Inscripted Land
During the ten years I lived in Eastern Oregon while first serving a church in Heppner and then a church in Joseph, I traveled frequently alongside the Columbia river while traveling to and from Portland. Usually I traveled by car, but occasionally I caught the bus. When I rode the bus I had the grace-filled privilege to look out and ponder the landscape. Columns of basalt line the crests of hills like so many battalions of foot soldiers forever awaiting the sound of the trumpet. Deep gullies and canyons have carved their way into these witnesses to an earlier era of geological activity. Each canyon and valley has its own creek or stream, swelling with the spring runoff and dwindling during the hot, dry summers. Deep gorges split the rock in two, while a forest of oaks and sumac spring up out of the cleavage. Sagebrush and an occasional juniper gradually make way for Douglas Fir, Ponderosa Pine, Sumac, Ash and Poplar. It is a sculptor and painter’s ...