Alvord Desert Honeymoon
Day 1
The Oregon wild fires were subdued by a heavy rain and gust of wind the day before we set off and so allowed us to take the most direct route to Alvord Desert. After a nearly nine and half hours drive, we arrived in time to quickly change into our our wedding attire and take a few self-timed photos during golden hour.
That evening, we ate instant shin ramen for dinner and fell asleep almost immediately after our heads hit the rolled up jackets we used as pillows. At midnight, an alarm went off and we awoke. As we emerged from the tent we found that the night sky had fallen and drowned the desert floor with darkness. As we looked around, it felt as if we were standing in the middle of a dark dome whose walls seemed hundreds of miles away and whose ceiling was infinite. We looked up, the Milky Way had cut an opening through the sky above and light oozed out of the open gash. Our eyes began to adjust and the millions of stars that freckled the sky came into focus.
Day 2
The sun peered over the plateau outside our tent door and, surprisingly, the desert void seemed even more empty as we left it the evening before. It was quiet, the cloudless morning sky bathed us with sunlight but, as the day wore on, the sun became more and more intolerable. In search of shade and a pastime to occupy our minds, we fashioned a sort of canopy using the rain fly of our tent. Strings wrapped around the spoiler on the car’s rear end, tent straps pinched between closed car doors and windows, and even a few bobby pins were used to pin back some of the excess folds. We sat down satisfied with our work, then dunked our chapped lips into our coffee mugs and pulled out our books.
Success is temporary, though. An hour after our heads felt the first bits of cool that we had meticulously wrangled, the sun had meandered across the sky and found our hiding spot. With the sun directly overhead and shade now an impossibility, we tried a bit of reverse psychology. We, instead, embraced the sun, then drew out our map and compass to find out where exactly we had randomly landed. After much confusion, mild dehydration and a bit of delirium, we placed the heavy minded tasks away, in favor of frolicking across the cracked dirt floor.
Day 3
Whilst brewing coffee within the warmth of our tent, the winds howled outside. The sunrise view was beautiful and the same as yesterday morning, but then again, so was everything else. The same. Then, Cathy noticed movement tracing across horizon of the unchanging backdrop, some five hundred feet away. It was a coyote. She was alone and it didn’t seem as if she were expecting any company because she hadn’t looked behind her or anywhere else except the desert floor beneath her. We howled at her and she looked up at us surprised but unafraid, then turned her head back down to the earth. As gravity pulled the last drops of coffee fell from the paper filter, she picked her head up and calmly vanished back into the horizon.
At mid-day we packed up our camp completely and once again drove aimlessly across the desert, back to the gravel road on the hill. We were headed for Alvord Hot Springs, a couple of open-air soaking pools filled by geothermic ground water from the Steens Mountain range. With the mountains so close and the desert so far off in the distance, it seemed our previous two days of camping were just a dream. Using the broken tab from our open beer can, we carved ‘CATHONY’ into one of the log benches near the pools as if to prove our lucidity.
The dream continued and we found ourselves back on the desert floor but this time in a new location. We were further north, if we triangulated ourselves correctly on the map, but that meant little to us since the north looked hardly different than the south. Then, as if beckoned by the hills, we walked barefoot through the brush, leaving behind our cameras, our phones and our civilized sensibility. The ground spoke to us, telling more of its secrets with each step that we took, and when the sun lowered, we returned to camp, bringing back a new understanding of the desert and a couple of splinters.
Day 4
Last morning, last sunrise, and last attempt at a cute self timed photo before heading back.
