At the beginning of it all, there was Camp Sherman.
Tucked along the Metolius River in the shadow of Black Butte, Camp Sherman is less a town than a feeling. The kind of place that gets into your bones and never really lets go.
I was born in Portland, but we moved to Camp Sherman when I was very little — and as far as I'm concerned, that's where my story begins. I’m told that as soon as I could walk, I began terrorizing the neighborhood on my stick horse — long before I had a real one — which tells you everything you need to know about who I was as a child and, honestly, who I still am. When I finally got my own pony, Ruby, I rode her to school. Not figuratively. Literally. Like Little House on the Prairie - I’m that old :) Black Butte School was a one-room schoolhouse, and arriving on horseback felt completely normal to me. Now it feels like a dream.
My best friend Danielle's family ran the Camp Sherman Store — if you've ever stopped there for one of their famous sandwiches or some fishing wisdom on your way to the river, you've stood in a place that shaped me. That store is as iconic as Central Oregon gets, and the family behind it were - and still are - the kind of people who made a small community feel like the whole world.
And then there's the Metolius.
My father was a master fly fisherman, and the river was his cathedral. He spent hours there, reading the water and testing his luck against the wiliest of rainbow trout — patiently, quietly, with great reverence. Two years ago, we returned his ashes to his beloved river. It was the most fitting goodbye I can imagine for a man who loved this place so completely.
I share all of this because when people ask me why I came back to Central Oregon, the honest answer is: I never really left. This land, these incredibly special places, these communities, the people — they are not just where I work. They are who I am.
When I help someone find a home in this region, I'm not just selling square footage. I'm sharing something I love deeply. And it started on a stick horse in Camp Sherman.
*Next month: Sisters — a town that grew up right alongside me.*
