She ate her sandwich watching a blue dasher dragonfly patrol the pool. A mule deer doe came to drink on the opposite bank, looked at Lena with the mild disinterest of someone who had seen it all, and lowered her head again.

Most entries just said Yes . One from last spring: Creek running high. Found a sand dollar in the mud. No ocean for 200 miles. Another: First time in five years. Cried a little.

She’d driven six hours from Portland for this. The name had snagged her: Oasis . In a landscape of volcanic scab and sagebrush, an oasis promised cottonwood shade, the sound of water over stone, a place that held its coolness like a secret.

Lena dropped her pack on a flat stone near a natural pool no bigger than a bathtub. Water seeped from a crack in the bedrock, trickled into the pool, and disappeared back underground fifty feet later. She dipped her hand in. Cold. Pure. The kind of cold that made your knuckles ache in a good way.