SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
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EDITORIAL
Let’s have a
fun, and
safe, holiday
We have much to celebrate this weekend besides the
obvious, which is our nation’s 245 years of indepen-
dence. The pandemic is waning. Mask mandates and
limits on restaurant capacity ended on Wednesday,
June 30. Cool water beckons as a record-setting heat
wave persists.
But danger lurks during this period of celebrations,
family gatherings and other fun.
Fire.
The potential for fi res to spread rapidly is well above
average for the fi rst week of July.
(The fi re danger is not, however, at record levels. In
most years the danger peaks during August or early
September.)
This is hardly surprising, considering Northeastern
Oregon is in the midst of one of its more severe heat
waves — the most severe, in some places.
We have no control over the force that starts most
wildfi res in our region — lightning.
Accidents can also spark blazes. The fi re that burned
about 100 acres in Keating Valley on Tuesday, June 29,
was ignited by farm equipment.
Farmers, obviously, have to work their land.
But most other human-caused fi res are in no way
inevitable.
The most obvious concern during this weekend in
particular is fi reworks. They are certainly capable of
sparking a fi re. But it requires no great effort to be safe
with fi reworks, should you choose to use some. Light
them only in places with nothing combustible nearby.
Estimate how far the sparks will go — and then
double that distance, or more. And no matter how safe
the spot might seem, have water at hand.
Fireworks are banned year-round on national
forests, Bureau of Land Management land and other
public property in the forests and rangelands.
The other precautions are familiar, but they can’t
be repeated too often. Snub cigarettes properly. Don’t
drive or park vehicles in areas with tall, dry grass. Be
careful with any activity that could possibly produce
even a single spark — even hammering a nail.
Yes, the fi re danger is considerable. But tinder-dry
sagebrush and desiccated pine trees don’t spontane-
ously combust. We can enjoy the holiday and do so
safely.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
New Go! Magazine on the way
Starting in July, EO Media Group
is launching Go! Magazine, a weekly
arts and entertainment publication de-
signed to do exactly what it says — get
readers to “go” out and experience all of
what Eastern Oregon has to offer. For
readers in Union, Baker, Umatilla and
Morrow counties, Go! will be in your
Thursday newspaper. For readers in
Wallowa and Grant counties, you will
receive the magazine every Wednesday.
Go! is designed to be a solid platform
to connect our readers in more diverse
— and I hope, interesting — ways. The
magazine gives you plenty of options
to know what is going on where and
in what town, with a calendar of event
dates and times for a host of weekly
entertainment venues throughout
the region. The accompanying web-
site, goeasternoregon.com, will offer a
mobile-friendly digital version of the
magazine and calendar to take with
you as you explore Eastern Oregon
again. After more than a year of stay-
ing home, we are all ready to take
to the roads and start celebrating at
festivals, rodeos, concerts and events
throughout the region.
After trying to fi nd ways to work
more effi ciently and working on joint
projects such as Northeast Oregon
Artisans and AgriBusiness, the six pa-
pers that make up EO Media Group’s
eastside publications are launching Go!
Magazine as another shared venture
for our readers.
ANDREW
CUTLER
La Grande and Baker City readers
are more than familiar with the prod-
uct, since it has been a staple of those
papers for more than a decade.
Our six papers — The Observer,
Baker City Herald, East Oregonian,
Wallowa County Chieftain, Blue Moun-
tain Eagle, and Hermiston Herald —
are combining resources to expand the
reach of the magazine.
Ultimately, what we do — all we do
— is centered on our readers. We are a
news product, sure, but all six newspa-
pers also provide a vehicle for readers
to know what is going on in the towns
that dot our great region of Oregon.
That kind of reach is something we
take some pride in. Eastern Oregon is
a big chunk of real estate. But we have
managed to provide a comprehensive
news package at our newspapers on a
consistent basis for a long time. While
we are proud of that, we are most
proud of the fact that we can furnish
our readers with complete coverage in
a remote part of our great state.
Finding a way to work more effi -
ciently by designing and then ex-
ecuting joint programs between our
newspapers is a way to “work smarter”
and the payoff — which is what really
matters — is that our readers will gain
a wealth of new information.
Our six papers provide unprec-
edented reach across our region and
the addition of Go! will ensure that our
readers continue to receive the benefi t
of our combined newspaper team
strength.
I am especially pleased that we will
be able to give you, the reader, more
resources to make decisions and to go
and see places and events that are part
of our common heritage.
While it is great that we are expand-
ing the product to new areas of the
region, none of it would mean anything
if we didn’t have someone to be a
“champion” for the product, someone
to see it through from beginning to end
week after week. For us, that someone
is Lisa Britton, who is based at the
Baker City Herald and can be reached
by phone (541-406-5274) or by email
(lbritton@bakercityherald.com). If you
have an event that you’d like to let
readers know about, she is the person
to contact. We need information at least
a week in advance of publication, so the
sooner you can submit an event, the
better. We welcome news about con-
certs, art shows, festivals, community
events, museum exhibits and more.
