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.

Following in the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims, penitents, and seekers over centuries, in 2012 Ellen Waterston walked the sacred ground of Spain's Camino de Santiago in search of answers to What's next? questions, a quest prompted by stepping down after 11 years as founder/director of a literary arts nonprofit. The list of life questions Waterston was certain she would resolve was quickly supplanted by what the Camino had in mind. Upon her return to Oregon, sorting through mementos of the trip, she was struck by a map of the ten Camino routes that converge in Santiago. The image of a woman leaping rose from the map and Camino Woman was born. This fictional character is the embodiment of all holy women marginalized by patriarchal religions, and spawned other characters, including a fictionalized peregrina of a certain age, a stylized and profane Catholic church in Father Tomas, an omniscient third-person voice, the role of the hospitalero as wisdom keeper, and caricatures of others met along the way. The title of the book has its origins in the fact that the Camino is often referred to as the Via Lactea, a reference to the fact that the Milky Way is always overhead when walking the Camino. Via Lactea is a verse novel, with a storyline that threads through it. It includes many styles and forms of poetry including free verse, new forms, and traditional ones-such as the haibun, described as terse prose usually ending with a haiku. The haibun is often associated with travel writings. Another form, the tanka, is sometimes referred to as short song. Its meter and shape on the page both mimicked the robotic action, day after day, of walk, eat, sleep, walk some more, and the isolation Waterston sometimes felt on the trail. Another form, the ghazal, is built of couplets and repetitions. For Waterston, its form mirrored the constant rain, day after day, while on the Camino.

There is an otherness to the high desert, something momentous and sacred in the purity of the silence. In this compelling collection of personal essays, award-winning poet and author Ellen Waterston illuminates the people, places, and landscape of Central Oregon's vast high desert.

In Where the Crooked River Rises, Waterston reveals the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that has been, and remains, her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Waterston's teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit brush.

First full poetry collection by Ellen Waterston includes a number of selections from I AM MADAGASCAR, winner of the 2005 Willa Award from Women Writing the West. First edition trade paper. The music of Ellen Waterston's language in BETWEEN DESERT SEASONS is touching and vibrant, fiery raw and refined, reined in and set free. -- Pattiann Rogers, author of WAYFARE The poems in this collection search for a way beyond loneliness of self first by naming that loneliness and then by threading connections to the multi-layered world beyond the self... -- Wendy Mnookin, author of THE MOON MAKES ITS OWN PLEA Ellen Waterston gives us the key to her heart: mother, daughter, loyal friend, stubborn lover, fancy dancer, and it hurts so good. -- Linda Hussa, author of TOKENS IN AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD Ellen Waterston's new poems come from years of living in a desert of high revelation... [Her] poems create an oasis for all of us -- a clear, remote, and vital spring, a woman's life beyond any macho western settler's museum or mirage. -- George Venn, General Editor of the Oregon Literature Series and author of WEST OF PARADISE

Then There Was No Mountain is the story of a single mother's efforts to steer her adolescents clear of substance use. Ironically, trying to manage the turmoil of those years, she comes to the realization that, out of her own inability to effectively deal with the circumstances, she resorts to behaviors associated with substance use disorder--magical thinking, denial, delayed reaction time--only making matters worse for those she most wants to help. Of this cautionary tale for parents, Publisher's Weekly writes, Waterston bravely revisits a painful period of her life...[H]er book should help others who are blindly navigating their way back to health and normalcy. According to the Oregonian, [T]he illuminating force of this book is Waterston's pacing, her metaphors, and her choreography with the language. TheSan Jose Mercury News states, Full of honesty, heartbreak and revelation.