Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker with Barbara J. Scot, Child of Steens Mountain (2008)
Content warning:
Animal cruelty, body horror, death
Synopsis
Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker was born in 1927 and grew up on a homestead on Steens Mountain in Southeastern Oregon. Her parents — an Irish immigrant father and a schoolteacher mother — raised McVicker and her brother and sister with a rural way of life. There was no electricity or running water on the homestead and there was always much to be done on the homestead to keep life running. This memoir is a collection of vignettes, narrating McVicker’s time working with her sheepherder father and assisting her mother in household duties, and later moving into a small rental house with her brother in Burns, Oregon to attend public school. McVicker later on met her husband, Gene. McVicker’s story follows along a tale of her growing confidence and gaining independence while detailing issues of parenting, coming-of-age, and making her own way of living.
Essay
Oregon may be known in some respects for its agricultural contributions, but the extent to which agriculture is a vital part of Oregon history and its future is scarcely shared. Child of Steens Mountain stays true to the natural beauty of the state and its agricultural significance, especially in the Southeast part of Oregon where Steens Mountain is. McVicker and Scot’s writings detail the landscape surrounding McVicker’s childhood homestead, bringing to life the known nature associated with Oregon.
The included foreword from Richard W. Etulain, historian of Oregon literary, political, or cultural figures of significance, details the geographical history of Eastern and Southern Oregon and the nonideal climate for ranching families in the 1920s. Steens Mountain was one of the last remaining areas still suitable for raising sheep herds and growing crops, something the O’Keeffes were luckily able to fall into.
McVicker roots herself in the Oregon landscape as more industrialization moves into the area and soldiers moving to the West Coast for World War II invade her teenage memories. Child of Steens Mountain lends to the way growing up on isolated Oregon land forces her family to rely on themselves and their agricultural know-how to survive. McVicker’s life and presence is rooted in the Steens Mountain and her identity is tied to Oregon agriculture practices because it is what she and her distant neighbors know their way of life to be.
As a memoir, Child of Steens Mountain deals with McVicker’s own experiences growing up on the homestead, but the detailed accounts of struggling with food and money through the Great Depression, loved ones heading off to fight in World War II, and the more mundane up and down struggles of life make this coming-of-age story much more applicable outside a southern Oregon lens.
I chose to include this memoir in a guide to Oregon literature because McVicker and Scot have encapsulated a feeling for me reminiscent of listening to my parents and extended family tell stories about growing up in rural Idaho and Tennessee — it brought me closer to home. I also grew up in a farming town, granted it is within the Willamette Valley, but my version of what Oregon is has differed from those in a town with a population greater than 7,500. The nature and yearly life cycle of crops and vegetation have shaped my idea of home. Oregon lands are and hopefully continue to be a place of bountiful harvests and home of herd after herd of livestock.
The tales from McVicker’s homestead paint the greater picture of an Oregon outside the main populace and bring the agricultural roots back into the conversation of Oregon as a whole. Oregon did not have a gold rush or such an interest in accessing the Pacific Ocean — settlers came to Oregon for the farmland, the grazing grounds. Agriculture is the reason settlers came to Oregon and stayed in Oregon.
Author Bio
Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker and Barbara J. Scot are neighbors on Sauvie Island, north of Portland, Oregon. The pair met while walking their dogs. While McVicker has only co-authored Child of Steens Mountain (2008), Scot had over a decade of writing experience. Scot has published three books: The Violet Shyness of Their Eyes: Notes from Nepal (1993), winner of a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Book Award; Prairie Reunion: A Miraculous, Healing Journey Into a Family’s Tragic History (1995), a New York Times Notable Book; and Sierra Club: The Stations of Still Creek (2001).
Further Reading
Opal Whiteley, The Story of Opal: Journal of an Understanding Heart (1920)
- Memoir, rural setting, South Willamette Valley
Dorothy L. McCall, Ranch Under the Rimrock (1971)
- Central Oregon, rural setting, memoir