The house sits on property owned by the Hammond Ranch at 41173 Dry Gulch Road about a mile west of Richland, said Dave Kingsbury, Eagle Valley Rural Fire District chief. His department was dispatched to the blaze at 11:33 p.m. Saturday.

The house was engulfed by flames when firefighters arrived, Kingsbury said.

The Hammond family of Boswell, Okla., who moved from the Richland area about two years ago, owns the house, he said.

Mib and Jacque Dailey were planning to rent the house, which has stood vacant since the Hammonds moved. The Daileys had begun moving their belongings in, but were not at the house when the fire started, Kingsbury said.

Although the firefighters were unable to save the house, they protected the outbuildings and extinguished fire that spread to the west wall of the garage, the fire chief said. The cause of the fire had not been determined today and Kingsbury had no estimate of the loss.

Dave Miller brought his team over from Elgin for the first gathering of the new Eastern Oregon Driving and Draft Horse Association. (Baker City Herald/Kathy Orr)

For a moment it feels like a much different time, when horses truly were the horsepower on ranches and farms.

Soon a team of Belgians pulls to a stop and their driver, 81-year-old Gene Westberg, grins and offers a ride to whoever is standing close.

Climb on and Westberg gets the horses moving with a twitch of the lines and a “Come up, Dolly, come up.”

This event, held Sunday at Westberg’s place on Old Auburn Road, was the first sledding party of the Eastern Oregon Driving and Draft Horse Association.

Fourteen horses were hitched for the day — six teams and two singles — and drivers came from Baker City, Haines, Keating, Halfway, Elgin and Prairie City.

The Association has 27 names on the mailing list — and it just officially formed last summer. The group’s first event was a draft horse fun day in October at the Oregon Trail Events Center.

Membership is $10 for individuals and $25 for families.

The thousands of people anxious to find out where motor vehicles will be able to travel on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest will have to wait a while longer than forest officials recently estimated.

Last week Wallowa-Whitman officials said Supervisor Steve Ellis probably would announce his decision on the forest’s long-awaited Travel Management Plan in late spring.

But on Wednesday Ellis said late summer is now the more likely time frame.

The reason for the delay, Ellis said, is that federal officials have given the Wallowa-Whitman and other national forests a higher priority: Spending their shares of the $787 billion federal stimulus package that President Obama signed into law last year.

In a Dec. 21, 2009, memo to forest supervisors, Mary Wagner, the Forest Service’s Northwest Region forester, wrote: “It must be clear that meeting our promises under (the stimulus package) is our most important task over the next several months. For some forests, delays in certain types of work will be part of what it takes...”

One such type of work, according to Wagner’s memo, is finishing travel management plans.

Ellis said Wallowa-Whitman workers will have to balance their work on the travel management plan with the task of putting together a variety of construction and maintenance projects that will be offered to contractors and paid for with stimulus dollars.

Most of the waterways — including three reaches of the Powder River, one of them in Baker Valley — were on a list of critical habitat that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service originally proposed to designate in 2002.

But those stream reaches, totaling about 350 miles, were left off the critical habitat list that the agency approved in September 2005.

Dozens of other streams in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Nevada that were proposed in 2002 were also excluded from the 2005 critical habitat maps.

Those exclusions prompted two environmental groups from Montana, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan, to file a lawsuit in January 2006 alleging the Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to adequately protect bull trout.

In March 2009 agency officials admitted that Julie MacDonald, a former Interior Department deputy assistant secretary who was appointed by the Bush administration in 2002, had interfered with the process of determining critical habitat.

MacDonald, who resigned in 2007, was involved in the controversial decision by which streams where bull trout were thought to live, but where they hadn’t been confirmed, were deleted from the 2005 list of critical habitat.

Tim Collins, city manager pro-tem, looked into three options for dealing with the snow berms in response to concerns raised by Councilor Beverly Calder and others.

Collins said Police Chief Wyn Lohner confirmed that the berms are a hazard, particularly when snow is pushed back from the intersection and the height of the berm restricts visibility.

“Because I agree to a large degree with Chief Lohner’s comments, I instructed the Public Works Department to remove most of the knobs that are formed by pushing the snow back from intersections and driveways,” Collins said.

The city staff tracked the cost of removing the snow knobs after the snowstorm in late December and projected it would cost between $2,000 and $2,500 per storm to haul away that snow, Collins said.

