An excerpt from a conversation:
"Amboy in particular is a special place. Amazes me how few people realize that there are literal volcanoes in SoCal that aren't very far. Saw a scorpion last time. Free camping too! Could hardly handle myself the time I went to Amboy and it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit past midnight, determined as I was crouching on Route 66 taking long exposure shots of the milky way. Dripping sweat in the pitch dark on a desert highway is a non-ideal, yet interesting experience."
It was in fact a mind-numbing 104 degrees at approximately 1am. I say mind-numbing because at such a seemingly unnatural and otherwise inexplicable level of heat, there simply isn't much to bare in terms of thoughts making their way through the maze of head matter and bursting into conscious reality. It is too hot to think, and that is all there is to it. And yet, this status, while presenting a quandary, also presents an opportunity. That is, the opportunity to just be, to exist for a short while free from the self-obligation to make sense of matters, to analyze, to fill the silence with unnecessary noise. Pair this mode of existence with clear skies and a camera, and everything else ceases to matter all that much. Gazing up at the stars - I'm awestruck. I lose track of everything around me. I lose myself in the light that has taken countless years to reach my eyes. In an instant, I become absorbed, temporarily in a trance-like state. I feel somehow more connected in a way that seems contradictory at first, but begins to make sense gradually with experience. Do it for yourself, following the credence of a phrase that I like to invoke: "fuck around and find out". With the stars, that is the only viable methodology.
Both photographs in this post were taken adjacent to the slim, smoothly paved road that winds its way towards Amboy Crater. There is a sign at the turnoff marking the bestowed significance of the landform as a "National Natural Landmark". Route 66 runs through - the largest intact stretch - and, at this point, with Ludlow to the West and Amboy but a click to the East. Vintage looking decals are painted on certain stretches of the famed stretch of asphalt snaking its way meticulously through the Great Mojave, known as the "mother road" to those who love it like a relative that lives on through more than just memory. The logos fade just like everything that persists out here for far too long. They are, on occasion, repainted, lending a sort of symbolic gesture of goodwill towards that which braves this desert. It may be a small gesture that is muted in a sense by the vastness that abounds, however it lends an unmistakable degree of optimism where such a feeling can at times be in short supply.
I remember calling my brother as I looked up from my perch on the highway to Amboy shining vividly on the horizon To the pessimist, a source of modest light pollution. To the open-minded wanderer, a beacon, a point of interest, a "north star" of sorts in this stretch of uninterrupted desert. The same desert that nearly everywhere else for miles casts its usual spell, one that brings impenetrable darkness like a thick veil over all things. I cannot recall what we talked about, only a state of mild surprise that cell service was at all viable at that point. Aside from the rim of the crater, nowhere in the vicinity can such a promise be made. The desert can be a lonely place. There is a reason that it draws in people like me. For all its glory, you aren't liable to meet a whole lot of people outside of the recently popularized spots. This can be a reason for enjoyment - you are free! Likewise, it can also be a reason for despair. I simply wouldn't be honest if I didn't at the very least acknowledge the many faces of the desert - what it brings out in someone, how it makes them feel, how it can aid in discovery of the self. There are profound shades of grey involved in all of this. And that is truly something powerful to realize.
I remember the air being so dry that every bit of moisture seemed to struggle to avoid being lost to the desert forever. The Mojave, in this light, takes on a degree of agency in its supreme effort to gather as much of the scarcest of life-sustaining resources. A love with a slight of precarity, it is. What a wonderful place to be alive.
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