Twentynine Palms, 2010 - June 20

One more day of delicious emptiness, in time, in space, and in pointless obligation.

Woke predawn, and got a few shots of the sunrise over the Sheep Hole and Bullion Mountains to the east and north. Despite their hopeful name, I have my doubts as to how much, or even if any, actual "bullion" ever came out of the Bullion Mountains, be it gold bullion, chicken bullion, or any other kind of bullion. But I could be wrong, I guess, and maybe this place is secretly the world supplier of chicken bullion. It could happen, right?

It’s the day before the summer solstice, and the sun has just about gone as far to the left along that ridgeline as it’s going to, before it reconsiders and then begins its long fall to the south toward the shorter days and colder temperatures to be found over at the other end of things, six months from now.

All eight of these shots are presented in the order in which they were taken, in case anybody was curious about that.

Before I came here, Newt advised that I not attempt to get myself any proper desert shoes back in Florida, but instead allow him to take me to a place where they had the right items, at a good price, once I had arrived out here.

So I flew out here wearing flipflops, and have been wearing them ever since, but as the heat began to set in today, we took a drive into Yucca Valley and Jimbo got himself a proper pair of boots, amply sufficient for thwarting the advances of saw-toothed rocks, viciously-spined plants, and venom-fanged reptiles.

Lonesome road, inbound to Twentynine Palms

Took the guy in the store a while to root around in the back room amongst the stock, and they only had one pair. But luck was with me and they fit snugly, comfortably, were not too heavy, and they give no sign of wearing any blisters on my feet in the coming days. Good steel-toed leather boots with a solid sole. No-nonsense footwear for a no-nonsense land.


Outbound toward Newt's, from Twentynine Palms		God help you if the car breaks down fifty miles out there

Suits the fuck out of me.

And now I’m ready to strike boldly out into the rough-edged part of things, wherever time and chance may take me.

Newt advises that the fun begins at sunrise tomorrow.

Good as things have been to this point, starting tomorrow they get even better.

We shall go voyaging into the desert, for real.

Before this trip, my good friend Jesse had mentioned about seeing a curious apparition alongside the interstate, back in Florida, that tried with a poor effort to masquerade itself as some kind of “christmas tree” or something, outsize, clearly man-made, and in general looking more than just a little bit suspicious.

She called it a Government Surveillance Tree, and of course a sobriquet like that needs to be stolen immediately, and I’m just the guy to steal it.

I’m pretty sure what she saw was a sorry attempt to disguise up the ugliness of a cell-phone tower with something that some idiot who never gets outside into the real world believes to be an improvement on things, visually, for all the sheep streaming down the highway in their chrome capsules.

And I mentioned that, last time I was out this way, Newt had clued me into the fact that they have similar idiocy out here as well, looking exactly like a fake, wrong-size-too-big metal palm tree with antennas bristling from within the crown of “fronds” like some nightmare CIA designed attempt at putting one over on a bovine populace of fools, dupes, and snitches.

Indeed, verily it is another manifestation of the Government Surveillance Tree.

And there’s one right off of the Twentynine Palms Highway, and I nailed that sonofabitch with the D40 as we drove past it a couple of hours ago.

Government Surveillance Tree

Coincidentally, Jesse emailed me just yesterday, reminding me that I told her that I would take a picture of one of these apparitions while I was out here.

Mission accomplished, Jesse. Picture taken, email sent, conspiracy confirmed.

A man with a fine new pair of boots views the world in a different way than other people. The world is meant for walking upon. Mountains need to be climbed. Open tracts need to be traversed. Ground needs to be covered.

So once we got back from our jaunt to the store in Yucca Valley and back, I set out into the 2pm heat of the day behind the house, to take myself a little walk through the sand and creosote.

Bonzo came with me, and despite a bit of a hobble from a bent-back toenail, he was fully up to the task of bouncing, pouncing, and digging into the creosote on a never-ending quest to capture the desert iguanas that live out here.

You see them skittering at speed across the bare sand between creosote bushes on a regular basis.

So while I admired the fit and feel of my new shoes, Bonzo maintained his assault upon all things lizardish, and in this fashion we worked our way diagonally across the property to the far corner of the fencing, out by the pile of rusted automobile gas tanks (they had been moved), and the other pile of scrap lumber (which had also been moved).

And once we arrived at our destination, it was time for me to stop and take in the fierce prospect all around, soaking up the heat and taking occasional swallows of water from the bottle I brought with me for that express task.

The sun was hammering nearly straight down out of a cobalt sky that has seen no cloud since I’ve been here.

All around me, the world simmered and shimmered without shadows and without mercy.

The overpoweringly brilliant overhead light gave everything a very flat look, and, coupled with the clarity of the air, gave outrageous lie to the substance of distance to features all around me.

I do not believe that I’ll ever be able to get enough of it.

Were I to move out here tomorrow and never leave, you’d still continue to find me out in the creosote staring in wonder at the world around me twenty years hence.

I can only compare it to the ocean, which is pretty much the only other thing I've ever encountered having the force and compelling nature to hold my rapt attention across the decades in similar fashion.

I cannot explain it, nor do I expect any understanding.

It is.

And that is all it is.

Very well then, let us find a route back to the house, threading between a different set of creosote bushes, shall we?

We shall.

And so Bonzo and I, and my new boots too, made our way back to the house through the molten white light.

Stayed in this very trailer for a week and a half last year, and only just today noticed this stuff:

Dawn

Sheila
“heart's”
Juan (with an apostrophe and a backwards ‘s’ after the heart.)

Ricky

Chris(?) 1991
M

Concrete walkway to a presumed front door of the old homesteader shack, of which nothing remains except the original concrete slab, which the Hell Trailer directly abuts, ninety degrees from the side that the walkway enters into.

Names are scratched into the concrete of the walkway in the handwriting of children.

Who were they? Where are they now? It hasn’t quite been twenty years.

Newt and Cathy have nothing to offer by way of any identity for these unknown children who once-upon-a-time ran and sang around this very place, and I've found myself once or twice since, wondering in the middle of the night, Who were they? Where are they now? It hasn't quite been twenty years.

Bonzo (and Stella too, for that matter) is a well-loved dog, and that love occasionally pops out and peeks at you from odd and unexpected places every once in a while, if you have the eye to see it.

And now comes the hard part: How in the fuck am I ever going to find a way to grab firmly ahold of the brooding lethal emptiness that envelops me all around, smash and crush it down until if fits inside of something as small and insignificant as a camera, and then pull it back out again and show it to you in a way that makes perhaps an atom or two more sense than no sense at all?

Fat fucking chance, MacLaren.

Can't happen.

I tried last year and it did not work, but I'm sufficiently stupid that I try again this year.

And it still doesn't work.

Fuckit.