Transmitting from the Mahavie Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Now is the time because night has fallen on the American desert

when did you

first see Death Valley

for me

it was the cold winter of

1982 one of those

notorious El Niino winters.

And I squeezed into a beat-up

Volkswagen Beetle with three other

high school hooligans.

Somehow we'd all caught

desert fever. Not valley fever.

The killer lung fungus common to Phoenix.

But desert fever, a crazed longing for being far from the stains of human civilization,

the bozo version we endure in California and what they used to call the sunbelt

when there was some novelty in moving away

from Ohio or Michigan and settling where the sun always shines and where there's no water.

Well, we bounced up Interstate 15 through Barstow and had a 3 a.m. breakfast and Baker at the Bun Boy, plenty of coffee.

And then north on Highway 127 as the sky lightened and the white winter sun suddenly topped Kingston Peak

and there it was.

I'd never seen anything so vast in my life.

...