This is one of those rambling posts so move on along to here or here if you are not interested. Its Sunday morning here in the Raintree Hotel in Chennai, sun is shining here. Its beautiful outside. I’m here for another 5 days give or take. Got a lot of stuff to get done here it feels like. I sometimes feel like Chennai is more my home than California. I spent almost 7 months here last year total in large clumps of time. I honestly enjoyed it immensely even though by the time each trip ended I felt the need to go back to the US. The US is no big positive sum thing though. Everything is expensive in the Bay area. Eating, drinking, socializing, doing. It all costs and it all sucks sometimes. Family stuff at home sucks off and on still. Won’t go into that in this higher mode philosophy though. The reason perhaps I feel more at home here than there is because there is none of the BS stuff going on here like at home. Here is the work and fun thing and the cost is not so much. But on to the more existential meanderings with a few examples which I will just gently force down your throat:
Barstow, California, 90s or so. Dropped off about 30 miles outside of Barstow on this training range that was used for World War II and after armor and artillery training. The area is described here by a military occupant. Make no mistake, this place is grim and you don’t want to get lost. We heard stories from this small bar somewhere on some road in some alternate reality about a car of tourists which simply disappeared into the desert. A bunch of these unique desert inhabitants took off to find them. Months later they were accidentally found. All dead. One rather stupid person had taken off walking and was found walking exactly the wrong way. We had maps, compasses, two vehicles and a bunch of beer. Well prepared in the archeological sense. But it was hot. The heat mercilessly beat down and sand whirled in the afternoons and our little survey and excavation units disappeared completely sometimes in the whirling dervishes of sand, wind. Our supervisor would summon us back to the so-called “Land Shark” and we sit it out. Often we just ended up back at the hotel at the swimming pool with copious amounts of beer. What was learned? Well, we learned to respect the f**king desert boys and girls. The desert rules and its not a nice ruler. It will subject you to its will, it will drive you mad, it will make you all either God fearing or atheists depending on how you enter. On the other side, its wild and primitive and beautiful and full of the most complex life cycles and coalescing paths of beauty and grimness. I will remember its space and and sun and time forever. Its a philosophical idea with a 125 degree reality.
Edwards AFB, CA. The gunnery range. From here you can see the Rogers Dry Lakebed extending its 20 or so miles and you can remember all the aviation history of the place. I am walking out along a solitary jeep track with two others. One is a botanist and the other is a wildlife biologist. We all walk 30 meters apart with the road path sandwiched in the middle. We have a 4 wheel drive loaded with water, pizza, sandwiches. Its marked on the map as our start and we will end up back here in 4 hours for lunch and then drive to another spot for the afternoon. The desert here is wild and wonderful. It extends to wild looking buttes around the town of Rosamond. North a bit perhaps is another desert ville called Mojave. Both are unique little places. Rosamond is the gateway to Edwards AFB and we used to drive there every day on my commute to work. Here is a memory. Rob Fishman and I worked together there and were driving one morning. It was quiet with only Rob humming along with KLOS FM from Los Angeles. It was the Mark and Brian show I believe. I had this package of 6 donuts with the white frosting or sugar on them. I opened the package with my teeth but was squeezing the package and all this white dust flowed out and ended on my face. Rob looked over at me and did not say anything. For about a minute. Then he started laughing. I looked in the mirror. White donut powder all over my beard and face. He got to work and started telling everyone.
Anyways though, back to the story about the hiking in the desert… You reach a moment where heaven, hell, desert, sky, mountains, hills, buttes all come together into a wild menagerie of reality. Desert scapes beckon all the time to you and you see where they all meet up. Desert dwellers know the feeling. Life just begins and ends as you do the archeology there. Its wondrous and its a sun and sky moment where it all blends into a scene vividly and forever implanted.
So what can we all do to survive in our deserts? Reach to that desert, see it for what it is. I reached there and dwelt in a fantastic spot that I still miss. The stories still flow. Sometime in March or April I will return to the land of sun and sky and revisit some people I have waited too long to get back with. it will be a mix of joy and sadness I fear. Truly said, you can never go back again. But I need to. As Robert Frost commented so well,
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Thanks Mr. Frost. You always remind of the sun and sky moments and that we all have some miles to go.
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