Stephanie lived with friends in the deepest part of Montana now, in a remote forested valley not far below Glacier National Park—a long way from me, too far (this distance my oft-repeated excuse) for regular visits. But the five hours it took, exactly, from my own doorstep to the doorstep of the eastern Oregon ranch house where Amanda was staying was manageable. On alternate Fridays after work, Mary, Mollie, and I packed our things—pillows and blankets and animal families and juice boxes and apples and Disney tapes to sing along to and paper and markers to draw with—and headed through the shadowed Santiam Pass to wind over the Cascade Mountains. Past Hoodoo, around Sisters, and into the ski-resort town of Bend. After a quick dinner there, we drove through the last curve before entering the long, dark strip of asphalt—U.S. 20. Nothing but sagebrush and tumbleweeds and scavenging red-tailed hawks sitting on old fence posts on either side, a road that led through the dry and overgrazed part of our state to our destination of Burns, Oregon.
