By Alice Elshoff

A wilderness nine miles east of Bend? Come on, there’s nothing there but juniper and sand, right? Wrong! The Badlands Wilderness Study Area, 32,053 acres of well-kept secret, offers some surprisingly primitive experiences.

Tucked in between Bend and Horse Ridge, bounded by alfalfa ranches to the north and U.S. 20 to the southwest, and snuggled up against a dry river canyon carved in ice-age days, the Badlands stand as a perfect example of High Desert wilderness.

Jagged reddish-brown and black Columbia River basalt escarpments contrast with light tan sand in a setting of picturesque old-growth junipers.  These abrupt rock faces, along with the excellent vegetative screening, create scores of mini-basins which block out sights and sounds of other visitors in the area. The opportunity to experience real solitude so close to a large and rapidly expanding residential area is only one of the attributes of this fascinating area.

This area is at its best in the early spring when the soul itches for that first hike; or in the late fall when the first rain washes the dust from the junipers and swells and greens the dry mosses that have been tenaciously holding down the soil all summer.  Primitive recreation uses here are limited only by imagination. This is a place to go with map and compass—to teach a youngster orienteering, to study animal tracks left each morning by the myriad of small night creatures who have signed
their names with tails and pads and claws.

It’s a place to move slowly and notice little things, to take the macro lens, to be patient and let the area reveal its secrets. Among these secrets are the occasional lava tube, the bat cave, the animal dens that put Walt Disney’s designers to shame, the meandering remnants of the dry river canyon containing naturally carved “mortars”, and some fine Indian drawings. Deer can always be seen in the area and a recent birding trip turned up 16 species.

A few primitive roads and an old woodcutting area no not detract seriously from the area. Most of the old “ways” are reverting back to a natural condition and a few key closures would assure that the rest would disappear in a fairly short time. There is some current woodcutting, however, which is offensive and needs to be stopped.  Considering the accessibility of this area, there is a surprising lack of ORV use (road abuse).

It appears an attempt will be made to delete the entire easternmost portion and a smaller triangular corner on the western border, reducing the area to 23,053 acres—a move for which there seems to be no good rationale.