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

The night has fallen on the desert.

In this past week or two,

many of us have been thinking about one thing out here

in the rural American West.

And that's the

desert writer Edward Abbey, old cactus ed, who would have turned 99 years old on January 29.

For so many of us, from park rangers to wildlife biologists to honky-tunk philosophers sliding off bar stools in Apache Junction, Arizona, or Mexican hat, Utah.

Ed Avie was the writer who best put our love

for the arid southwest into words.

Beautiful words, body words.

Poetic and surprisingly whimsical, a desert prophet with a cigar clamp between his teeth and a beer in his hand.

Abby was the author of The Beloved solitaire, that rare book of poetic nonfiction formed into a perfect, dramatic arc.

Or Arch, in this case, being the story of a seasonal ranger at remote Arches National Monument in the

1950s.

It's got everything, everything you want in a desert book.

It's got ghost stories, mining lore, good-natured ribbing of the good rural Mormon people he worked

with. A book equally devoted to the wildlife and geology, to mountain and desert, solitude and socializing.

Winter snow and sizzling summer.

Cowboys and Indians.

Turkey buzzards and missing tourists.

It's about a single long season in the Slickrock Country of Southeast

...