Deadman's Pass

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The scenic viewpoint was several miles off the main road, but how could I resist a place called “Deadman’s Pass”?

It was worth the drive: I parked a polite distance from the two other vehicles, grabbed my camera, and ventured out onto the sunny hillside to gape at a beautifully classic Oregon panorama: lush spring wildflowers, framing a view of overlapping lushly forested hills under a perfect blue sky.

I’d finished shooting but was still gazing when a man and a dog ventured out of the trees nearby.

He called to me, “Hey—did you know there’s a Geogache up here?”

“No, I didn’t.” I admitted. “What’s a Geocache?”

He explained that it’s a sort of word-wide treasure hunt, in which people use GPS coordinates to locate a box that has been planted in a specific location and marked on an online map. The box will contain a logbook, so that people can sign in and leave comments, and any random items anyone cares to leave.

“If you take something, you are supposed to leave something in its place. It took me a while to find this one—it’s down that hill a ways, under a log. Here, I’ll show you.”

I hesitated for a moment. A women traveling alone tends to develop security guidelines for herself, along the lines of, “Don’t follow strange men—even handsome bearded ones—into isolated wooded areas.

But then, he seemed so nice. He felt OK. And he had a very nice dog, who bounded over when he whistled, was introduced as “Blaze”, and licked the hand I offered. The warning flag in my head felt more like “I should be alarmed” than “I am alarmed.”. If he was a serial killer, wouldn’t I have some vague sense of that?

Yes, I know—more than a couple of women who thought that now moulder in shallow graves. Just this morning my man had asked the details of my plan for the day, so he’d know “where to send the search party.”

But how many more women have lost adventures, by following rules rather than instincts? If he was determined to kill me, he could bop me over the head right here in the sunlight.

If it was my time, so be it: I’d just fight like a tiger if it came to that.

I followed him into the woods, down a steep slope. It wasn’t very far in. He chatted all the way, about how he loved these treasure hunts, and had located three or four in this part of eastern Oregon.

The cache was in an ammo box under a fallen tree. He popped it open and held it out to me. Inside was a small notebook and pen in a plastic bag, and all sorts of trinkets—toys, keychains, and such. I signed my name just under his entry, which read, “Tyler and Blaze”.

I resealed the notebook in its bag, then closed the can. He replaced it under the tree, and we started back up the hill. I felt a sharp tug from behind, and nearly lost my footing on the steep slope, grabbing at a tree to right myself.

Tyler said, “Whoa, careful there!”, then reached out to untangle the keys to my rental car, which I keep on a leash attached to my jeans. “Hey, that’s a good idea. You sure don’t want to lose your keys out here.”

Back on the sunny hillside, he told me about his love of mushroom hunting, geocaching, and eastern Oregon. He said he went to California once, to Ukiah, but “there were too many people”.

“If there were too many people for you in Ukiah, don’t go any further into California!” I advised him.

We’d come to the fork in the conversation, as strangers do.

I said, “Well, I mean to make Portland by evening, so I’d better move on.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but just told me to drive safe. It occurred to me that, if this was a movie on Lifetime Movie Network, the scary-looking old guy who sat scowling at us from inside a battered station wagon would now be temporarily suspected of being the serial killer, but would eventually emerge as my savior.

Luckily, this was real life rather than Lifetime, and neither of them seemed to want to murder me. I petted the dog, took leave of Tyler, and drove on, safe.

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Photos

Deadman's Pass
A beautiful sunny spot despite the ominous name...

Comments

[?]

what you did
It was ok but my question was: how Deadmans Pass got it's name?

[Madalo]

good question
i'll look it up