Ever Seen the Movie Tremors?

Standing on the summit of 500-foot Lava Butte south of Bend, OR is like being transported to another life, a volcanic past of times long forgotten. For those unfamiliar Lava Butte is a 7,000-year-old cinder cone (which erupted around the same time as Crater Lake’s Mt. Mazama). I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what a Lava Butte is, so when the Ranger at the Monument entrance asked did I come to see the Butte and do I want to drive up it, obviously my answer was yes, yes I do. Did I have a clue what I was about to see, what do you think? 

I’d been driving around the Cascade Lakes most of the day, which if you haven’t been you won’t know that on the sides of the scenic highway are huge, and I mean huge piles of black lava piled up. If you’ve seen the film tremors, the part where the giant worm monsters dig through the sand leaving heaping piles of dirt behind their path is exactly what it looks like. I kinda hoped something would pop out of the ground like in the movie because at least then I’d understand what I was looking at. Alas nothing did, but I book marked it for later to try and find the answer for what I’m seeing, after all I’d just come to see a couple of lakes. Sure enough, the Newberry Volcanic Monument in Oregon  answered those questions. Basically what happened was 7000 years ago a Cinder Cone formed (a cone formed around a volcanic vent by fragments of lava thrown out during eruptions) leaving lava flowing in a 9 mile radius of across the land. Flash forward to present day and it’s a sea of black rock like formations that unforgivingly cover the ground. Driving up the cone or Lava Butte allows you to see the crater opening and most importantly get a panoramic view of the string of Cascade volcanoes (Mt. Bachelor, Broken Top and the Three Sisters) and what I think is far more interesting, the sea of black lava just dominating the landscape.

If you have not guessed by now, I’m not really what you’d call an “outdoor” person. I didn’t grow up camping or hiking, the most outdoors I got was being taken to the Lake district by my nice and safe private North London school on a camping trip when I was 13. You could say I’ve missed a few things.

Back to the Butte, so at the top is a trail which carefully takes you around the cone’s parameter allowing you to really get a good look of the area and of course inside the cone, but it also allows you to see a trail that snakes its way through the lava on the ground. I’m now totally obsessed and all I want to do is drive down the Butte to get to the path. I’m still pretty clueless, I’ve got no idea what I’d really be seeing. Of course I’d just seen it from above and prior to this visit seen the pics on Google reading the descriptions such as “mars like rocks” and “it’s like being on another planet” but it’s only till you’re there do you understand this truly is like nothing you’ve seen before.  I could try and describe it, but it really needs to be seen in person. The best I can do is say it’s like, and yes wait for it, being on another planet because you look at everything with the eyes of a child. Everything looks so alien and new. The strangest thing you’ll see is a twisted tree, (think a wet towel someone wrung out to dry) apparently it’s so hard to grow anything after lava spills that any plucky young sapling that is that determined to live must twist itself literally around and around to try and capture enough nutrients to survive.** Fun fact through, it’s called the Lava Ness Monster. The second thing worth mentioning is that this lava covers 9 miles around you, so it’s almost all the eye can see which adds to its dramatic alien planet like effect. 

I probably am not doing it justice because it’s really something you have to see for yourself but I will say this. My blog, and my instagram are both called Out Of Office for this exact example. I’ve sat at a desk with a window looking over Park Ave in NYC, staring out at the yellow cabs and honking cars for most of my working life. I’ve missed so many things because I focused solely on my career. I didn’t know if I wanted to climb mountains or walk through forests because I never gave myself space to try. Walking through a lava bed, and looking at a cascade of volcanic mountains beats Park Ave any day. Sorry Manhattan, World 1, NYC 0

*Drove, let’s be real, I drove up the mountain.

** Disclaimer: the tree is actually dead now 😦