Orion Magazine

Excerpt from “Bend, Oregon”

I live on the dry side of the Cascade Mountains, in the high desert of Central Oregon, far away from the northeastern hardwood forests where my husband and I grew up.  Oregon? our families asked when we told them we were moving, Why Oregon?  They pronounced it like easterners: Ore-gone.  Why did we want to go there?  Ore-gone is far away, Ore-gone is wet and gray, even wetter and grayer than Cleveland and Syracuse, where they live.  Why would we choose that?

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