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

Night has fallen on the desert.

But which desert?

Well, all of them and the Americas.

The deserts run up the western spine of these twin continents, north and South America.

Tall walls of mountains on the boundary of the great plates that make up the surface of our haunted planet.

From Antarctica and the Andes through Central America and up the narrow spine of Baja, California.

Northward through the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, the Cascades, the coast ranges of Vancouver,

to the Yukon, the Brooks Range, the Alaska Range, the whole eastern edge of the ring of fire.

The Cordillera of the Americas.

When the mountains are tall enough, they catch up the clouds and the rain and the snow in their jagged

peaks, starving land beyond of water. And what we get in return is the desert, nature, and the minimalist form.

Perfect and sublime in its scarcity of plant life, its strangeness of animal life.

The Great Basin Desert starts on the violent eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada,

north of the Mojave, and then it stretches across the entire width of Nevada and half of Utah.

The loneliest road in America is U.S. Highway 50.

It runs right through the middle.

It never feels that lonely to me.

For example, it has plenty of highway patrolmen.

One of these guys was parked up on a dirt ridge outside of Austin, Austin, Nevada.

And sure enough, I rolled past arguably within the speed limit, And he turned on all 500 lights and came chasing after me.

My crime? Well, I'd bought a vehicle, still had the dealer plates,

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