When was it when you first knew that you wanted to be a writer?” asks student Brittany Newton.

Our group from Seaside High School sits around the breakfast table in the banquet room of a Portland Elmer’s. We’re involved in a question and answer session with one of Oregon’s most gifted writers, Craig Lesley.

“When I was in high school, I was a sports writer on the paper staff,” Lesley begins. “I worked on the yearbook, too. After I graduated from college, I decided to enroll in the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program at the University of Massachusetts. That’s when I really started to pursue writing as a career. In fact, some of the pieces I wrote for my master’s thesis ended up finding their way into ‘Winterkill’.”

Thanks in part to a grant from the Clatsop County Cultural Coalition, we were able to buy “Winterkill” books, meet with Lesley and explore some of the places described in his book.

You realize what a good novel “Winterkill” is when you try to explain to someone what it’s about. It’s a book about a Nez Perce rodeo cowboy caught between cultures. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a book about fathers and sons. But there’s a lot more to it than that. As with Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion,” the landscape becomes one of the characters. The rugged Wallowas and Imnaha country play as big a role as the main character, Danny Kachiah, his father Red Shirt and Danny’s son Jack.

“The character of Red Shirt was based loosely on my uncle, Oscar Lang,” Lesley explains. “For years he ran Oscar’s Sporting Goods in Madras. There’s something about the Northwest that seems to breed people who are bigger than life and Oscar was one of those people.”

“How did you get the title for the book?” asks student Kaylani French.

“That’s a good question,” Lesley responds. “‘Winterkill’ refers to the animals that don’t make it through the winter. Of course, there are key characters in my book who die during the winter. Actually, though, my original title was ‘Elk Moon Dreamers.’ My editors liked the title ‘Winterkill’ better, so that’s what we went with.”

My wife asked him if he ever finds college professors and reviewers reading things into his books. “I guess one time someone asked Robert Frost if a particular line in one of his poems signified a particular thing and Frost replied, ‘I’ve put a lot of time into these poems. I’m entitled to whatever you can find.’ I guess that’s my response, too,” Lesley says with a grin.

I asked him if he knows where a novel is going when he starts or if the whole thing is kind of a discovery process. “Well, with ‘Winterkill’ I knew where it was going to end up,” he explains. “I knew it was going to end up in the Wallowas; I just didn’t know how I was going to get there.”

Getting to the Wallowas was our goal after breakfast. So after Lesley signed a few books and posed for a photo with us, we headed across the Gorge, stopping at Multnomah Falls and Celilo Village along the way. I was thankful for the clear, windless day. Driving a bus through the Columbia River Gorge when the wind is whistling can be a nerve-wracking experience. My friend John Newton told me about driving his family through the Gorge in their Volkswagen van when fierce winds were blowing. “I felt like I was driving a loaf of bread,” he told me.

When we got to Pendleton, we stopped at the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute on the Umatilla Reservation. It’s a gorgeous piece of work with architecture that imitates the rolling hills that surround it. The museum – which continues to evolve – reflects years of thoughtful planning. The exhibit hall and gallery tell the stories of the local Native Americans from their perspective.

It was early evening when we arrived at Joseph High School. The sun was setting on the snow-capped Wallowas. We spread our sleeping bags across the beautiful classroom floor. I was thankful that the group went to sleep right away. I was brain-dead from the long drive. I’d never found a hard linoleum floor more comfortable.

The next morning we toured Valley Bronze Foundry which has a showroom in Astoria. You can see their work all over the world, from the Lewis and Clark statue at Seaside’s Turnaround to Germany’s huge Freedom Horses exhibit which an American artist presented to their country as a gift from the United States. After that, we stopped at the gravesite of Old Chief Joseph at the north end of Wallowa Lake. Then we drove to the base of Mount Howard to catch the tram.

As we were driving back to Seaside, I asked students to each write a Haiku-like poem of memorable images and events from the trip. Most wrote about the tram ride to the top of Mount Howard. I’ve included several below:

We form groups of four

And wait anxiously in line

Giggling and nervously eyeing

The approaching tram car.

He takes our tickets and holds the door open

Like a chauffeur at a fancy hotel.

We climb inside – and it’s smaller than you think –

And arrange ourselves two by two.

He locks the door and I hold on tight

To the pole in the middle.

I fake a big smile for the camera in my face,

Capturing the moment.

I halfway want it to be over with,

But the other half is savoring every minute of it.

I’m sitting backwards and I don’t think much of it

Until all I see in front of me

Is a giant snow-capped mountain,

Slowly getting bigger and bigger

Until it’s all I see.

– Sydney Morrisson

The cold mountain air

Fills my mind.

I’m transported to Europe

As I gaze at the snow-covered mountains

That surround me.

On top of Mount Howard

We talk to a man from Bavaria.

“Say hello to the ocean for me,” he tells us.

– Brittany Newton

A soft whisper of a cloud

Floated gently in the jewel-blue sky

And the wind

Lightly tossed the tips of the trees

Shaking the last little bits of snow

Onto the frozen ground.

– Mina Beckman

Eight thousand feet up.

I see green field patches

Between jagged edges of mountains.

Sounds of fresh water racing down the mountain.

Fresh pine air.

– Kaylani French

That same afternoon we drove down to the town of Imnaha for dinner. As you head out of Joseph and into the Breaks of the Imnaha, you have the sensation that you’re going down an elevator shaft. Within an hour and a half, we had gone from the top of Mount Howard at nearly 8,000 feet to the town of Imnaha at less than 2,000 feet. All within a distance of 35 miles.

We got up the following morning, packed the bus, and left for Seaside, nearly 500 miles away. As we headed down the road, I was reminded why Chief Joseph was so reluctant to leave this place. Following is a student’s description of what we saw in our rearview mirror:

Boiling foothills of the Wallowas,

Green grass smothering hill after hill,

Howard and his companions rising in the background,

The silent rulers of the land,

And a falcon slowly wheeling through the sky.

– Amanda Cochran

Mark Mizell is an English teacher at Seaside High School. His column runs the first Thursday of each month in The Daily Astorian.