Mojave Desert, California archives

1.24.2006
Volume 1 - Mojave Desert, California
It has become almost customary to start off with some sort of a disclaimer in this section. Maybe I’m falling into a pattern. Warning – this will be a long one, or Warning – this will be a short one (which ends up being the longest one yet), or Warning – I haven’t written in a while in case you’d thought I fell into an abandoned mine and disappeared, and my personal favorite Warning – what you’re about to read will make no sense whatsoever. So I disclaim all these things and more for this, the first entry of perhaps my last major chapter of adventures.

How’s that for an intro. Don’t hold me to it though. Jay-Z, Eminem, and even Weezer all told the world they were done making music only to keep on keeping on. Was it a marketing ploy, or simply the growing pains of artists trying their best to escape from a life they love and hate at the same time? I empathize with my boy Slim. I am in the midst of a life of adventure, risk, and meaning but one without a solid sense of community. And so it is with bittersweet zeal that I announce that yet again I am venturing off into the great unknown to prove to the those interested enough to pay attention that it is possible to live a life of no regrets, to do things for the pure joy of experiencing them, and to follow your dreams without succumbing to a vinyl-siding life of anonymity.

If you knew me back in the summer of ot4, you may recall a little trip I took across our great nation along Route 66 to the promised land of Los Angeles. It was a good trip. Nothing is perfect, however, and I distinctly remember one particular section of road where we broke with Route 66 in order to get to LA as soon as humanly possible. What notorious location could cause a man of integrity such as myself to give up his dream of traveling the entire Route 66 for the sake of convenience? What God-awful piece of land could be so forsaken that I would drive on the slab of Interstate concrete that destroyed the lives of thousands of small townfolks across the West. Ah the mighty Mojave Desert. I don’t know exactly what I said about the desert the last time I drove through it without air conditioning but it probably involved these key phrases: “the closest to hell I’ve ever been,” “God himself couldn’t survive out here,” “anyone who voluntarily does more than drive through is out of their mind,” “I will never ever come back here again.” When I was in middle school I also vowed to never wear jeans. I hated the things. I like neon pink and green pants with orange stripes and pictures of lizards. I thought jeans were boring. Eventually they stopped making neon pants that fit me as I passed about 7th grade. By then, however, I had embraced the world of denim. I never used to eat vegetables; now I even order green beans at restaurants. Broccoli even! I am a man of my word; sometimes my word just changes. So I find myself now about to embark on a trip to the last place even I ever thought I would go again – the Mojave Desert.

Realistically, the reason I hated it so much two years ago was because it was so darn hot. I will only be there for a few months, and I’ll be leaving just as the thermometer trips 100. And this time I have air conditioning, so I really have nothing to worry about. The question remains, though, what on earth do you do in the middle of the Mojave Desert for four months? If you’re most people in the desert, you sell overpriced gasoline to hot and angry travelers such as my former self who can’t understand why on earth God decided to deprive hundreds of miles of land of any moisture whatsoever. If you’re like me and a few others burned from the same kiln, you work for the Mojave National Preserve, America’s newest and most desolate national park located in the middle of a desert. Contain your shock and awe, did you expect anything less? Here are the facts.

Since before I graduated in May I made the decision that I really didn’t like a lot of what the world of mass communications (my major) had to offer. I never had any desire to sell things to people who would be better served by freeing themselves from the trappings of consumerism (marketing), lying to a sheep-like public about the values of the company lining my pockets who just killed baby seals and wants me to put a “positive spin” on it (public relations), or scare people out of leaving their houses by reporting to them all the murders and abductions that could happen to them if they don’t watch my news station (journalism). I got into communications to make movies that inspired people and made them laugh. I am not ready yet to take on the world of film, however, so I decided to look at my options for when I graduated. It made sense to me to dedicate a portion of my life completely to service. I enjoy community service, and I have been involved in it at various levels for many years. Nothing in terms of national community service really appealed to me, though. I was not ready to give two years to serving the world’s poor through the Peace Corps nor to give a year to the domestically needy through AmeriCorps or other service organizations (though I have the utmost esteem for those who do). Then I found the Student Conservation Association (SCA). I don’t remember exactly where or when I first heard about them, but I did, and I now know it was for a reason. The SCA is a national service organization offering volunteer projects/internships at national parks and other outdoors/environmental conservation-related places around the U.S. The projects last from three months to over a year and can be doing just about anything, though a good chunk of them presuppose some basic education in the sciences (which I do not have). Nevertheless, I have slowly but surely grown to detest a life of working in a cubicle and grown more and more entranced by the idea of working outside. I am not a huge fan of ticks, port-o-potties, rain, wedgies, and other things associated with the Boy Scout camping life, however I love being outdoors and enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. I think my travels to Ecuador, Australia, and across the country made me realize it is silly to spend your life in a box when there is so much world out there to see. The SCA came around and offered the chance to see a part of the country known and protected for its natural beauty, and get an educational grant for doing it. Needless to say I took the bait.

In the back of my mind, this was my plan for a while. I got a job at Etown over the summer that worked out awesome, and I found the chance to go to Disney that was only available to me at that particular time so the SCA got pushed back. The time to get in touch with nature was fast approaching even as I entered Disney, though. I applied for a number of positions and was disappointed to not get any of them, as you may recall reading about. As I left Disney less than two weeks ago I was looking forward to heading home and relaxing while I decided what to do next. I had thrown out everything having to do with SCA. Fate has a way of working everything out in ways you can’t possibly predict, however, and on my drive home I got a call telling me about the position. They offered it to me the next day, and the day after that I accepted. It was a difficult decision, especially since I was trying to enjoy the time I was spending with my loved ones whom I hadn’t seen in months. Then there are the obvious qualms of people who wonder why I do anything I do. My future is not in the Mojave; it’s in Pennsylvania right now. So why, they say, would you waste your time dilly-dallying in a stretch of heat-stricken desert? These people probably aren’t reading this anyway, and that is a question that would take an entire book for me to answer. It is a life philosophy that the majority of people will never understand. Going to the desert to do this was a natural decision, almost organic, like my trip to California years ago. It was something I had to do.

If you’re having trouble grasping it all, think about it like going away to the military. It has become non uncommon to chide me for “leaving my loved ones behind…again.” It is easy to not appreciate what you do not understand. There are those who have problems with the military, myself included, but I know of no one whose distaste for military men and women stems from their lack of dedication to their loved ones. It is quite the opposite in fact. Obviously, it makes relationship difficult. No one is ecstatic about leaving a loved one behind or watching a loved one leave. But soldiers go not to escape life, postpone a career, or to skirt their duties as a citizen. They go to provide for their future; they go because they are dedicated to their loved ones. They go because they believe that they are going to protect something (liberty, freedom, whatever it may be) that they believe to be in danger and worth fighting to save. If a young man or woman enlists for any reason other than an irresistible calling to do so, they probably will not last very long at their post. It is a calling, something that is difficult to understand if it has not been experienced, and something that is impossible to resist. I view my service in the same way. I am going to serve the land that has provided for our species for so thousands of years. I am going to protect this country’s great natural resources so future generations can enjoy them. I am fighting a battle for people’s appreciation of a landscape even I myself once despised. I am not going to escape anything, but to preserve the beauty of God’s creation so that one day I can take my family to a national park and tell my kids that daddy did something meaningful with his life, that he had some small part in ensuring that they could experience it too. Nature has brought me incalculable joy, and I want to do what I can to ensure others have the same opportunities. And don’t think it’s not dangerous. There be scorpions in these parts.

The Mojave was my absolute last choice for places to go. However, the more I have looked into it, the more excited I really am. Apart from the extreme temperatures which don’t hit until May anyway, the area is bursting at the seams with the history that drove me to Route 66 in the first place (which incidentally goes right through the southern part of the Preserve). There are abandoned buildings everywhere. It is a culture built upon the same ideals that drove Route 66. Dreams. There are old gold mines, homesteads, ghost towns, patches of land that people would have killed for 150 years ago that are now as empty as Paris Hilton’s head. It is fascinating. So I am very excited to go and work. First, what I’ll be doing.

From what I understand, I will be performing duties typically associated with a park ranger. I will spend a lot of time staffing a visitor center and selling books at the educational bookstore. I will be a general point of contact for people planning to spend time in the park, possibly their only human contact out there in the middle of nowhere. I will also be working on doing something to improve the sign system throughout the park, which apparently needs a little help. One day every two weeks I am on mandatory park exploration day, and three days every two weeks I get a long weekend to go explore the many sights within a few hours drive of my new home. I get free housing, $75 a week for food, and all expenses paid travel to and from the site. It is a pretty sweet deal. That’s about all I know about my duties so far. I’m sure I’ll have loads to say after working for a while.

