Review
This is the finest book written about our region in many years. It should be in every library in the Northwest and makes an especially fine gift for the male reader-whether or not he has experienced our great desert and semi-desert inland empire in Oregon, Washington, or Idaho. -- Eugene Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, October 7, 1964
About the Author
Reub Long is a lifetime cowboy whose curiosity about the things around him is insatiable. He has managed to accumulate some thousands of acres of desert range where he runs beautiful horses and raises Hereford cattle. He has lived on the desert all his life, taking the cold, the wind, and the pitiless summer sun, and giving back gentleness and understanding. He is known to thousands as a desert philosopher with wit and wisdom far beyond most of us.
E.R. Jackman probably knows more people than any other person in Oregon. One can't get so far back on any country road that Jackman hasn't been there. He spent his mature life with the Extension Service of Oregon State University, working unceasingly to stop erosion, to make the fields better, and to create more wealth in Oregon.
So Reub Long is a cowboy who thinks like a scientist and Jackman is a scientist who thinks like a cowboy. They have been close friends for many years and this book is an outgrowth of their mutual liking of the desert.
