J. David Coughlin could not have known that his future would be decided the instant he first saw the Elkhorn Mountains.

Almost half a century later, a period during which Coughlin could see the Elkhorns very nearly every day, his memory remains vivid of that initial glimpse.

He was 26, his law degree from Willamette University less than a year old on that day in 1970.

It’s no surprise that Coughlin, who grew up in Portland, noticed the Elkhorns as his car descended Ladd Canyon and the great range spread across the southwest horizon.

Mountains, not a budding legal career, dominated his life.

Coughlin could no more have failed to scan the Elkhorns’ ridges and faces for climbing routes than an angler could drive across a river without wondering where he might best drop a fly to tempt a trout.

He was in fact on a climbing trip that day. Coughlin was driving to Wyoming to climb in the Tetons with Yvon Chouinard, already a famous rock climber who, a few years later, would name his outdoor clothing company Patagonia.

But on that day it was the Elkhorns that not only attracted Coughlin’s gaze, but stayed lodged in his memory.

“I looked up at the mountains and said, ‘those are tremendous,’ ” said Coughlin, 73, who is retiring this week after a 46-year career as an attorney in Baker City.

On his return trip from the Tetons to Portland, Coughlin drove to Anthony Lakes. His enthusiasm for the Elkhorns grew. That winter he took a job at the ski area.

If Coughlin’s affinity for the mountains didn’t solidify his connection to Baker City, what happened next certainly did.

Except this time Coughlin wasn’t looking at the mountains.

He was on his back, looking up at the bottom of a building just a few inches above his face.

He was attaching cables to a building so it could be moved (the building is still around today, and serves as the ski area’s ticket shop).

Coughlin saw, in the strip of light just beyond the building’s edge, a pair of feet.

He slid out to see who was standing there.

Her name was Lisa Kuchinsky. She was a recent graduate of the University of Colorado who had just started teaching English at Baker High School.

They were married the next year — not in a church, but at West Eagle Meadows on the edge of the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

“It was a bit remote,” Coughlin said, chuckling as he remembers the reaction of some of the wedding guests who had traveled from Portland and who must have wondered, after more than 15 miles of driving on gravel roads through the woods, whether somebody had made a wrong turn en route to the nuptials.

Sometime during the winter that Coughlin worked at Anthony Lakes, Lyle Wolff, who served as the Baker County Circuit Court judge from the late 1950s until 1977, learned that a young lawyer was spending his time on the slopes rather than in the courtroom.

“He told me we need lawyers,” Coughlin recalls. “I said I’ll try it for six months. That was 46 years ago.”

It’s a span that Coughlin considers with fondness and not a whit of regret.

“We’ve had a really good life here in Baker City, a very happy, very successful life,” he said. “I got to meet a lot of very nice people, and I got to help a lot of people. Along with the enjoyment of just living in Baker City all these years.”

Coughlin’s first law partner was Jack Jacobson. Their office was at First Street and Court Avenue.

Later Coughlin formed a partnership with Bill Jackson. After Jackson was elected as circuit court judge (he defeated Wolff) in 1977, Coughlin started a practice with Martin Leuenberger. They bought the old Post Office building at Main and Auburn in Baker City in 1982. Their firm, which includes three other attorneys, is Intermountain Law and has its local office at 3370 10th St., Suite H.

See more in the June 2, 2017 issue of the Baker City Herald.