My wife and I went to Cline Falls on one of the recent sunny, relatively warm weekends and now I’m kind of mad at myself: How is it that I have lived in Central Oregon since 2001, but only just now made my way to the actual Cline Falls, located just west of Redmond?

The falls had been dammed until 2017, but I don’t know if this makes my tardiness more or less excusable. As a family, we’d been to Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint on the Deschutes River near Eagle Crest a few times, the last probably occurring around George W. Bush’s second term in office.

That was when our kids were little, and my wife and I would load them into the minivan for picnics at all of this area’s state staples: Shevlin Park, Tumalo State Park, Tumalo Falls and Cline Falls. As the kids aged and longer hikes to lakes in the Cascades became possibilities, we let Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint on Highway 126 fall by the wayside.

Infamous crime

I don’t know what I was thinking. But maybe I do know a little about what I was thinking. Back in 2006, I covered for The Bulletin the release of “Strange Piece of Paradise,” author Terri Jentz’s nonfiction book about the brutal axe attack on her and her friend, Avra Goldman, late one evening at the state park one night in the summer of 1977. The 20-year-old Yale roommates were riding bikes across the country on the TransAmerica Trail and had stopped to camp for the evening when a truck ran over their pup tent, and its madman driver emerged wielding an axe.

Jentz’s account of the attack is clear-eyed, incredible and not mine to tell: Suffice it to say, Jentz and Goldman were grievously injured. Somehow, covered in blood, Jentz managed to make it to the road and flag down two passing teenagers. Thanks to the medical care they received at St. Charles Bend, the roommates miraculously survived, and Goldman was left blind from the incident. The crime was never solved in legal terms, but there had been rumors for years about its perpetrator.

As Jentz told Moon Magazine in a 2014 interview, “Many people told me they believed they knew who had done it. It was a very violent 17-year-old boy who was constantly beating up his girlfriend. So I investigated for several years, not believing it could possibly be this local kid, and then finally did in fact fully believe it was him. The book really lays out the case to prove it.”

The interview is fascinating, as is the book. If Central Oregon history, even the ugly stuff, is of interest to you, get your hands on a copy of “Strange Piece of Paradise.”

Here and now

As the title suggests, Central Oregon is a pretty big character in Jentz’s book, and I’d be lying if I said the crime that occurred at Cline Falls hadn’t discolored it for years in my mind’s eye. But human misbehavior is not nature’s fault. Time moves on, and things heal, as did Jentz’s hacked-at arm.

Fortunately, nearly two decades after my dive into Jentz and her book, my librarian wife wanted to show me the recently opened Redmond Library, so we decided to make a day of it in Redmond. We started the morning with the just-over-a-mile round-trip hike from the parking lot on the shoulder of the park entrance, then picked up the riverbank trail. Taking it downstream leads hikers under the highway, and after about a quarter-mile farther, you can begin to hear and, even better, see the falls.

Up close, the 20-foot falls do not disappoint, with segments like candy for the eyes. We gawked for a long time. I’ll spare you my complaints about the graffiti marring the view. Some people just don’t appreciate natural beauty. Fortunately, nature’s hydraulic sculpting wins the day, making the graffiti twits’ scribblings fairly easy to ignore.

The trail continues on, so my wife and I did, too, for a spell, taking in flat boulders and grassy shaded areas on which to sit and take in the Deschutes River before we backtracked, exploring the area just east of the falls a bit more. We then drove into town to take in the impressive edifice that is the new Redmond Library, followed by an outstanding lunch at Xalisco Latin Cuisine. All in all, we had a pretty good haul making a day of it in Redmond.

With the snowmelt upstream, the falls are particularly robust in spring. Along with hiking, the 9-acre Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint affords opportunities to picnic, swim and fish on the Middle Deschutes. Camping is not permitted.

Getting there: From Redmond, take Highway 126 west and follow signs to Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint. From the parking lot, backtrack on the park road and look for signs to the trail. It’s an easy hike, but with rocks, uneven surfaces and the possibility of rattlesnakes for company, watch your step.