(April 2022)
My About page on this web site details a few Central Oregon features that draw me to the area, both for recreation and to photograph the scenery. In addition to those qualities is the region’s sparse traffic:
However, while in Harney County on April 12, 2008, I was surprised to meet up with this:
This was my first experience with such a beefy conveyance. I wasn’t quite sure what to do until one of the ranch hands rode up and asked me to stay put, that the herd would part around my vehicle. And it did, though several herd members gave me the eye:
Again, a few years later:
This type of rural road jam clearly calls for caution. The herd below stopped me for 10 or 15 minutes – enough time for a cup of coffee, to experience the moment, and to check out the landscape:
Some folks, however, ignore animal safety, let alone their own:
Less than a week later, while descending Canyon Creek Road from Big Big Summit Prairie (Crook County), I was held up by a band of wild horses meandering down the roadway. April 12, 2018:
I paraphrased the following information from a reader board located at the junction of Ochoco Ranger Road and Coyote Creek Road (NF-2610): The Big Summit Wildlife Territory, home to several bands of wild free-roaming horses, was created in 1971. Early settlers’ horses may have shared the lineage of those owned by Native Peoples whose horses, in turn, are traceable to the mounts of Spanish explorers. The Big Summit horses appear to have maintained genetic markers of the Iberian and Andalusian strains, both native to the Iberian Peninsula. Several long-time Prineville residents told me that many locals have never seen any of these herds.
And here, free again from those rural traffic jams:
