29Palms - Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Very well then, night has fallen.

I'm sitting here in the "hell" trailer out on Newt Broome's property at Twentynine Palms, California.

Out in Wonder Valley.

It's a wonder anybody lives here.

People are stupid, after all, and not many would be able to understand what's going on out here, and as a result I'd expect them all to run screaming from a place like this, back to the homogenized havens of their safe, predictable, secure lives.

This place is pretty heavy in many regards, and an overall ambience of unforgivingness pervades everything. Fuck up out here, and the place will cheerfully kill you.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's back up for a bit, ok?

We hit the road from my place on Merritt Island three mornings ago, bright and early ahead of the Monday rush hour traffic.

Sixteen and a half hours later, and we're pulling into the parking lot of a motel west of Houston, Texas.

We'd just finished rolling over one thousand miles.

Long day behind the wheel.

Not a lot to say about that particular leg of the trip.

Hundreds of miles of this boring shit

Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eastern Texas are all flat, hemmed in by an impenetrable wall of trees, and boring as all hell from an interstate highway point of view.

There's some serious swamps in Louisiana. The refineries around Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas are foul-smelling, and I'm glad I don't live in the vicinity, pumping that toxic gaseous effluvium in and out of my lungs day in and day out. Houston's freeway spaghetti is ridiculous, and the town itself is the locus of oil money evil and could stand a good cultural sanitizing.

Otherwise, it was just a goddamned lot of trees, a few idiot drivers to be avoided, and a lot of time spent.

Whatever.

Tuesday morning, up early and back on the road once more.

Does this mean we're in Texas?

Texas is big, and not a lot happens there.

As you unreel yet another hundred miles, if you look closely, you might notice the look and feel of things outside of your car ever so slowly shifting toward deserts and hills. Texas has plenty of hundred-mile stretches, one after the other. Too goddamned many, if you ask me. Enough already.

But the changes are subtle and it takes forever, and you could easily miss the whole thing till you were somewhere out past Fort Stockton, came over a rise, and suddenly noticed the silhouettes of actual mountains through the distant hazes and then realized that you just happened to be in a pretty serious desert, too.

Some fool in a white Lexus passes us at a goodly clip, and a cop heading the other way promptly crosses the median, comes up from behind, blows past us, and then nails the Lexus out there ahead of us. We laugh like fools as we sail on past the parked cop and his moneyed prey.

El Paso is ugly and it wants to die.

Hammering along I-10 to Deming, New Mexico, and Newt says, "Screw this shit, we're going to get off this god-forsaken interstate and head up north and take in Meteor Crater, Arizona on the way home."

And just as soon as you get off the damnable interstate, things immediately improve.

We roll northwest to Silver City, New Mexico, just as the light is failing. Total elapsed distance for the two days comes up to just about nineteen-hundred miles.

Along the way to Silver City, we admire the basin and range geology around us, starting down at the bottom in a basin between dark ranges, as the light improves and the shadows lengthen. Two-lane highway, but we make good time. Hardly anybody else out there on the road with us.

The sun closes with the horizon as we rise up into one of the ranges, and the scenery around us becomes more and more interesting as we go. There’s a lot of really cool shit out there in the distance, and it’s all just as fascinating as hell.

Stark mountains, pronghorn antelope, giant mining operations, volcanic features complete with columnar basalt ribbing against the sky, vegetation a vibrant green from the summer rains that have fallen in the last couple of days, small towns tucked away in a landscape that never ceases to provide a sense of wonder and beauty, and on and on it goes.

Back up early on Wednesday morning, and back on the road we go.

We’re heading generally northwest, intending to catch I-40 in Holbrook, Arizona, and then cut across, take in Meteor Crater, and then west and south to our final destination, where I’m sitting right this minute, typing these words in the desert night.

This is Arizona?

Coming back down out of the high country in Arizona

Western New Mexico and eastern Arizona are fucking beautiful, and I don’t think I can properly describe any of it. The terrain goes up and down, and as it does it varies between some pretty harsh desert and surprisingly verdant alpine pine forests.

The road alternately runs low across blasted landscapes of stunted grass and rock, and high through gorgeous mountain scenery eight or nine thousand feet up into the wonderfully dry cool air.

Back in to the desert, once again

This is what people expect when you say "Arizona"

The rocks alternate back and forth between sedimentary and volcanic as we go.

Endless variations on a theme.

We finally come back down to the low flatness of the desert, and then hammer west on I-40 toward Winslow, and a hole in the ground I’ve wanted to lay eyes on ever since I first learned of its existence when I was a child.

Newt, who has eyes that are trained to spot things in the desert (among other things), espies the crater rim in the distance first.

Don't look like much at first....		But then you start to realize...		There's a fucking big hole in the ground out there!

Low, hardly sticking up above the surrounding flatness, but of a lighter shade than the rocks and dirt all around us.

Signs advise you how far you have to go.

Turn off of the interstate and head south.

