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.
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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
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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
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