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.

The desert where I've been lately is the Great Basin.

That remote and spellbinding land east of the Sierra Nevada.

The sawtooth, snowy mountains looming over the Owens Valley,

Mono Lake to Alanchia,

blending into the Mojave along various boundaries of flora,

fauna and hydrology that nobody can ever quite agree upon.

Try it yourself sometime.

The last scraggly stand of Joshua trees fades into Great Basin Sage Plains.

And then there's a few more of our Mojave Yeca trees.

Whole doubts or colonizers, who can say?

A land of little rain, yes.

And a land of long, narrow mountain ranges

where you can walk through a hundred miles of snow-capped mountain pine forest

that you might have to break out the ice axe.

Hot springs and herds of pronghorn antelope.

Ghost towns, wild horses, scattered cattle ranches,

little changed since the 19th century.

Ice cold streams with mountain trout jumping.

The most beautiful and uncrowded highways in the whole world.

Eagles and hawks and vultures dotting the immense dry blue sky.

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