Most people visit Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the spring. That’s when birds, migrating north along the Pacific Flyway, turn up by the thousands at the famous eastern Oregon refuge, which encompasses high desert marshland in remote Harney County 30 miles south of Burns. In May the weather is generally close to comfortable, so long as you don’t mind hordes of mosquitoes, and on Memorial Day weekend hundreds of birders traditionally pack the refuge and nearby motels and campgrounds to sort through the migrating flocks for rarities.
For the past two decades, though, my son and I have also taken up visiting Malheur in the depths of winter. It’s a time of splendid quiet, spectacular isolation and, at times, bitter cold.