Temperance Creek

In the early seventies, some of us were shot like stars from our parents homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hell's Canyon of Eastern Oregon, one hundred miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parent's world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes. Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces Pam to the vanishing culture of the wandering shepherd and together they embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness. From the back of a horse, Pam leads her packstring of readers from overlook to water crossing, down trails two thousand years old, and from the vantages she chooses for us, we feel the edges of our own experiences. It is a memoir of falling in love with a place and a man and the price extracted for that love. Pam chronicles her journey from a suburban college student to a 'wild woman', from hippie to sheepherder to outlaw. Her trail starts at the University of Oregon and finishes in wild and remote Hells Canyon on thge Snake River. Along the way, she bravely confronts rattlesnakes, cougars, bears and a bullet wound to her thign, while learning the complex tasks of sheepherding from her partner, the intrepid Skip.