Listening for the Voice of the Desert

By SCOTT SMALLWOOD

Oliver Morrison rises with the sun. He's up before 6 a.m., carting an empty milk jug to the dairy shed. A Seattle native, the 20-year-old considered colleges far from home, including Yale and Swarthmore. But he chose Deep Springs College -- geographically closer but worlds away from any of those places.

Tucked into a desolate valley between California's White Mountains and the Nevada border, just a buzzard's flight north of Death Valley, Deep Springs is a working cattle ranch and a