Based on an average winter, Collins estimated it would cost the city between $6,000 and $10,000 annually “to remove the more serious hazards created by the berms.”

Why? Why do they do it? What motivates people to assault innocent strangers, vandalize property, or abuse drugs?

It doesn’t make sense.

While certainly not rational on most levels, destructive and antisocial behaviors occur for a reason, or more accurately, a combination of reasons. 

And, in a twisted and oversimplified way, some of the causes are rooted in the same human needs that motivate people to play sports, join service organizations and get good grades.

Last week we looked at how basic survival needs can be harnessed to help motivate us to work toward our goals, and how they can just as easily interfere with our efforts.

This week we’ll examine some secondary or psychological needs that can be just as powerful in determining the level and direction of our motivation.

Three of the most recognized psychological needs are control (power), belonging (affiliation), and competence (being capable or valued). They can all provide motivation in either helpful and detrimental ways.

Matt Ward, 15, bagged this buck in November on a trip with “Hunt of a Lifetime,” which grants hunting and fishing dreams to youth with life-threatening illnesses. Ward was born with spina bifida. (Baker City Herald/Submitted Photo)

“I told Matt’s that’s the biggest deer I’ve ever seen,” says Mark Ward.

Matt, 15, shoots a mischievous smile at his dad, then sorts through photos on the table that show his prize, a mule deer buck with seven points on one side and six points on the other.

“First deer hunt and kill,” Matt says.

His adventure was courtesy of Hunt of a Lifetime, a nonprofit that grants hunting and fishing wishes for children age 21 and younger with life-threatening illnesses.

Matt was born with spina bifida, which means “open spine.” This condition occurs when a fetus’ spine doesn’t close entirely during the first month of pregnancy.

Matt’s case is considered “moderate” severity, said his mom, Lisa. He must use a wheelchair, but he does have use of his upper body and arms to move his chair under his own power.

Clay McEnroe says it was “pure luck” that got him involved with Hunt of a Lifetime.

He first heard about the program from an employee at the Thomas Angus Ranch.

“He said they’re having a heck of a time finding help,” McEnroe said.

So he did some research and contacted the Oregon Chapter.

Hunt of a Lifetime is based in Pennsylvania. It was founded by Tina Pattison, who made countless phone calls to find an affordable moose hunt for her son, Matthew, who was battling cancer.

An outfitter responded and the tiny village of Nordegg in Alberta, Canada, rallied to give Matthew a moose hunt of a lifetime, at no cost to the family.

He died six months later.

That’s when Pattison decided to start a foundation to fulfill hunting dreams for children age 21 and younger with life-threatening illnesses. (She’d discovered that other wish-granting organizations shied away from hunting trips, and most were limited to those 18 and younger.)

“I have taken the liberty to assure Mr. Johnson that we understand and are willing to work with him and hold the position for him,” Dorrah said.

“The Council has the option of saying ‘sorry Mr. Johnson, if you can’t be here next week we don’t want you,’ ” — but Dorrah said he doesn’t think that’s the right thing to do, given Johnson’s circumstances.

Dorrah laid out his proposal to have the Council interview former interim city manager Steve Bogart within the next couple of weeks as a possible replacement for Tim Collins, who has been working as interim manager since the Council fired Steve Brocato on June 9, 2009.

“Steve Bogart has been going from city to city to city for years,” Dorrah said. “He served as city manager here for a while.”

A man who fled Baker City after an October shooting and later was arrested in Portland has been sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to third-degree assault and three other felony charges.

Judge Greg Baxter sentenced Zachary Persicke, 24, of 2690 Ninth St., Friday in Baker County Circuit Court.

In addition to the assault charge, Persicke pleaded guilty to coercion and two counts of felon in possession of a firearm, all Class C felonies, District Attorney Matt Shirtcliff said.

Baxter sentenced Persicke to 30 months in prison on the assault charge and added 18 months for each of the other charges, for a total of 84 months in prison. Persicke will be required to complete three years’ post-prison supervision upon release and to pay restitution to the victim, Jesse Rounsville, 46, of 225 Bridge St.

Rounsville was shot in the torso the night of Oct. 22 at a house in the 2300 block of Fifth St. He was flown by LifeFlight to St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise for treatment. Rounsville was treated and released “fairly quickly,” Shirtcliff said, and has made nearly a full recovery.