Nevada & the Great Basin

Steve's work in the Great Basin led to The Sagebrush Ocean and Earthtones—and to an undying love for the odd and wonderful state of Nevada. He’s thrilled to begin work on a 35th anniversary edition of The Sagebrush Ocean, to be published by the University of Nevada Press in 2024.

A vast reservoir of silence and solitude, the Great Basin Desert sweeps from Salt Lake City to Reno. Few know its nooks and crannies as Steve does.

The sagebrush ocean in Monitor Valley, Nevada. Is a place truly remote when you have cell service?

Magen Dufurrena with an orphan lamb, Dufurrena Ranch, Denio, Nevada.

Albert Szukalski's life-size "Last Supper"on the rim of the Amargosa Desert, Rhyolite, Nevada. From *Earthtones."

Corn lily, Deep Creek Range, Utah.

The moon rises over the Hot Creek Range in central Nevada. This image so signifies the spare beauty and remoteness of the Great Basin that we chose it for the cover of "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Wheeler Peak--centerpiece of Great Basin National Park and highest point in Nevada's Snake Range; from Stella Lake. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Salt-tolerant plants may have first gained a toehold in the Great Basin around salty hot springs like Geyser Hot Springs in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Badlands slot, Cathedral Gorge State Park, Nevada. From "Earthtones."

Where few other plants survive, Great Basin bristlecone pines while away the centuries. These are the Earth's oldest individual beings, living 5,000 years and more. The Table, Mount Moriah Wilderness, Snake Range, Nevada.

In the Oquirrhs, first range out into the Great Basin from Salt Lake City, I spent time with biologists using radio collars to track cougars. I photographed this old female, Cougar #12, as she recovered from a tranquilizer dart.

Patterns of rock and snow high in the Wheeler Peak cirque. Once a glacier, recently a "glacieret," with climate change this patch of ice surely will become no more than a snowfield. Great Basin National Park, Nevada.

Mule deer on a desert stage, Denay Valley, Nevada. From "Earthtones."

The Great Basin, a refuge filled with space, solitude, and silence. City of Rocks National Reserve, Idaho.

A Great Blue Heron flaps down into the tules at Bear River Refuge, Great Salt Lake. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Indian ricegrass, Sand Mountain, Nevada. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Tim Dufurrena, at a branding on the family sheep ranch near Denio, Nevada. The Great Basin is a wilderness--with cows.

Ruined miner's cabin at Tybo, Hot Creek Range, Nevada. From "Earthtones."

Fremont Indian people lived at the Baker Archaeological Site from 1220 to 1295 AD. Archaeologists excavated the village, below the Snake Range, and outlined the position of the pithouse walls. Baker, Nevada.

The Bonneville Salt Flats at the heart of the Great Salt Lake Desert, one of the most forbidding landscapes on the continent.

Basin and range, basin and range, basin and range. View toward the Desert National Wildlife Range from high on Mount Charleston, Nevada.

Back roads in Nevada take us deep into the interior of the American West. Roll to a stop and amble across the land. Here, each of us stands above basin floors tall among the stands of sagebrush or saltbush or greasewood.

Millions of birds depend on a shrinking and endangered Great Salt Lake's brine shrimp and brine flies to fuel their intercontinental migrations. Antelope Island, Utah.

Not all the Great Basin Desert looks like a desert! Indian paintbrush, Emerald Lake, Jarbidge Wilderness, Nevada. From "Earthtones."

Tumbleweed tracks on the Big Crescent Dunes, Big Smoky Valley, Nevada. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

From the matrix of sagebrush rise island mountains, like the Monitor and Toquima ranges, Nevada. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

From an aspen grove high in the Pine Forest Range, bands of living communities pattern the desert north across a playa to the Pueblo Mountains on the Oregon border. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Pure stands of winterfat, Spring Valley, Nevada, with the Schell Creek Range beyond; the metaphorical "sagebrush ocean." embraces currents, eddies, and embayments of other desert shrubs. From "The Sagebrush Ocean."

Bristlecone pines at 11,000 feet on The Table, Mount Moriah Wilderness, Snake Range, Nevada. It's humbling to realize that these trees in the forgotten mountains of America already have lived through five millennia. From "Earthtones."

Southwest Native Nations

Pacific Coast