When I was a kid, I remember hearing a Native American story about Oregon’s Three Sisters, and The Husband– in central Oregon. It stuck with me, and I told it to my kids on a trip to Bend from Portland. We had been talking a lot about myths and how they are both true and not true. They share something true, but it doesn’t mean things happened just as the stories say. I loved my daughter Amelia’s take on the story. Here’s my version of the story as it was told to me, and my daughter’s take on it. Apparently, way back a long time ago, the three sisters where all being courted by a bachelor, who was both fickle and small. He could never decide. Which sister? It was the oldest one day, the youngest the next. The middle sister took the bachelor’s indecision with a grain of salt. When he came by, she would stop and talk, smiling while looking away over his shoulder towards something else. She didn’t take him too seriously, because she had other projects on her mind. The youngest laughed and flirted mercilously, trying to woo him, but laughing at him just the same. He seemed small and silly to her, and so she went on her merry way. The oldest one, however, wanted to win his heart. She tried sincerely to win him. One day, in spring, he reached out to hold her hand, when his eye lit on her little sister. “Well, I have a question for your little sister. “Nice talking with you,” he called out, trailing away. She was so mad, she blew her top, yelling and spewing. And this is why South Sister is the shortest mountain now, because as my 6-year-old daughter said after hearing this story, “if you blow your top, you get shorter.” And that is why the Husband is still there, stuck in his indecision, all alone, while the littlest laughs and the middle one looks out over the horizon. The oldest one, though shorter, is now the wisest. She lost something real that day, and now she serves as lookout. Today, she is one of the most climbed mountains in Oregon.
If You Blow Your Top, You Get Shorter – Oregon’s Three Sisters