The park itself is an interesting piece of land. To clarify, it a national preserve, not a national park. There are not many national preserves around for good reason. The only difference as far as I can tell is that preserves allow limited hunting and parks do not. Apparently it started with a patch of land that was up for National Park status in Alaska. Environmentalists wanted it protected, but the hunting lobby is strong, and they did not want to give it up. The National Preserve was the result of lots of compromise on both sides. So a Preserve completely satisfies neither extreme, but ensures they can at least get along together. Mojave allows hunting of mostly mule deer and quail in the fall (luckily the time when I will be gone; I would not have agreed to work there if I had to participate or encourage hunting), lets a few private property owners keep their land (mostly mines) within Preserve boundaries, and lets ranchers keep their cattle grazing on desert shrubs. Despite these minor inconveniences, 50% of the land is Congressionally designated wilderness area, meaning no traces of humanity other than walking can happen on that land. It provides an excellent mixture. Anyway, the Preserve was established in 1994 as a result of the national Desert Protection Act. So there was a lot of fight to create it. It lies roughly between Interstates 15 on the north and 40 on the south in southeastern California (in case your map was made before 1994).

Turns out there is a lot more than nothing out there. There are tons of trees, animals, and as many as 10 different ecosystems that have developed within the land the park protects. There is an incredible variation on altitude as well. The town I’ll be living in is about 900 feet above sea level, but the mountains less than an hour away rise to almost 8000 feet! And there are some cool animals from kit foxes (about the size of cats) to coyotes to tortoises to jackrabbits and roadrunners to bighorn sheep to the creepy crawly lizards, snakes, and bugs. And lots of wild donkeys. There are lava flows, cinder cones, mountains, cacti, Joshua trees, abandoned mines, ghost towns, 700 foot sand dunes, and enormous dry lakebeds. The Mojave Road, which I have discovered was a trading route and the main path through the desert as far back as the 1600s, even runs through the middle. More than half the “roads” are dirt or gravel. There is little to compare it to in the east. Out there everything is super spread out. You can travel for hours on the interstate between gas stations. More than a thousand people makes a big town. In fact the ghost towns that lie within the Preserve’s boundaries appear to never have been very big. They were mostly just old mining posts that died and were reduced to rubble after the mine was stripped.

Then there is my specific work location. It’s called Kelso Depot. During the era when steam engines ruled the land a man named Harvey set up a chain of Harvey houses across the country in remote areas passed by the Santa Fe Railroad. For travelers, they offered a place to rest for the night and food, long before hotels were born. It also offered a place for the train to fill up with supplies, mainly water. Also, he staffed his houses with women. Gasp! At the time, however, about the only thing women did outside other than raise kids was teach. He was one of the first to offer women the opportunity to work and make money. So the Union Pacific was getting a bad rap because the Santa Fe had all these Harvey Houses that were drawing so much attention that they decided to start their own. One of these in the middle of the Mojave was Kelso Depot. At one time, there was a whole town around what would now be called simply a train station. In its heyday the place was bustling with people. As diesel engines replaced steam, however, trains had no need to stop in the middle of the desert to pick up water to power them up mountains of central California. Kelso dwindled, the town disappeared, and the depot shut down in the ‘80s. It sat empty for over 20 years. The Union Pacific tried to tear down since there really was no reason for them to own an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, but some people were fascinated with the building’s history and fought to preserve it. The train people sold it to the Bureau of Land Management who by now had control of most of this desert land for $1. In 1994, with the establishment of the Preserve, it transferred hands again. Many years and over $5 million dollars later, Kelso Depot is open once again. The Preserve spent lots of time and money restoring the entire building and turning it into the main visitor center, and it just opened in the fall. The official grand opening celebration will be during the time I’m there. Freight trains still roll by, but now the building houses museum exhibits, restored rooms, a theater, and a bookstore. They are planning to reopen the lunch counter (i.e. restaurant by next fall). What a cool place to work!

But it is literally in the middle of nowhere. Couldn’t be more than different from Disney if I tried. I am living in a town called Baker. Look on a California map to find it. The town is located off I-15, the main route from LA to Las Vegas. It sprung up literally as a stop for people traveling between the two big cities, because there is nothing around anywhere. Its economy is built on expensive gasoline and fast food. It is a pit stop and not much more. How many people does it take to fill the gas tanks of those enormous Hummers all the rappers drive to Vegas? Between 600 and 1000, depending on who you believe. That is the entire population of the town of Baker. There is nothing to the north or south but desert. To the east after about an hour and a half is Las Vegas (not counting Primm, a town just over the Nevada line that literally has nothing more than three huge casinos all owned by the same person). To the west one hour is Barstow, a city of about 25,000. About two hours past Barstow is LA. (Actually, there is also Zzyzx. It was a health spa set up by this medical quack that has since been turned over to the University of California as a desert research center. It’s between Baker and Barstow.) It occurred to me today for the first time how small Baker really is. My college in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania was a small school by all accounts, but even they had 1,800 students, most of whom lived on campus. The housing complex I lived at in Orlando probably had at least 1,500 kids. The entire town of Baker has 1000 people at the most, with no one else around for dozens of miles. It is theoretically possible that the geographic size of Baker could be less than that of Elizabethtown College!

But fear not, Baker does have one magnificent claim to fame – the world’s tallest thermometer. And it wins by a long shot. This digital (no mercury involved) beauty towers 134 feet tall in honor of the highest temperature ever recorded in the United States (just a little north in Death Valley). The thermometer is part of a complex owned by Bun Boy, a tiny (i.e. there are two of them) desert fast food franchise. The other one is in Barstow. Still they claim themselves as the famous Bun Boy restaurant and even have a motel. There are two other motels in town. Maybe they are motor courts; either way they are the types of places I would stay in but wouldn’t recommend that someone concerned with comfort patronize. It is actually kind of sad. Motor courts used to be so cool and revolutionary. You had little houses almost, some even with garages. But they only held 20 families at the most probably, so someone came up with the idea to build rooms on top of one another and created the motel. Motor courts started showing their age, and now the ones that are left are generally dirty and full of strange odors. Even motels are looked down upon these days, as the corporations thought “if we can have two stories, why not three or four or twenty?” There are no Holiday Inn motels around but there are lots of indoor hallway-access hotels that tower across suburban America. And they have continental breakfasts. Of course the resort is it’s own beast, an ode to the wretched extremes that the rich will go to in order to ensure that they spend their thousands of dollars a night wisely. I am still not completely sure what constitutes an inn.

At any rate, there are no inns, hotels, or resorts in Baker. Just three motels, a few gas stations, a handful of fast food joints, four sit down restaurants, a school, and I suppose some houses. (I’ll be living in a trailer with the woman who runs the bookstore at Kelso. Whether she is a young or old woman I have yet to discover.) And that, my friends, is my story. Who knows what will happen. Rest assured I will do lots of exploring, drive off-road in a minivan, wonder how on earth it could possibly be so hot, spend lots of time missing my beautiful girlfriend, try to get weary desert travelers to buy Revolution t-shirts, and hopefully see the clearest view of the night sky I have ever laid eyes on. I do not have a phone in my trailer, so my cell phone will (God willing) be my main source of contact. I will have sporadic Internet access, and a postal address. Send water…I hear it’s scarce out there. All this info is good from January 29 until June, when I will return to the crowded suburbs of northeast Ohio to decide how to make money and enjoy life and make a difference for the next few years, decide where/when/if I should go to more school, and more or less settle down after entirely too long of moving around every few months. Until then, I miss you a lot!


Jeremy Ebersole
Mojave National Preserve
P.O. Box 241
Baker, CA 92309

If you want to send a package (which would make you my greatest hero) change the P.O. Box 241 part to 58650 Cal Trans Ave. and send it UPS. Neither the postal service nor FedEx delivers packages to where I’ll be.





2.17.2006
Volume 2 - Mojave Desert, California
Ahhhh! I didn’t realize I was so dependant on technology. However, after going without Internet or computer access of any kind for a little over two weeks, I can generally say that I am unhealthily addicted to email. But hey you try living in a town of 600 where the closest anything but gas and fast food is an hour away with no TV, intermittent cell phone, no house phone, five radio stations, and no newspaper, and see if you feel disconnected. But after patiently finding other ways to spend my nights (i.e. sleeping) I was rewarded with 100+ emails to read. And now, after finally wading through all the band mailing list emails in my Inbox, I am ready to report on one of the most dramatically different three weeks of my life…and try to keep you interested for the next half hour or so.

