Written by Julie Burchstead, FOMR Volunteer and Friend
These remarks were prepared by Julie for sharing at FOMR’s annual fundraising event on October 18th, 2025
Photo by Julie Burchstead

I am one of many Friends Volunteers. I have worked at The Crane’s Nest Nature Store and had the extreme honor to serve as a teacher for the AiR program, working alongside Carey Goss of the Refuge, to bring an integrated biology and art experience to students across the reaches of Harney County. These days, my husband’s health makes longer stays difficult, but I still get to Malheur when I can. Since volunteering, Malheur is a place I need to come back to. 

Just weeks ago I saw my first mountain bluebirds in The Steens (whose lower reaches were alight with golden aspens). I witnessed their kestrel-like hovering as they fed in a meadow. At the Narrows I saw young grebes comically pile their nearly too large selves onto a parents back. Then, after experiencing a flat, I spent a morning at Les Schwab in amiable conversation with a local rancher. We were two people whose paths would likely never have crossed, but found connections through our stories. I stepped for the first time on the Alvord. And nearly every storm for four days finished a rainbow. 

Oregon has many beautiful places. But there is a draw at Malheur that forever changes a person. It was the Volunteer program supported by Friends of Malheur that led me to discover that. In the words of Mary Oliver, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

I grew up in Portland-a child of concrete streets, bathed in the sounds of traffic, under a perennial dome of light. As an adult, I moved rurally, east of the city. I lived in Texas for a time, and later Vermont. Many landscapes. Some teaching colleagues and I took a summer trip once through Shaniko and Baker City, opening my eyes to Eastern Oregon. One of my Eagle Creek first graders grew up to be a cowboy “somewhere near Burns”. His mom sent me photos: Jesse, horseback, doing a ranch hand’s timeless work-against incredible landscapes artfully captured through Mary Hyde’s lens. But still, I would not have been able to pick out Harney County on a map. I fed my horses Eastern Oregon hay and had relatives and colleagues who farmed. I was reasonably well read and interested in the biology of the world around me, but was oblivious to the precarious balance of wildlife and human fortunes centered around Malheur Lake. The snows of the Steens were simply photos in a coffee table book I thumbed through at Powell’s.  But that was to change. 

It began with the recurring whispers of a dear friend who had retired before me. “You need to come to Malheur.  You would love it here.” Sally and her husband John are regular refuge volunteers, staying a month or more at a time.  Though I was still in Vermont, years from retiring and a long way from home, Sally’s invitations never wavered. 

Then came 2020. A difficult time for the world. I had just retired, moved across the country, and lost my mother to Alzheimer’s. Volunteer service seemed the best solution to shake off such a dark time. So in 2021 I took Sally’s advice and sent an email to Janelle Wicks. “Do you still have room for a volunteer?”

Janelle made it so easy. Yes, we can host you onsite in your own RV. We provide complete hook-ups. There is a community center with laundry facilities, showers, and a shared kitchen. Yes, we can arrange your work schedule to allow you to go home mid-month and check in on your husband. So I packed up my camper and trundled over the Cascades from Roseburg.

What I found…

• A community of fellow service-minded people, relationships forged on refuge and into the local community that often sustain beyond Volunteer tenure.

• A supportive and insightful leadership in Janelle who not only can identify the unique strengths of each volunteer (sometimes even those they do not see themselves) but also has the ability to plug those skills into what is needed. 

• Thoughtful scheduling that creates time for Volunteers to not only work, but also have meaningful time to learn and immerse themselves into the landscape and local community. 

• Housing infrastructure onsite that allows volunteers to become a part of the refuge and landscape. You get to know birds better when you wake up to them daily. 

• A commitment by Friends in conjunction with the refuge to be integrated and part of the larger community of Burns in ways that support both human and wildlife interests. Classes, festivals, AiR, fieldtrips…all are community facing, bringing volunteers, visitors, locals, and the refuge together. As the refuge experiences increasing staff and resource shortage, the public facing role of friends becomes more important than ever. 

• Healing. My experience here, my awe of this place opened in me a hunger to capture it in words and creative work, something that continues still today, and something Janelle harnessed in a way for me to continue to support the refuge in a unique small way.

It is because of my experiences through Friends of Malheur-as a Volunteer, I have come to know and appreciate this unique and important part of our state, and also its significance in the greater ecosystem. I have had opportunities to get to know the people and community of Burns and the surrounding area. It is more important than ever to see and experience people whose lives are different from our own and find what we have in common. 

Friends of Malheur supports its Volunteers. Volunteers who in the short term help accomplish tasks or support programs, and in the long term become new stewards, new voices to introduce the beauty and importance of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to others.

There is something about this place.

There is a draw here that forever changes a person.

It infuses you the moment you step out of your car and fill your lungs with sagebrush breath and you are never the same.

Maybe it is the way we are exposed under the giant expanse of sky.

Our human notion of grandeur stripped bare as we see where we really stand, so tiny, insignificant in the order of things, a blink in the geology of time.

Change and uncertainty, calm and storm announce themselves continuously in the billow and thread of clouds, one moment is never like the next.

It’s a continuous overhead dance, with ever-original choreography, the best seats in the house accessible to each one of us- if we only look up.

Perhaps Malheur’s magic too, is inherent in the calls and flutter of the ever changing cast of winged travelers. These seemingly fragile navigators of impossible journeys, who find their way through whatever challenges they find themselves a part of, despite us.

Their flyways are threads that connect us like a quilt, their presence weaves together our cities and towns, from here to places distant and unknown. At Malheur, they remind us daily:  We are all of one home.

The wax and wain of life-giving water affects us all. 

And then there is art.

To caress what we see with line and color, slows us. When we linger on shape and form and light and color, we see and appreciate the objects of such focus more deeply. It is not so important the finished result so much as how that seeing changes us and our relationship with the subject. 

Such seeing becomes 

An offering.

A homage.

A recognition.

When we truly see the beauty and uniqueness of what is before us, its breath, its beating heart, we recognize too, our kinship. 

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

As my friend Sally says, Come volunteer. You’ll love it! 

Because of your support for Friends of Malheur Wildlife refuge, you can.