Andrew Cutler is the regional editorial
director for the EO Media Group,
overseeing the content of the Baker City
Herald and fi ve more newspapers in
Eastern Oregon.
Early June snow already feels like nostalgia
I love the mountains but I don’t
trust them.
It wasn’t always so.
I am by nature credulous. Gull-
ible, even.
But after a series of incidents
that had me slogging along a trail
in a storm, my socks saturated with
icy water, my face so numb I could
issue guttural grunts but not form
actual words, I wised up.
The mountains can be treacher-
ous any time.
But late spring is the season, it
seems to me, when the mountains
are most likely to get up to their
brand of meteorological mischief.
The trick tends to be especially
convincing in years when summer
heat arrives early, as it did this year.
The heat wave during the fi rst
week of June — it already seems
nostalgic given what we’ve endured
the past week — prompted me both
to wrestle one of our two window
air-conditioners out of the shed, and
to switch my at-home wardrobe to
shorts and T-shirts.
I’ll doggedly stick with that basic
outfi t through September, no matter
the occasional summer cold front or
cloudburst.
(I am equally consistent with my
wardrobe of sweatpants and a fl eece
jacket from fall through mid-spring,
JAYSON
JACOBY
even if I occasionally get a trifl e
sweaty during a January thaw or
one of those strange March days
when the sun bears down with a
ferocity reminiscent of August.)
When we decided on Sunday,
June 6, to drive up to Anthony
Lakes and see if Black Lake was
still icebound, I wasn’t persuaded by
the balmy temperature in my yard.
In the waning days of spring
the difference in weather between
Baker Valley and the elevated
topography of the Elkhorns can be
roughly equivalent to the difference
between the tropics and the arctic.
I dressed as I would for a snow-
shoe hike.
Except for the snowshoes, which
we left behind. I reasoned that
the chilly night — the automated
weather station near the top of the
ski area’s chairlift recorded a low of
25 — would have frozen the linger-
ing snowdrifts suffi ciently that our
boots would crunch on the crust
rather than plunge into the soggy,
grainy snow beneath.
(Notwithstanding mosquitoes,
a category of annoyance with no
real competitor, slushy spring snow
exhausts my patience more rapidly
than any other backcountry ob-
stacle. After a few episodes of sink-
ing up to my crotch and then trying
to extricate a boot from the icy
clutches, I pine for any type of trail
condition, whether dust or mud.)
When we got to the Elkhorn
Crest trailhead the car thermom-
eter was showing 39 degrees, and
tendrils of fog were whipping across
the notch that cleaves the summit
of Gunsight Mountain and gives
the granitic peak its name.
Snow covered the trail for most of
the fi rst quarter mile or so but the
drifts, as I hoped, were fi rm.
The low ground was sodden,
pools of meltwater ankle deep in
places. It was a picturesque scene,
the epitome of an alpine spring, but
I was plagued by thoughts of mos-
quito larvae, which must number
in the millions in those temporary
ponds.
We were fortunately a few weeks
too early to have to deal with those
pests.
Black Lake was ice-free. Last
June when we hiked here, just
two days later in the month, the
only open water was a fringe along
the north shore where the ice had
pulled back.
Snow started to fall while we
were there at the lake, a gentle
shower but incongruous given what
we had been through recently in the
lowlands.
Three days earlier I was mow-
ing my lawn in 90-degree heat, but
this memory seemed as fl imsy as
a nightmare in the clear light of
morning.
We made a loop, returning to the
trailhead by way of Anthony Lake.
As we walked the trail on the lake’s
east shore the desultory shower of
tiny ice pellets matured into a squall
of fat fl akes, propelled across the
lake by a freshening wind. Only the
bare patches on the ski runs, and
the stationary chairlift, betrayed the
season, ruining the illusion that it
was midwinter rather than the cusp
of the summer solstice.
We trudged back to the car. I
started the engine and, for pos-
sibly the last time until autumn, I
twisted the temperature control into
the red until it stopped.
✐
✐
✐
Thunder rumbled in the night
and I fumbled on the bedside table
for my glasses.
I wasn’t sure if the hollow sound,
like distant artillery fi re, had awak-
ened me, or whether I was merely
between dreams in a moment of
semi-consciousness that coincided
with the thunder.
My initial thought — it felt more
like a compulsion, actually — was
to tap my phone and summon the
Doppler radar, which like so much
else in our digital age, is incapable
of sleep.
This simple act, the work of a few
seconds, would show me not only
the precise location of the storm
that spawned the thunder, but also
the direction it was moving.
I resisted the urge.
This is an increasingly rare thing
these days — to leave closed the
electronic window to the digital
world of information.
Instead I slid open the analog,
but absolutely tangible, window
on the west side of our bedroom a
couple more inches, the better to
hear the thunder, and to gauge for
myself, as I lay there in the dark,
whether the vagaries of nature
might bring the storm my way, and
with it the aroma of summer rain, a
scent that no app can duplicate.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.