I’ve spent a lot of time in Skyline Forest. I ran the numbers and calculated I spent approximately 1,300 hours riding my bike all across Skyline from the time I began venturing out into its network of incredible gravel roads in 2010 until it was closed to the public in August 2022.

Skyline Forest is a vast, 33,000-acre forest landscape with plentiful riding opportunities and abundant views — and it’s just a stone’s throw to the west of Bend. As a professional gravel cyclist, it has offered me and the Central Oregon cycling community an amazing and accessible training ground. Stretching across 50 square miles from Bend to Sisters, there was always a new challenge awaiting and a memorable time to be had while exploring these eastern Cascades slopes and foothills.

Over time, Skyline Forest also transformed into somewhat of a personal refuge. It is a landscape I now know well and hold dearly in my heart. Just being out there amongst nature, moving under my own power, and surrounded by open space; it was always a special opportunity to clear my mind, fill my heart, and recharge. Skyline Forest is one of those places you can escape to and get lost in (without ever really getting lost). There’s something ineffable about being in a place with so few other people around — just a simple pair of wheels and a seemingly endless gravel road beneath me, the Cascades towering above, and the high desert disappearing into the eastern horizon.

Now, when I think about the time that I’ve spent in Skyline Forest and its uncertain future, I get emotional, because it is a place of utter escape, because it is an important part of our region’s ecology, and because it means so much to so many Central Oregonians.

Historically, Skyline Forest has been somewhat of a “take-it-for-granted” part of Central Oregon, assumed to be a continuation of the Deschutes National Forest. But over the past few years, more and more people have learned that our “backyard forest” isn’t public land, and they have realized its future is at stake.

If you take one thing from reading this letter, take this: Skyline Forest is privately owned and is up for sale. But if this community comes together, we can permanently protect it and restore public access.

The current sale price is based on speculative development potential. This type of development includes large luxury homes and would require the destruction of essential migration corridors and wildlife habitat, dangerously extending our communities into a wildfire-prone landscape, and likely eliminating the opportunity for public access and recreation on this unique and expansive forestland.

But this development doesn’t need to happen. A brighter future for Skyline Forest is possible. Community organizations including Central Oregon LandWatch and the Deschutes Land Trust have been working to conserve Skyline Forest, and last year, doing so was identified as a priority community goal through Envision Bend’s Vision Action Plan.

As more members of our community learn about Skyline, the more empowered we will be to raise a collective voice and propel this grassroots movement toward its ultimate goal: permanently conserving Skyline Forest for its essential natural values and public access.

If I can play a small role in protecting this place, that’s the best legacy I could ever leave.

Together, we can save Skyline Forest. You can join the movement and learn more about this special place and our communities’ connection to it by visiting saveskylineforest.org.

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