Willow Witt Ranch

What does it say about life in Los Angeles that staying in a bare bones, one room cabin in Oregon with my entire family (all five of us) while we all suffered from a stomach virus – was SO RELAXING compared to my life this past year in the comfort of my own home! For one thing, it is a clue that we need to get out of town more often. But in the cabin’s defense, the Oregon countryside was spectacular! For four nights, my mother, two children, husband and I stayed on a farm just outside of Ashland, Oregon, called the Willow-Witt Ranch. Our hosts were farmers/ranchers with additional staff on hand to help with the daily chores associated with a herd of goats, pigs, chickens, and the farm dogs, cats, horse, and ducks.

What struck me after much too long in the city was the absolute quiet of the country and the unbelievable number of stars in the night sky. I grew up in Wisconsin, on a farm, and I don’t recall ever seeing as many stars, other than on a trip to the Boundary Waters. The stillness, broken during the day by an occasional bumping of goats’ horns in mild disputes or play, was remarkable. No planes overhead, no engines, no cell phone conversations, no music not of my choosing blaring out of car speakers as I sit inside my house. The quiet had a calming effect on all of us, even though we were all either sick, about to be sick, or just finished being sick.

The initial reason for our visit to Ashland, Oregon, was to visit a friend from college who now lives there and attends Southern Oregon University. Ashland is also home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, so we planned on seeing a couple of plays. Since my children love trains, I originally planned a trip there via Amtrak with them. But when I looked into the logistics of traveling from Los Angeles to Oregon, then renting a car, the cost and the amount of travel time was prohibitive – almost equivalent to driving! And driving probably would have been cheaper.

So we ended up taking a two-hour flight from LAX to Medford, Oregon, on Horizon/Alaska Airlines, renting a car, and driving about half an hour into Ashland. The Willow Witt Ranch is another half hour outside of Ashland. The countryside on the way to the ranch reminded my husband and me of the South Island of New Zealand, complete with cattle, all green hills that you realize as you drive through them are foothills at the base of mountains. The hills are dotted with boulders that look volcanic in origin and moderately populated with evergreens. The road to the ranch was described accurately in the website directions I printed out, but we are so acclimated to city and interstate driving that we rarely use our odometer. So we got lost a few times, having spaced in the forest out rather than noting when we’d gone more than 3.3 miles off the main road. Eventually, however, we found the ranch and settled into our room.

As the virus raced through my body, and then my mother’s, and then my husband’s, we took turns taking to our beds and moaning for most of a day. Meanwhile, my four-year-old and seven-year-old spent untold hours outdoors petting the “kid goats” (as my son called them). The adults not felled by the stomach bug wandered between the open corals, keeping a relaxed watch on the two children. The farm hands allowed them to watch milking and gather eggs. Later we sampled fresh goat milk and fresh eggs, and the grownups all agreed that they were wonderful and wholly different foodstuff from anything we’d had before.

Illness nearly prevented me from seeing our first scheduled play in town, “Pride and Prejudice,” but I made it. It was a beautiful production, but I am one of those people who likes almost any production of a Jane Austen book. Our next play, “Twelfth Night,” was a revival of the play that had kicked off the Oregon Shakespeare Festival 75 years ago. It was our last night in Ashland, and we were planning to go with our local friend. At the last minute my husband, who’d bravely fought off the worst effects of the virus so far, became too ill to go. So my friend and I went and were both blown away! It was an amazing show and beautifully staged in the outdoor theater. But it was COLD! My friend brought along extra coats, seat cushions, and a wool blanket. I thought it was her old aversion to temperatures below 80F. But before intermission, we’d both bundled up in all of her layers and were practically clinging to each other for extra warmth. Still, the chilly air only added to the show’s wonder. (Luckily, I’d bought a child’s synopsis to “Twelfth Night,” so I wasn’t as in the dark as I’d been for the last Shakespearean show I’d seen, a production of “Love’s Labour Lost” by the Globe Theatre group.)

The town of Ashland is beautiful. My husband and I both commented that it seemed to be what a lot of picturesque tourist towns aspire to in terms of natural beauty, quaintness, good dining and shopping. We realized with some chagrin that we’d spent more than a few long weekend in various towns in California and on the East Coast that, we felt, were pale imitations of Ashland. There’s a legend that water from the drinking fountain in the park in the middle of town has curative properties. We didn’t try it, as we were too miserable to remember this piece of trivia when we were actually in the park playing with the kids. But visiting the town of Ashland was in itself blunted the edge (at least temporarily) that we’d developed during too many hours in traffic, too much participating in the rat race, and being to ask to care about too many lost causes in our regular lives. We are definitely going back for another visit again soon. Maybe this time we’ll both be able to see “Twelfth Night.”