Wallowa man creates film that explores modern age, rural lifestyle

Published 5:37 am Sunday, December 29, 2002

WALLOWA – As a ranch kid growing up near Wallowa, Cody Sheehy’s horizons already extended far beyond the scenic confines of the Wallowa Mountains. From age 6 to 9 he lived with his family in the Republic of China in a region called Inner Mongolia.

He has returned to that part of the world more than once through the years with his father, Dennis Sheehy, an international range specialist as well as a cattle rancher.

At age 23 Sheehy has just produced a half-hour documentary called “Losing Changes,” filmed in both Outer Mongolia and Wallowa County. The film examines the impact of the modern political and economic environment on Mongolian herders and their eastern Oregon counterparts a world away, as they struggle to maintain a generations-old way of life.

The documentary will shown for the first time in the OK Theatre in Enterprise at 7 p.m. Monday. There is no admission charge, though donations will be accepted to help pay for such expenses as heating the theater.

“It’s weighted a little in favor of eastern Oregon, but almost half is from Mongolia,” said Cody Sheehy, who identifies his father as his main consultant and narrator. “It was his idea.”

The younger Sheehy graduated from Portland State University with a degree in science in June, and spent two weeks on his own with a video camera supplied by Wallowa Resources, an Enterprise-based nonprofit organization, filming in Mongolia.

Though it wasn’t a main focus in college, “it’s something I really enjoy doing,” Sheehy said of filmmaking. In fact, taking part in a program in Montana involving making scientific films is one of his future options; others include enlisting in the U.S. Navy or attending graduate school in oceanography at Oregon State University.

“I love the ocean, too,” said Sheehy, who recently spent two months sailing alone from Monterey, Calif., to Portland in a 17-foot boat. He also made a film of that adventure and admitted he might sneak it in at the “Losing Changes” showing Monday night. The working title of the film of his ocean adventure is “A Boat Named Hero Sailing the West Coast.”

One of Cody Sheehy’s early adventures was in 1986 when he was 6 and was the subject of a massive overnight search in the Wallowa Mountains after wandering away from a family picnic. He was found after walking 20 miles, headed for his grandmother’s house in Wallowa.

At that time, Cody’s father was in Mongolia, working as a grasslands expert with the Chinese government.

Dennis Sheehy himself was the subject of an award-winning documentary based on the family’s sojourn in China’s Inner Mongolia in the 1980s, when he began his life’s mission trying to help establish sustainable range practices while preserving the pastoral way of life.

Titled “Cowboy in Mongolia,” the film was aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting, was named a gold-medal winner at the 1989 Houston International Film Festival and was the winner of the 1990 Science in Society Journalism Award.

“The Cowboy” tells the story of Sheehy, a Vietnam veteran who became deeply interested in China while recovering from a serious wound suffered during the war. He learned the Chinese language, studied rangeland management and returned with his family in 1985 to win the trust of traditional Mongols and help herders learn sustainable range practices.

Today, Dennis Sheehy continues his battle against the degradation of rangeland in a part of the world where the economic marketplace is rapidly making the ancient pastoral way of life almost a thing of the past.

“They have been herders for a thousand years,” Sheehy said.

He has traveled to China, Mongolia and, most recently, the Tibetan plateaus, several times a year for the past two decades, working as an acknowledged sustainable agriculture range expert on numerous range rehabilitation projects through such organizations as the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, the United Nations and the World Bank.

He is pessimistic about chances the Mongolian herdsmen will survive the modern age much longer.

“Things are changing fast,” he said. Still Sheehy keeps trying, and now is involved in a project on the Tibetan plateau.

Cody Sheehy said one objective of his film is to educate the urban viewer about the rural way of life, to give those living in cities a whole new perspective about agriculture and the environment.

Among Wallowa County ranchers included in “Losing Changes” are Jack McClaran and Skye Krebs.