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Published: August 12th 2017
DUG BAR
Whew....Made it.In 1963 I stumbled across a novel written by a fellow calling himself Will Henry. He named his story
From Where The Sun Now Stands and it was about the Nez Perce War. During the month of August I read that whole story seven times. It was an enthralling account written from the perspective of a young Nez Perce in the Wallowa band named Heyets, who was about my age. I had just turned 15. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year when our family moved from Auburn, CA down to Santa Maria. I had not yet made new friends so I took up reading and found that I liked it. The Nez Perce War has been a favorite topic ever since. Of particular interest was a place called Dug Bar on the Snake River. It was the place where Joseph tried to cross his horse herd during the spring floods and a great many of them drowned. To my way of thinking those drownings, more than anything else, were the root cause of the uprising. Dug Bar has been on my bucket list as a place of great spirituality since 1963. Until
HORSE CROSSING
Tough place during high water to try and swim an already tired horse across a few years back I thought that it was not accessible by road, but it is - just barely. It is a steep, narrow, twisty damn road that is never maintained. It has dozens of blind turns and in many places weeds are growing up in the middle. It is a road that should only be traveled by experienced back country drivers who might have a secret death wish. The road passes through rugged country that is astonishingly beautiful. I now regret not having taken more pictures in there. For the first seven miles or so the road passes down the Imnaha River Valley through an area that is occupied by ranches and that part of the road is paved. The stretch of road from where the pavement ends to Dug Bar, where the road terminates at a landing strip on the river, is maybe a distance of twenty miles. The drive takes about two hours so it is a ten mile per hour road. My visit to Dug Bar was the highpoint of the whole vacation trip.
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