Wallowa County is a large and until recently remote area: two million acres in the far northeast corner of Oregon; the population hovers at 7,000, with fewer in winter when snowbirds go south; many more in summer with hiking trails, fishing streams, a beautiful lake, rodeo, powwow, car shows.
We are now officially a tourist destination, with fishers, hunters, riders, hikers, painters, photographers, coming to the place where grandpa shot elk and great aunt Lucie had a cabin, where dad went to Boy Scout camp and mom rode her horse in the Chief Joseph Days parade. In recent years we’ve added art galleries and bronze foundries, and now, even in Pandemic times, people with license plates that read Kansas, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada come to see what the Tourism Department has dubbed one of the “Seven Wonders of Oregon.”
We’ve been blessed, lucky, or both on the Covid-19 score—as of today we have had just 18 people test positive and only one death. We’ve followed Governor Brown’s guidelines pretty well, staying away from crowded indoor spaces, wearing masks, taking our exercise, meals, and beers outside.
A local preacher-lawyer took the state to court and a judge in Baker City stood with him and others to keep churches open. The Oregon Supreme Court told the judge to reconsider; he wouldn’t, and about that time a large church in nearby Island City defied the state and spread 200 cases in the wink of an eye. No new words from the preachers.
But Umatilla County is close-by, and its Wal-Mart Distribution Center and processing plants are statewide hot spots. The numbers in Bend, Oregon and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, both bigger and more posh tourism area than ours, are up. We watched while Sun Valley had an early spike—skiers brought it from California, they said. Oregon overall, quiet and seemingly safe for months, now regularly tops 400 new cases in a day.
The Main Street of Joseph and the shores of Wallowa Lake are crowded with tourists.
We wait for the shoe to drop.
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