Deserts are charming to those who know how to see them — all kinds of bogs, barrens, and heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an uncanny look. As I gazed the purple deepened over all the landscape. Then fell the gloaming, making everything still more forbidding and mysterious. Then, darkness like death.

Steep Trails, Chapter V (p. 93), Norman S. Berg, Publisher. 1970