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About The independent. (Vernonia, Or.) 1986-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 7, 1994)
The INDEPENDENT, December 7,1994 The INDEPENDENT Serving the upper Nehalem River valley. Published twice monthly on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, by Public Opinion Laboratory Ltd., 1206 S ta te A venue, V ernonia, OR 97064, as a fre e new spaper. E ditors and P ublishers, D irk & Noni Andersen, (503) 429-9410. _ * i Proclamation VERNONIA CARES FIRST ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE WEEKEND DECEMBER 9-11,1994 Whereas, Vernonia Cares provides emergency food to the needy people in the Vernonia area, and Whereas, Vernonia Cares’s supply of emergency foods has been depleted, and Whereas, Jamie Stacklie and Vernonia Pride will be conduct ing a food drive to replenish the emergency food reserves, and Whereas, Donations of food or money can be taken to Ver nonia Sentry, to the high school, any member of Vernonia Pride, or directly to Vernonia Cares Therefore, I. Tony Hyde, Mayor of the City of Vernonia pro claim the weekend of December 9th through 11th as VERNONIA CARES FIRST ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE WEEKEND and call upon all citizens of the City of Vernonia to do nate food and money to help replenish the emergen cy food reserves of Vernonia Cares and make the food drive a success. By Tony Hyde, Mayor City of Vernonia As the above proclamation makes clear, there will be a food drive this coming weekend, Dec. 10-11. If you will not be home but would like to contribute, vol unteers w ill pick up donations you leave on your doorstep. There will also be donation boxes in all of the churches on Dec. 11. In addition to canned and boxed food, toiletries and cash are always needed. If you are not sure what to give, a check would make a most welcome donation and it would be tax deductible. There is another way to help, too, by donating your time and energy at Vernonia Cares. A few more peo ple helping out on a regular basis would be a wel come gift to those who already volunteer, and many volunteers will be needed to make up the Christmas boxes. For more information on the food drive, call Jamie Stacklie at 429-7563, or JoAnn Beamish at 429-8030. To volunteer your time at Vernonia Cares, or for more information about their work, call 429-1414. I f thou has abundance, give alms accordingly: if thou have but a little, be not afraid to give according to that little. The Apocrypha Tobit. IV, 8 'i • ■HMM f 0©«/f 6«V£ A W * X/ /$< A Ptfiner f t * pi* ¿ T A T * e i • By Dale Webb, member Izaak Walton League, Nehalem Valley Chapter What memories family camping can make! This summer I was fortunate enough to get to take my son and daughter on an Eastern Ore gon high desert exploration trip (fancy words fo r sleeping in the back of the pickup and bumming around out in the sagebrush). Our trip started by driving almost all night to get to Christmas Valley and pulling into an old rock pit at 2:00 a.m. to sleep. Our primary goal was to locate and harass some Bugs Bunnies. In the morning my son was able to locate Bugs’s cousin Roger (Cot to n ta il) R abbit and de liver a 21 (BB) gun salute. By late morning we decided that Bugs Bunny wasn’t very abundant at this location and went down to the local gas station. The a tte n d a n t said the rabbit po pulation was down, but he had heard there were some around Plush. After consulting maps to figure out where Plush was, we were on our way. I remem bered the road east of Christmas Valley as be ing all gravel—some fifteen years ago— now it puts Highway 47 to shame. Before getting to Plush, we crossed areas named Rabbit Hill, Rabbit Creek and Rabbit Basin. We stopped and looked around for rab bit sign and thought “not too many, let’s drive into Plush and ask a local.” In Plush we asked some locals at the store, gas station, diner and bar (one place not four). They also said the rabbit population was down, but the best hunting was up in the Rabbit Hills area, by Rabbit Creek and down in Rabbit Basin. So it was time to backtrack. As we followed directions back toward Rab bit Basin, we began to notice some of Bugs’s cousins. You know, Road Rabbit, a cousin that can’t make up his mind which side of the road has more tender sagebrush and ends up be ing Wily Coyote feed, slightly tenderized. We drove into Rabbit Basin through tall sage on an old, one lane alkali road and decided to camp on a bench in a nearby hillside. After eating our canned dinner, we drove from our perch above the valley floor and suddenly my son yelled out “There’s one!” (what a misstat- ment that turned out to be). When we got out of the pickup there were rabbits running ev erywhere. It was time to toad up the artillery: Michael used my .22 and I was left with my only other rabbit stick, a demure little .270 with 110 grain hollow points pushed out the barrel at around 3000 ft. a second. Jennifer followed at my heel with the big .177 Crossman magnum mh- bit destroyer. Michael was having a little trou ble getting proper target acquirem ent (of course the end of the barrel weaving like a leaf in a hurricane didn’t have anything to do with it). Jennifer followed as I terminated three Bunnies with three consecutive shots. I heard her whimpering and thought, “Oh boy, am I in for it now.” I turned and asked her what was the matter. “I don’t get to shoot any,” she replied. I just about busted a gut. We spent two days at Rabbit Basin chasing Roger and Bugs Bunny around and, after 400 rounds of .22 ammo and about three boxes of .270 she lls, we fig u re d th a t we had had enough. We tra v e lle d back to Plush and thanked the store owners for directing us to the rabbits and, after eating an ice cream bar, headed for the Hart Mountain National Ante lope Refuge. The store owner had mentioned that there was a hotsprings near the refuge headquarters so we made the four-mile detour to soak our alkali-covered bodies in its 95 de gree water. The hotsprings is in a hole surrounded by a concrete slab, which is surrounded by an eight foot wall. The water is about eight feet deep in one spot and the sides are covered with a green moss. From the hot springs we traveled on down to Frenchglen, then up to Fish Lake in the Steens Mountains, arriving in time to set up camp and prepare another canned dinner before darkness fell. While we were eating, we kept hearing small critters moving in the bushes, by the time we were cleaning up, they were running across our feet. An army of mice was advancing on our position so we put away our food and retired into the safety of our back-of-the-pickup beds. The next day we discovered that our food was not safe in the cab of the pickup, for we had surrendered our bread during the night. We ate bre akfa st and went fis h in g , of course Jennifer was the first to catch a fish After getting tired of nonbiting fish, we got into the pickup and headed up to the east rim viewing area on top of the mountain— what a Please see page 3 * .