You are hopefully already familiar with where I am so I will dispense with the formalities. I took the Interstate across the country. It was long and rather uninteresting as Interstates tend to be. While not as memorable as Route 66 a few years back, I did have an excellent travel partner and got to see a few areas of the country that I haven’t seen before. (I now only have 12 states to go before I’ve seen them all!) First is Nebraska. I was impressed. Now I know very little about Nebraska, but what I do know I like. I have one friend from the corn state, and have met in passing a few others who are all very amiable. Over the summer while working at a national track and field event mostly starring inner city kids, I was surprised to see a group of possibly Norwegians walk through the door, all pristine looking with shaggy blonde hair and big blue eyes. Nebraskans. There was nothing inherently special about the state. It was just a very welcoming and homey place. The capitol was pretty and safe and the food was good. If I had a word to describe Nebraska it would be “nice.” Really nice. Another exciting feature on the Nebraska map is the infamous Boot Hill. Yes, the Boot Hill. Huh? Well it is more legend than fact, but this was the almost mythical place where all the bad guys of the Old West were buried with their boots still on. In the folklore of American history, this is up there with the OK Coral. The worst robbers and criminals were buried at Boot Hill. Turns out it’s a tiny cemetery in the middle of a small suburb. All the bodies have been moved, though there were never very many to begin with, and most of them were normal people. But still, it was really cool. And there were houses right by it. I would not want to live next to this place. A graveyard maybe, but a legendary graveyard? No thank you.

Soon after Nebraska we came into Colorado. When I think of Colorado, I think of huge snowy mountains for miles and miles. Too many Coors ads on TV I guess. The vast majority of the state is either Midwest-style plains or rocky desert mountains. But in the middle, oh those snow-capped peaks. Denver is literally right at the eastern edge of the Rockies. You see them from everywhere, and those things just shoot straight out of the ground. One minute you’re in a big city, the next you’re itching for a John Denver marathon. It was gorgeous but not very wide. Going west, we were in the cold mountains only about an hour and a half. There was lots of snow and it was very cold. But we saw mountain goats or bighorn sheep or something else you don’t see in Ohio right by the highway. I wouldn’t want to drive there much, but if I lived there I think I’d be content to stay in my little neighborhood. Cozy is a good word. There were just tons of these little cozy towns in small valleys between these mountains blanketed in snow. Lots of skiing and lots of snow. I love little mountain towns. Sierra Madre, California. Sedona, Arizona. Idaho Springs, Colorado. These places are amazing. They have main streets and arts councils and good restaurants and beautiful scenery and just everything that makes life beautiful. But any town relocated to the mountains or the beach ups its value in my book quite a bit.

After a disappointing lack of buffalo sightings and a day or so of desert, we arrived in the town of Baker, California (population 300-600 depending on which sign you believe). This is my new home. Life is different here. I will attempt to describe it to you, but you cannot really imagine what it is like. There are no traffic lights, but there is one four-way stop sign. There is one school district with about 100 kids K-12. There are no house, not one; only trailers. About 20% of the buildings are abandoned. There is one well-paved road that begins and ends on the Interstate. There is a county prison, a senior center, a tiny park, a community services building, two churches (one Catholic, one Protestant, both with services in Spanish and English; I go to the Protestant church which has a regular attendance of about five), a post office, a few towing places, about seven gas stations, about 10 fast food restaurants, three full-service restaurants, three small independent motels, a beef jerky store, a mine of some kind, two general stores, and the world’s tallest thermometer. That is everything in the town. There is nothing but a lone gas station or two for an hour to the north, east, and west. It’s about two and a half hours to the closest anything to the south. And at night it is blacker than a smoker’s lungs. This is the Mojave Desert. I like it, but I would not want to live here forever. It is very different in a way that is difficult to describe. The area is obviously economically depressed, but the people are kind and generous. We realize that we are all here together in the middle of nowhere and we get along just fine. If they were true isolationists they would be out farther in the middle of nowhere, and some of them are.

Within the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve are a number of “inholders.” These are people who own land within the boundaries of a National Park. Out here, that means you live on a dirt road, probably in a trailer, an hour away from a post office, and probably tend to keep to yourself. It is a haven for reclusive artists, fugitive criminals, and nature buffs who really want to live at one with the land or at least away from prying eyes. They are a special breed, as I think all are out here. It takes something special to thrive where it gets 120 degrees for three months a year. Thank goodness I’ll be gone by the time it hits 110. The area itself is absolutely fascinating though. It is so rich in history I couldn’t possibly bore you with all the details, but ask me about it and I could go on for hours. Suffice it to say, the area was once more inhabited by humans then it is now. Ghost towns about. The area is inseparably linked to Native Americans, ranchers, homesteaders, miners, and railroaders. Anywhere there was a mountain, there was a mine. Anywhere there was above-ground water, there was a settlement. Towns by the dozens were here at one point, all of which have disappeared with the decline of rail travel and the depletion of mineral resources. But the plant and animal life here keeps the area alive in between the rusted truck beds and stone ruins.

The closest city is Barstow, about an hour west. On my first trip to the big city, I stopped at an area called Afton Canyon. I was driving the company car, a four wheel drive Chevy Trailblazer. This was my first experience with true off-roading. It is like driving on ice, or pins and needles. Every inch you slowly creep forward you wonder if you may have to walk 20 miles when your car gets stuck and your cell phone doesn’t work. But it is exhilarating, and there is no other way to see the heart of the desert. I didn’t make it all the way through the canyon because I decided driving through a small river was a bad idea. Backing up on a dirt hill was also a bad idea, but it was the lesser of two evils.

I have had the opportunity to explore a few areas within the boundaries of the Preserve. The most fascinating yet is the lava tube. I am not perfectly clear on how it formed, but it is essentially a small cave nestled on the side of a cinder cone (a mound made of big chunks of hard lava). There are two small openings to the outside world where light comes in and forms a perfect and beautiful beam of light. It was awesome. On top of the cone I could see an eagle soaring below us on the mountain. You have to realize from a high vantage point it is possible to see for literally a hundred miles. Another adventure came in the form of the imposing Clark Mountain. It wasn’t the mountain, but the rocky road leading around it that tripped me up. The road was nervous to begin with, but when it dead ended into an enormous pit mine that wasn’t on my map, I had one of those any last wishes moments again. This was no old guy with a beard and a pick axe riding a mine car into an old wooden shack type of mine. This was a many football field sized hole in the side of a mountain with fences and lots of “DANGER” signs. I am a curious person, but no man should be curious enough to wander within falling distance of an abandoned mine. There are as many ways to die in there as there are grains of sand in the desert. So I left. More recently I visited an iron ore mine without fences up. So I jumped in. Ha! I did walk close to the edge, and that was scary enough to keep me away from mines for a while, for the sake of my future kids and the fact that I would like them to exist. Then there is Cima, a one time railroad town that today consists of a post office and general store, both in the same building and both run by the same woman…for the past 30 years.

Let us not forget the oasis at Zzyzx. To many it is simply an exit off the Interstate that appears to lead to nowhere, but it is actually an incredible place. It lies at the base of a mountain on the edge of a dry lake bed. Apparently this large area was once a big lake. Now it is a sea of white. From a distance it looks like snow, but close up it is revealed to be hard crusty salt as far as the eye can see. There is still a water source there though, and that water attracted people to the area for centuries. Naturally, it was first used by Native Americans as a major stopping point on their nomadic wanderings. Later it was an army outpost along a route used by wagon trail pioneers and mail carriers to protect them from Indian attacks. It was a salt mine, a railroad stop (the railroad is gone now, all of its parts sold for scrap metal during WWII), and a health spa run by a benevolent if medically challenged radio evangelist. Now it is a desert research center run by the state university, but there are still awesome old buildings, cracked swimming pools, stone fountains, and lots of water and palm trees. People from all over the world used to come to the heath spa for free. The evangelist really wanted to help people, and even planned a whole community out here. Unfortunately, he never owned the land and was eventually evicted.

The place where I actually work is called Kelso Depot. The town it served was started in 1904 and got its name from a guy whose last name was pulled out of a hat. The town was always dependant on the railroad, and during WWII, on an iron ore mine a few miles south. It all started when the railroad built a depot there because it was a good source of water. Steam engines at the time needed lots of water to run. Going east from Kelso, they also needed helper engines (like tugboats) to help get them up the steep grade going into the next town. So Kelso was born. The present depot was built in 1924 and housed a restaurant and overnight lodging for railroaders. The depot shut down in the 1960s, and the restaurant closed in 1985. The building then sat empty until October. So it is really cool to work there. It is miles from anything, though the one time large town (about 2000) now is reduced to 12, mostly temporary railroad maintenance folks. But enough history.

