'Walking the High Desert' By Ellen Waterston

Ellen Waterston launched her newest book "Walking the High Desert: Encounters With Rural America Along the Oregon Desert Trail". The event was a collaboration between the University of Washington Press and Elliott Bay Book Company.

Book Description:
Former high desert rancher Ellen Waterston writes of a wild, essentially roadless, starkly beautiful part of the American West. Following the recently created 750-mile Oregon Desert Trail, she embarks on a creative and inquisitive exploration, introducing readers to a “trusting, naïve, earnest, stubbly, grumpy old man of a desert” that is grappling with issues at the forefront of national, if not global, concern: public land use, grazing rights for livestock, protection of sacred Indigenous ground, water rights, and protection of habitat for endangered species.

Blending travel writing with memoir and history, Waterston profiles a wide range of people who call the high desert home and offers fresh perspectives on nationally reported regional conflicts such as the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation. Walking the High Desert invites readers—wherever they may be—to consider their own beliefs, identities, and surroundings through the optic of the high desert of southeastern Oregon.

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[frankblangeard]

If you are looking for information about the Oregon Desert Trail this book is not what you are looking for. The book touches on many political aspects of life in eastern Oregon including cattle grazing, global warming etc. The Oregon Desert Trail is only mentioned here and there in passing and is sjmply an excuse for tying the chapters of the book together.