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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2021)
2B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD OUTDOORS & REC SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 2021 WALLOWA If You Go ... Continued from Page 1B From my home in Baker City, the lake seems more dis- tant than it is, mainly, I think, because the immense bulk of the Wallowas is in the way. But the reality, of course, is that the lake is an easy, and quite beautiful, two-hour drive away. I made that drive on Sat- urday, Jan. 23, with my wife, Lisa, and our kids, Olivia and Max. Being prone to unfounded optimism as well as irratio- nality, I brought along our snowshoes. I had a vague no- tion of hiking a section of the Chief Joseph Mountain Trail at the south end of the lake. I should have packed crampons. Although this would have posed a problem seeing as we don’t own any. Those overshoes of sharp steel spikes would have been the most welcome of append- ages, though, as we crept along the trail. The snow was scanty. The ice, however, was plentiful. I ought to have suspected that the January thaw would have melted much of the snow, and that the meltwater, unable to soak into the frozen soil, would have fi lled the trail’s shallow trench. Appropriate, I suppose, given the role glaciers have played in sculpting the Wal- lowas we see today. We made our tentative, shuffl ing way to the foot- bridge over the West Fork of the Wallowa and started up the switchbacks. But after a couple of near falls we turned back, fear of potential fractures outweighing the prospect of a view across the lake. Disappointed, I suggested we try the East Fork trail, but it was, if anything, more defi cient in friction. The day was far too beauti- ful to call a forfeit, though, WALLOWA LAKE STATE PARK Park is at the south end of Wallowa Lake. Follow paved highway from Joseph about 5 miles. IWETEMYLAKIN STATE HERITAGE AREA Park is just south of Joseph. www.stateparks.oregon.gov OLD CHIEF JOSEPH GRAVESITE A few hundred feet south of Iwetemylakin Heritage Area. where Young Chief Joseph uttered words so noble they should never be associated with the word “surrender.” “Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fi ght no more forever.” I thought of those words as I stood beside his father’s grave. It’s on a knoll with a view of Wallowa Lake, and the grand mountains beyond, that Joseph himself, tıwi·teqıs, must surely have reveled in often. And I thought of another brief speech. Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald A speech that defi nes this The view of Wallowa Lake from the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site near Joseph. place with a power and an eloquence that no photo- graph could ever capture, nearly cloudless, appropri- from three tribes, the Nez in some way the rich, inspi- that no description of peak or ately chilly for midwinter and Perce (the site being part of rational but also unspeak- glacier or lake could express with only a moderate breeze its traditional homeland), ably sad legacy of the Nez half so well. from the north. Confederated Tribes of the Perce. These words were spoken We explored the sprawling Umatilla Indian Reservation Old Chief Joseph, who died by Old Chief Joseph, just Wallowa Lake State Park, and Confederated Tribes of in 1871, was the father of before his death. He was including a short stroll on the the Colville Reservation. the chief, also named Joseph, speaking to his son, who nature trail. I had hoped to The park has a fi ne net- who led the Nez Perce on use this path to connect to the work of trails totaling about their tragic trail from the Chief Joseph Mountain Trail a mile, most of which mean- Wallowa country in 1877, but we were yet again foiled der along the Wallowa Lake pursued by U.S. Army sol- by ice. glacier’s terminal moraine. diers across the mountains of Next we drove back to the It’s a distinctive landscape, Idaho and Montana. north end of the lake and most notably the scattered In 2010 I walked through parked at the Iwetemlaykin granitic boulders known as the Big Hole National Battle- State Heritage Site, a place “erratics” that were rafted fi eld in Montana, site of one I had not visited (and can’t here by ice from miles away. of the skirmishes between pronounce, even with the aid After hiking the trails the Army and the Nez Perce. of a state park pamphlet). we took a short detour to About 90 members of the The Oregon Parks and Old Chief Joseph’s grave, a tribe, including many women Recreation Department national historic landmark and children, died in the opened the 62-acre site in managed by the National battle on Aug. 9-10 of 1877. 2009. The state paid $4.1 Park Service. The death toll among the million for the property, using Here I felt the same emo- soldiers was 31. $3.2 million from the Lottery tion that I have at other That terrible trail ended and $300,000 in donations places which commemorate near the Canadian border, would become the leader of the Nez Perce. “My son, never forget my dy- ing words, this country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and mother.” Young Chief Joseph heeded his father’s call. But it did not matter. Old Chief Joseph’s remains, originally interred between the forks of the Wallowa and Lostine rivers (fi tting, as the Nez Perce called the Wallowa Valley the “land of winding waters”), were reburied at the foot of the lake in 1926. Wallowa Lake would be magical even if its history was solely of the geologic sort — fascinating, but as cold and insensate as the stony mountains. Its human history, a tale of bravery and stoicism that warms the heart as thorough- ly as glacial ice chills the bones, elevates this place to a realm loftier than the highest peak. 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