BLM Dispatch #57 - Soldier Meadows Hot Springs
This desert-within-a-desert is famous for hosting Burning Man, but there is a lot more to a region that covers one thousand square miles. One of those landscapes is the Soldier Meadows Hot Springs…
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BLM Dispatch #56 - Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Natural Area
The Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Natural Area just might be the most remote BLM land I’ve ever ventured out to. The closest establishment is the Denio Junction Restaurant and Bar, two hours away, which sits three miles south of the Oregon border at the junction of Highway 140 and State Route 292 (it’s hailed as the only eatery within 100 miles in any direction). I was running low on fuel and feeling unsure about road conditions leading to the Natural Area, so I dropped in for some gas and advice.
I entered through a white door and found two couples eating lunch at thick wooden tables that resembled a log cabin. Mounted pronghorn, mule deer and a bobcat kept an eye on the place and everything from cold drinks to gemstones to postcards were for sale. And standing behind the bar, under framed pictures of bigfoot and Audrey Hepburn, was a middle-aged woman staring at me with a smile.
Welcome in, she said. What can I help ya with?…
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BLM Dispatch #55 - Summit Lake Nevada and the (brief) Miraculous History of the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout
Third week of May. I stop the car along a two-track dirt road and walk to the first gate. Smooth silver wire precariously holds the gate to the wooden fence post and I release it. The gate swings outward. I drive through, park, and then walk back to close the gate. A minute later, I come to a second gate. Same thing. Park, walk, loosen the gate, drive through, park, walk back, close the gate.
A weathered sign announces the landscape I’ve arrived at. Each letter has been engraved into the wood, and each one looks freshly painted in white. The familiar metal triangle of the BLM logo is affixed to the upper left, though its colors and words have been erased by the sun.
Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Natural Area…
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BLM Dispatch #52 - My Daughter's First Backpacking Trip, Part 2
At 7:38 a.m. we shouldered our packs and walked toward the trailhead. The trail to Patterson Lake climbed six miles and 2,460 vertical feet. We tightened our pack straps, fist bumped the leaning wooden Wilderness sign, and started uphill.
That was how the day started. I didn’t know we’d also be finishing the day at the same trailhead. But I’ll get to that…
On fatherhood, red flag weather warnings, and making last second decisions with a 5th grader.
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BLM Dispatch #51 - My Daughter's First Backpacking Trip, Part 1
Several months back, my 11-year-old daughter Vivian asked if we could go on her first real backpacking trip together.
After resisting the urge to weep and then run outside and hoot and holler and howl at the moon in gratitude — DREAMS COME TRUE! — I offered a very cool and relaxed, yes.
Where do you want to go?
One of those tall mountain lakes with clear water.
I immediately had a landscape in mind…
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BLM Dispatch #50 - Books, books, books
Something a little different this week. Fifty dispatches feels like a good excuse to spend an entire newsletter talking about books.
I’ll start with my reading so far in 2026, which has been heavily influenced by a single obsession: the Great Basin.
If a book is about the Great Basin, set in the Great Basin, adjacent to the Great Basin, or can be connected to the Great Basin through an elaborate series of mental gymnastics, it’s on my list.
Plus, A Collection of My Favorite Books…
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