C6
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 20, 2019
CAUGHT OVGARD
The international incident that wasn’t
By LUKE OVGARD
For the East Oregonian
BAY OF ISLANDS, New
Zealand — After a solid first
day of sea kayaking and get-
ting the lay of the land, we
decided to mix it up the sec-
ond day.
It was great in theory, but
kayaking for miles in high
winds all day was exhaust-
ing. Carrying the kayaks by
hand up the beach, over the
rocks and then five blocks
back to the hostel we were
staying at was excruciating.
When we repeated the
next day, even higher winds
blew us onto an island. The
island was absolutely cov-
ered in sea glass, and after I
filled up a small bag with it,
we shoved off again.
Fishing was decent, but
impractical. The wind didn’t
let up, and we were forced to
land on another beach.
Little did we know that
we were about to start an
international incident.
Photos contributed by Luke Ovgard
Waitangi Beach looks like any other beach from a distance, but it holds deep significance to New Zealand.
Beachhead
The beach we’d taken our
reprieve on was Waitangi
Beach.
For those not familiar
with New Zealand’s history,
the country is unique among
white-settled nations in that
white settlers didn’t rape,
pillage, enslave, and sub-
jugate the natives. Instead,
the native Maori and the
white settlers signed a doc-
ument called the Treaty
of Waitangi, which basi-
cally served as the country’s
founding document.
Every year, on Feb. 6,
a ceremony is held at the
location of the original
treaty when a war canoe
is launched from a sacred
beach. A beach two fish-
ermen had unintentionally
landed on in a windstorm —
in early February.
We failed to realize what
we’d done until a procession
of Maori began carrying a
ceremonial canoe down to
the beach and a large proces-
sion of officials joined them.
There were cameras and
around 100 people in tow to
celebrate the birth of their
island nation.
The Maori ceremonial war canoes used at Waitangi for reenactments held on Waitangi Day
can be up to 120 feet long and are always made from a single tree.
All that work, risk and effort for a jack mackerel, one of the
most common fish in New Zealand’s waters.
My Kiwi friend from col-
lege, David Clarke, was mor-
tified and I was mortified.
Once we realized the gravity
of the situation, we hopped
back in the kayaks and pad-
dled like mad, making com-
ically slow progress with the
cheap plastic kayaks in light
of our exhaustion and a pow-
erful headwind.
The wind was blowing
at 30 to 40 miles per hour,
right in our faces, and it took
us almost two hours to pad-
dle the 3 miles or so back to
Zealand’s regional rep for
the company, had loaded us
up with then went to check
out the Waitangi Treaty
Grounds.
the beach from which we’d
launched.
No police awaited us, and
we assumed we’d made it
away unscathed.
Once we landed, we
decided to leave the kayaks
on shore for a while and see
the Bay of Islands and the
collection of small towns
therein.
Wharf
We took a ferry to the
town of Russell, where we
grabbed lunch and fished
from the wharf there. David
landed a fish the locals called
a spot, while I landed my
second species of the day, a
jack mackerel.
Fishing was mediocre at
best, so we grabbed take-
away (to-go) fish and chips
and made our way back to
our hostel in Paihia.
Real food was too expen-
sive for us, so we had another
lunch of grilled frankfurters,
mustard, and sauerkraut and
washed it down with the Red
Bull David’s brother, New
Recognition
Though the museum was
incredible and full of inter-
esting history and Maori
culture, perhaps the most
exciting moment came when
one of the employees recog-
nized us as “the blokes with
the kayaks.”
Just as we began to die
of embarrassment, fear and
shame, he started laughing
and said “Sweet as, bro!” the
Kiwi slang for “Awesome!”
We shared a laugh, fin-
ished the tour and I thanked
God the trip down under
didn’t turn my world upside
down.
———
Order performance fish-
ing apparel or read more at
caughtovgard.com; Follow
on Instagram and Fishbrain
@lukeovgard; Contact luke.
ovgard@gmail.com.
