Eastern Oregon Writers in Residence
Harney County
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| Birds over lake |
Harney County encompasses 10,000 square miles of Oregon's Outback in the southeastern end of the state. Distance in the Outback is counted in minutes of drive time, not miles; e.g., “Drewsey is 60 minutes from Burns.”
Roughly half the population of 7,000 people, including Basque, Paiute, Pioneer‑stock, Scots‑Irish, Welsh and “Other,” is settled around the twin cities of Burns and Hines, with the rest living in widely scattered settlements. The diversity of individual interests is surprising, with poets and painters and writers of prose and poetry, weavers and crafters of art and music “comin’ inta town” from the ranch for community concerts, art shows and plays, for fundraisers and high school ball games. Harney County is a genuine community on a large scale.
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| Frenchglen School |
And this community promotes the arts! Local thespians gather and perform as the ‘Once in a Blue Moon’ Productions. The Missoula Children’s Theater has been coming into Harney County since 2000, supported by the local Harney Youth Theater Guild. Art galleries host artist openings monthly, and the local movie theater, which is on the state’s historical register, shows mostly first‑run movies. Craft fairs and displays of textile arts abound year round. The Harney County Library hosts programs, tours, clubs, and workshops for literature and literacy. The library also houses the Clair McGill Luce Western History Room, a research facility gaining national repute. The Chamber Music Society directs an orchestra, a choir, and bell choir in bi‑annual concerts, and sponsors scholarships for school age
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| Harney County resident |
musicians. The springtime Migratory Bird Festival draws birdwatchers and artisans from around the world, to watch and celebrate the skeins of birds that fill the flyways over the Harney Basin.
What does Harney County ask of a Writer‑in-Residence? The Oregon Outback is an unusual place, and daily engenders tales for the telling. We look for an author willing to come and encourage writing and storytelling, someone to impart the excitement and power of the written word for personal and community enrichment.
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| Crane Boarding School sign |
What can Harney County offer a Writer‑in-Residence? Experiences both of person and place in a rich palette, a sky big enough to let imagination soar, solitude and silences to regenerate the soul, and a friendly, unaffected potpourri of people. We live on the frontier, and visiting writers have the opportunity to live an adventure most just read about.
– Peg Wallis, Harney County EOWIR volunteer
Previous Harney County Writers-in-Residence
2010 Kristy Athens
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| Linda Harrington at Plein Air workshop |
EN PLEIN AIR WORKSHOP BURNS, OR
APRIL 10, 2010
“Tough Country”
By Linda L. Harrington
The wind bites my face like the ice teeth of Hoare frost. My nose threatens to drip. “Find a warm place – you look miserable,” she says.
Saturday at the park ends quickly for the young couple braving the elements with their 3 year-old, hoping for a nice day and some “quality time.” The young mother stands stick straight with her hands plunged deeply into her shallow pocketed low riders, shoulders raised against her ears to ward off the cold. Dad pushes the swing with the little girl, standing sideways to the wind with one hand stuffed into his pants pocket. The child looks from side to side, trying to enjoy the moment but clearly wishing it would end.
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| Kristy Athens and students in Plein Air writing exercises |
The day is gray. Overcast. Not auspicious for the birders who have come from afar to take in the annual bird festival. If there are birds in the sky they aren’t over this park. An occasional car passes by the edge of the park. No one appears to be in a hurry. This is a day to run from, not to. The table cloth, so thoughtfully placed for us, flaps in the cold wind. Alone, abandoned, it serves only to remind me how cold and numb I was standing there. I hear the wind howling from the backseat of my car where I have taken shelter.
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| Kristy Athens and students in the Harney County Library (photo: Lisa Moody) |
These are the hardest days for me in Burns. The ones where the wind howls and hisses and bellows at me as if to say, “go away, newcomer, you will never adapt to this place.” It is tough country. The people are tough, the land is hard, and the weather is unfriendly. It makes me long for the Upper John
Day Valley where I can be outside with comfort and ease. Burns is the poster child for every weather report about Eastern Oregon that shows a wizened cowboy with kerchief wrapped around his face, bent into the wind, on the back of a frost covered horse, plowing through a foot of snow trying to rescue spring calves. I used to see these images on the television from the comfort of my Portland home.
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| Kate Marsh-Copeland at Plein Air workshop |
I expected to see them when we moved to Prairie City but they never materialized. I decided they didn’t exist, or at least not often and not in my Eastern Oregon. Then we moved to Burns. They exist. They are real. The only thing missing from this park on this day is the cowboy, the horse and the snow. Everything else is here to remind me that this tough country is way too tough for me.
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| Desert Theater, Downtown Burns | Hines middle school student writing in Plein Air |
2009 Angela Allen
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| Photos by Angela Allen |
Harney County Lessons
I am heartened
in this vast lonely land
by the room for affection.
Tundra swans swim in twos,
mule deer mingle, then muddle,
sandhill cranes remain faithful.
Children rush in like flyway birds
carrying songs into fine, thin air,
prepared to wing it any which way.
Angela Allen
Frenchglen, Harney County, Ore.
March 2, 2009
Two Haikus
Wind, like coyotes,
howling as it races
down the deserted field.
It sounds as if it
might blow my house to pieces
on the nights it roars.
Peter Neuschwander, age 13, 7th Grade, Fields Elementary, Harney County, April 2009
Green
Green is the fence posts along the road
the color of toads and the smell of grass.
Green is the smooth alfalfa growing rapidly in the field
and the pretty green‑eyed girl in the John Deere.
Tanner Arnold, age 13, 7th Grade, Juntura School, Malheur County, April 2009
2008 Geronimo Tagatac
2007 Jon Rombach
