Twentynine Palms, July 2011
Page 4: Wet and Dry
Ok then...
Up before the sun, and all of yesterday’s cloudiness is gone, the sky is as clear as a bell, and a bit of the cool desert predawn chill has returned at last. But only a bit, and some of the humidity can still be felt, too.
In the trailer, I put my coffee together, and while it’s brewing, Newt ambles on over with the dogs, to examine yesterday's ranchin’ work on the Bottle Wall.
And we stop and chat for a bit, and he decides that today we’re going to take ourselves a ride.
Suits the hell out of me.
We'll be going down the east side of the Salton Sea, to Slab City, and a bit beyond, just to see what’s out there.
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Breakfast is had, more coffee is downed, and in short order we’ve taken the turn off of 62 and into the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
In the town of Twentynine Palms, clear evidence of the rainstorm the day before yesterday is all over the place. Dirt and rocks have been moved, the highway department has scraped and shoved wayward alluvium back off the roadway, a bit of remnant mud here and there, and plant life that has all turned a vibrant green.
Amazing.
We roll up into Joshua Tree, and make the turn that will take us down and across the Pinto Basin.
Cholla Forest, Ocatillo Garden, sand, rocks, and distant hills.
Golly, what a swell place this is.
It’ll kill you if you let it, though.
We cross I-10 and continue downhill along the path of a riverine cut in the local geology where clear evidence of continental blocks in collision lies in plain sight, all around. The southern end of the San Andreas lurks beneath a thin overlay of erosional deposits none too far away, and some of the folding in the rock layers closely hemming the roadway in on both sides, has to be seen to be believed. But of course, all of this is only six thousand years old, and was placed here by a loving god who, when he’s not killing them outright, likes to play tricks on the crown of his creation, just to keep them in line. Just to keep them guessing.
The rocks finally lay down, Salton Sea appears around a bend, and artificial agriculture erupts in too-green enthusiasm shortly thereafter.
This place is, after all, a fucking desert, and the water they’re pouring into the ground all over the place around here isn’t going to last forever.
But for the moment, please pass the grapes, would you?
Down the East Shore, beyond all of the
frighteningly Malthusian agriculture.
Stop and check the surf.
It’s flat.
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Onwards, through a near-lunar landscape, but without the craters.
Just about as dry as the fucking moon, too.
People scratch out a living here and there, but it’s pretty touch-and-go from the looks of things, and the ‘go’ side of the equation seems to be on the ascendent.
Post-apocalyptic ruins dot the landscape, and both Rod Serling and Doctor Strangelove would fit right in around here.
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Past Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain crazed christian wedding cake nightmare, and into Slab City.
Where things more or less just give the hell up, say “Fuck it,” and are content to fall into some kind of Third or Fourth World vision of the future.
The place is at once liberating and scary as hell.
I’d love to roll on out here, pitch a tent, and just hang out for a month or three, soaking up the ambience, getting to know the locals and the in’s and out’s of their social structure (such as it may be), and generally try to learn a thing or two of substance about the place.
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But something tells me that’s not gonna happen, and today we drive right on through the main part of “town” and on out into the desert beyond.
Slab City straggles and staggers along for another mile or three, but eventually peters out altogether into some delightfully ugly desert, strewn with the detritus of untold numbers of people who have passed through, gave it a try, and then just walked away from it.
We’re in Imperial County, but it has a most End of Empire look and feel to it.
Archeologists will puzzle over the meaning of what’s left one day, and nothing more than unanswered questions will remain.
There is a Great Story in these disposable ruins, and with luck someone will come along one day and write the book this place so richly deserves, inserting it within its context, and detailing the historical forces that created, and will one day destroy, this place. Where’s John Steinbeck when you need him?
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And, having come one hundred miles to view unknown people’s personal effects strewn across the desert floor between stunted creosote and palo verde trees, we turn right around and drive back home.
The vision rewinds itself from end to end, and with no more ceremony than that, we’re back home once again.
I go into the trailer to put the surf report that Newt advocated I do for 16streets together, and emerge an hour or so later, saunter on over to his house where the internet lives, and in short order the report is up, live.
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16streets.com |
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Oughtta be a few scratched heads over this one, I'm guessing.
Back in the trailer, and what’s that I hear?
Could it be thunder?
Once again?
Indeed it is.
It's raining out there.
It’s raining over the Twentynine Palms mountains one more time.
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This would be the third rain event
I’ve witnessed
since I got here.
Hell, it’s almost becoming normal.
This time, a spattering of rain actually falls where I'm standing. I walk outside to feel it upon my skin, and it's bizarrely cold compared to the enveloping heat that continues to fill the air.
Fat drops continue to pepper the concrete slab in front of the trailer, and I grab my camera and photograph the pattern of wet and dry, but the drops never quite manage to coalesce into an unbroken sheet of water.
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The heat radiating out from the concrete and surrounding ground overpower the diffident shower, and in the end, no standing water is to be found anywhere.
Fucking desert.
Over by the mountains, it’s clear that they got a good dousing, but not out here.
Ah well, it was rain, and it counts, and that’s enough for me.
Cathy comes home, and I’m invited for delicious burgers, and after eating, I’m stuffed, and return to the trailer and doze off.
Finish the day hanging out with Newt and Cathy on the back porch as the sun lowers beneath the horizon, and then after a while I amble on over here to the trailer for the last time this day.
The half moon shines down from a not-quite-fully-dark sky, and I take my ease on the slab, sitting on the folding chair, listening to the quiet. Bonzo comes around for a scratch, and eventually curls up at my left foot, and together the two of us allow the evening warmth to enfold us. We sit this way for a pretty good while, and then it’s finally time for Jimbo to call a finish to things, and I take my leave from Bonzo, go inside the trailer, finish off these last words, douse the lights, and go to bed.
Good night everyone.Previous PageNext Page |
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