Forever on Our Mind: The Silent Stories of the Alvord Desert
Listening to Mother Nature in the quietest (and driest) reaches of Southeastern Oregon
05. The Silent Stories of the Alvord Desert
September 2016:
I’ve been dawdling on this gravel road for what feels like hours. The heights of Steens Mountain hide behind a few rolling foothills to my left, endless expanses of golden grasses sway to the right, and a cloud of dust fills my rear-view mirror. No matter how many twists and turns I take, the view never changes.
I eventually approach a slight incline beyond which I cannot see. No hills line the horizon above the crest; instead, a piercing blue sky masks a growing impatience in the pit of my stomach. If the Alvord Desert doesn’t appear beyond the crest of this hill, if I don’t see a hint of the miles-long dry lakebed, if another few miles of knee-high grasses and bus-sized crags litter the horizon … well, I’ll probably keep going. But I won’t be happy about it, and I’ll briefly consider turning back on what’s starting to feel like a doomed treasure hunt.
I’m here, nearly 400 miles from Portland, hoping to find the driest place in Oregon. With it, I’m about to find something else entirely.
Fairly or not, people think of rain when they think of Oregon. West of the Cascades, it’s about how often it rains and how much it rains. The relative merit of umbrellas can be a relationship deal-breaker in Portland, and the Willamette Valley’s fertile farmland wouldn’t exist without 50 inches of annual rainfall. East of the Cascades, it’s about how little rain the region receives; the likes of Bend and Sunriver see about 300 days of sunshine each year—I once met a transplant who moved to Bend to combat his Seasonal Affective Disorder—and thick forests give way to endless wheat fields and arid rock formations east of the Columbia River Gorge.
There’s nowhere it rains less in Oregon than the Alvord Desert. Sunbathing in the eastern shadow of Steens Mountain, the 12-by-7-mile dry lakebed receives a scant seven inches every year—not quite enough to fill a bathtub. On the other side of Oregon, Astoria once received 7.2 inches of rain in a single day near the mouth of the Columbia River.
What does seven inches of annual rainfall actually look like? Once I hit the crest of the hill, I finally see for myself.
What I see is the latest stop on a geological journey that has continued, unabated, for millions of years. Up to 3.5 million years ago, the nearly 200-foot-deep Lake Alvord covered the expanse before me—until a glacial flood largely emptied the reservoir nearly 15,000 years back and left behind the first vestiges of the modern-day Alvord Desert. Today, the neighboring Steens Mountain stops most precipitation before it can reach desert, creating a rain shadow that makes it the driest place in Oregon.
Still as an untouched swimming pool, the Alvord Desert reaches for the horizon in every direction—stopped only by hills and crags on all sides. In the Labor Day Weekend sun, I squint to keep my gaze as I adjust to the blinding beige carpet ahead.
Ten minutes later, I leave the gravel road, rattle along a one-lane dirt path connecting to the playa, and drive onto the set of a car commercial. Dried mud, mostly the color of a paper bag, engulfs me from every direction.
Faded tire tracks, bobbing and weaving into the horizon, leave me with little guidance for where to go—or how to get there. Even the biggest Walmart parking lot is pockmarked with signs, lines, and barriers directing traffic. Out here, my curiosity is limited only by the rocky outcrops surrounding the flat-as-a-pancake playa. I grapple for a few seconds with how to embrace that freedom. It feels irresponsible not to constrain myself with white lines, yellow arrows, and gray curbs. Then again, there are no white lines, yellow arrows, and gray curbs.
I rev my Civic’s engine and hit 50 or 60 MPH, driving straight enough to straddle the knife’s edge of my imagination. When I turn left or right, I veer with a reckless abandon that might earn a middle finger in rush-hour traffic or a ticket from even the most forgiving cop. I try donuts in what feels like the world’s largest parking lot, only to realize that this isn’t a “Fast and the Furious” movie—and that I don’t actually know how to perform a donut. Wide-eyed eight-year-olds don’t imagine this kind of glee when they get their first Hot Wheels for Christmas.
Fifteen, 20, 30 minutes go by. The rocky outcrops surrounding the desert never seem to get any closer, they just come into focus. When a particular peak catches my eye, I make a beeline. When I grow bored after what feels like hours, I turn and chase another crag that catches my eye. (If you’re imagining the dog from “Up” right now, shouting “Squirrel!” over and over, you’re not wrong.)
Somewhere near the center of the playa, I turn off the car and step outside. Rather than the soft sand we usually associate with deserts, a cracked, caked mud resembles a hastily put-together puzzle at my feet. Cars, quads, and motorcycles zoom out of earshot, leaving miles-long dust trails in their wake.
More striking than the desert’s appearance, however, is what I hear. Or, more accurately, it’s what I don’t hear.
The Alvord Desert is not silent like 3 p.m.-on-a-Friday-in-the-office silent. It's not even silent like the dead air between radio stations. It's, you know, actually silent. With no treetops for wind gusts to dance with or buzzing bees to scare me witless, there’s nothing to make an actual sound out here. The sound waves from those revving motorcycles and quads in the distance wilt under the weight of the loneliness that envelops this place.
An occasional wind gust breezes by, as if on a Sunday stroll, but that’s about it. If I listen closely, I swear I can hear my heartbeat in my eardrums. I’m almost scared to move, as if doing so might throw off the sacred balance of what feels like the quietest place on Earth.
After a few minutes, I kick up some of the lakebed and crush it under my foot just to hear something.
Doc Brown wasn’t talking about the Alvord Desert when he said, ”Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” But after an hour of aimless driving and meditative silence, I very much need roads to return to my campsite on the other side of Steens Mountain. From the middle of the playa, having lost myself in the never-ending expanse surrounding me, every direction looks the same. The rocks to (what I presume is) the east resemble the outcrops to (what I imagine is) the west. No matter where I look, the view never changes.
North, south, it matters little. So I choose a direction, roll up the windows to keep the dust out, and just drive.
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