Bumping over the last 50 miles of washboard gravel road, you arrive at the playa and drive onto the vast openness of a dry lake bed. It's unbelievably flat, and, giddy, you accelerate across the expanse. Eighty-four square miles of no lanes, speed limits, intersections, or ditches. You point your truck toward a notch in the distant cliffs, set the cruise control, then take your feet off the pedals and your hands off the wheel. Steering isn’t necessary—there's nothing to hit. If you wanted to, you could crawl into the back seat and take a twenty-minute nap. Waking up, you’d still be on the same course, tracking towards the same distant cliffs. Eventually, you tap the brakes and roll to a stop. You unfold a chair and toss your sleeping bag on the ground. Your camp setup complete, you bask in the silence and solitude. You’re where you want to be, a dry playa lake—known as the Alvord—which lies in the northwestern-most corner of The Great Basin. Water that falls here disappears, evaporating long before it ever sees a river that reaches an ocean.
It’s important, you think, to find a place in this world where you can sit and not hear a single sound, except, maybe, your own heart beating. This is why, a few days ago, you gathered a handful of necessities, gassed up, and headed inland. You drove up and over the Cascade Mountains, then south across the Columbia River Gorge, then southeast across the rolling wheat fields of eastern Oregon, through the Painted Hills and dinosaur graveyards of the John Day watershed, and finally, into the expanse of the Oregon Outback. You’ve arrived in an area where phones say "no service." Your truck radio’s scan feature searches and searches but can’t find a station.
People are scarce here. The Alvord Playa sits in a county that has a population of less than one person per square mile and encompasses an area almost ten times the size of Rhode Island. This is why you make a pilgrimage here every September. The solitude is intoxicating; the sightlines are long.
This evening on the playa, a tired sun falls into the folds of Steens Mountain, a fifteen million-year-old basalt anticline which dominates the western horizon. A few small snow patches cling to its upper reaches. Long shadows race across the intricate patterns of the playa as the sun disappears and the last light fades. You settle in for an evening of astral theater: watching the planets travel along the sun’s ecliptic. Jupiter follows Venus, Saturn follows Jupiter, Mars follows Saturn. An ancient path around an ancient star. You see satellites, and this time, the International Space Station. It’s silent and still. Occasionally, the silence is broken. The braying of a wild burro. Coyotes yipping to each other. The whinny of a mustang in the surrounding hills.
During the days, you walk. Any direction. No need to wear shoes. The soft, warm, powder-like dust of the playa feels good on your feet. Clothes are an afterthought; it's warm, there's nobody here. After an hour or so you stop and sit. One day, two Yellowjackets venture across the playa to investigate. On another, a lone bird flies through a shimmering mirage and lands nearby, hoping for a handout.
The luminosity and luster of light on the playa evolves as the days progress. The sliding low-angle light of dawn turns into the searing and brilliant light of midday. The early evenings turn into half-light which paves the way for the grandest light of all: Belt of Venus light—a pastel mix of orange and pink and blue—which flows up and out and over the top of you, and backlights Steens Mountain.
On another day you walk to a small boulder-sized lava outcrop that sits below a basalt rim on the playa’s edge. As you get closer, you see something shining in the sun. You’re not the first to walk here. Nestled on the boulder is a makeshift altar from visitors long past. A small wire with a silent jingle bell, a quarter, a penny, a shiny rock, a metal slug, two beer caps…There’s a quiet calm here—Buddha sits nearby, meditating, staring out across the expanse of nothingness. You’re thinking about something you read that morning. Both creativity and sanity have been linked to the ability to perceive reality differently.
Yesterday, you drove off the playa and crossed over the southern decline of Steens Mountain and drove along the basalt escarpment of the Catlow Rim. You saw no people and no cars. You did see two coyotes sitting on their haunches in a field. They watched you watch them. You saw 30 or 40 mule deer and a dead badger. When you crossed the pass on your return back to the playa, you saw a Bighorn ram mounting a ewe. Bighorn sex made you happy. A good thing for a magnificent species whose numbers are declining.
On your last evening, you pour a glass of wine and watch the sun sink into the horizon. A storm is developing to the south. It’s a spectacular sight—updrafts from a line of towering cumulus sweeping across the playa lifting curtains of white dust into descending tendrils of virga. Branch lightning flashes in the distance. It’s moving your way and the potential for rain worries you—will the dry lake suddenly become a wet lake leaving you miles from a shoreline? The storm moves north and eventually, it hits—a wall of white dust, a haboob—that engulfs you and smothers the long sightlines you cherish. Big raindrops start to hit the ground. Initially, you let the rain fall on you, cleansing after days in the desert dust without a chance to bathe. Your chair and footstool and wine glass blow over. You rush to grab your sleeping bag and pillow before they fly across the playa and out of sight. You throw everything in the car and fall into the front seat. The car starts to shake and tremble. The wall of white only lasts a few minutes, but the lightning continues to strike all around you. You’re the only metal object and the tallest protuberance in the middle of 84 acres of flat nothing. You sit hunched in your seat in a fetal position, making sure your hands and feet aren’t touching metal. Your heart pounds in your chest. This, you think, would be a weird way to die.
Eventually, the rain subsides and the wind dies down and the storm continues north off the playa. When the lightning stops you open the door and step out. The smell of ozone permeates the air. The tops of the surrounding clouds are brilliant white. Crepuscular rays spotlight the intricate patterns of the playa minutes before the sun disappears below Steens Mountain.