In my experience, relationships with places are not all that different from relationships with people. You have to spend time with a place to get to know it. Ask it questions. Become familiar with its moods and seasons. Learn what makes it tick. Before long, an intimacy may develop and you may even find yourself saying the L-word—love. It takes time. Sure there are those love-at-first-sight moments—but those are fleeting. A deep relationship to the land is more than a few moments on a clifftop view watching the sunset.
When it comes to Whychus Canyon Preserve, few people have a deeper relationship with the land as Sarah Mowry. As a staff member at the Deschutes Land Trust for the last 15 years, Sarah has been with the property since it was first established in 2010, and in 2014 when an additional 480 acres were added. With that in mind, I met Sarah at the Whychus Canyon Preserve trailhead on a cool autumn afternoon to explore the place for the first time.
The Hike
- Trailhead: Whychus Canyon Preserve Trailhead
- Distance: about 4 miles
- Elevation Gain: approximately 500 feet
- Details: Directions and details are found at the Deschutes Land Trust website.
Welcome to Whychus
Before hitting the trail, Sarah gave me a bit of background on the Whychus Watershed. Whychus Creek is a glacier-fed stream. The creek begins up near the Three Sisters, tears downhill until it reaches Alders Springs and its confluence with the Deschutes River.
Most of the river’s path is marked by deep canyons, but there are some places where the land opens up and meadow habitat is possible. According to Sarah, Whychus Canyon Preserve, the property we were about to explore, has some of the best meadow habitats. These meadows are “biological hotspots,” Sarah explained.
In addition, Whychus Canyon Preserve provides habitat features for Chinook salmon and steelhead, which are being reintroduced into the Deschutes River Basin. “There has been a huge collaborative effort to bring them back led by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Portland General Electric,” explained Sarah.
The preserve also provides migratory routes for terrestrial species, like deer and elk, as they move down into their winter range. “The habitat connection the Preserve provides to adjacent public land is huge,” said Sarah,. And at 930 acres, the Whychus Canyon Preserve extended the habitat substantially.
Plus, Whychus Canyon Preserve has an extensive trail system with 7 miles of established trail for people to explore.
All this to say, Whychus Canyon Preserve has a lot going for it.
Restore
After several minutes discussing the property, Sarah and I realized we better hit the trail if we were going to finish our hike before sunset. We had decided on a 4-mile loop down to the river and we immediately began our descent.
As we tripped downhill past dried bunchgrass and sagebrush and past juniper and pine, Sarah told me about the Land Trust’s forest restoration work. She explained that when the Land Trust first acquired the property, the forested canyon was thick with small juniper and pine. So in order to restore the land, some of the trees were thinned out by hand.
Restore. Restore is a tricky word. It means to return to its former state. But how far back do you go? Can cutting down trees really be considered restorative?
The short answer is—it depends! Restoration work, as Sarah explained it, all depends on the location, local ecology, and the project goals. For the Whychus Canyon Preserve, cutting down a few trees made sense. It helped with fire protection and opened up the forest for larger pines and junipers while promoting healthier habitat for all sorts of other plants and animals.
Jumpstart
One of the Land Trust’s goals for Whychus Canyon Preserve, is to “restore a natural functioning system,” said Sarah. And, sometimes, a hands off approach won’t get you there. Past hands have already had an impact, so expecting nature to bring it back just isn’t going to happen. Healing the relationship between the land and people requires time and work. “You need to jumpstart the system,” said Sarah, “Give it a leg up so it can get itself back to a healthy place.”
Of course, the way you do so can be tricky. For example, in Whychus Creek at nearby Camp Polk Meadow Preserve, another Land Trust restoration site, the stream was restored by digging out historic channels and adding curves and other features for habitat complexity. Fast forward four years and the Land Trust is working with partners to restore Whychus Creek at Whychus Canyon Preserve using more process-oriented methods. “We are learning things all of the time,” Sarah said, “The kind of restoration work we were doing now has evolved from what we did 10 years ago.”
Canyon Bottom
Before long, Sarah and I had made it down to the bottom of the canyon and the crystal clear waters of Whychus Creek. Trees and shrubs line much of its banks, as it continues cutting its way down deepening the canyon.
“We haven’t done any stream restoration in this part of the Preserve yet,” said Sarah. Eventually, she explained, a detailed plan is currently being created that will lay out everything—stream structure, plantings, habitat features, etc. Thousands of native plants will be brought in to fill in the gaps. And logs—lots and lots of whole trees are needed. “Large woody debris,” as it is often called, provides cover for fish and aids in the development of stream habitat diversity.
Free
As we hiked along the bottomlands, Sarah pointed to areas where strips of land had clearly been raised adjacent to the creek; probably dug by the Army Corps of Engineers with good intent to reduce flooding. Instead, these berms disconnected the stream channel from its floodplain, limiting the ability of Whychus Creek to spread out. Thus giving the creek access to its floodplain will also be an important part of the restoration plan.