Finally arrive, and wind up the outer slope of the crater’s raised ejecta rim to the visitors center where you park the car, get out, pay them some money, and walk the rest of the way to the lip of the crater where you can walk around a bit and take it all in.

HOLY SHIT!

A great yawning chasm in the middle of nowhere

Pictures do this thing no justice at all

Kilometer across and six-hundred feet deep.

The force required to do this beggars the imagination

Just blasted out of the surrounding flatness.

You find yourself just sitting, staring at it

Implacable. Unimaginable. Incredible.

Along the inside of the rim, you can see where the existing layers of rock were bent and lifted upwards from the force of the titanic explosion that blew this psychotic hole into the ground in single, near-instantaneous apocalyptic spasm.

Way down in the distance, at the very bottom of the hole, you can see remains where the Barringer family, who owned this land way back when, had set up a drilling rig, hoping to find perhaps the parent body that caused the whole thing. Which was instead more or less vaporized by the force of the impact and no longer exists. The Barringers came up empty handed. Ah well.

Words don’t work very well to describe this place, and I don’t think I’m going to bother with any further description of things. The pictures utterly fail to capture the wonder of this place as well, so about all I can say is if you ever find yourself out here in this area, take the time, make the time, and take this fucker in, in person, the way it was meant to be done.

Outside, it’s local noon, and the desert sun is pouring down out of the sky.

Time to go.

Back on the interstate, and we’re on the home stretch.

Back up hill again, and then past Flagstaff, Arizona, and it’s a long final run downhill, back into the harshness of the desert.

Cross the Colorado River in the blazing heat.

Outside the car windows, things have taken on a sinister look. Beautiful, but sinister.

The rocks and hills look like the heat has just beaten them completely down over the eons. Everything has a look to it as if all the life has been leached out of it and there’s nothing left but carcasses, husks.

The road takes us farther and farther into the shimmering desolation.

Here and there, on either side of the road, small towns and isolated dwellings, showing some signs of human habitation, look as if they were left out here by mistake.

This is hotter than it looks. Much hotter.

The land is saying loudly, clearly, “Keep out, if you know what’s good for you.”

And for the most part, people are happy to abide by the warning.

Except for a few.

Places like this attract a certain breed of hardy soul that thrives in an environment that would be the end of most folks.

And so they enjoy their splendid isolation with just a few of their ilk, and laugh up their sleeves at all those lesser mortals who can’t hack it out here, glad to see them gone, the better to give them the room they need to breathe free, and follow their own pursuits, unhampered by the Great Swarm.

Luther Newton Broome

Luther Newton Broome would be one of these people.

We cross some downright lunar terrain on our final leg, heading toward his compound.

Desert light, desert shadow, and desert color limn the iconic shapes and forms that surround us, from the edge of the road all the way out to the horizon on every side.

Finally we arrive, and once there, I get to see what a couple of college art professors have done for themselves out here in the middle of some serious nowhere.

Newt’s wife, Cathy, you see, is also a professional artist, and the two of them let their imaginations and their creativity run wild and free out here. She greets me with intelligent cheer and warmth.

Long shadows, front gate

And then Newt takes me around the compound, and I find myself completely enchanted with what they’ve done out here.

The hour of the long shadows at Twentynine Palms

But this is not art for people who keep their imaginations and sense of wonder on a short leash. People who arrive in the Land of Art with a load of preconceptions as to how things should look, how things should be done, how things are supposed to behave.

If you are one of those unfortunates, I’d advise you perhaps save yourself the trouble of paying a visit out here.

Evening descends at the compound

You might not quite like all of what you see.

Or even any of it.

But for myself, it’s a riot of clashing ideas, shapes, things, and I immediately fall in love with all of it.

From the brash flames painted on the side of the trailer I’ll be staying in, to the pile of ferrous junk by the fence that contains a surprising amount of smashed up automobile gas tanks, of all things. From the Lizard Woman in the big metal building, to the paintings hanging on the walls inside of the house that were created using coffee, among other things. Newt and Cathy can’t care what somebody might think or say about their work, and instead pursue it single-mindedly, wherever it may take them.

The virga in the distance is the closest I ever got to rain

This is some honest work, and that honesty shines through all of it, illuminating it in a way that cannot be duplicated using other means.

And so I just enjoy the hell out of myself, watch my first sunset out here, and am now ensconced in the “hell” trailer, just about ready to put this laptop down, douse the light, and take some well-earned rest.

Twilight art studio

What tomorrow may bring I cannot know.

Newt owns me for the duration, and if he wants me to help him haul lava rocks, then I help him haul lava rocks, and if he wants to drive me to some endlessly fascinating thing or other, then I drive with him to marvel at some endlessly fascinating thing or other.

Distance and creosote, both are good companions

The complete lack of a plan, or even the faintest idea of what’s coming next, appeals to me on a deeply visceral level.

I’ll keep you posted on what develops.

For now, good night.