Well maybe a little more. In Barstow is a building similar to Kelso Depot. It is a restored Harvey House called Casa del Desierto. Harvey Houses are a long story, but it is essentially like Kelso except with a hotel for anyone and pretty girls serving the food. The place is beautiful, but even nicer is the view from nearby Lookout Point. Now it’s not actually called that, but that is what it is. Just like in every great movie you’ve ever seen, Barstow has a legitimate lookout point from which you can see the entire city. I didn’t even know they were real! The only bummer is you can’t drive to it; but hey, it’s only a short walk. In between Barstow and Baker there is not a lot other than a gas station called Jeremy’s, an abandoned water park, a tourist ghost town, and supposedly the most important archeological site in North America. I went to this dig site, and while I had no idea what exactly was going on, I heard word that they found artifacts there that some scientists estimate to be over 200,000 years old, making them the oldest human artifacts in the U.S. of A. It was all very scientific.

Now Mojave National Preserve is not the only desert park in the area. For the even more masochistic is the 90 degrees in the winter haven of Death Valley, so named because it is likely you will die if you enter in the summer. It really is a neat park though. They have enormous basins of salt like the one at Zzyzx, one being the lowest above-ground point in the Western Hemisphere at 242 feet below sea level (the lowest is the Dead Sea). You can actually look up on the mountain at the sea level sign. It’s really interesting the difference between national parks. Mojave is pretty sparse as far as services go. Death Valley, which is even more remote, has a hotel, gas station, and even restaurants, however. There were a lot of gorgeous views and rock formations in the ground that would make you think you were on another planet. I even got to see a huge abandoned mine, the old school wooden kind. I kept my distance though. Joshua Tree National Park is in the other direction from Baker. Not a whole lot to report there, other than the existence of a real live oasis. This isn’t like a Sahara oasis in the middle of miles of sand, but it is hordes of palm trees nestled in the middle of mountains covered in nothing but cacti and brown bushes. There was water and everything; it was very beautiful. The coolest part of my trip there, however, wasn’t even in the park. At the southern edge was the most enormous collection of windmills I have ever seen. Not the Dutch kind mind you, just big white poles with windmills on top. The power these things generate I am pretty sure supplies the entire rich elderly golf community of Palm Springs. There were literally hundreds of them as far as the eye could see. The desert seems to be the place for larges things. There is an enormous field of solar panels nearby and a special section of an army base with deep space research antennas the size of football fields. There is lots of room out here.

Continuing with the random more or less chronological happenings of my recent life, they have a neat trail by the Preserve’s other visitor’s center where they have actually stuck metal rings in the side of the mountain to help you climb through a few crevices and get an awesome view of the desert below you. Another awesome view came at the end of a hike I did with a 65 year old man who could have lived in the mountains for years if he had to. The man knew more about rocks and nuts and animal tracks than I could hope to keep up with. We climbed a mountain together, and this guy was setting the pace. I only hope I can be as active when I am retired! He told me I should be a writer and write about him and the school kids who held up our cavern tour before we went on the hike. Remember all those times you went on field trips and thought they were boring because it was all science stuff. Turns out the tour guide may not have liked you either. Rocks are for looking at, not causing avalanches with boys and girls.

Last week was particularly harrowing. I was out and about exploring the park in the government’s SUV when I realized I was going too fast for a road made largely of rocks. I realized this after throwing my car around enough to hear what sounded like metal screeching on metal following a series of dips that almost had me hitting the ceiling. I decided it was time to go back. Good thing too, because pretty soon I was driving with three tires. I got out to look at the most exploded piece of rubber I had ever laid eyes on. This wasn’t a flat; it looked like someone had gashed holes in about 10 places around the tire. Turns out rocks are sharp. If I couldn’t have gotten a hold of a ranger, I might have been there for a long time changing that thing. Then the next day I discovered first hand that the desert is not only hot, it is also very dry. Duh. Orlando was humid; Baker is the opposite. Apparently my nasal passages like more moisture than they’re getting so they decided to dry up and start bleeding. This at least is the theory for why I was spitting up blood last week. Since I’m still alive, I believe they were right. I am now the proud owner of a humidifier that I diligently clean every night. Speaking of blood, and in all seriousness, I saw something on a recent trip to Las Vegas that I will never forget. Death. I have seen accidents before, but never have I so surely recognized the shape of a human body inside a zipped bag. It was chilling. Please, please, please wear your seatbelt and slow the heck down.

Vegas is another story. I have been to many cities and I can honestly say this is my least favorite. Sin City is a perfect name. It is crowded, dirty, over-sexed, sensational, and extravagant. There are thousands of homeless wandering the streets because they lost their money in a casino large enough to house the homeless of the entire country hiding behind neon signs taller than skyscrapers. That city is everything it is made out to be and more. It’s got everything but a soul. Including an awesome car museum. There are Rolls-Royces in this place that put Hummers to shame. These 1930s British behemoths are the size of a yacht. A mother mountain lion could raise her young inside this car’s radiator it was so big. But it better be big if you’re going to pay a couple million for it. The one other good thing I found in midst of cocktail waitresses was a deep fried Oreo. We’ve all seen them at county fairs, but few have dared clog their arteries with such an atrocity. Some things are worth trying once to say you’ve done it, and chocolate cookies dipped in fat are one of them. Honestly, it tasted like a funnel cake…but a little more sickening. Once was enough.

My most recent adventure involved something even scarier than bloody noses and collapsing mines. Sewing. I just got my uniform, but apparently nature people are also supposed to be good at sewing, because I had to sew a patch onto my sleeve with my own two hands. Now the sewing machine was invented about 130 years ago, but we al know the government is notoriously slow with catching up, so we still don’t have them in the National Park Service. This I possibly the most frustrating thing a human being can do. About an hour in I thought to myself, “These are the best years of my life, and I’ve just spent 60 minutes of them trying to fit an electron-thin piece of string through a proton-thick needle hole, without any luck.” And yet I persevered and accomplished perhaps my greatest achievement ever and forever – I sewed two patches on two sleeves…and they were straight! We’ll see if they stay on in the wash.

So almost three weeks into my strangest adventure yet, I can honestly say (believe it or not) the government is a better employer than Mickey Mouse. I am working with passionate people who care about what I think and are happy to give me days off. Maybe it makes my nose bleed, maybe I have to drive an hour for groceries, maybe the snakes come out next month, and maybe I haven’t seen the color green in weeks, but this is fun. I am proud to be here and having a jolly time. It is a fitting capstone to a year of post-college exploration. But dang do I miss Pennsylvania. Until next time, enjoy this guide book-like volume of travel stories. The witty anecdotes will surely return. Go sledding for me, but honestly, stay out of the mines.

Jeremy





3.27.2006
Volume 3 - Mojave Desert, California
“Life is good. Life is great. Life is unbelievable. Life is hard. Life is cruel. Life is so beautiful.” What better way to start a new day than with a quote from the true poets of the boy band generation – LFO? I can think of none. Yes hopefully you’re life is good, great, and unbelievable. And hopefully hard too, to make things interesting. I have done and seen a lot since we last spoke, as can be expected. Some less than expected events have transpired, however, that I would love to relate to you. You may be under the same impression I was that the last thing you would expect to see in the desert is snow. But snow it has. Many times. Inches. We closed roads because of snow. I have taken alternate routes because of snow. The thing with life out here is that elevation is everything. Where I live we’re at about 1000 feet. However, areas of my park up in the mountains are close to 5000 feet. Snow melts before it gets all the way down to me, but in the 20 degrees colder and 4000 feet higher mountains, they are less fortunate. So never let it be said that it doesn’t snow in the desert. In three months it will be 120 degrees, but last week it was snowing.

I may or may not have mentioned before that there are literally hundreds of abandoned mines within the boundaries of the park. You can’t get to most of them without a big truck or SUV because they are on sandy or rocky roads far from help. Luckily, I get to use our government vehicle to explore the park every week so I know what to tell visitors. I have had the chilling experience of visiting some of these ghost mines. It is interesting enough being in an area that at one time was so lively that is now empty. These are areas that provided people with a livelihood and hopes and dreams. Many of them look like they were abandoned in a heartbeat. There are signs and buildings and machines everywhere, like the owners heard there was a volcano coming and just left with the clothes on their back. These remnants of the past just sit there, completely untouched by anything but nature. So why not touch them? Well if you go in an old mine, you’re more likely to stay in than come out, so the smart ones leave the places alone. So you can imagine the feeling of standing in front of an abandoned hole with machines all around knowing that you will probably die if you go in. It is exciting. I visited one really old mine (the old wooden prospector kind) that was still in great shape. There were wooden buildings everywhere, and you could even see where the entrance was, though it’s now caved in. The creepiest of all, however, was a more recent cinder mine. If your car is resting on cinder blocks right now, you may have gotten your supports from this very mine. This thing was a pit mine, or an enormous hole in the ground with giant earth moving machines and buildings and signs and lots and lots of black volcanic rock (which is essentially what cinder is). The site was such that I, the guy ventured into the Apache Death Cave two years ago, was too scared to even get out of my car. It was wicked.

