Le Guin became a member of ONDA in the 1990s, was a steadfast supporter through the decades, and presented at an event ONDA held celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the designation of the Steens Mountain Wilderness. In this short essay, Concerning a Wilderness, she describes her love of Steens, the connection between ranchers and the landscape in eastern Oregon and her esteem for ONDA, writing, “Nothing in conservation work is ever uncomplicated! But I’m proud of ONDA for working on that conversation, being neighborly, trying to include the human landscape in the natural one as truly part of what is to be honored, protected, and saved.”

In spring 2016, she offered the following reflection to ONDA.

Falling in Love with a Desert

From a little packet of family papers in a footlocker, I just learned that my great-grandfather Johnston homesteaded on the Alvord side of Steens Mountain in the 1870s.

Moving the cattle up from California, my grandmother Phebe then age twelve, rode herd. My dear great-aunt Betsy was born there, near Wild Horse Creek Canyon.

But I didn’t know that, the first time we went out to the Steens country, nearly fifty years ago. All I knew as we drove away after one night in Frenchglen was that I was in love, and all I could think was: I have to come back!

One way or another, we’ve been back many times.

Our general purpose in going is just to be there. A morning drive down the Conter Road – a visit to see the dear old awful trailer I lived in when Ki taught workshops at the Field Station – a picnic at Benson Pond – an afternoon watching a buzzard’s great lazy circles over the rimrock, the clouds boiling up over Steens, the slow change of light as the sun goes west … it’s enough to live on for a year.

Sometimes I can write a poem about it.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, March 2016

You can read the poem “High Desert” and see Le Guin’s drawings from Out Here on her website.