Sailor In The Desert

From this...
From this…
...to this!
…to this!

I’ve been home a week now. If I thought things were a blur before…Wow! The memories swirl.

Boots and Saddles cowboy... it's time to ride!
Boots and Saddles cowboy… it’s time to ride!
Deep In The Coronado National forest
Deep In The Coronado
National forest

So much in such a short time; nearly 12,000 kilometres in five weeks. I feel like a big sponge, it’ll take a while to wring out. I’ve also managed to fall asleep while editing my photos and…well, there some incredible shots that you’ll never see. My banana fingers managed to keep on deleting after I nodded off. All the king’s techies can’t find Fred’s files again. BUGGA! You’ll have to take my word for it, there really were some amazing shots of Northern California and the South Oregon Coast.

Find the cow!
Find the cow!

Once out of the saddle I’ve taken my boots and socks off. Thus able to do the math I’m realizing how desperately financially broke I am for the moment. The good old truck, like a loyal pony, is dropping apart one piece at a time now that it’s home. So am I. The initial prognosis for my ankle is surgery. Of course the process requires that I help every medical specialist possible extract a Porsche payment from the system before the first diagnosis is firmly confirmed and a date for the grim day is set, and probably postponed, for some time far down the road. The weather here at home is cold and snowy and utterly miserable. In the last week a friend died tragically under very mysterious circumstances. I MISS MEXICO!

Arivaca Arizona Business district We're Closed!
Arivaca Arizona
Business district
We’re Closed!
Uptown Arivaca
Uptown Arivaca

Old ‘Seafire’ is happily afloat and looking good. The recent snow has scrubbed her clean. She’s cold and damp inside but there are no apparent leaks and the old girl is tugging at her lines, wanting to get off the dock. I am now more confused than ever. I love this boat and all the dreams and assurances she provides me. She has been my home for a few years now. ‘Seafire’ is the cumulation of all the other boats I’ve owned and put so much of my life into. However, the epiphanies I sought and found are telling me things entirely unexpected.

Ruby ... Looks like she did take her love to town
Ruby

Looks like she did take her love to town
Spring time in the desert
Spring time in the desert

For half of my life I have had myself convinced that I could not live away from the sea and that a man without a boat is a prisoner. If I did not own a boat, I felt like a worm. I am suddenly realizing that several hundred miles inland I survived healthily and happily. In fact, in the dry desert air, I found I could breath better than I have in years.

Behind the hanging tree, Baboquivan Peak from the southeast
Behind the hanging tree,
Baboquivari Peak
from the southeast
Baboquivari from the north, as seen on Kitt Peak
Baboquivari from the north, as seen on Kitt Peak
Some of the telescopes at Kitt Peak
Some of the telescopes at Kitt Peak

I actually found the same feeling of fulfilment in the vastness and mystery of the desert that I do at sea.

A surplused mirror from one of the telescopes
A surplused mirror from one of the telescopes

I have realized how much I have denied myself by accepting a barrier that kept me from travelling inland of the shore and accepting the richness of this planet which is available everywhere to perceptive people. I am also realizing the profundity of my own words when I condemn materialism.

If I had a hang-glider!
If I had a hang-glider! The T in the road is the turn-off for Kitt Peak, 12 miles to the top

Have I owned several boats or have they owned me?  Why are my sailing friends with the most sea time also the folks who’ve never owned a damned boat in their lives?

Kitt Peak Selfie
Kitt Peak Selfie

The devastation of the ongoing recession in the US is clear. I saw people of my age, begging on the street corners. They carry home-made cardboard signs saying things such as, “We’ve lost every thing. Any help gratefully accepted.” How close we all live to the edge! I know the clear-eyed dignity of Mexican peasants and their children and realize that despite my awareness and all my words, I am as hard-wired for our superficial, consumer culture as anyone. I truly wonder who are the truly rich people. Is it those who know how little they need?  In Mexico, the roadside crosses of the poor and those better off all mark people’s passing who are all equally dead.

