The Desert Changes a Person

Something about the vastness, the great emptiness, the abscence of human sound other than your own breath- it exposes and magnifies any cracks in your soul.

There is something about watching the clouds roll in, the dust storm approach through the mountain pass miles away, and yet being powerless to do anything but watch it approach. The millions of pin pricks impaling the skin on the back of your neck as you turn to shield your face.

The strong scent of rain, of ozone- so much more overpowering than back east- drenching the dry sandiness of your insides, where your heart should be, washing away the bitterness and regret, eroding away the hardened hatred along the cracks until small hollows form and eventually become man-sized caves where the pain used to be.

The desert changes a person.

So many things larger than you- you, small, insignificant, irrelevant to the searing heat, the bitter cold, the unrelentless wind.

Life is hard. Small problems dissappear through necessity. Day to day stress melt away in lieu of calculating the water left in the camelback, and not loosing the trail in the stark but deadly beauty. The desert tortoise, the horned lizard, the ravens- all survive just fine. The evidence is in the tracks.

"I coud die out here, and no one would know- not in time to save me, not before my bones are picked clean. They wouldn't know where to look. " Aloneness, physical, and emotional, magnified. "A broken ankle, a slip, a fall, a knock on the head, a snake bite. It's all over, so suddenly." No man is an island, but I live in a vaccuum, both real and imagined.

The rusted out old chevy sedan, half burried in rocks rounded by years of water. There is no river here, not now- but once, once, this car was parked, or was driven across this valley, or perhaps a higher valley- when the storm clouds gathered over the pass. No glass, no head lights, no upholstery; boulders on the roof, cobbles filling the spaces where feet and legs and pocket books once resided. Nothing but silence (the deafening noise ringing in my ears) and the clatter of cobbles as the dog explores this former trap, sticking her head out of the empty rear windshield. The panting and scramble of paws for a food hold.

Death Valley.

This is the Mojave I know.

The desert changes a person.

March; mid-spring. 70s at lower elevations, but up in the pass, it was cold, windy; 45 and spitting a swirling snow. We pass the abandoned mine shaft, equipment left to rust and lose their features in the sun. The long dirt road, hours from the last paved road, after so many turns I can't remember. We passed a ranch with curious steer. A whale, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere, painted up high on the valley wall.

More abandoned mines than I can count lie haphazardly throughout the hillsides- some recently shut down (steel, modern equpiment left to rust), others old, with rotting wood timbers, and shacks that pass daylight. Slowly collecting swirling snowflakes where the wind eddies- they sit still for a few seconds before dissapearing without leaving a wet spot. Its hard to ignore the snese of decades passing before your eyes.

This is the Mojave I know.

The desert changes a person.