleton Round Up, be prepared for drunken cowboys and craziness.  And of course, the Pendleton Woolen Mills, where they make those expensive indian blankets you can get pretty much anywhere in the country that sells "western" goods.

Toppenish, Washington is in the Yakima Valley, at the base of the Horse Heavens.  The city of murals.  Nearly every business in town has a huge western mural on the side, depticting some aspect of the region's history.  Home of the Toppenish Pow-Wow and Rodeo.  Also seat of the Yakama Nation.  There's the prerequisite casino and cultural center, but really their cultural center doesn't even begin to rival the Tamstlikt in Pendleton.  The murals, really, are the main attraction.  70 of them.  I've attached a picture of my favorite...and yes, the old man on the ladder is part of the painting.  :)