High Desert Retreat
Part 1 - Atown to Vegas Solo
The government offers you nothing but apprehension. Only you can offer yourself peace.
-Jim Harrison
Dylans hard rain is a-falling.
Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
I drove out of the forest seeking relief. I crossed snow-covered mountains rapt in wonder. I gazed awestruck at million-mile views. I slept in poor towns haunted by ghosts. I climbed rocky hills looking for artists.
Rolled out of Anacortes three Fridays ago down howling I-5, bore off onto I-405 to creep like a lemming past the hoity-toity spires of Bellevue town, tacked left on I-90 and accelerated up and over Snoqualmie Pass. Lashed by rain and sleet until I turned southeast toward wine country and the desert.
Bg Red hummed along, gear organized in the back, digital music in the cab, and the hours slipped away. I spent the first night in a small family motel in cowboy Baker City, observing Trumpy signs and feeling dismayed. These hard-working, simple folks will be hurt first and most.
Wheels up and away next morning, southbound via US93. Eighty-mile-an-hour hair-on-fire rush across the big open of Idaho, right-hand turn at Twin Falls, crossed the bridge over Kneivels Snake River Canyon, and boomed south toward Jackpot, Nevada - an out-of-the-way gambling outlet for less than devout Idaho Mormons.
Climbed the escarpment up and out of Jackpot - Salmon Creek Canyon to our left, true high desert now, zoomed past the Mustang Monument, out of range of the music service, just the droning hum from Red’s tires and big faithful engine loping along. My thoughts drifted…
I meet my brother in Vegas in three days to explore southern Utah and Nevada. We haven’t spent two weeks together since we were kids on the farm. Now we will go spinning through one of the most iconic and beautiful regions of this country with nary a plan.
This trip is both an opportunity for brotherly bonding and an escape. Mike and I aren’t getting any younger, and it’s past time to travel together. At 68 and 65 years old, time is heavy on us. Life is short. Too, I yearn for the sacred silence of the desert—the peace and the truth it holds. The human world is louder, more insistent, more strident than ever. The digital blather crescendos as the empire collapses. Depravity and corruption spread unchecked; cruelty is celebrated; the poor are ravaged by the rich; and the American experiment is abandoned. Out here, though, in the other-than-human world of the desert, the silence is immense. The peace is its own sound you cant unhear. The desert is harsh, but it is also beautiful, and true. The rules here are simple, clear, and undeniable: have water, have food, have shelter, protect yourself from the elements, grasp the beauty, remember you are free, and above all, be grateful.
North of Wells, topping a rise, appeared the fabulous Humboldt Mountains. Storms in central Nevada sprinkled the mountains and desert with a sugary layer of brilliant white snow. Below is a link to a piece I wrote about travelling north on this same high, lonesome, coyote highway.
Spent the night in poor, benighted Ely (Eelee), Nevada, where I was the only guest in a forty room hotel. Cruised past the cemetery down the hill into the old town built in the gulch below the dead open pit mine. Boarded-up windows, empty lots, trash blowing in the wind - another American boom town. Got gas at the fancy new Loves Travel Stop on the edge of town and headed south for the Pahranagat.
I camped for free by Upper Pahranagat Lake in the National Wildlife Refuge. Spent the next morning high in the hills searching for petroglyphs. The site was protected by a steep, treacherous 8 mile dirt track. The ‘glyphs are in three discrete areas where the ancestors hunted and camped 6000 years ago. They directed herds of game through a narrow canyon and took the animals at close range. Smart.
A close study of the area indicated that water had once been abundant here. Rills and falls and whirlpools were evident among the boulders. I clambered all over those rocky hills. Up a draw to the top of a steep hillock, back down to the canyon floor, up the facing slope - no ‘glyphs…not one. I checked the map, oriented myself to the topography, climbed a different little draw - nothing. Hands on hips, I looked over the surrounding rough terrain, panting and sweaty, and heard…laughter. The ancients laughing at the chubby white dude looking for their rock art. With a wave and a wink, they made their art invisible to me. And laughed about it. I grinned, thanked them for the excersize, gave up the search, and ground back down the track to my camp at the lake.
That afternoon, I sped away from the haunted Pahranagat Valley toward Sin City to meet Mike. I'd spent three days solo in Big Red driving beautiful back roads. I'd spent hours in the hills searching for evidence of the ancients. I was in a blissful dream state and thought only good thoughts of the ancients, this country, and my fellow humans.
Thoughts that soon evaporated after contact with zombie Americans in a tawdry Vegas casino.
But that is a story for Part 2.
The thunder is rollin’. Play us out Bob.