Desert Conference

Morning sun along the John Day River near Clarno

I spent last weekend at the Washington Family Ranch/Young Life camp in Wasco County, near the town of Antelope; the former Rajneesh compound.  A very interesting and somewhat disturbing place.  The Young Life people are busy turning it into a rather large amusement park, a playground for the 30,000 Christian kids they bring through there every year.  It is really too bad they cannot celebrate the essence of the sage-steppe environment where the camp is set and build something more in harmony with that incredible place.  Instead, they are trying to recreate the equivalent of a "Wild Waves" park that would better fit into a place like Hillsboro.  Huge missed opportunity.  Also supremely ironic that Young Life can effect such impact here with nary a peep from the outside world while the Rajneeshies caused a huge stir in the 1980s with a less environmentally heavy presence (although in this case Young Life has not yet tried to take over the Wasco County Board of Commissioners).  The conference, however, was great.  Hard to handle sitting inside talking about the place while wanting to be IN the place - but it was very enjoyable and I learned much.