STILL LIFE
Standing at the Cholla Cactus Garden, there is little sound but the crisp, uneven wind blowing through the cacti. The sun is glaringly hot, ricocheting off rugged hills of gneiss. A scaly lizard peeks from the fence with some curiosity before darting into a spiny teddy bear cactus. When you turn away from the cacti, a vast landscape falls steeply into an abyss of brown and dove gray— undefined and alien. A vehicle can be seen driving far off in the distance. It looks like a tiny speck of brilliant white as the sun hits it at a precise angle.
As you continue further along into this abyss, the land seems continuously fall deeper into the Earth— unfathomably so. You begin to wonder if you will ever reach the bottom as it seems endless past a certain point. You’re reminded then that this land was once an ancient ocean and not simply a desolate desert. There is this sense of chaos in the stillness, but also alternately a feeling of immense peace that I have experienced very few times in my life. There is something about survival, about the idea of being brought to the bare elements that define us, that is oddly comforting. There was also this comfort in driving without a defined destination, as I would drive in my youth simply to explore places I had never been before. I’ve always found beauty and wonder in even the most seemingly mundane of things, so to see anything new was a gift.
I drove for many miles, until I went deeper still into the stark gray depths. I was near the Salton Sea now, then Indio (where I stopped for coffee and marvelled at the sandy dunes that seemed to stretch on forever), then Palm Desert, finally arriving at Palm Springs. The first time I saw Palm Springs it was nighttime, from a distance, and all I could see in the darkness was the glittering of millions of lights on the distance that looked like a vast field of stars. The multitudes of windmills, with their eerie red lights, cast rotating dark shadows upon the field and created a surreal ambience that I cannot fully describe in words without taking away some of its luster. It looked like the most magical place on Earth. It felt like some living organism that defied all measure of time and space.
I would drive even further that night, already exhausted, to Joshua Tree, where I would sit for 15 minutes in the freezing cold of winter under a moonlit sky before turning right back around and driving eight hours to Lompoc for work. The next morning I was exhausted, but I had finally seen the desert for the very first time in my life and was forever changed by it. I would later say that despite the immense effort I would have done it again in a heartbeat. It was a sort of pilgrimage I had been longing for my whole life, even though I didn’t know that at the time. I would only, months later, realize how it impacted me so deeply.
Palm Springs during the daytime, many months later in the summer, was lacklustre in comparison to the romantic visual I had from my previous exposure to it. The mountainous vistas that hugged the perimeter were awespiring. The desert sands that surrounded it were bright and picturesque. The town, with its huge shaggy fan palms and beautifully kept Midcentury homes, was as I would have expected. But I felt a strange sense of unease there. After the stark stillness of the desert, being in a city on the edge of that felt very foreign to me. I would leave Palm Springs very quickly and head for Twentynine Palms to stay at an Airbnb for the night before heading back to LA to catch a flight back home.
Driving through the hills, with the many twists and turns, I would find a strange, unfamiliar landscape. California, in general, is full of many unusual landscapes. As the hills fell away the Joshua trees began to dot the horizon. In Morongo Valley I would see a “Dig Your Own Cactus” shop and wistfully in hoped I would have time to visit (they were closed the day I was there, unfortunately.) in Yucca Valley I would find a good restaurant, as I was famished. In Joshua Tree I attended a farmer’s market and saw a vintage shop. I would take random roads just to see what was there. “Safely” getting lost is far more enjoyable than actually getting lost.
When I finally made it to Twentynine Palms, I would drive up a rugged road, take a turn, and be at the AirBnB. It was a well-populated area— with ample booked rentals and families present- but there was something that also felt very remote about it even though in reality it wasn’t. Perhaps the rough roads made it seem more remote; or perhaps the rugged landscape around it made me feel as if I was on another planet. Most people there had some degree of acreage, but several lived on an acre or two, had relatively small minimalist homes, and everything was fairly well-kept. Many of the homes had water trucked in, but the home I was staying at was on the city system thankfully. Chaparral was everywhere and the musty odour mixed with the Petrichor, creating a memorable scent that I would find myself deeply longing for months later. The scent was fascinating. The sounds of the desert, especially, were beautiful and foreign.
