When you read “distracted driving” you’re apt to think of a cellphone or a talkative passenger in the back seat or even a fast food hamburger that squirts ketchup on your lap with the first bite.

(Although I tend to make the biggest messes with cups of soda; give me a straw and poorly fitted lid, and I can spray liquid over most of the interior of a typical sedan.)

But none of these can compel my eyes to stray from the highway with anything like the power of the Elkhorn Mountains.

I had to drive to Haines and back on a recent early afternoon.

The sun had begun to wester and the harsh light of midday had softened. A minor storm had passed through the day before and freshened the mountains’ white mantle. The clouds had largely dissipated but for a few wispy patches that rode below the level of the peaks, rather like ice floes on a lazy river, and the atmosphere had the crystalline quality that gives the illusion that I could make out individual snow-flocked trees despite the distance of several miles.

These mountains are familiar to me — as much, in a way, as my own backyard or bedroom. As well they should be, I suppose, as I can see the Elkhorns from both places.

But as with all great ranges, the Elkhorns have a mercurial personality which can, sometimes in the span of an hour, dramatically change their appearance. I have many times waited eagerly for the mountains to reappear in the wake of the first autumn storm which I suspect has dusted the peaks with snow.

The Elkhorns are fetching in all seasons and weathers, to be sure. But to my eyes these mountains never seem quite right when bereft of snow.

Yet as closely as I watch the Elkhorns, as often as I marvel at my good fortune to live, almost literally, in the expansive shadow they cast across Baker Valley, these mountains manage not infrequently to surprise and delight me.

Such was the case during my drive to Haines. I had scarcely left town, just past the Wards’ potato cellars, when I noticed that the Elkhorns had taken on the sheen unique to winter afternoons soon after a fall of snow. And although I could hardly scrutinize the slopes — I was, as I mentioned, driving an automobile, which is no small responsibility — the Elkhorns so dominate the western horizon that they defy being ignored. Even the briefest of peripheral views revealed their magnificence — how the deepening snow has softened the sedimentary spines, the almost palpable chill of the blue-black shadows, so sharply defined they might have been shaped by an especially keen blade.

I imagined, as I often do while I’m gazing up at the Elkhorns, what it would be like to be up there at that moment — how deep the drifts on the narrow summit of Rock Creek Butte, the apex of the range at 9,106 feet, how cruelly the wind would cut on the exposed ridges above 8,000 feet.

I tended to my small errand in Haines and headed back south on Highway 30. As before, I had to resist the urge to direct my attention from the road — which was, happily, dry — and let my view wander along the ridges and spurs and peaks, my eyes going where I wished my boots, strapped to snowshoes, could be.

The drive from Haines to Baker City is a short one. I had the radio on but I don’t recall any of the songs that played over the 11 miles. The music was mere background noise as I stole brief glimpses of the Elkhorns, my thoughts occupied with their omnipresence and their reliability and their ultimate, overriding characteristic, which is beauty.

I wouldn’t argue that Highway 30 through Baker Valley is Oregon’s most scenic stretch of highway. The state has a wealth of such routes, so the competition for such a title is considerable.

There are even roads elsewhere in Baker County that rival Highway 30. Anthony Lakes Highway, for instance, as it climbs into the Elkhorns. And the panorama of the Wallowas from Highway 86, where it crests the hill at the junction with the Keating Road, frequently mesmerizes me.

But for an otherwise undistinguished section of two-lane blacktop, Highway 30 has a backdrop that elevates it above the mundane grind of a boring commute.