Dispatch from the Alvord Desert, OR Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger
This is Book II of the Oregon Testament. New readers should begin with the Owyhee Puzzle.
I am standing on top of a promontory, high above Leslie Gulch in the Southeastern Oregon's Owyhee region with my younger brother, Hans. By car, we are almost 12 hours from Portland.
We have stumbled on a small Native American site, a hunting perch that includes a handful of stone tools and a mortar.
The stone tools that Hans and I hold in our hands have small etched teeth. There is a comfortable cut in the rock, so that it fits snugly into the left hand. On other parts of the rock, there are deliberate cuts for functions we can only guess at. Hans knows that the primary function of these tools is to scrape the hide off freshly killed animal. But what did they hunt?
Hans suggests we look around for dung and answer that question ourselves. Almost immediately, we find whole big piles of the stuff - elk dung, coyote dung, rabbit pellets. He pokes around at the sun-whitened clumps, showing me the animal fur in the coyote dung, the big loose elk piles.
The Loneliest Road A journey across the Nevada's Great Basin and the Loneliest Road in America. We follow the struggle between off-roaders, Great Basin Indians and conservationists over the fate of a blue butterfly.
Summer Lake Part II of a conversation about travel writing, this episode continues into the southern Oregon Desert.
Rachel, Nevada and Area 51
Area 51 is a dusty set of hangars at the bottom of a dry lake bed.
The Owyhee River Part I of the Oregon Testament.Follow us to Leslie Gulch, where we stumble upon a yet undiscovered Native American site.
The Alvord Desert Part II of the Oregon Testament. Fishing under the Steens Mountains, and wandering the alkali flats of Alvord Lake.
Mono Lake They are twisted, trollish, ungodly, like a woman turned to stone