DRY
DRY
Old Hammerhead
Old Hammerhead

  I am among the growing numbers who ask questions and I do really want to end my days outside of the sheep pens most of us willingly inhabit. I remember George Carlin’s last time on stage and his parting words, “Folks, it’s all bullshit!” I met folks who have been freed of their life in a rut, their possessions and all the entrapment of contemporary North American life. They now live as happy wanderers and have learned to see each day for the glorious experience it can be. Repeatedly, I heard from each that one of their joys is realizing how little material stuff they actually need. Collectively they all seem to be enjoying a liberation and freedom previously unimagined. The lies which ran their lives are shattered.

Catch me if you can
Catch me if you can

I am NOT turning my back on my affinity for the sea, nor my sailing dreams. I AM realizing how wonderful it is to have my head out of that place where the sun never shines. It is wonderful to feel the affirmation of wind in my hair and the sun on my face as well of the cool darkness of deep water.  I have some decisions to make and hope to find a balance to my life that I have been denying myself and those who try to love me. The journey continues.  To have written and published the last two paragraphs, I hope, is a testament of progress which I claimed to seek when I first began writing this blog. Life is a journey, grow or die.   

A mesquite fire, a cowboy singing "Git along Little Doggie" a coyote howls as the moon rises in the east; well that's the way it went in the movies.
A mesquite fire, a cowboy singing “Git along Little Doggie” a coyote howls as the moon rises in the east;
well that’s the way it went in the movies.

Once I’d crossed the border from Nogales, Mexico into Nogales, Arizona I collapsed for the night in the regional Walmart parking lot. Despite my aversion to the McWally world it is nice to have a safe, level place where you are welcome to park your trailer for the night and use the clean washrooms whenever you want.  Dare I lament the absence of shower facilities?  I mean really!  Some people do appear to live in these edifices of tacky acquisition.   

Only in america
Only in America

The next morning dawned on Valentine’s Day and I was amazed at the masses of Spanish-speaking people thronging into the place before six in the chilly morning to scoop up every card, chocolate, flower and stuffed toy.

I beat a hasty retreat into the desert. I turned Westward onto Route 289 which led me into the Coronado National Forest. The trees are twenty feet tall and a hundred feet apart. Some of the cacti are as tall. How many trees within sight of each other make a forest? As the sun rose at my back I travelled a meandering dirt track that led me through one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Rocky cliffs, caves and steep gulches form a maze that begs to be explored on horseback. I expected to meet a stage coach on every switch-back. If John Wayne or Gary Cooper stood beside a dead horse, hitch-hiking with only their saddle, I would have calmly asked then if they’d like me to brew up some coffee. I passed an abandoned mine town named Ruby and again marvelled at how the human race was able to map this country, develop it so rapidly and find rich mineral deposits so readily.

Howdy Stranger!
Howdy Stranger!

For hours I could see the telescopes on distant Kitt Peak and it seemed to take all day to drive a distant radius around Baboquivan Peak, a towering granite pinnacle which must have held great significance to the indigenous people. I stopped in tiny but lovely Arivaca, once a U.S Cavalry camp, now home to the tiny Casino Rurál and the lovely Cantina Gitana. I drove on through the Altar Valley and the massive Tohono O’Odham Indian Reserve.

What the? How'd a fishing boat end up in the middle of the desert?
What the?
How’d a fishing boat end up in the middle of the desert?

This is all in the northern portion of the Sonora Desert. Once at the end of the twelve-mile drive up Kitt Peak, which rises a mile above the surrounding desert and yet still looks up at 7,738′ Baboquivan, you begin to understand the meaning of vast. You can see forever…well at least half-way to Nevada!

I can only wonder at the original inhabitants and their wonder at the abstract concept we white-faced creatures held of defining and dividing eternity.

Whatever dude!
Whatever dude!

Fortunately it appears that here, the native population truly holds a controlling interest in how the land is husbanded. I am told that only 25% of Arizona is held as deeded land. Much of the remaining area is Indian Reserve and State or National Park.

