Twentynine Palms, July 2011
Page 5: Beneath the Desert Sky
Morning dawns clear, but the stubborn humidity continues to hang on.
After yesterday’s exertions on the road, Newt decides to give things a rest today, and I’m in wholehearted agreement.
After all, what we did was to basically drive six hours non-stop, and that sort of thing can take it out of you.
So today, I sit on the back porch while Newt, Cathy, and the dogs all go for a morning walk out into the creosote.
Today’s launch day for the final Space Shuttle mission of the program, STS-135. I’ve watched 131 of the previous 134 launches including the first 98 in a row with my own eyes, and it saddens me to think I’m going to miss this one.
Sigh.
So I do the best I can, and follow it live on line, and watch the climb into orbit from out here in the middle of nowhere.
It’s an age of miracles and wonder, I tell you.
Me watching a machine with four humans inside of it, hurl itself beyond the end of the atmosphere at the completely far-fetched speed of five miles per second, and I’m out here several thousands of miles away from orbital insertion watching things as they happen, as if I’m riding the External Tank like a goddamned cowboy riding a horse.
A time will come when NObody will believe that any such thing could have ever possibly occurred in reality.
But today it’s ever so real, the shoot’s a good one, and I’m happy to see the last mission off to a good and safe start.
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Towards midday, the clouds, once again, begin to boil up over the Twentynine Palms Mountains.
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Well, at least it’s consistent, I suppose.
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I sit out in the middle of things on the folding chair, in the shade of one of the tamarisk trees, and just sort of take it all in, sky, sun, heat, heady smell of creosote, dust, dirt, desolation, and all. It is time well spent, and my only regret is that I did not, and do not, have any more of it than I was allotted.
Prior to today, the steering flow has been uniformly out of the southeast, but today it looks to have gone due south, to perhaps a trifle west of due south. The previous rain has been skidding by to our west every single time, so maybe today it will come right to us instead.
Fat fucking chance.
I take a few photographs of the cumulous buildup, but otherwise I am fully content to do nothing at all, bathing myself in this remarkable heat.
It’s very nice.
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Later, as the heat swells to its full mid-afternoon crescendo, I saunter off across the property on a diagonal line toward the far corner of the fencing, out by Newt’s piles of scrap wood and scrap metal. Bonfire fodder? Fetal art? Who can know?
Out at the end of things, I consider the piles of wreckage for a little while, and then slowly amble along the fence toward the south and then east, in a large right-angle back to the trailer.
It’s hotter than fuck out here, and I’m sure that if there was anybody around who could see me, they would label me as a self-dangerous lunatic on the spot.
But me, being me, I kinda like it.
I come out here to experience the place, and in particular experience those parts of the place I’ve never had the pleasure of encountering anywhere else my travels have taken me, and so it pleases me to take a little promenade Beneath the Desert Sky. During the hottest part of the whole goddamned day.
I finally return to the cool of the trailer and put in a little time organizing the photographs I’ve taken up to this point.
Step back outside for the end of the day, and off in the distances thunderheads are beginning to take on the warm colors of what develops over time into a perfectly gorgeous sunset as they shove and flatten themselves up underneath the bottom of the stratosphere.
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The clouds evolve, the sun continues inexorably downward, and the whole thing constantly morphs and rearranges itself as I blaze away with the camera, photographing the living hell out of it, hoping against hope that one or two frames will maybe, just maybe, capture perhaps the tiniest bit of it.
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I also photograph the glass in the wall on the back porch, and hopefully one or two frames will, maybe, capture just the smallest bit of that, too.
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This place just completely overwhelms, sometimes. Art, everywhere you look.
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Sitting on the back porch as night falls.
Lightning display getting progressively better and better, off to the north.
Finally all three of us take our chairs out into the dirt and creosote to watch, as the bolts are unleashed in silence, who the fuck knows how far away.
Which should have been the end of the day, but it wasn’t.
Two-thirty a.m., asleep in the trailer, and I come wide awake for no good reason.
Step outside into the night.
The moonless sky overhead is a riot of stars.
The Milky Way arches directly overhead, from horizon to horizon, with Cygnus at the zenith.
The brilliance of the beacon at the Twentynine Palms airport is an intermittent shadow-casting annoyance, but once I locate myself in a way to put it behind a tamarisk tree, the sky opens itself up for me and I stand there for I do not know how long, simply staring up at it, walking old familiar highways in the sky, getting reacquainted with constellations shown off in a way I have not seen for too long, and just generally allowing myself to be absorbed by it all.
Very nice.
And then a bright orange sporadic meteor flashes across my field of vision, just by way of finishing touch.
And now, at last, the day really is done.Previous PageNext Page |
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