Bend, Oregon

Position: 44°03’32.6″N 121°18’54.6″W

Compared with the Byzantine Empire, the city of Bend, Oregon, has had a short history. For millennia indigenous peoples lived, gathered and hunted the wide plains and foothills surrounding the “Towarnehiooks” river. They also fought each other from opposite banks. Not long after Lewis and Clark headed home in 1806, fur trappers sponsored by the Hudson’s Bay Company showed up. By 1855 the native tribes (Tenino, Wasco, and Paiutes) were booted off their ancestral lands and onto the Warm Springs Reservation, and the river renamed “Des Chutes”.

Bend was originally called “Farewell Bend” by early pioneers fording the river there before continuing their westward journey towards the Willamette Valley. By the turn of the 20^th century a city had been platted out and in 1904 incorporated. The U.S. Postal Service shortened the town’s name to “Bend” to keep things simple. Bend it has been ever since.

Once the tribes were run off and the beavers all turned into hats, trees were the next target. By 1911 a couple of lumber mills sprang up and, thanks to the Deschutes Railroad War, two separate lines carried lumber north towards Portland and from there to the rest of the country. For the next 20 years Bend was all honky-tonks and red-eye whiskey. Things slowed down some during the Depression. By the 1950s too many trees had been cut and too few planted. Two mills became one and economic malaise took over.

Tow Lift

In the 1960s a couple of rich guys from Portland moved into the area and threw it an economic lifeline – in the form of a ski lift on nearby Mount Bachelor. Like a slap in the face with a cold salmon, the city council woke up and began the slow process of turning Bend into a destination for holidaymakers and retirees.

Today it is a thriving, rich, white metropolis. Dozens of five and ten-million-dollar ranches attend to the sunrise over the vast high desert that spreads east out past Pilot Butte, a dormant cinder cone. Hours later they watch it set behind the snowy peak of Mount Bachelor and the long stretch of volcanoes making up the Cascade Range. Clouds fill the skies only 30% of the time. The mountains trap snow and rain and reliably feed water to the parched landscape all year round.

Positioned halfway between San Francisco and Seattle, Bend offers an escape for harried tech execs tired of their commute from Woodside to Cupertino, or from Capitol Hill to Bellevue. Direct flights to Redmond bring them in in a couple of hours from either direction. In 1990 Bend’s population was around 20,000. Today it is five times that. Include the surrounding metropolitan area and on any given day you’ve got a quarter million folks clogging up Highway 97. Cellular service is quick 5G and internet speeds average over 200Mbps. The air is clean, the streets are swept, and all the locals have moved out in search of lower rents.

Rings

Like a sagittal section of tree trunk, you can read the history of Bend through its concentric circles of development. In its core you can find the remains of its economic heart, the old lumber mill in the guise of a chichi shopping area. Mirror Pond, formed by a dam, has generated electricity since 1910 and still supplies power to around 200 homes.

Walking west and north towards Awbrey Butte, rows of small craftsman homes sit neatly on tree-lined streets. Many are still small enough to have dusty backyards with dogs that bark at you. Here and there houses have been scraped and replaced by faux-prairie style McMansions; all pointed roofs and narrow horizontal windows. Those places have barely enough side yard to swing a ferret, let alone run a dog. These glimpses of random modernity are sentinels. Harbingers of more to come as you continue your walk.

Up into the hills, you happen upon neighbourhoods built in the 1970s and 80s. Ponderosa pines stand tall here. With precariously shallow roots, these trees are safe only in numbers, supporting each other in blustery winter storms. These older ranch homes are mostly original. Their condition robust enough and their purchase price high enough to preclude immediate demolition and replacement. Besides, the city’s boundaries keep pushing outwards, maximizing growth.

Gates Bill

Another half mile up the hill brings you through an area of newer high-density, post-modern craftsman homes all sitting on top of each other. Keep that ferret in your trousers. You certainly won’t have room to swing it in one of these places. Cross the wide street and you enter the domain of private roads and threatening ‘No Parking’ signs. Here big 3,000 and 4,000 square foot (and larger) semi-custom homes shelter wealthy, part-time residents from points north and south. These neighbourhoods exude exclusivity. From their proximity to a golf fairway to their limited muted-grey paint schemes, folks either willingly comply with the rules of their homeowner’s association or find somewhere else to live.

If you want a gated community Bend has those, too. You’ll have to go a little further out of town and spend a couple million dollars more. Those houses, all black siding and engineered wood beams, are stuck out on a treeless ridge surrounded by iron railings. Nothing says you’ve arrived like a 10,000 square foot house with a zillion BTU air conditioner thirty minutes from the ski slopes. (But there’s still not enough backyard for your ferret to swing freely.)

Outdoors

Perhaps this is a little too cynical. Back in town folks are friendly and there are more breweries and coffee shops per capita than anyplace else on Earth. Restaurants and bars are cosy with lots of outside seating in warmer weather.

Life in Bend is lived outdoors. If you want to bike, run, ride a horse, snowboard, climb, fly-fish, kayak, hike or bowl it’s all here. Just walking around the many outfitters with a double shot oat milk latte raises your heart rate and makes you feel fitter. Scratch a little and somewhere beneath the pricey veneer of Whole Foods and REI lies a chummy dirtbag ski town with lots of youthful energy.

Inka’s Pad

Taking advantage of Lauren and Wade’s Trusted House Sitter’s gig, we all debunked Vancouver for Bend. The homeowners needed someone responsible to look after their very sweet 14-year-old cattle dog mix, Inka. Wade inquired if it would be okay to bring both their pups, Woody and Nessa, along with a couple of itinerant sailors. The owners generously said that would be just fine.

A couple of days later, my younger daughter Emma and her husband Jarno flew in from Malta. They had arranged for a Trusted Housesitting gig of their own. With years of experience under their belts, they know to filter their sitting options by “outdoor cats” if you want an easy time of it. Indoor cats and dogs lack the independence that low maintenance and the minimum of six hours a day the slopes of Mount Bachelor demand.

Tai (Carol’s eldest) drove down from Portland for a few days over Christmas, returning on New Year’s Eve. Anne and Joe drove down from Seattle and deftly filled the gap in our entourage. Joe brought all the fixings for his “Dubuque 75s”, a riff on the classic French 75 cocktail with Cognac instead of gin. When those ran out, Carol whipped up a batch of her new favourite cocktail, the Nor’easter. This bourbon and maple syrup liquid cosh is best made with Reed’s ginger beer (not ginger ale as is often called for). By some miracle we made it past midnight buoyed by a spirited round of Cards Against Humanity. We rang in the new year by heading straight to bed.