From the desk of High Desert Journal’s founding Editor and Chair of the Board of Directors, Elizabeth Quinn—

In the spring of 2005, after going to bed at 2am with more-than-I-can-remember copy editing sessions under my belt, I woke at 5am and climbed the stairs to my living room. I thought to myself, I know what this feeling is; it is the feeling of giving birth. It was our first press date and one more review for copy edits was necessary before 9am. So it was Issue #1 of High Desert Journal came into the world. 

Terry Tempest Williams has written, “someone must chart the changes.” When I read through the 19 issues printed and another 8 years of digital articles of HDJ, for me the content of HDJ provokes memories that mark the changes. Memories of those gone before us come to mind first: Ursula LeGuin, Bill Kittredge, Charles Bowden, and Elizabeth Grossman to name a few; stories and images of the ways people truly attempted to bridge the urban and the rural; and then the arrival of online publishing. I remember author Mary Sojourner exclaiming to me, “The book is dead. What will become of authors?” We were scared. We scrambled, considered options and tried to create content online to compliment the hard copies and eventually went to online format only. 

If I were able to show up as myself today and tell myself one thing to do before starting HDJ 20 years ago, it would be to ensure that the business plan has adequate capacity to realize its goals. Nonprofit does not mean free labor. So many people: writers, artists, editors, designers, board members, and volunteers have given so much time without any or with very little pay. And yet, had I followed my own advice, HDJ would not have been born. It was a dream I was compelled by and am grateful I pursued. It was a dream made real by the talented and generous gifts of editors and designers: Charles Finn, Thomas Osborne, David Stentiford, CMarie Fuhrman, Laura Pritchett, Sheryl Noethe, Stacy Boe Miller, and Corey Oglesby; and by dedicated board members most recently: Robert Stubblefield and Kris Balliet. 

The biggest resource HDJ has had over the years is love. Over nearly 20 years, innumerable people have believed in the value of HDJ and invested their time, words, art, money, ideas and care. Without all of these gifts, HDJ would not have illuminated the interior West’s rich ecology of story, memory and imagination as it did. That ecology will live on, archived here at highdesertjournal.com. All issues of HDJ will be accessible digitally at our current website, and our 19 print issues will soon be publicly available in perpetuity via the University of Idaho Library’s Special Collections & Archives in Moscow, Idaho. 

Today, HDJ’s nonprofit corporation status ceases to exist, but nothing born ever really ends. Instead what is born is carried forward in paths forged and decisions made; hearts enriched and stories told; ideas dreamed and creations committed to; and ultimately in how we love a place and care for one another.

With gratitude as vast as the desert—

Elizabeth Quinn