An old joke has long circulated the plains and mountains of the American Northwest. After the opening of the Oregon Trail, which opened a passage through the Rocky Mountains, immigrants from the New World found themselves faced with a curious dilemma, when an (imaginary) road sign appeared: on the left, California, promise of gold and sunshine; on the right, Oregon, its more austere lands and its rather humid climate. The legend says that at that time only those who could not read branched off to the right.
As often, the touch of humor masks a form of reality: the people of the American Northwest maintain an inferiority complex vis-à-vis their big neighbors to the South, the inhabitants of the Golden State. And yet. Certainly not all states have a catalog of tourist riches such as the beaches of Monterey, the giant sequoias of Yosemite National Park or the misty atmospheres of San Francisco Bay.
But what territory needs these beauties when it is home to natural treasures like Crater Lake, an astonishing volcanic lake, Mount Hood, a snow-capped jewel in the Cascade range, or Portland, a city often designated as one of the most pleasant cities to live in the States? -United ? Who has more and better to offer than a coast that has remained wild along the Pacific Ocean, from the rocks of Cannon Beach, in the north, to those of Gold Beach, near the Californian border, passing through the astonishing dune strip that stretches south of Florence?
Get lost in the great outdoors
It was while visiting Dunes City, a huge tangle of wetlands and sandy hills, that Frank Herbert (1920-1986) would have found the inspiration to start writing his famous science fiction novel. Dunesreleased in 1965 in the United States, then in 1970 in France, before giving birth to two blockbuster films.
A native of Tacoma, Washington, the future novelist spent part of his youth in Salem, the administrative capital of Oregon, then in Portland. In 1957, the young journalist had come to visit the region of Florence to study the movement of the dunes and the herbaceous plants of the area. The paper was never published, but his observations, research, and also, it seems, his repeated experiments with “magic mushrooms” resulted in one of the most famous works of science-literature. fiction.
“The dunes have the reputation of having swallowed whole cities, lakes, rivers…”Frank Herbert reportedly wrote to a friend after his visit, impressed by the traces of the fight which, in his imagination, had taken place there between men and nature, in what became the Oregon National Dunes Recreation Area.
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