Miles and miles of miles and miles
Miles and miles of miles and miles

Sadly the paranoia of The US Homeland Security is at a fever pitch. They are everywhere, easily working their mandate up to a hundred miles north of the Mexican border with trucks, ATVs, horses, helicopters, drones, blimps and random checkpoints. They seem to operate carte blanche with an unlimited budget. At various check-points, many miles inside the border, huge tents cover both lanes of the road.

Ya can't miss it
Ya can’t miss it

The guards, armed just like their Mexican counterparts are friendly and conversational. Hell, it’s lonely out there. I ask them if they ever actually catch any illegal immigrants. Their grinning, guffawing response assures me that indeed they do and that I, “Wouldn’t believe some of the drugs they try to bring in.” They really seem to enjoy their work.

Beautiful downtown Blythe California Really, that's it!
Beautiful downtown Blythe California
Really, that’s it!

The photos taken from Kitt Peak are wholly incapable of portraying the feeling of human smallness beneath the deep blue sky. The huge granite summit is dotted with several massive telescopes. It is a place where man tries to find his way home somewhere among the countless billions of stars all around us.  Arizona is presently in a drought and there was deep concern about the peril of fire on the peak. To my wonder I noticed massive bald cliffs, thousands of feet above the valley floor, that glistened with the wetness of spring water still rising from deep within. It is a sad thing to find a tangibly spiritual place and have to move on. My funds were limited and I had a speaking engagement a few days away.

A lizard's head of rock, look it blinked.
A lizard’s head of rock,
look it blinked. This natural wind-eroded formation is huge from eye to nose is about 20′

I stopped for the night back in the Belly Acres RV Park in Ajo Arizona where there’s a pistol-packing granny doing a splendid job of keep all things organized. As she did on the previous visit, I was warned about wild pigs, or ‘Javelinas, which’ frequent the camp at night and boldly scrounge for scraps. The end of the next day saw me in Earp, California on the banks of the Colorado River which is the border between Parker, Arizona and the final Western state. It is where old Wyatt himself is planted.

Relaxing in the desert ...I guess!
Relaxing in the desert
…I guess!

The next day saw me driving in hours-long straight lines through undulating desert which becomes known as the Mohave. It finally runs up against the Sierra Nevada Mountains where I turned north and paralleled the Western edge of Death Valley. It is stunningly beautiful, even in the dull winter tones of mid-February. This is country photographed by people like Ansel Adams and it is easy to understand how one could take an entire year trying to capture the amazing light playing on a few rocks or stunted trees. The desert here affords great solitude and peace. The quiet is palpable. The views are infinite. Mirages in the distance make perfect sense. Nights under the desert sky must be overwhelming. Mono Lake is the final jewel of the desert before it climbs into the mountains and the world changes its beauty.

Old School
Old School

Sadly there are others who see the desert differently. Areas for off-road recreational vehicles are provided restrictively so that the entire desert is not decimated but it still seems horrible to come upon an area where hundreds of motorcycles, ATVs, dune buggies and other roaring contraptions turn the desert into an apocalypse of noise and dusty mayhem. A ranch I passed has set itself up for this obnoxious activity and provides a huge tavern for the thirsty to come and tank up. Toddlers clad in body armour zip around with everyone else in this mad mindlessness. I can’t condemn something I don’t understand but it seems to me that horses and burros make a lot more sense. When the chips are down, it’s damned tough to eat a jeep.

New School
New School

I visited the quaint old mining town of Randsburg. It is an intact but mined-out frontier town where things seem to be much as abandoned. A handful of folks still live there and eck out a living from the tourists and more swarms of off-road warriors.

Even I had to admire these hogs, and their riders loved the tiny trailer.
Even I had to admire these hogs, and their riders loved the tiny trailer.

This entire desert seems to be pock-marked with abandoned mines, and the odd monstrous mess of open pit copper mines, some still working. The wealth of a few has permanently scarred the countryside. I wonder at all those who worked this dry, hard country spending and giving their lives for another man’s greed. I suppose some things never change.