History plays a big part in just about everything out here. There isn’t a lot around now, but there was at one time, and most of the fascination of the area lies in these remnants. Today we have huge mines where trucks the size of skyscrapers haul heavy rocks out of the ground and onto private railroads where they are efficiently processed into jut about anything. This is the case in the largest operating mine in the U.S., which I visited. The visitor’s center also offered fascinating insight into the history of mining as well. Borax is a name for a number of minerals containing the chemical element boron. This stuff is used in a number of household cleaning products and building materials. Most early borax deposits were located at a mine discovered in the middle of what is now Death Valley. It was even more desolate and isolated then than it is now. These miners found all this great borax, but they were also hundreds of miles from the closest vestige of civilization in the hottest, driest part of the country. So the created the 20 Mule Team. They tied 18 mules and two horses to enormous wooden carts of borax led by two men, with a giant jug of water and marched them all across hundreds of miles of mountainous uninhabited desert to the nearest train station. And for the many years of their existence, they never lost a single life. It’s incredible.

Almost as incredible as the pork chops at Nipton. These things are seriously two inches thick. Nipton was an old railroad town like the countless others out here. It fell out of use and was abandoned like all the other railroad towns. But then someone bought the entire town and redid everything. Granted the entire town consists of a hotel, restaurant, and store, but it is awesome. It must be the most isolated little bed and breakfast anywhere. The restaurant is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. You walk in and are more than likely the only one there. The chef and only employee is sitting watching TV and hands you a menu. A half hour later, after he has gone to the back and cooked your dinner, he brings you not a greasy grilled cheese or other diner food, but a slab of pork finer than you’ll find in any steakhouse. And it’s all a labor of love. Nipton, population 42, is worth far more than a thousand Primms put together. Primm is a “town” right on the border of California and Nevada. Gambling is legal in Nevada, but not California. I have decided I don’t think I can live in a state with casinos. People tell me there is more in Nevada than casinos, but I am struggling to see it. Primm consists of three enormous Vegas-style themed casinos smack in the middle of the desert with a tiny apartment complex for employees. What do they offer for your hard-earned money? Well they have dang good buffets and a roller coaster that’ll leave you with a couple days of a sore neck, but that’s about all. Everything out here is just…odd.

Now two years ago I drove Route 66 all the way from Chicago to LA…except California. It was just way too hot in my air conditioner-less car to drive through the Mojave in May the long way. Finally I got the chance to complete my journey and have now driven every inch of drivable Route 66 left in this country. Route 66 in general is incredible, but this California section was very very different. It is completely empty. Gas stations are literally hundreds of miles apart with nothing in between. There were more, but with the coming of the Interstates, there is no longer a need for frequent gas along a forgotten desert highway. There are no less than 10 abandoned or nearly abandoned towns through the Mojave desert on 66. They range from towns that actually have a few hundred residents to many that are just ruins or even completely empty, not a man made structure in sight. It was an awesome drive. And I got to see LA for the first time since living there. Still smoggy. A very interesting gentleman has actually purchased a town called Amboy on the old road and is planning to restore it much like what was done in Nipton. There is an old motor court, gas station, and café that are soon to undergo restoration. But this guy’s story is really neat. His name is Albert something, and he is an Asian man who owns a small chain of rotisserie chicken fast food restaurants aimed at a Hispanic audience. Rotisserie chicken and burritos all in one meal. What makes it even more bizarre is where Juan Pollo chicken is headquartered. The gentleman purchased the site of the very first McDonald’s in San Bernardino when it went up for sale, turned it into a free McDonald’s shrine/museum and set up his headquarters. The original McDonald’s building was long gone, and the site had been in many hands since, but this is the birthplace of the restaurant that for better or worse changed the way the world eats. Only in California, as they say, will you find an Asian man who owns a small Mexican rotisserie chicken fast food joint fixing up an old piece of Americana from his base inside a shrine he built to the competition. What a great guy!

And there’s more. For a long time there was a phone booth in the middle of the desert miles and miles from a paved road or occupied house. This pay phone was lovingly called “the loneliest phone booth in America.” I agree. The phone attracted quite a cult following and was eventually removed. Whether the park, or the phone company, or locals mad at the increased traffic removed it no one knows or will admit, but the thing is definitely gone. I went to visit the former site of the 1980s-era blue and white box and can confirm that it is many miles of difficult dirt road from even the closest hint of life and that there is absolutely no feature whatsoever there to indicate that there was once a phone booth. It is amazing how easily the past can literally just disappear. But, really, this thing is waaaaay out there. Lonely is right. A much larger and older structure a couple hundred miles away still stands and gets thousands of visitors a day. Hoover Dam is almost as cool as Mt. Rushmore. This is an engineering marvel. It is really really big. It is definitely as big as you think it is, and very straight down off a ledge that is easier to fall off of than anything they would build now. The scale of this place is awesome though. We would never ever do anything like it today when corporations are spending billions of dollars developing the cheapest plastic with which to send to China to make our toys. It’s not America, though, it’s the world. There are no modern wonders. We live in carbon copy houses in carbon copy suburbs, and listen to the same voice on the radio and surf the same sites on the Web. We are efficiently boring. There are no cathedrals, no dams, no monuments, no pyramids; nothing is done on a grand scale. Maybe it is a waste to build a giant marble angel on top of Hoover Dam so future civilizations will know something great happened here, but it’s a better use of my taxes than the 1/5 of a fighter jet that that same amount paid for. I hope someday future generations find the ruins of our fighter jets and learn better.

On a happier note, I was pleased to find a little alpine ski resort area only a few hours from my arid desert. Big Bear Lake is an awesome little area high in the wooded mountains where the air smells like pine needles and the water is bluer than Paris Hilton’s eyes. I don’t ski nor do I have a desire to, but man ski towns are cool! Leaving the lake is a two-lane road called Rim of the World. I love windy mountain roads, and this is probably the best. You really feel like you are at the edge of the earth, driving through cold woodsy mountains inches from falling off and looking out over miles and miles of LA metropolis below you. There is a high school up there where these kids leave class every day and see the most breathtaking view imaginable. I’d never get any work done. My high school had a nice view of the post office.

I have had a few visitors these days as well. They have done a great deal to keep me from getting lonely and keep my spirits up for the day when I return to my homeland in the east. I first received a Valentine’s visit from the most beautiful girl in the world. The best and worst part of her visit was when she left. There is nothing quite like saying goodbye to someone who means so much to you and knowing you will not see them for three months, and at the same time knowing that your distance has forced you to be strong and loyal. And the payoff for great struggles is a great reward. So I eagerly wait for the reunion. My awesome grandparents also visited, and we had a wonderful time. We visited a chocolate factory entirely different from the Hershey beast I am used to. This was a small factory with a walk-through tour and a generous helping of free samples. Ethel M Chocolates was my first introduction to the world of fancy chocolate. This is mail order quality, the kind you might give for Valentine’s Day. Truffles, and crèmes, and liquors and other chocolate outside gooey inside words I can’t pronounce. It is expensive and delicious. And they have a water recycling plant on property that produces the most breathable air I have inhaled in months! I also learned during this visit that I miss pizzerias. In Orlando, I missed coffee shops, even though I never really went to them. Here I want a pizzeria. Not even a Pizza Hut, just a little mom and pop pizza place like the ones in my college town. So enjoy your calzones boys and girls for those of us eating frozen pizza without near enough pepperoni every week.

There are many places I can go here that I could never go in Pennsylvania, however. Take sand dunes for example. There is very little sand in Pennsylvania, but here it is quite bountiful. Now the Mojave is not full of wavy dunes and mirages like the Sahara, but we do have an area known as the Devil’s Playground full of 700 foot high piles of sand. I climbed them. It was hard. Climbing uphill on sand is like walking on leftover cafeteria slop. You gain two feet and lose one with every step. I was pushing hard in about 30 second spurts then resting for a couple minutes as I caught my breath and convinced my legs to not give out on me. This continued for about a half hour till I finally reached the top. Wind is the main cause of these dunes, meaning it was really cold at the top. So I came back down…in about 30 seconds. I think my ears had trouble adjusting to the altitude change of running down a couple hundred feet in under a minute. I was taking giant four foot leaps down the side of this dune with sand racing down all around me. It was intense and awesome, and my groin hurt when I was done. I also ventured to probably the most remote easily accessible area of our park. After a two hour drive largely on dirt roads and a couple of wrong turns dead ending at large drops, my friend and I found our way to an old fort. The remnants of this loneliest fort in American military history sit beside the only consistently running stream in the park. The place was established along an old route used by settlers and mail wagons in the 1860s. It lasted a few years before it was finally shut down because everyone assigned to the post deserted after a few months. Walking by the creek was like entering another area of the country. There were actually trees and grass and flowers and all those other signs of vibrant life so absent in the rest of the desert. And we walked through an awesome gorge filled with huge chunks of dried mud, lots of mountain lion scat (the politely scientific word for poop), and crazy rock formations around every corner. It was the most isolated I’ve felt out here, so I’m glad I wasn’t alone.

