late dawn, winter desert

mojave desert. november 2010.

happy winter solstice!

black rock ridge

Between the Mojave and Joshua Tree lies a volcanic crater of small blackened rock and a broken round ridge. 2010.

shades

Kelso Dunes. 2010.

on the way up, 2nd november in a row. maybe it should become my annual pilgrimage. just can't get enough of that still silence, where blood thunders through your ear and a car drives loudly by three miles away. 

mojave

Mojave Desert. 2010.

This is facing south, with the Kelso Sand Dunes behind me. Shortly after daybreak.

Sand Waves with Grass

Mojave Desert. 2009.

Looking East

Kelso Dunes, Mojave Desert. 2oo9.

I think I picked this one more because I want to be back there then because it's a great photo. For some reason I feel like the clouds are really in motion, that they're booking it across the sky, flying south for the winter. The sand dunes were just these two small mountains of sand in the middle of a plain, with clumps of hard rocky mountains scattered around to the south, the east, the north. The west slowly rolled its way oceanward with yellowed hillocks that eventually crescendoed into heavy brown cliffs, off near the top of the horizon. They looked dark even in the feathery morning sun.

At the top, a bee hovered one foot above the highest point of the dune, buzzing its confusion at my presence before zigging off. When I got to the bottom, after leaping my way down the singing dunes, I poured a cup of sand out of each boot. Then I did yoga in my underwear, in the empty desert.

I made a lover's prayer

Mojave. 2009.

A poem, inspired by Gillian Welch's "I made a lover's prayer."


the sharp, sweet ache of loneliness slides into me
it has its own tang
like blood on the tongue

fall is come to wrap me in its arms of early dusk

there isn't anyone else.
not the man that i dream of;
not that man that i hope for.
there isn't anyone else.

Dawn in the Mojave

Dawn woke me up.

I was sleeping in the Mojave Desert, on my way to Utah. I hadn't bothered to set up my tent, which meant that star, and then moon, and then sunlight was bright enough to wake me. I was completely alone--the nearest road was six miles away, where I could hear an occasional car sling past.

The wire towers had hummed, loudly, last night. They were still going when I fell asleep, just three hours after dark--5:30 p.m. in early November. But when the moon rose, I slowly realized that I couldn't hear a sound. The wires were quiet, and so was everything else. As I listened, a few small animal sounds skittered toward me, or away, and then were gone. The emptiness of sound was complete.