I would park my rental car and step into a small rental, which was basically a large room with a kitchenette and a large fenced in patio. The bathroom was shared between my rental and another larger one, and the owners lived in a home on the back side of the property separated with a privacy fence. The rental was tastefully decorated with several elements I would later integrate into my mental inventory, and I remember sitting on the bed after the long journey with a sense of weightlessness.
The past few days had been a blur of activity. When I wasn’t working hard in Vandenberg or Hawthorne, I spent every moment I could each night driving to different places or seeing new things. I left work one evening and drove up to Pismo Beach with a friend, seeing the beach at sunset while surfers cast silhouettes on the shining waters and countless jellyfish on the shoreline. I wondered how they weren't afraid of the dark waters, when I as even hesitant to enter the waters in daylight. I have always been overly cautious, I suppose. I drove through Guadelupe with its architectural bars and colorful murals that made me feel like I was in another country or another time. I drove through farmlands and knobby hills, vineyards and fields of flowers. Through a land with a constantly shifting landscape that seemed too round or too sloped to be real at times.
One time I drove by one of the lupine fields and saw what appeared to be a quinceanera photo shoot. I had a ground squirrel try his or her best to come into the car with me at Surf Beach. In the mornings I would leave my hotel room and head to Coastal Grindz before driving into work. I loved seeing the white windmills on the hills. Lompoc has this Studio Ghibli quality to it that is charming. A friend and I had dinner one night in Orcutt and it felt as if we were in Italy— the landscape was very similar there. I sang Gregory Alan Isakov’s “San Luis” in my head while driving through San Luis Obispo. A few days in Lompoc would feel like months. In some ways I felt like I had always been there— the Pacific Coast, for many years, has always had an unusual hold on my heart. Santa Maria was one of the only places I felt a bit uncomfortable. I remember stopping at a Starbuck’s in a rather upscale area and hearing what sounded (thankfully a long way away) like a series of gunshots.
The Pacific Ocean is ancient and unpredictable. In a strange way I can sense its depth and danger, but it is fascinating. I feel very humbled by it, but in a good way. I have always respected the sea and it’s power. The waves are much higher and far more chaotic than the waves in the Atlantic. The water is cooler, deeper, darker. There is a mystery inherent in the ocean. I would merely touch the Pacific as I had several times before in Oregon but didn’t dare to swim. The military base had jagged cliffs with huge drop-offs, which reminded me a lot of Ireland and Scotland. I almost went off the largest cliff once when the marine layer became abruptly extra thick. The marine layer hangs on the horizon line and creates a blurry mirage where sometimes it is difficult to tell where the ocean starts and the sky begins. I saw whales once while the sun glistened off of the surf . It’s a landscape that is unlike anything I have ever seen in this world and there is a certain amount of charm in that.
On my way to Hawthorne, I decided that I would take the scenic route— into the mountains with beautiful rivers, hugging the coastline as I went through Los Padres and Ventura and San Fernando. Despite the fact that I dearly missed my family and my home and was eager to return to them, there was also something inspiring about seeing new places and going off on my own. I have such an adventurous spirit and an avid interest in the unknown that I hunger for it at times. I am not a good candidate for sitting at a desk all day or even sitting still. Having these experiences and being able to simply be present within them made me feel incredibly alive. I was a different person out there in some ways— I spoke to everyone I met, I was mentally cataloguing everything, and was a more relaxed version of myself.
The sun was beginning to set.
I made tea and watched as the desert faded from golden orange to purple and then blue-gray. The stars began filling out the sky. I watched the Milky Way come into view. Out here the sky was so black that you could see nearly everything. As a person who had always prided myself on being self-sufficient, but i came to the realization that I was alone. Yet, oddly enough, standing there in the desert, very still watching time and space seem to change fluidly before my waking eyes, I didn’t feel fundamentally alone either. I had to truly say goodbye to the life I had in order to be present in my future, and that meant accepting that you can inhabit two polarities at the same time.
And perhaps that was the greatest revelation for me in my pilgrimage. The desert didn’t change me— I had simply changed. I was the universe and the universe was me. I was stardust. I was collossal and powerful and all the things people always feared because they didn’t understand. And for the very first time I was okay with that. It would be a want, not a need, to belong.
The first lesson the desert taught me was, no matter what, I had the freedom to exist in the world— untethered to it.