The fort area stands in sharp contrast to a recent trip to San Diego, the land of perfect weather and heaps of gnarly inhabitants. I drove and drove and drove, but finally arrived in the city I can still attest to as the finest big city in America. There are orchards of fruit on the hills, culture, beaches, beautiful people, and of course sunny skies all around. It is a fine city. I even got to venture to its more congested northern neighbor in LA and see an Australian band play with my good friends from the land down under. All in all, it was a trip that brought back a lot of memories and caused me to wait in a lot of traffic. But it was worth it. I love seeing friends I haven’t seen in years in places I haven’t been in years. And I was actually out socializing. I would socialize here in the desert except there really is no opportunity. There is no social network, no one my age, nothing to do except eat fast food. So it was excellent to feel like a kid again going out and relishing the thought of not doing dishes for two whole days.

So life is good. I couldn’t be happier. Perhaps there old journal entries are not as witty, biting, or critical as they once were. I realize writing them that I am not nearly as poignant as I have been in the past. I make fewer obscure cultural references and jokes that no one understands. I venture off on fewer tangents and use bland words like “lots” way too much. There may be multiple reasons for this. We can only speculate. I can tell you I am both weary and content at the same time. I can think of no period in my life when I have been happier with where I am and more full of hope with where I will someday be. And at the same time I am tired of traveling. I miss my friends and my family and my loved ones and my pizzerias. I love this world and still intend to see every inch of it, but, forgive me for saying it, but I think I am growing up…a little. I pray that I will never be grown up in the traditional sense of the word, but my priorities are changing. I love venturing past abandoned mines and seeing a different corner of God’s oven every morning. Even more, though, I am eager for the day when I can simply love and be loved. I have seen the world; and it’s not out there. It’s in your eyes. You are the world. You are beauty. What greater joy can there be than to experience another? I can think of none.

Love,
Jeremy





4.20.2006
Volume 4 - Mojave Desert, California
Well well if it isn’t your old pal Jeremy back for one more bout in the ring. Baseball season is underway. Birds are chirping and cattle are lowing. Butterflies are emerging from their cocoons and little boys are falling in love on fields of grass and impressing their new mates with the number of earthworms they can eat. Except in the desert there is no grass. And there are poisonous snakes instead of butterflies. And the cattle all become steak instead of producing milk. But we do have roadrunners, and while they don’t chirp, they do make a really cool clacking noise. Thus is springtime in the not quite a wasteland of the American desert.

I have vigilantly continued with my restless exploration of everything within a day’s drive of the middle of nowhere where I live, albeit now in shorts, layers of sunscreen, and a cautious ear for rattles. It has been interesting. Literally every town out here has a history built around either mining, the railroad, or both. Some towns play it up more than others. And some save themselves from falling into oblivion by catering to tourists. I had the privilege to visit two of these towns. Calico was the center of an old mining district up in the mountains not far from where I live. The place was a literal ghost town like so many out here when a fine gentleman bought the town in order to preserve it. He already had an amusement park a couple of hours away in southern California called Knott’s Berry Farm, so his take on preservation is a little different than what some might think. The few buildings that were still standing in the town were made inhabitable, and new ones were constructed in the same old West style. Eventually, the area became a state park, and now for $5, Joe Wannabeacowboy can poke around and learn a bit of the history of mining in the west…and buy some souvenirs of his visit. The coolest part of the town (other than the fact that Clint Eastwood was shooting a movie in the surrounding hills) was the proliferation of abandoned mines everywhere. I knew there were a lot of mines out there, but here you can walk into about 20 tunnels from the parking lot if you’re so inclined. It was very hard to resist. They did have one little section of an old mine open to go in though, enough to quench my thirst for adventure and keep me from wandering into any black carbon dioxide-rich holes in the surrounding hills. They also had an interesting and very old cemetery. It must have been an interesting site to see this kid, dressed mostly in black as chance would have it, wandering around a century old desert cemetery by himself in the middle of the afternoon.

And then there is Oatman. I am usually able to at least understand most places I visit, but Oatman still has me baffled. Go way back to my Route 66 rambling a few years ago and you may read of my extreme distaste for this place. When I cam out here before, we arrived at Oatman in the heat of the day in the heat of the summer without air conditioning. What we saw after hours of driving windy desert roads was an old west town filled with tourists, donkeys, and more flies than Ohio has ever seen. I vowed never to return to this peculiar slice of America. So naturally I went back recently. Well, I don’t hate it anymore but I still don’t get it. It is very much Like Calico in that it is an old mining town that was restored. Except it never became a ghost town. It survived through the ages without ever really changing. So what you get now are a number of authentically old buildings on a main street which is the only paved road in town and a tourist population that exceeds the number of locals. Why do people travel from all over the world to come here? There is something about feeding a wild burro that excites people. You can pet donkeys in most petting zoos across America, but these are wild! Burros were brought from Spain long ago as work animals. The poor guys have been bred to bear the burdens that people could not. The West was won on the back of these highly intelligent beasts of burden. And the Oatman burros are one group that modern America doesn’t consider a nuisance. While I still almost got splashed by donkey pee, I was not attacked by flies this time, and actually enjoyed this bizarre tourist trap.

When I am not exploring old towns I am usually exploring something older, like extinct volcanoes. One in particular is now a crater that rises from the brown landscape around it in a black pit of hardened lava. It was cool to walk the rim of a volcano that hasn’t blown up in thousands or millions of years. I have this misfortune, however, of only being on top of things when the wind is fiercely trying to blow me down. I really almost went over this thing. I had to duck down inside the crater for a time and crawl to safety so the wind didn’t blow me over the edge. It is much too steep to go into the crater to the exit, so I had to walk (or run when the wind died down) along the edge to a section gradual enough that I could traverse the descent safely. It was cool. My parents also visited recently, and we had a splendid time venturing out and about. We found ourselves on a military base on the last day of their visit, and after what seemed like decades of questioning of who we were, why we were there, what we had for breakfast, why we didn’t name our first boy George in honor of the president, and other imperative pieces of information related to national security, we were able to get a word in and say we had reservations, which despite the permission slip our mommy gave us saying it was okay go on the field trip, led to some more questions before we could enter. Apart from affirming my decision to not join the military, we got a neat tour of a NASA-run deep space communication facility. They have all these huge satellite dishes spread out over 50 miles that receive messages from satellites flying out around the solar system and beyond. Some of the dishes were as big as football fields and are receiving signals so faint and from so far away I could not even begin to explain the technology. One of the coolest parts I think was seeing actual video footage of the surface of Mars from a video taken by a satellite that is roving around up there and sending signals back to the Mojave desert. So never let it be said that the Mojave is technologically backwards.

I also recently found out that I am a stud. Especially with older women. Back in high school, everyone’s mom thought their daughter should date me. Now it seems their grandmothers probably thought the same thing. We had a bus of elderly Los Angelinos raid my work, and I was told that I was the handsomest young ranger her 80 year old eyes had ever seen. It was quite charming, so we ran off to Vegas and tied the knot. Well at least part of that is true. I visited some other old mines out here too. I literally found a gold mine worth of gold mines in some nearby mountains – 60-foot high wooden structures, huts built into the hillside, old trucks and buses rusting away on blocks, bottomless pits inches from the road, strange flightless birds – all the trappings of a good mining district were right before my eyes. I still didn’t go in any of them though.

I am still up with the times though. It’s not all old stuff around here. I’m still cool baby. Speaking of cool, the greatest man to walk the earth since Homer Simpson needs your help. Go to http://www.weirdalstar.com to help cement the future of American entertainment for generations to come. In other monumental entertainment news, perhaps the only worthwhile use for your TV set other than The Weird Al Show is making a big leap. That’s right, 2007 will go down in history as the year The Simpsons changed the caliber of animated movies. Much the same way Snow White ushered in the age of feature-length animation, The Simpsons movie will undoubtedly usher in an age of movies based on TV shows that makes people forget all about Inspector Gadget! In the defense of modern animated films, of which I have become an aficionado of sorts since working at Disney, I can say of all the movie studios jumping on the Shrek-inspired animation bandwagon, my former employer still has the most breathtaking 3D animation out there today. The Wild may not have the hilarious script that Chicken Little had, and yes it is essentially Madagascar and The Lion King put together in a completely unoriginal plot, but it is really cool to look at.

