March 18, 2011

The desert is a place that dreams go to die. The ruins of someone’s attempt to make a living in the middle of the miles of sand and big blue rocky mountains litter the desert everywhere. There’s nothing ‘soft’ about the desert—anything living there bites, stings or scratches. It’s an unforgiving place.



Traveling through the dry rocky hills and the gravelly land that barely supports a bit of grass and a quick blaze of wildflowers in the spring has little appeal for most folk. But oh what a different story is told by those who have been bitten by the desert bug—to them the desolation seems a sleeping opportunity only waiting for the dreamer to bring his earth-changing visions to the desert and transform the dusty, gritty Mojave into a miracle, a Garden of Eden, a total transformation because of a “unique and great” plan.

But it never happens. Driving through the desert you can see ruin after ruin of dead dreams. Shacks, adobe, rocks, boards—anything that would make a dwelling. There are ruins of old barns, corrals and doomed wells. Along the edges of the first two original Route Sixty-sixes you can find old car parts, cans, the occasional coin and even the rusted stays from the women’s corsets. (The first dream the women abandoned was the hourglass figure—corsets were too hot so they were tossed by the side of the road to rot away—except the stays, dozens and dozens of rusting metal stays—they’re still out there in odd little patterns.)

Mr. T and I are desert rats. I was raised on the desert and learned to be both respectful and wary of the lure of the Mojave. The beauty of the desert imprinted early in my soul. I also learned how easy it would be to lose my bearings out there and learned early on the landmarks that marked my child’s world. (This would never happen today but my cousin and I from the age of 6 on were told our boundaries were that we had to be able to see my aunt’s garage roof from the highest hill we could climb. That was it! And off we went for hours at a time! Compared to today’s shackled children, our world was very large.)

My godfather was an early Canadian environmentalist-turned-painter-turned gold miner who happened to marry my well-heeled Bluebook godmother and brought her West. (She was promptly disinherited by her family—smash that dream!) My grandmother was teaching school in Richmond, Virginia, in 1921 when my grandfather who worked for the Santa Fe Railroad sent her a letter asking her to marry him—he enclosed a one-way train ticket to Ludlow, Arizona, because his dream of making a new life included her. She went. Eventually she found herself living in Barstow, CA, with her neighbor being the woman who would eventually be my godmother. I can’t imagine that they were living out the dreams they might have had as young girls.

Even the monks could not make the dream of a desert monastery come true. Ten years of living in military cast-off metal portable “buildings” and battling the heat, wind and isolation eventually drove them to the mountains. More ruins added to the desert’s ongoing collection.


Everywhere you look, it’s just more evidence of someone’s dream that died. I wonder what happened to the bearers of all those dreams. They left no clues—just the detritus they couldn’t take with them when they finally gave up and moved on like the hundreds before them. Uncle Jack always thought the “Big Strike” was just one hill over. But it never was so he’d paint a picture, sell it, and that would grubstake his meanderings for a bit longer. I’m glad my grandfather didn’t live long enough to see the passenger train service evaporate for the railroads. He wouldn’t have believed it. He always thought the desert was his dream come true since he was lucky enough to be employed during the Great Depression and could provide for his family.

My desert dreams that have died have been mostly dreams that stayed in my imagination. The pull is still strong so we pack up the RV and hit the road. I’m my most comfortable out in the remote shadows of towns that are still holding on—but I’ve seen too much. I prefer to leave my desert dreams in my head and so I have the possibility of some of them turning out to be success stories rather than risk calling them into existence only to leave one more set of bones cluttering up the desert floor.

But when we park the RV, I put on my hiking boots, stuff camera gear in my vest, arm myself with a walking stick and slap a hat on my head that says The Crowbar I can still catch that whiff of a desert dream that just might materialize over the next hill.