Mount Bachelor, Oregon

Mount Bachelor is my beacon in Central Oregon. Friends came to visit us from the flat lands of Nebraska and they said one of the things they wanted to see in Oregon was a volcano.  We told them we thought we could accommodate them.  I can sit on my couch and look out my window at Bachelor between the water building and the big water tank. So a nice big volcano is easily visible from our home. 

 I have always loved mountains.  They provide me with boundaries.  I feel adrift without them.  So the Cascades and particularly Mt. Bachelor provide me with my anchor. It looks like a mini-Fuji standing there aloof from Tumalo, Broken Top, and the 3 Sisters. As you drive around La Pine it appears bigger and smaller depending on where you are looking at it from.  Most people come to see it as a ski vacation.  To me it is much bigger. You can see it in many different places.  The picture I have here is from the Wicki up Reservoir.  

 My first view of it and the surrounding Cascades came when we visited Bend to look for a job in 2008. Driving in from the east on highway 20, you come out of the Badlands and onto high desert.  The first “mountain” you see is Pilot Butte.  It seems to appear out of now where.  As you continue driving down around that butte you descend into the Deschutes River Valley.  As you take a large curve you find what the Butte has been hiding.  Bachelor, Tumalo and Broken Top and 3 Sisters all appear majestically over the top of many smaller buttes and volcanic vents.  The beauty of the snow capped peaks literally takes your breath away.  Words just don’t do the beauty of the Bend area justice. These mountains reminded me of the home I had just left in the Rockies.  Though the Cascades aren’t near as high as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, where 14ner rule, they seem almost as big or bigger just because they are so close.  Bend is built on the lava flows of the surrounding volcanoes and the Deschutes River gets its name from the beautiful series of falls created by the river cutting through these flows. 

Mount Bachelor is a beauty.  The name came because he is set apart from his neighboring 3 Sisters.  Strange he never married!  But Bachelor is not alone.  He is my anchor giving me a sense of belonging, a place, of security.