In defense of California
Posted: December 20th, 2005, 4:59 pm
I've crisscrossed the American Southwest lately and I'm starting to get the feel of it. But California is another matter. California has little to do with the Southwest...
But there is a road toward its eastern reaches.... from drizzle-green toward slabs of tan. From heavy, pregnant air toward arid seasons of resolve, thoroughly connected by dust. From watered and mapped havens out to where the road should give out, or give creeping comfort. I'm addicted to that road, though it's a long, long drive, lately.
Some of the best road signs bleed hundreds of miles well out of the gate-- a trucker's dilemma. Classic. And when mountain passes start to add up, I should seek out the Buddhists, those who never look too far forward or backward. But I'm stuck behind a semi on the last summit before my promised land. Dear God how I patiently wait to see the sun again, with appropriate haste. I've tried to get there for some time now. There is no more noble destination.
It isn't much of a destination. I aim to sit squarely under the powerlines on a pointless desert track, not sure which one, mired in swelter. High noon will be forgiven, in principle. Am I off-course? Likely. But less so when conceived from within a damp evergreen shiver in late October. These are the times in which I live.
I seek the Mojave Desert, in the quieter heart of Southern California. I want to study its malleable frontier legends, create one of my own. But I soon run up against government fences; akin to hitting a "go-to-jail" card on the verge of a big score in Monopoly. Vast quadrants of the desert are roped off for vital affairs of state, generally with the words "bombing", or "weapons", or "dump", attached to their titles. Oh how these noble toxic preserves destroy and protect the realm, far and wide. Scores of forgotten trails wander through, off-limits. Do the officers venture out there? What do they make of it?
So I push farther south, into recesses where I write opinions on the above, subject a stand of Joshua Trees to my sermonizing, none too pretty, like any sensible game. I love that space, how I lose my mind in that way. Or in other possible ways. But the Mojave Desert compresses with each new foray, it seems, like the free world itself, like photochemical haze creeping up the Kern River canyon toward Isabella. I might cross one too many ridges west, lured by a smog bank of purpose.
I sense when I swerve toward the coastline. The pressure increase.... Air pressure, fences, traffic. One too many ridges west might subject me to a greased, grooved concrete freeway like an old Hanna-Barbera scenery loop, under overpasses, past repeating cypress and slender palms. It could take awhile. There is enough grooved California concrete and road signage to reach the moon, give or take. Seven-million people in L.A. and nine-million cars. How is that possible? How did it come to that?
It comes at me in shifts. Overpasses recede, yield to two lanes across lower San Joaquin Valley in heavy Bakersfield smog, across irrigated checkerboards and utter flatness. I approach Taft and the pace ramps up. I notice my alert level, that edge, a perma-stream of vehicles each way, rhythmic oncoming whoosh, jockeying for the pass; a great campaign, out of scale with its simple country road. I expect the first generic suburb to come on innocently, and a dozen more to follow. That might expain the odd country-lane traffic. The freeway loop might resume....
Instead the road bypasses most of Taft, opting for spare and familiar scrub hills. But they are carved up. They are framed and wired. They are bisected, dissected, confined against their will. Not far beyond, I pass a sign.... "Oilman's Club", then a crowded oil field. I watch a thick hydrocarbon haze embrace its roots across a vast tangle of grasshopper oil pumps. I swear I could make out a procession of Chevy Suburbans and Lincoln Navigators filing into the heaviest pump thicket to pray-- petroleum pilgrimage. Good and honest supplication for good and honest Christian industry, if nothing else.
But coastal mountains lie before me, posed as priceless jewels, if I will persevere awhile longer. They are slowly converting to green. Maybe I'll catch the eye of a coastal storm, the crush. Of course all might be forgotten if I were to work up enough nerve to brave the eternal concrete of L.A., in a warm shade of taco-stand paradise, where it's always seventy-one degrees, give or take, and one needn't concern himself too much with the weather. I suppose I'll end up living there some day. Most everyone else does.
edited for grammar, etc., plus revised intro.