However, this doesn’t mean the creek will simply be rechanneled—directed by the will of people. Instead, a process-based restoration is being implemented throughout the Whychus Canyon Preserve. With this sort of plan, the Whychus Creek will be free to find its own path, or paths, as it were.
The Land Trust has already begun using this sort of methodology on the northernmost mile of recent creek restoration efforts at the Preserve. Left to find its own path, Whychus Creek has created several new channels and water is beginning to saturate the surrounding landscape. In fact, some of the pines in the floodplain are dying off because the soils are now too wet to support them. “It’s a little hard to watch,” said Sarah, but it’s all part of the process. Those trees will become homes for other animals as snags or provide cover for fish.”
The newly wet floodplain also meant a different planting plan for the restoration. When you let the creek choose where it will go, you can’t choose where to put the water-loving plants or the plants that prefer dryer conditions, so you plant a little of everything everywhere, explained Sarah.
Healing
Restoration isn’t hands-off, but all hands on deck. It is work. The land comes with “baggage” from past human relationships—sometimes scars. Restoration is providing the opportunity for renewal, a starting point. Then knowing when to back off and let nature heal itself.
Watching the land heal is a huge perk of Sarah’s 15 years with the trust. “It is awesome because I get to see the positive changes we can make over time.”
Land Trust
Earlier on during our hike, Sarah pointed out several houses built along the rimrock on the opposite side of Whychus Creek from the land trust’s property. Now, as we began to make our ascent back up the canyon, more houses came into view perched above us.
“Development is a challenge to nature,” explained Sarah. “A lot of good habitat is on private land. What can you do when it is covered over?”
That is why land trusts are an important part of the land conservation equation. Land trusts fill in the gaps where public lands can’t by strategically purchasing lands, or establishing land protection agreements called conservation easements, with a focus on the future.
The Deschutes Land Trust was first established in 1995 for this very reason. Central Oregon was developing at a rapid pace and many community members were concerned about the loss of wild areas and vital habitats. So when a well-beloved parcel of land went up for sale and was threatened with development, community members came together, and the Deschutes Land Trust got started, by protecting their first property—the 63 acre Indian Ford Meadow Preserve just outside of Sisters, OR.
Now the Deschutes Land Trust manages over 17,000 acres of land.
Easements
Nearly half of the Land Trust’s lands are protected through land protection agreements called conservation easements. Conservation easements are agreements with landowners to protect or restrict certain activities on their private property in perpetuity. Each agreement is unique to the land and the owner.
Why would a landowner want to put an easement on their property? “Most of our landowners have done it because they have a conservation vision,” said Sarah.
View at the Top
The trail steepened as Sarah and I climbed some rock steps, sweating our way to the top of the canyon and a sweeping view looking out over the preserve. Sarah told me that the trail builder that put in the steps we were climbing was all about “the journey instead of the destination.” But I have to admit, the destination, in this case, was sort of the point.
Looking out across the canyon, layers of rim rock were imbued with a golden hue, and stately pine trees mixed with juniper dotted the landscape all the way down to the fall-colored leaves of deciduous trees that lined Whychus Creek. In the distance, you could just make out the meadow that Sarah had talked about earlier. This was one of those moments—a beginning—a connection to the land.
We paused here to take in the scenery and experience the preserve from a different vantage point. Sarah pulled out a map of the area that showed a conceptual rendition of the new stream channels that were forming and reforming as the meadow has been restored with an influx of water. And we talked at some length about restoration monitoring methods and the wonders of lidar imagery.
But the sun was getting lower and we had families to get home to, so we made the difficult decision to continue onward, following the trail along the canyon rim to our cars.
Time for Change
As we walked along patches of old growth juniper and sagebrush steppe, Sarah and I talked about the people in our lives and the changes we have been dealing with lately. We discussed the challenges of having kids in distance learning, changing job responsibilities, and just a general sense of loss that life has taken lately.
One of Sarah’s responsibilities as outreach director is to coordinate events that bring people to the preserves to learn more about it. People need to “learn about a place to care about a place,” Sarah explained. And for the time being, these sorts of events are just not possible.
Renewal
Looking around at the dried out sagebrush and bunchgrass along the path, it is difficult to imagine anything else. But each spring the brown earth is renewed with bright fields of green and colorful spring wildflowers. “Gold stars blanket the floor,” Sarah said in remembrance. The “star” of the show are dime-sized goldfield daisies that bloom in early spring, enveloping the land in a warm yellow profusion of color.
The winter we are facing right now makes it seem like we will never see spring. But barren landscapes can be returned to beauty and function whether through changing season, or, at times, through restoration.
This makes me think, perhaps that is what is really needed—a restoration. To be brought back to an ancient connection with the land, and with the people that inhabit it. We need to turn to one another and turn to the land. Nurture relationships. Listen and learn. It will take work—hard work—and a good deal of patience, but if we can get things moving in the right direction, perhaps nature will kick in and bring us back to something better.
Now that is a change I would love to observe.
Sarah Mowry is the Deschutes Land Trust’s Outreach Director. Sarah has been with the trust for the past 15 years. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College and a Masters Degree from the University of Montana.