By Skyler Marshall

One evening in Larsen Bay, Alaska, Digne and I got off work in the Egg House early — “early” meaning at the glorious hour of 10 p.m. The idea of an extra two hours of sleep sounded delicious; my cozy top bunk and pajamas beckoned to me. In Alaska, sleep became like a decadent, expensive dessert: you only got it once in a blue moon, and you always wished you had it when you were constantly stuck with something far inferior.

But Casey said, “No way.”

Casey was a man in his mid-twenties I had met in Egegik, Alaska, when he sat down beside Digne and me at our customary table one lunch, introduced himself, and effused the air with his charm and easy humor. An ex-Marine who was a medical volunteer in Ecuador and Ethiopia, he was now attending Oregon State University and studying mechanical engineering.

Casey was not the sort of man to let the opportunity for adventure glide past him, and thus I was forced to put slumber on the back burner as Joshua, Digne, Casey, and I hiked down the main road that runs through Larsen Bay until we reached the hunting lodges past the post office and school, where we gazed reverently out towards the mountains that seemed to grow from the water beneath like stalagmites.

So it was no wonder that Casey persuaded me to deviate from my original route through Oregon and take the four-hour drive from Ashland to Bend to visit him this September.

Why was I in Oregon, you might ask? I had decided to take a road trip to Portland to fetch Digne and Joshua as they made their way to the San Francisco Bay Area after their three-month contract with Icicle Seafoods in Alaska. It gave me an excuse to visit the two other people who made up my “Alaska family” besides Digne and Joshua, Casey and his childhood friend, Katie, who also went to OSU.

I spent my first night of my road trip in Ashland, a little town just north of the state line that is home to the famous Shakespeare Festival. I will admit right away that I am not the biggest fan of Oregon — I prefer California or Washington and I’ve always thought Oregon an unnecessary bit of land that needlessly puts me much farther away from the beautiful Puget Sound — but I love Ashland.

I dropped off my bags at the inn about 3 p.m., and taking a Catharine Arnold book with me, I went to the Lithia Park to read.

Lithia Park is a lovely place with lots of winding paths shaded by hundreds of beautiful trees. It’s filled with ponds and brooks, mallards and cranes. Leaning against a short stone wall while I read, I had a view of the young mothers, old couples, and punk youth, hitchhikers and others who wandered through the Ashland park.

For dessert, I went to Mix Sweet Shop, one of my favorite coffee places in the world and a cute and much more impressive alternative to the adorable log-cabin-style Starbucks up the street. I had a scoop of chocolate truffle ice cream on a waffle cone, and began reading “Far From the Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy at the bar. It was a perfect way to enjoy the first evening of my Oregonian road trip.

The next morning, after I stopped by Mix for a fresh-baked croissant and a mocha beautifully decorated with leaves and hearts drawn in milk atop my coffee drink, I left Ashland for lands I had not yet explored.

I had never been to the eastern side of the Cascades, and I drove a bit too fast through the mountain pass to the high desert that surrounds Bend. I hadn’t seen Casey since we left Anchorage in mid-August. I was eager to meet up with this close friend, and lately, I had been feeling nostalgic about the days in Larsen Bay.

“So what’re we doing today, Case?” I asked him. “I want quintessential Bend.”

“You’ll see,” he replied cryptically, giving me a shadow of a wink and a wry smile,

After picking up a pack of soda from the store, Casey took me to Backporch Coffee Roasters, where I had the most amazing mocha sweetened with lavender syrup. Chocolate and lavender have become my new favorite combination since my trip to the Fairfax Scoop, described in my second article.

After walking through Bend’s quaint downtown, we hopped into his truck and headed toward the wilderness. I still had no idea what Casey had planned for our adventure. Perhaps he was planning on killing me and throwing my body in the woods for the coyotes and bears to munch on. However, this was not the case.

“You’re going to learn how to shoot a gun,” he said, removing a scary-looking Colt AR-15 from the back of his truck. I had never touched a real gun in my life. They were hulking, frightening things, things I had never had any desire to handle, fearing I would mistakenly shoot something expensive or someone – probably myself. Years of watching “Law & Order”” with my mother had taught me that guns were scary.

So I was hesitant at first. But with calm and reassuring words, Casey coaxed me into the correct stance and the right way to aim the weapon I held in my hands. Then, I pulled the trigger, and the gun answered with a resounding BOOM! that echoed through the woods. Propped along a small dirt hummock were the shaken bottles of soda from the store, acting as my prey. By the end of the hour of target practice, I had hit three cans! I rejoiced with loud whoops of joy. I trembled with heady excitement.

After lunch and a movie – “Despicable Me 2,” which I found hilarious – I decided I would be spending the night in Bend rather than traveling on to Salem to spend time with my god family and their newly adopted daughter, Grace.

How could I leave this little city when I had had so many adventures here? I had been introduced to new and exciting things, and I was a junkie for this sort of spontaneity once I got a taste.

The next morning, I watched as Casey gently placed some pieces of deer meat onto the burner, cooked them on either side for a few moments, and sprinkled them with spices. He handed me a piece. “Try it,” he told me. The deer had been one that Casey had shot a couple days before. It was fresh and all-organic meat, in line with the topics and lifestyle he constantly promotes,

I had never had venison before. My initial thoughts were, “No thanks, I probably won’t like it.” But this was Casey, and “No” simply was not an option.

I placed a morsel on my tongue and froze. The meat melted in my mouth, the reddish juices running down my chin and my fingers as I eagerly chewed. “Casey,” I said, awestruck, “can I have another piece?”

Now that I am home from Bend, I miss it as much as I miss Alaska, although, I suppose I miss Casey rather than the actual place. To me, he epitomizes adventure, embodying everything I wanted to experience after Alaska — heady exploits in places unknown, relishing in the newness and beauty of the experience at hand and discovering the world and the many facets of the people you meet along the way. The more people in our lives that introduce spontaneity into our humdrum existence planned out in our iPhone calendars make our universe a little more lively, a little more colorful, and a little more memorable. I’ve decided a quest of mine is to fill my life with more of these people.

As Casey often insisted to me in Alaska,”Life is too short to go to sleep too early.”

Skyler Marshall is an 18-year-old Benicia High School graduate with a zealous travel bug and a passion for reading (and smelling) good books, writing, eating exquisite foods, watching remarkable films and yoga.