This is my account of a trip to Central (or "Eastern")
Oregon in order to do 2 video screenings of various short videos, by myself and others, including
the 48 hour movie.
This trip was orginally the brainstorm of
reverend phil. Also on the trip with he and I were Bengt and Mandy.
we got out of town at about 11 on saturday. as soon as we got
over the Cascades, the rainy mess that had been in
action all day just disappeared and we were in a bright hot sunny
desert.
the landscape out there is a lot like northern arizona, but maybe with
a little more vegetation. lots of classic cowboy-movie-type rock
formations, big buttes and mesas and cliffs and stuff.
we got to Mitchell, which is where Phil went to highschool. it's
a tiny town, 160 people, in the middle and on the sides of this
little canyon. it's kind of charming. the main street has several
businesses that are totally western-style facades, old wood,
hitching posts, etc.
so after we took a look at the town we went out to find a camping
site. phil lead us down this long gravel and dirt road to this
place called Priest Hole, mainly a place to put boats in the John
Day river. it was way out in the middle of nowhere, near the
Painted Hills. phil got his truck stuck in the soft sand by the
river, but we pushed it out in not too long. we camped right next
to the river, set up our tents then headed back into town to set
up for the movie. it was about 5:30, so we didnt have much time
before sunset.
it turned out we were really late getting it set up because the
person that was going to bring us an extension cord never showed
up. we found another one and finally got going about a half hour
late, at 7:30. townsfolk kept coming and going, but mostly
going, the later it got. by the time we got started there were
about 4 adults and 8 kids (like pre-teens). by the time it was
over, there were 0 adults (except for one guy that had drove up
in his pickup and was watching through his window), and 2 of the
kids. we didnt' even show the documentary because even these 2
left after the 48 hour movie was over, perhaps thinking that was
it.
it was embarrassing and frustrating. I guess Betty Beige (yes,
that is really her name), phil's contact in town who set this up
for us, really let us down. not only did she not show up with the
extension cord but she had said she would promote the screening a
little around town, by putting up posters and stuff, but then
never did. there was a little bit of word of mouth buzz, but
mostly nobody really knew about it or didnt care. even phil's
friends in town didn't show up. some he even visited beforehand
and i guess they were like "well, we're eating dinner, sorry."
really sad.
anyway, we packed up and headed back out to the campsite and then
had fun sitting around the fire, making smores and drinking. it
was pretty cold that night but i was comfortable sleeping till i
woke up a little before sunset and realized my head was very
chilly poking out of my sleeping bag. I got up at least an hour
before everyone else, i think it was probably about 7 am, after
actual sunrise, but before it had come over the hills to the
east. I walked up the river aways and saw lots of birdlife: loud
squawking things that i think might have been kingfishers, some
pheasant, a blue heron that flew by, some ducks, and other things
i couldnt identify. there was a thick mist that hung over the
river. i saw the sun start marching down the sides of western
hills. i went back to camp and started a fire. then i set up my
camera to film myself and the rise of the sun over the hills. it
was great. it was really a beautiful camping place.
immediately the air started to warm up. i made coffee with my
little stove, started getting out food for breakfast. couldn't
find the oatmeal i had brought. eventually bengt and phil and
mandy got up. we ate donuts and bananas and granola and yogurt
and coffee. for $5 we had purchased more wood than we could
realistically burn. i convinced phil that we didn't have to burn
it all up just for sake of using it. we left 4 or 5 big chunks
there by the fire ring for someone else to use, perhaps.
we struck camp and then started tooling around the area. we went
to the John Day Fossil Beds in the Painted Hills. the hills are
totally beautiful. not as many colors as the Painted Desert in
Arizona, mostly gold, red, and black, but they really do look
like some giant swiped a few paintbrushes across the land. it was
great. we hiked around a little. then phil took us back to town
and showed us some sites there. the high school he went to (his
graduating class was 8 people), some spots where kids go to
drink and get away. etc etc.
we had a great lunch at a little cafe in town. then we headed
out, making our way back toward Madras where the sunday screening
would be, but taking our time, stopping at cool views and stuff.
we got to Prineville, sort of halfway between Mitchell and
Madras, a bigger town but still pretty small. we met Phil's
friend from highschool, Tim, who works for the Prineville Fire
Department. he was on duty for the next 16 hours so he couldnt go
to the screening. he's a funny guy though. he reminded me of
Dignan in Bottle Rocket. A lot smarter than Dignan, but visually
and voicewise, and he had a similiar sort of dry, stoic way of
speaking. I told Phil, who amazingly has still not seen Bottle
Rocket, that he had to see it at least just so he could compare
Tim to Dignan.
We moved on to Madras, and then spent an hour or so trying to
find the place where the screening would be. Phil had failed to
bring directions to the place, or write down the address, or a
phone number, and he couldn't even remember the name of the
person he had dealt with! I gradually became close to furious at
how flakey and irresponsible this was. How could you arrange a
showing of a movie in a city that you did not know, and not take
along that kind of information? totally ridiculous. I've
presented my work at cultural events from
Brussels to Australia and i've never seen anything or anyone so
miserably disorganized. Phil claimed it was all because he hadn't
slept. I still don't know why he chose to not sleep the night
before going on a big road/camping trip. and even so, he could
have written down the information before starting to not sleep. I don't mean any offense to Phil, I just am describing what happened and trying to convey how amazed and frustrated I was.
Anyway, we were almost ready to give up when bengt and i flagged down a
town policeman and he told us where the place was. But, no one
was there yet. It was still a couple hours till the screening,
but I was so frustrated by our almost-failed search, and by the
night before, that I had pretty much reached my limit in this
comedy of errors. I didn't feel like waiting around to see if
this mystery contact in Madras would remember to show up or
whether she would blow us off just like the woman in Mitchell
had. I also didn't want another heartbreaking scene of seeing
only a tiny handful of people show up. Bengt had already been
planning to leave early, so i decided to go with him. we had a
little dinner with mandy and phil and then headed out, making
sure they had what they might need for the screening. just
before driving off, after doublechecking 3 times that i had
left the video tape with him, phil told me, for the first time
EVER, that the Madras person had wanted to show the videos from a
disc instead! We didn't even have all the pieces on vcd, but i
dug out the one copy of the 48hour movie vcd that i had along and gave it to
him.
then we were off. bengt and i made really good time and were back
home by 9:00. the rains began again as soon as we came back over
the mountains. amazing. western and "eastern" oregon are like 2
different planets. (i put eastern in quotes because where we were was really central oregon. but phil
and a few other locals kept calling it eastern. basically the
idea, i guess, is that everything past the Cascades is eastern. and yet,
newspapers and other official information called the area
"central". whatever.)
I hope phil and mandy got back okay. i was really glad mandy was
with him because otherwise i would have been afraid for his
ability to drive back that late at night with such little sleep.
To sum up, basically the whole weekend was fun except for
anything that had to do with the "official" reason we were out
there (showing our videos), ironically enough. i'm really glad i went, just for the
camping and seeing the beautiful country, but we should have just
done it for the fun of it instead of trying to get anything
accomplished. pretending that any appreciable number of people
out there would be interested in these wacky little movies of
ours, or expecting that the logistics of screening them would go smoothly, was a
lost cause. at least now i know. live an learn....