More High Desert Musings...
Posted: August 27th, 2004, 5:57 pm
More High Desert Musings...
A traveler sought in the worst way to disappear, leaving Highway 95 somewhere near Goldfield, Nevada. He heard a friendly voice on the
radio; the only station which came in clearly. Some might call this a
sign from God, but he called it the reason God gave him a tape player.
The first words were of universality, quickly followed by membership rules
for Club Heaven. The voice at the end of the airwave was engaging; skilled and efficient at partitioning off the unworthy. It triggered the accursed image of the jet plane and the tower all over again. He screamed at the radio until a tape slipped in and a King Tubby rhythm killed it.
He had a mining trail and a bottle of whiskey to work with. He peeled away
layers of the scene, taken by light itself. He saw clearly the path of a solar
flare, sent out from a cliff point to add its energy to the expanse; light abundance. The trail wandered into the hills. The hills invited him to share in their rhythm. He expected the earth to devour him.
The great circle-- earth meets sky-- is unfettered here. Light and silence are not the only rewards. One can pick up the unmasked earth sculpture at any point. Trails deftly thread endless fashionings of high and low; gentle rise and fall or glorious chaotic form; a full-scale radiant relief map. In the withering low basins, ghost ridges hover atop swells and seas of earth, which you may cross within your interior. There is perfect curvature.... lustrous, consuming sweeps. Exhibits of the planet's shape are unsurpassed in the desert, though the view might be illusory across enormous space. But the view is always available, unlike within a dense forest, where shape resides at your own station and the crowding of life
thereupon.
In the last town, among the plastic flags and foaming CNN pundits who forgot to check the expiration date on their sanity and humanity, he heard about a boring stretch of Nevada highway, so he naturally made it his next trip. When he drove the highway, it tricked him with its seventy-mile-an-hour drone. Velocity is irrelevant out in that space. Move quickly and you only confront sheer distance. The road may have you at its mercy. Desert requests patience, while City demands increasing speed. Each offers its reward; one rooted in bedrock and the other fabricated. But that might be the shock of silent space playing a trick. He had only seen that dichotomy when he was "out there"; when he had moved slowly enough for long enough; something he could never gauge. He crosses a line encircling an escarpment, and if he hits it at the right speed, he sees a picture. He has
committed the sin of retreating from it, in the past.
Religion leads people. He had acquired several religious texts by now; among them his topographical atlases; often as unreliable or unclear as their scriptural counterparts. He runs his fingers along the contour lines and he imagines what the canyons and ridges might look and feel like. He imagines the road's character, or rhythm. Music may even come to mind to fit the rhythm, all sensed from a scientific, well-numbered grid, with no hope of putting numbers to the sensation. The atlas shows every known path and etching across the emptiness in detail, but much of this detail is just a well-documented guess. If one follows enough of these lines, that becomes apparent. Some of the boldest of them dissolve into rock and sand.
He liked his version of religion better than most.... the physical and spiritual seemed more likely to merge, even if he couldn't write a verse for every scene. Wander upon a massive strip-mining operation in the desert and you might get a sense of it. It's not as if the desert will be wiped out. It will survive A thru Z types of fashionable frontal assaults because it remains undesired and unchallenged as a whole. But if one happens to be out there and witness an entire hillside being cut down by brute force, then a question or two may come to mind. Here is a place of value. A large corporate subsidiary noticed it, or maybe a hapless stray in a beat-up pickup noticed it; the former coveting what can physically be powered from the earth through sheer might and economics, and the latter perhaps coveting the earth itself; a philosophy of the lesser trail.
But he wondered how far he was removed from deeper psychology of it. How would he react if he happened upon an exposed ledge of silver out on that lesser trail? He shut off the engine and began to tune in a rhythm of
timeless rise and fall susceptible to exposing one's breathing. It was a good
question; one worth ignoring.
A traveler sought in the worst way to disappear, leaving Highway 95 somewhere near Goldfield, Nevada. He heard a friendly voice on the
radio; the only station which came in clearly. Some might call this a
sign from God, but he called it the reason God gave him a tape player.
The first words were of universality, quickly followed by membership rules
for Club Heaven. The voice at the end of the airwave was engaging; skilled and efficient at partitioning off the unworthy. It triggered the accursed image of the jet plane and the tower all over again. He screamed at the radio until a tape slipped in and a King Tubby rhythm killed it.
He had a mining trail and a bottle of whiskey to work with. He peeled away
layers of the scene, taken by light itself. He saw clearly the path of a solar
flare, sent out from a cliff point to add its energy to the expanse; light abundance. The trail wandered into the hills. The hills invited him to share in their rhythm. He expected the earth to devour him.
The great circle-- earth meets sky-- is unfettered here. Light and silence are not the only rewards. One can pick up the unmasked earth sculpture at any point. Trails deftly thread endless fashionings of high and low; gentle rise and fall or glorious chaotic form; a full-scale radiant relief map. In the withering low basins, ghost ridges hover atop swells and seas of earth, which you may cross within your interior. There is perfect curvature.... lustrous, consuming sweeps. Exhibits of the planet's shape are unsurpassed in the desert, though the view might be illusory across enormous space. But the view is always available, unlike within a dense forest, where shape resides at your own station and the crowding of life
thereupon.
In the last town, among the plastic flags and foaming CNN pundits who forgot to check the expiration date on their sanity and humanity, he heard about a boring stretch of Nevada highway, so he naturally made it his next trip. When he drove the highway, it tricked him with its seventy-mile-an-hour drone. Velocity is irrelevant out in that space. Move quickly and you only confront sheer distance. The road may have you at its mercy. Desert requests patience, while City demands increasing speed. Each offers its reward; one rooted in bedrock and the other fabricated. But that might be the shock of silent space playing a trick. He had only seen that dichotomy when he was "out there"; when he had moved slowly enough for long enough; something he could never gauge. He crosses a line encircling an escarpment, and if he hits it at the right speed, he sees a picture. He has
committed the sin of retreating from it, in the past.
Religion leads people. He had acquired several religious texts by now; among them his topographical atlases; often as unreliable or unclear as their scriptural counterparts. He runs his fingers along the contour lines and he imagines what the canyons and ridges might look and feel like. He imagines the road's character, or rhythm. Music may even come to mind to fit the rhythm, all sensed from a scientific, well-numbered grid, with no hope of putting numbers to the sensation. The atlas shows every known path and etching across the emptiness in detail, but much of this detail is just a well-documented guess. If one follows enough of these lines, that becomes apparent. Some of the boldest of them dissolve into rock and sand.
He liked his version of religion better than most.... the physical and spiritual seemed more likely to merge, even if he couldn't write a verse for every scene. Wander upon a massive strip-mining operation in the desert and you might get a sense of it. It's not as if the desert will be wiped out. It will survive A thru Z types of fashionable frontal assaults because it remains undesired and unchallenged as a whole. But if one happens to be out there and witness an entire hillside being cut down by brute force, then a question or two may come to mind. Here is a place of value. A large corporate subsidiary noticed it, or maybe a hapless stray in a beat-up pickup noticed it; the former coveting what can physically be powered from the earth through sheer might and economics, and the latter perhaps coveting the earth itself; a philosophy of the lesser trail.
But he wondered how far he was removed from deeper psychology of it. How would he react if he happened upon an exposed ledge of silver out on that lesser trail? He shut off the engine and began to tune in a rhythm of
timeless rise and fall susceptible to exposing one's breathing. It was a good
question; one worth ignoring.
