The Desert - Contradiction waiting. Photo by J. Robert Clark
The desert is contradiction. A stark yet beautiful place that belies its danger. Wicked hot days; bone-break cold nights. Seemingly nothing but rocks and sand. But it lives. Plants. Animals. And people. Life, carving out an existence in a landscape engineered to destroy it.
Does a place have intention? Unlikely. But lacking purpose can be sinister. Like an emotionless, steely robot, the desert works to erase what came before. It eliminates what wanders in. And it waits.
Waiting, it is vigilant. Shrewd in judgment and sentence. Often fatal. Occasionally redeeming. Punishing to all.
I visit the desert, but I dare not stay. Under its sky, I am small. Out here, being small feels okay, but only for a time.
Too long in the desert and my thoughts change. Old fears dissipate, replaced by notions both comforting and unsettling. Disembodied feelings of place, not of mind. Foreign. Other.
Something larger than me is at play. No, not God. But akin to it.
In the desert, my sight narrows. Identity drops from focus. Raw experience rather than vision. The desert coalesces around me, striping my conscience bare.
I could easily remain until nothing is left of me but grit and dust.
Then, much like waking from a sleep, I see again. Blurry at first. Then focused. A distant hill comes into view, clear in detail through the dry desert air. My eyes tear and I blink. But no drops fall. Time to leave.
Back to my old thoughts and ways. Comfortable in routine, if nothing else. And for a while, I stay away. But I will return as I always do, to the desert.
Beautiful. Sinister – Contradiction waiting.
It wasn't until my pre-teens that I first visited a real desert. By then, my imagination brimmed with larger-than-life stories from countless books and films. Those 1950s sci-fi flicks on atomic threat and mutated beasts were most influential. Certainly, the most fun. I half expected colossal ants or a giant Gila monster when I first visited1. But despite these heightened, unrealistic expectations, the real thing did not disappoint.
My first desert experience was while on a family road trip "out West." Upon seeing the high deserts of Wyoming and Colorado, I was speechless. So few things in life exceed the hype. But the desert was everything I had hoped it would be – exotic, expansive, and oh so mysterious.
Yes, a land of contradictions. For me, this is the allure of the desert – a mythic landscape with room enough for all the truth and lies you can assign to it.
It's no wonder then that desert stories always draw me in. Rhythm, meaning, and suspense all exist here. Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire painted the allure of the desert well. He inspired generations of wanderers to find themselves among the rocks and sand. Far different, 2015's Southbound, an anthology horror film, depicts five twisted tales woven together by the desert. The film paints an unforgiving tale of evil woven together by the desert2.
These two stories couldn't be more different, one inviting and the other foreboding. And yet, the desert quietly stars in each. The desert is a character, not only the stage, in these stories. Much like the city in classic noir fiction, the desert envelopes and influences all. And if the city never sleeps, then the desert never ends. This permanence challenges everything else within.
It's safe to say that the desert makes for good story.
My story idea Somewhere East of Barstow is an experiment as I dive into themes of human nature in new realities. The desert feels like a perfect space to drop in and explore these. Here, ambiguity is king, allowing for interpretation and presenting little constraint.
As for the actual desert east of Barstow? This expanse of California desert is rich in history. Here, the western section of Historic Route 66 makes it's last thrust towards the Pacific 3. Hell opened up for the Okies along this stretch 4 as they fled the Dustbowl Era of the 1930s. With few resources and little support, it must have been pure hell.
And yet, a short decade or so on, and in real contradiction, a new kind of prosperity took hold. In Needles and Barstow and smaller dots like Ludlow and Amboy, there was now birth and new life. Post-war prosperity transformed these desert towns in the 40s, 50s, and peaking in the 60s. Car-loving families out in search of freedom fueled this growth. And they created a whole new culture in the process. The quintessential American Dream was defined here as much as it was anywhere else.
But as quickly as this desert blossomed into a string of neon and hope, it vanished back into the sand. The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System ensured it. This vast highway system sliced through the heart of America and killed the old dream for many when it did.
Buildings abandoned and decaying. Whole towns vanished off the map. These booms and busts leave ghosts behind. Families that made their lives here forced out in search of new opportunities. Nostalgia or habit keeps some going, hanging onto the old. But the ghosts now outnumber them by far. Here in the desert, permanence is an illusion. All is open to interpretation. Ripe for story and imagining, "what if?"
Somewhere East of Barstow is a vehicle for me to explore these concepts and see how the pieces fit together.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I appreciate you and your interest.
Science. Fiction. Create.
JRC
1 I am alluding to Them! (1954) and The Giant Gila Monster (1959). Hulking, mutant wildlife terrorizes mankind. What could be better?” ↩
2 Southbound is far from perfect, but as a horror/sci-fi flick, its haunting atmosphere doesn’t disappoint. You can almost taste the fear as characters realize how lost they are. Warning: Not for the uninitiated or faint of heart! ↩
3 For anyone interested in a guide to The Mother Road, I recommend Tom Snyder’s Route 66 Traveler’s Guide. It’s a bit dated, but it does what it says as a guide and the nuggets of history and fun writing make it a good read. ↩
4 In every sense of the word, environmental refugees. The classic telling unfolds of course in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. ↩