But there is a road toward its eastern reaches.... from drizzle-green toward slabs of tan. From heavy, pregnant air toward arid seasons of resolve, thoroughly connected by dust. From watered and mapped havens out to where the road should give out, or give creeping comfort. I'm addicted to that road, though it's a long, long drive, lately.
Some of the best road signs bleed hundreds of miles well out of the gate-- a trucker's dilemma. Classic. And when mountain passes start to add up, I should seek out the Buddhists, those who never look too far forward or backward. But I'm stuck behind a semi on the last summit before my promised land. Dear God how I patiently wait to see the sun again, with appropriate haste. I've tried to get there for some time now. There is no more noble destination.
It isn't much of a destination. I aim to sit squarely under the powerlines on a pointless desert track, not sure which one, mired in swelter. High noon will be forgiven, in principle. Am I off-course? Likely. But less so when conceived from within a damp evergreen shiver in late October. These are the times in which I live.
I seek the Mojave Desert, in the quieter heart of Southern California. I want to study its malleable frontier legends, create one of my own. But I soon run up against government fences; akin to hitting a "go-to-jail" card on the verge of a big score in Monopoly. Vast quadrants of the desert are roped off for vital affairs of state, generally with the words "bombing", or "weapons", or "dump", attached to their titles. Oh how these noble toxic preserves destroy and protect the realm, far and wide. Scores of forgotten trails wander through, off-limits. Do the officers venture out there? What do they make of it?
So I push farther south, into recesses where I write opinions on the above, subject a stand of Joshua Trees to my sermonizing, none too pretty, like any sensible game. I love that space, how I lose my mind in that way. Or in other possible ways. But the Mojave Desert compresses with each new foray, it seems, like the free world itself, like photochemical haze creeping up the Kern River canyon toward Isabella. I might cross one too many ridges west, lured by a smog bank of purpose.
I sense when I swerve toward the coastline. The pressure increase.... Air pressure, fences, traffic. One too many ridges west might subject me to a greased, grooved concrete freeway like an old Hanna-Barbera scenery loop, under overpasses, past repeating cypress and slender palms. It could take awhile. There is enough grooved California concrete and road signage to reach the moon, give or take. Seven-million people in L.A. and nine-million cars. How is that possible? How did it come to that?
It comes at me in shifts. Overpasses recede, yield to two lanes across lower San Joaquin Valley in heavy Bakersfield smog, across irrigated checkerboards and utter flatness. I approach Taft and the pace ramps up. I notice my alert level, that edge, a perma-stream of vehicles each way, rhythmic oncoming whoosh, jockeying for the pass; a great campaign, out of scale with its simple country road. I expect the first generic suburb to come on innocently, and a dozen more to follow. That might expain the odd country-lane traffic. The freeway loop might resume....
Instead the road bypasses most of Taft, opting for spare and familiar scrub hills. But they are carved up. They are framed and wired. They are bisected, dissected, confined against their will. Not far beyond, I pass a sign.... "Oilman's Club", then a crowded oil field. I watch a thick hydrocarbon haze embrace its roots across a vast tangle of grasshopper oil pumps. I swear I could make out a procession of Chevy Suburbans and Lincoln Navigators filing into the heaviest pump thicket to pray-- petroleum pilgrimage. Good and honest supplication for good and honest Christian industry, if nothing else.
But coastal mountains lie before me, posed as priceless jewels, if I will persevere awhile longer. They are slowly converting to green. Maybe I'll catch the eye of a coastal storm, the crush. Of course all might be forgotten if I were to work up enough nerve to brave the eternal concrete of L.A., in a warm shade of taco-stand paradise, where it's always seventy-one degrees, give or take, and one needn't concern himself too much with the weather. I suppose I'll end up living there some day. Most everyone else does.
edited for grammar, etc., plus revised intro.