Interesting recipe gives Northern Blue Mountains unique presentation
By ETHAN SHAW
For the East Oregonian
Every mountain range is
different: looks different,
feels different. It’s a com-
plicated recipe, after all, to
cook one up and there are
a lot of ingredients: molten
and solid rock, water in all
its forms, sunlight, wind,
plants and more. And a diz-
zyingly long cooking time,
mind you.
An interesting rec-
ipe gives Northeast Ore-
gon and Southeast Wash-
ington’s Northern Blue
Mountains — that vaguely
defined
northwestern,
windward range of the
broader Blues — an inter-
esting topographic presen-
tation. They’re less a con-
ventional mountain range
and more a great tableland
(the “Blue Tablelands”).
A dissected tableland,
gnawed at and drilled into,
leaving mesas and buttes
and knife ridges over-
looking breaks and can-
yons. Rugged, knee-buck-
ling, axle-busting country,
but possessed for the most
part of a remarkably even
skyline.
It’s that roughly level,
conifer-ruffled
skyline,
belying the tumbledown
terrain below, that defines
the range. Under twilight
or starlight, this is land that
can masquerade as a roll-
ing, easy-to-walk plain.
Try to walk it, though,
straight out to that invit-
ingly flattish horizon, and
you’ll quickly be disabused
of the notion.
That’s what you get
with almost unbelievable
quantities of basalt spewed
out like molasses nearby,
flood after flood of it, then
upraised as a layer cake and
exposed to the relentless,
Contributed photos by Ethan Shaw
Owsley Hogback overlooks the Meacham canyonlands area of the Northern Blue Mountains.
The Meacham canyonlands showcase the typical level hori-
zon but majorly rough terrain of the Northern Blues.
Pikes Peak and the western front of the Northern Blues from
close to Milton-Freewater.
no-hurry demolition work
of weathering and erosion.
Up here, the Northern
Blues climax into what (to
my eye, anyhow) is spec-
nation of the range’s relief
and ruggedness. (These
canyonland sections aren’t
unrelated to the fact that
this stretch of the North-
tacular tableland scenery,
dominated by the big Mea-
cham-Umatilla breaks and
the bigger Wenaha-Tucan-
non canyonlands, culmi-
ern Blues, downwind
of the Columbia Gorge,
gets a lot more precipita-
tion than more southwest-
erly reaches, ramping up
stream-cutting muscle.)
These Blue Tablelands
are their own kingdom,
but also a kind of topo-
graphic segue: bridging the
lower, softer basalt coun-
try of the Mid-Columbia
Basin (whose bleak Yakima
Fold Belt ridges mirror the
upwarp of the Northern
Blues) and the epic plunge
of Hells Canyon as well as
the higher subalpine and
alpine ranges of the Blues
to their south.
Folks from, say, the
Colorado or the Cana-
dian Rockies crossing I-84
might sneer at the North-
ern Blues (though, let’s
hope, not at the high Wal-
lowas or Elkhorns). Or
maybe they just scratch
their heads: “What exactly
are these? Mountains? Pla-
teaus? Pumped-up, mostly
timbered badlands?”
Well, they are what
they are: broken tableland,
raked-open
canyonland,
black-timbered humpback
summit, sunny ponderosa
bench, long balsamroot
ridge, Douglas-fir stringer
draw, deadwood shrub-jun-
gle gulch, golden ribbed
hillslope,
basalt-scarred
breaks, dark woods and
bright grassland, parched
grassy flanks and lush can-
yon deeps and back-in-the-
timber springs — and elk
pasture, hunting ground,
sheep driveway, skid road,
and everywhere the ghost
of fire.
Not everybody’s idea of
a mountainscape, sure. But,
as Hemingway might say,
“good country.”
———
Ethan Shaw is a natural-
ist and freelance outdoors/
nature writer who lives in
Cove and spends as much
time as possible in the
backcountry.