Alvord Desert at Dawn, originally uploaded by Unsettler.

I was completely surprised to find the Alvord Desert — the most arid spot in Oregon, with less than 7 inches of annual precip — covered in water. But chalk that up to my lack of geologic knowledge; turns out this whole “Great Basin” is, in fact, a basin. All of the watersheds in this part of the continent flow into it, rather than to the ocean, so it floods every spring. That’s sort of dazzling to me, for reasons I can’t quite articulate.

Anyway, that’s all a long way of explaining why my desert pictures look an awful lot like lake pictures.