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.

Half the country is freezing. Half the country is enjoying pleasant spring temperatures.

And I'm shivering in the former half, the first half, the western half.

On this cold night at the tail end of winter,

a winter that is usually long forgotten in the Mojave Desert as the month of March approaches.

But those of us who've been stuck out here for way too long do remember wild winters of the past.

Some that lingered well into the merry month of May.

That's how it was in 2008 and again in 2009, when I had the rare pleasure of being snowed in for a week straight, way up a dirt road looking over the western Mojave all the way to saddleback bute.

And I remember trying to get up to Reno one time.

This must have been the winter of 0.4 or 05, I believe.

When the 395 was closed from Lone Pine to the Nevada line, and I made my way up Nevada

on U.S. 95, along with every northbound semi-truck.

By the time I got up to Fernley, Friendly, Fernley,

they were closing off the ramps to I-80 Westbound,

but I snuck through before the barrier was down all the way.

And made it home just in time.

It would be days before Interstate 80 reopened Arena, let alone over the Sierra.

I'm too old for this kind of cold weather.

Let's head over to some warmer climbs.

Let's get out of all this howling wind and nightly snow

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