Now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Well, night has fallen on the American desert, and I just sort of feel like making a proclamation.

Because you stand up here on a lectern, and you feel like you're supposed to proclaim something.

There's a compulsion to make a proclamation, and considering the circumstances, I hereby proclaim a new holiday, a particular holiday for desert people.

A desert Thanksgiving.

In the North American desert, this could be one of those wandering holy days like Easter and Passover.

Or probably better, It should have a set

day, a day set on the calendar that's based on a county-by-county calculation of the average

day when the rattlesnakes are out again. The purpose of this regional day of thanks,

a weekend of thanks in fact so you could get a good Saturday night

party built into the thing. Well, it's to say goodbye to the easy times, the cooler months

when you do not think about rattlesnakes. We really only have two seasons in the desert.

Up in Elko, three or four winters ago, I was buying myself one of those oil cloth flannel-line coats at the Western Ware store because the wind was so cold around the Ruby Mountains up there that I was having a hard time just hiking around, just walking around looking at things.

There were snow flurries whipping around the parking lot outside,

and at the checkout I said it felt like North Dakota out there.

And the woman behind the counter, she kind of shook her head at me like I was a real idiot.

She said, we only have two seasons in Elko, too damn cold and too damn hot.

And that's true of a lot of the desert.

The high desert up in Utah, southern Arizona, up around Dulcy.

Dulcy, New Mexico, where there's supposed to be a secret alien base inside the mountain.

All kinds of weird lights in the sky, things coming in and out of the mountainside.

Once I went up to Dulcy to look, I'd read a lot of garbage on the internet, and I thought I might better drive up there

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