But back to the old days. I did the coolest thing I’ve done since I’ve been here last week. Far far from anything, near to the Colorado River is the Techatticup Mine. It was spectacular. There are so many old buildings, huge old buildings still standing, as well as tons and tons of other pieces of nostalgia like gas pumps, old cars, barber’s seat, everything! And I actually got to go in! After seeing so many abandoned mines from the outside, here was one that was safe to enter. A family moved to the area to retire a few years ago and found an easily accessible entrance to this mine. They did some exploring, thought it was cool, and decided to open it up to the public. So me, two ladies, and a British family went in a 130 year old mine. The mine is 600 feet deep, with tunnels going in every direction, old ladders are everywhere, mine carts are strewn around; it is definitely not a place I would go in alone. This mine did $3 million worth of gold back in the 1880s, dug out by men who got one candle a day to see with and pulled by donkeys who lived and died underground. The best part wasn’t even the mine though, it was the animals. Simple pleasures I know, but I was so happy to get to pet a cat. My relationship with animals recently has been one entirely based on observation or fear. I saw so many beautiful animals at Disney, but I never did anything but observe them. I drove past these guys ten times a day, but never felt like I was close to them. To those of you laughing who think you can’t have a meaningful relationship with a hairy beast, remember that people with pets are proven to live longer! Out here all the animals are naturally skittish. They have to be because they can be quick prey if they don’t run away. The ones that don’t run (i.e. the predators) are the ones I think are waiting to attack me every time I go wandering about in the cactus by myself. Granted I have learned a lot, including the difference between a blackbird, a crow, and a raven, but nevermore shall I take the simple act of petting a cat for granted. It didn’t run away, and it didn’t attack me. Petting the cat was fun, but looking at some animals can be really cool too. Like the roadrunner. I have been trying to get pictures of the animals out here, but their natural instincts mean they never stand still for more than half a second. I never thought I’d get a picture of a roadrunner, but lo and behold, this family has practically domesticated one by feeding it regularly. So after seeing these guys dashing across the road time and time again, I actually saw one a foot away from me just standing there making its crazy noise and looking at me curiously. They look very little like the cartoon character until they start running, then I swear their legs grow a couple of inches. And finally, I had a moment that is difficult to explain. The family puts carrots out around their property for the animals to munch on, and I happened to be there when this nightly event was taking place. It was breathtaking. You have this barren looking landscape that suddenly starts teeming with life. After seeing animals do nothing but run away as fast as they can for three months, I was suddenly surrounded by literally dozens of rabbits, chipmunks, quail, and swallows teeming around me. It was exactly like Snow White. All around me wild animals, designed to run away were peacefully munching away. I’ve seen a few rabbits and chipmunks together before, but never has such an assemblage of God’s creatures made me feel so at home. It was the first real sign of habitability in this seemingly barren wilderness. Then I stepped on a cactus and decided to leave before I hurt myself any more.

And now for deep thoughts. Being away from home and any semblance of familiarity for what seems like so long has helped usher along some healthy changes. Change is the only constant in life it’s true. Well most of the time. I took a trip to a small city on the shores of the Colorado River recently called Lake Havasu City, mainly to see the London Bridge. You see London Bridge was falling down in the ‘60s and the city decided to sell it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder happened to be a gentleman who was in the process of forming a resort community on the shores of the Colorado River. So now Americans can see one of Britain’s great symbols and the subject of everyone’s favorite nursery rhyme sitting calmly in the middle of the Arizona desert. It’s the actual thing, WWII bullet holes and everything, not a Disney-style fiberglass reproduction. The obvious British feel of the whole area really made me miss Australia and made me want to visit Europe more than ever before. Maybe I just miss grass. Either way I reminded myself on this trip why I don’t like camping. It is incredibly uncomfortable. I figured I would just find a camping site on Lake Havasu and sleep in a sleeping bag in my car for two night while I was visiting. No point in spending all that money on a hotel room when it’s just me and I only make enough money to buy food every week. Well minivans are not quite as big as they appear. And there is nothing to do after 7:30 when it is pitch black out. So some things don’t change. I came home a day early and almost had my first day in almost three months when I did not drive or ride in a car, but then my A/C broke again and I had to drive to get it fixed. The whole trip got me to thinking. Uh oh. I had always speculated that God somehow placed me on the wrong side of the country. I always fancied myself more of a west coast kind of guy, calm easy going, cowabunga, the whole shebang. Well Southern California is still Southern California, and that’s its own beast, but for everything it offers it is surrounded by “the West.” Now please don’t let this spoil your appetite for adventure if you’ve never been out here. I am not necessarily saying the West is bad, it is just much more different form the east than I ever realized. My experience with the West has been one of town after town hours apart form each other in one of two conditions. There is the Has Been Town. These are the tiny hamlets whose existence is completely defined by their past. This is an old railroad town, an old mining town, an old logging town, an old whatever that is scattered about the countryside like chickenpox. What is there now? Fast food restaurants, gas stations, and old men too drunk to remember the last time they left town. The towns are slowly dying. Then there are the Yuppie Towns. The towns that aren’t dieing are booming. And real estate prices mean they are beyond anyone’s reach. So who lives in the West? Retired people. Everywhere you turn are retired people in RVs, retired people in second homes, retired people out yachting on the river. It is such a contrast, horribly poor old mining towns and grossly rich boom towns. All the second homes not only drive up real estate costs, but they also create a town without any real community. How can you have community when most of your residents only live in their mansions for a few months a year? I have no problem with being retired and having fun, but I just wanna say "your family is so much more beautiful than any beach!" But then again I am the one doing everything backwards, not them. So the west is beautiful, and interesting, and full of people who have worked their whole life so they can play when they hit 60, but it is very different. As I think more and more about the type of town I want to live in when I “settle down” I realize that it looks more and more like Akron, Ohio every day, the town I grew up in and never fully appreciated. So no real conclusion to that story, it’s hard to make sense of it all. But remember the grass can’t be greener on the other side if there is no grass because you only get five inches of rain a year.

But it’s all good yo. There is an interesting phenomenon that is taking place within me currently. What is it? Well boys and girls, gather round for story time, but don’t fall asleep; nap time isn’t for another hour. This may sound familiar at first, but keep reading. I visited an old mine and townsite recently ironically named Providence. During my short visit to the ruins I came upon two important realizations and a great epiphany. Realization number one: old mines and ghost towns just don’t do it for my like they used to. Providence is comparable to the life-changing town of Two Guns that I found when I traveled Route 66 years ago. They are old towns that are now completely in ruins. Two Guns was the first real ghost town I had seen. Providence may be the last. They both consist entirely of old unpaved roads, ruined stone buildings, and lots of desert shrubs. And yet my feeling was very different at each location. I still think they are incredibly interesting and a must-see destination for anyone who has not thoroughly explored at least one of them. The towns are not all that different, so it must be something in me that ahs changed. I chalk it up to overkill, the good old too much of a good thing, it can’t be Christmas every day idea. I call it the Chicken Finger Principle. At my college, we used to get chicken fingers about once a week. People always loved them, and wanted more. They complained about the food and said if they just had more chicken fingers the caf would be so much more enjoyable. So when the college redid the entire food system at the college, they gave the masses exactly what they wanted – chicken fingers ate every meal. You could eat breaded fried chicken for lunch and dinner every day for a semester if you wanted to. And a funny thing happened, people started complaining that all the caf ever served was chicken fingers. The “excellent! chicken fingers!” reaction became “not chicken fingers again!” It was too much of a good thing. My partner in crime on my last Route 66/California adventure presented the same concept a different way. We went to a TV show taping of The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn and had a blast. It was a great time, so naturally I made plans to go to a whole bunch of other TV show tapings while I was there. You find something you like and you keep doing it right? Not so, he said. he said he would prefer to not go to any more because he had such a good time the first time he didn’t want to ruin it. He wanted his memory of TV show tapings to be a good one full of novelty and excitement, not one of routine or normalcy. He held back in order to preserve the magic. And now I understand. Old towns and mines are awesome, but I have done so many of them I can barely tell them apart any more. And I see them differently too. What was once a place that interested me purely on a scientific level is now much more human. These aren’t just old ruins from another time, they are people’s lives and hopes and memories falling apart and returning to dust. People created themselves here and now there is nothing. And Providence itself is in special trouble. The road getting there is the worst one I've been on out here. Within a few years and a couple more storms the road could easily be impassable, thus sealing Providence's fate, a ghost town destined to return to dust with only the most interpid hikers there to give the eulogy.

