I have entered into the desert,

Map of Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area

The Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area (CMPA)

428,156 acres of public land offering diverse scenic and recreational experiences. The CMPA encompasses an extraordinary landscape with deep glacier carved gorges, stunning scenery, wilderness, wild rivers, a rich diversity of plant and animal species, and a way of life for all who live there. The 52-mile Steens Mountain Backcountry Byway provides access to four campgrounds and the views from Kiger Gorge, East Rim, Big Indian Gorge, Wildhorse and Little Blitzen Gorge overlooks are not to be missed!

Geology: During the Ice Age, glaciers formed in the major stream channels on the mountain. These glaciers dug trenches about one-half mile deep, through layers of hard basalt. The result was four immense U-shaped gorges – Kiger, Little Blitzen, Big Indian, and Wildhorse. The famous notch in the east ridge of Kiger Gorge formed during a later glaciation when a small glacier in Mann Creek Canyon eroded through the ridge top. Massive internal pressures forced the east edge of the Steens upward. The result was a 30-mile-long fault-block mountain with a spectacular and rugged east face that rises one vertical mile above the Alvord Desert. Steens Mountain is the largest fault-block mountain in the northern Great Basin.

That's the earth science.

Here's the poetry. I'm using excerpts from The Poet in the Desert by the extraordinary Charles Erskine Scott Wood to describe this place where my heart returns again and again, where I spent solitary vacations three different years, and where Mike and I spent part of our honeymoon. The photos are mine, taken on one of my vacations alone there.

Beginning in 1912, Wood (whom I revere) wrote his epic-length poem of over one hundred pages about the Harney Valley area of eastern Oregon that encompasses what is now known as The Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area.

I have entered into the Desert, the place of desolation.

The Desert confronts me haughtily and assails me with solitude. . .



I have come into the lean and stricken land
Which fears not God, that I may meet my soul . . .

I will question the Silent Ones who have gone before and are
forgotten . . .





Where are you, Truth, where are you?
The Desert is pitiless.
I am frightened of its bigness and its indifference.
I am alone, an atom thrown out from Eternity,
Allotted to do my part.
I will do my part, and it shall be my own.
I refuse to be moulded in the common mould,
None different from another.
I refuse to step regularly according to custom;
To measure myself among the monotonous patterns laid
out before me.
I will be myself and obey the voice within me
Which impetuously cries to be free;
To wander imperiously, destroying the paths,
The moulds and the patterns.
O Truth discover yourself unto me.





The sea of sage-brush, breaking against the purple hills far
away.
And the white alkali-flats which shimmer in the mirage as
beautiful blue lakes, constantly retreating.
The mirage paints upon the sky, rivers with cool willowy banks . . .
I lie down upon the warm sand of the Desert and it seems to me
Life has its mirages, also.





When August noons are hot, good it is to lie
Under an oak or spreading maple, in dry weeds
And grass that, dying, tell of sunburnt summer,
Loosing the soul toward a fellowship
With the unseen wanderer who snatches up
A handful of dust and playfully,
With a child's gesture, whirls it upward.
Good it is to look into the blue,
Between the shading leaves that shift and move;
And looking, dream and muse and speculate
What is the sky?--What is Infinity? . . .
What is a weed?--a tree?--an ant?
What is a dust-whirl? . . .





Behold the signs of the Desert;
The stagnant water-hole, trampled with hoofs . . .






The mountains afar girdle the Desert as a zone of amethyst;
Pale, translucent walls of opal,
Girdling the Desert as Life is girt by Eternity.
They lift their heads high above our tribulation
Into the azure vault of Time . . .

Behold the signs of the Desert:
A buzzard, afloat on airy seas,
Alone, between the two immensities, as I am alone between two
immensities;
A juniper-tree on a rocky hillside . . .
A basaltic-cliff, embroidered with lichens and illuminated by
the sun, orange and yellow . . .

Silence. Invincible. Impregnable. Compelling the soul to stand
forth to be questioned.

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