Realization number two: I am afraid. I walked around Two Guns with the full knowledge that I could run into a snake at any time. They are just as likely to be in the desert there in May as they are to be in the desert here in April. The danger level was the same, if not more then because I was not prepared. Now when I am seemingly less likely to get bitten and more prepared if I do, I walk with much more trepidation through the desert shrubs. Why was I once so carefree and I am now sitting in a field reading rather than exploring? Progress is supposed to alleviate fears not add new ones. And I realized it is because of love. And this is where it gets difficult to explain. I am much more afraid of dying because I so much more enjoy living. I understand death is simply a natural stage of life. It must be. Without death there is no life; it gives meaning to life to know that we will someday die. And it can even be a joyous occasion for those who believe that something much better than life awaits after death. Still since we are alive now, it makes sense to enjoy life to its fullest and put off death as long as possible. How then do we appreciate life? That is a great debate. Do we live life to the fullest by seeing the world and jumping around skirting death, laughing in the face of death by acting like we don’t care if it happens? Do we get out and do as much as we can, experiencing all life has to offer? I do not think this is a bad thing, but I am increasingly aware that this is far from the key to a well lived life. You see, this is a selfish life. I went to California before for me. I went to Florida because I had always wanted to work at an amusement park. The majority of my traveling has been based largely on selfish desires to create the best life for me. This is a slight simplification, but the main benefit of living this lifestyle recently is that it has shown me that it is not one that would be healthy to keep up. Turns out The Beatles had it right all along…all you need is love. I am afraid of dying now more than before because I am not chasing pleasure or experience anymore. Chasing things will always leave you empty, and in a way that’s what I was doing. I am afraid of dying now more than before because I have found something to truly live for; I’m not jumping around trying to figure out what I’m doing. I’m not spending my time enjoying a place until I get bored and move somewhere else, always enjoying where I am largely because of the knowledge that in the future I will be somewhere new. Love, love, love, love is all you need. This is not a sappy love letter, nor is it a fifth grade crush. I have had sufficient amounts of both of those to know that this is not what I am writing now. Yes love in general and even the inspiration for my love of love can be personified in a single person, and to that person in my life I am eternally grateful and indebted, and they already know that. But while love of another can be a bridge, a light of sorts pointing to something bigger, a door to a new realm of thinking, it is that something bigger that has truly given me hope. It is that concept made real in one other that inspires me. We’re talking about Love with a capital L. I feel like I have so much to live for now because I have a future and that future is not based on myself, or my individuality, or my ideals, or my vision, or any of those concepts that are based largely on self-gratification. Don’t misread me, I am still fun and spontaneous to the max. Talk about mondo tubular freakiness, I’m still bout it bout it. But it’s not about me anymore. It’s about Her, and about You, and about Us. I have rarely had problems expressing myself with the written word, but I find it frustratingly difficult to come close to what exactly it is that makes me so happy, so full of life, so confident, so willing and eager to lay myself aside for the immeasurable joy that comes from the smile on another person’s face. All this comes with the realization that I am not really laying myself aside, but building myself and all of us up, for it is only in laying ourselves aside that we can truly experience life, connection, God, Love. It is my proof that God exists. Maybe I should have been a philosophy major.

I can’t really add a comical conclusion to that, so I’ll let it be, and hope that somehow it makes some kind of sense. I will say this, I have a name for this whole epiphany, this whole process of change that has been happening in me. I call it growing up. I don’t know what I’ll grow into next, but I will do it, as always, with the smile of a man who is genuinely happy.

Jeremy






6.16.2006
Volume 5 - Mojave Desert, California
I am at a loss for words. Who’d have thunk it? I have been meaning to write this for a while now. I had many good experiences out in California since I last wrote, left the desert, hung out at home for a week, then packed my life up and moved to Pennsylvania. So I definitely have things to say. I just don’t know that I want to say them. This may be the hardest entry to write. Because it’s the last.

I am really just incredibly happy. I have loved writing these, but a large part of it was getting things off my chest because I was upset about them and/or I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to them about. As I said since the beginning, this has always been as much therapy for me as an interesting read for you. And now I just don’t feel like I need any more therapy. They have served their purpose. I know how much you looooove reading them, but the good part of life is that it never stay the same. Things are always changing. I’m passing the baton.

But onto business. The big news is why I moved to Pennsylvania. It should be no surprise to anyone who has kept up with me that as much as I loved all my adventures and wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world, the main lesson I’ve learned through them is the importance of loved ones and community. So it is natural that I return to a geographical location where those benefits are readily available. Basically I am now the awesomest admissions counselor Elizabethtown college has ever seen. That’s right, I have returned to my alma mater on the other side of the fence, the one that pays me to be there instead of the other way around. Two days into my new job, I am thrilled to be here. Yes I wear a tie to work; yes I spent a good portion of today ordering office supplies; and yes I now have a real salary. But count me not a sellout fellow punk rockers. For my Minivan of Spectacularly Amazing Sticker Proliferation still parks beside the house my office is in every day. And bottom line, I am doing something I absolutely love and could not be happier with. I am content. I shall continue fighting the good fight. I shall continue the march against injustice, violence, apathy, and bad music. And I shall do so in the minds of people with an incredible potential to make a difference in the world, prospective college students. I keep running over things I could say about why I am here and what I hope to do here. My mind is going a mile a minute, but my fingers can’t keep up. I wish I could talk with you one on one so you could hear the passion in my voice. If you find yourself in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, I hope you’ll say hello and let me tell you in person.

So what else have I done since that far distant time we last communicated? I got lost in the desert, climbed some big boulders much like Spiderman, realized it is unintelligent to climb boulders by yourself when you’ve never done it before, and had a visit from a good friend. I also took a trip with another friend to America’s first true amusement park, Disneyland. It is much smaller and quainter than its Floridian counterpart, almost gobbled up by but disguised nicely from the suburban proliferation that has grown around it. It was a beautiful place. I learned the restaurant in Chicago that gave me the bug to go to LA two years ago went out of business. Luckily there is still one in Milwaukee to get those life-changing nachos. I visited two crazy outdoor art exhibits. One featured a life-size sculpture of daVinci’s “Last Supper” with plaster phantoms. At the other I met an old man who claimed to have previously worked for Gregory Peck. I could not for the life of me figure out if he was serious or senile, but he was very nice. I visited one of the most amazing ghost towns in the country, a city built to be permanent that lasted 10 years before becoming a series of shells. Three hospitals, a two-story school, many churches, and a Red Light District all deserted. I saw fish that exist where I was looking and nowhere else. I watched one too many animated movies featuring borrowed story lines and gave up on the craft. Then I saw “Cars” and was reminded that animation truly is a medium capable of power and honesty unlike any other when it is crafted by the hand of a visionary. You’re not too old to see it. I said goodbye to the few people who had been pretty much my only source of human contact for the past four months and met my dad to drive home. We saw a wild mustang running in slow motion against the wind with his mane blowing in the breeze. And best of all we drove the entire way (almost) without setting tire on an Interstate. I can now say with renewed confidence that Interstates should be one of humanity’s biggest regrets, that US, state and county highways, the two lane roads that to this day still connect our country, offer the most fascinating way to see a country that we better make time to see now before it is all covered in four to eight lanes of concrete. As my dad says, it’s about having a good time not making good time. Go see “Cars” if you still don’t get it.

Oh and I saved the life of a desert tortoise in a way that touched my soul. See they are very afraid of everything; it’s their natural defense to dive inside their shell when they feel threatened. Sometimes they even “evacuate their bladders” which is very very bad because they drink and drink all summer to store enough water in there to hibernate all winter. If something scares them so much they wet themselves they could die a couple months later. It is quite a predicament to see one on the road. You don’t want it to get hit, but you don’t want to scare it by picking it up either. So I approached one very slowly. I bonded with it. Slow and steady. And then the unthinkable happened. It walked toward me. They’re not supposed to do that. It slowly inched its way in my direction and plopped down in my shadow safely away from the coming cars. It was safe and stress-free. I tell you this awesome story not to gloat but as the basis for a metaphor. You can fly by the needs of others without ever noticing they exist, or you can see them and not do anything, or you may think you can’t for anything to help…you’d be wrong. For the reward of the vigilant and the patient is success. No one would have said what happened with that tortoise was possible. Until it happened. Believe in yourself and stay the course, and you will save that tortoise.

And so I depart in typical style, not with a grand explosion but with a dignified bow at the top of my game. I thank you for your friendship and hope that the end of an easyjournal website will not be the end of our communication. I will write with my contact info when I get a place established. Until we meet in person, take one thing from my three years of writing…


Love.

Smile.

And love to smile.


Jeremy


















The End?