Once upon a dream
Once upon a dream

Eventually, on the next day at dusk, I fetched up in South Lake Tahoe. Maybe I was exhausted, but this place is one of the most vulgar locations I have found. This beautiful huge mountain lake is rimmed with a throbbing strip mall of crass commercialism and dotted with towering casinos. Everything seemed cheap and tacky. The road westward was snow-lined, steep and winding. The rushing traffic was heavy but I drove on until I was able to park at a fairgrounds in Auburn, a suburb of Sacramento. It was a long day.

Mined out
Mined out

Eager to make my way to Astoria, I drove off the next morning determined to be on the beach in Oregon that night. I did not know that the photos I was taking would soon be lost.

Dry hole
Dry hole

Through the fruit and nut orchards I went, picking and eating oranges, trying to capture some of the abundance with my camera. I followed the Sacramento River northward for miles as the countryside slowly changed. I ruefully recall one photo taken in a popular waterfowl hunting area. An entire store side was painted with the message, “We Pluck Your Ducks.”

All things shall pass
All things shall pass
Who has seen the wind?
Who has seen the wind?

I turned west at Redding, stopping to copiously photograph the beautiful old mining town of Shasta. There was no one around, the light was soft and pure. I took some amazing pictures. They are indelibly printed on the hard-drive in the back of my skull. Westward in the thickening rain I drove the spectacular highway along the Trinity River until finally I found the ocean again at Fields Landing. Home, driving through huge thick timber, horizontal rain and crashing surf. `I wondered about the sunset down in Jalisco as I crawled into my cold, damp sheets in Bandon, Oregon. My little trailer rocked in the buffeting wind. Home! Yeah right.

In the distance you could see the sheriff coming for miles. he never understood why no-one was home when he arrived with a warrant.
In the distance you could see the sheriff coming for miles. he never understood why no-one was home when he arrived with a warrant.

Cow Pie On My Mud Flaps

 cows in the sunset

Cows in the misty sunset

Another long day on the road ends in a motel in Alamo, Nevada. After last night’s freeze-out I need a hot shower and am dead-tired, in part, from not sleeping well last night. So I’m cheating, but I had only one snacky sort of meal all day.  I can report a heightened sense of smell and taste. My jeans want to fall down even more easily than usual! It was a grand day despite a wrong turn that cost me an hour’s worth of time and fuel to sort myself out. So much for Fred the old fly boy and his compass! 

I thought I have known a few "Areseholes of the earth." Maybe this is the real one!?
I thought I have known a few
“Areseholes of the earth.”
Maybe this is the real one!?

I’ll post lots of photos with this blog but it is impossible to describe or photograph the vastness and beauty of these high, wide valleys. Some winding passes had summits over 7600′ and the little old truck complained about the thin air. Mining is prevalent throughout the state is seems, with some mountains apparently being ground to dust. This is offset by sprawling range land everywhere. Occasionally you come on the ruins of a stone ranch house and it seems sad to see someone’s hard work and love abandoned. Modern technology has little respect for its foundations it seems.

The way we were
The way we were

For part of the day my route followed the old Pony Express trail and I wondered at how quickly this vast region has been conquered with a web of highways, fences, railways and mines. A sign proclaimed this to be the loneliest drive in America. That suited me fine.  I felt an urge to ride off over a ridge on a horse through the sage brush and stunted junipers. There was a time very long ago when I worked on a ranch and had a horse and was in lust with the girl on the ranch down the road. But this! My cowboy days didn’t resemble anything in the movies, not like the country around me now! People really do say “Howdy” here. Git along now. I got me cow pie on my fenders and great big tires to spread it all around. Whoo haw.Liitle house, big lawn

I find myself trying to see the whole country as the indigenous people must have.  What a rich homeland!  Theirs was certainly not the utopic existence some idealize, but it must have been incomprehensible to be invaded by an alien race who wanted everything for themselves, taking more than their immediate needs, dividing and owning and destroying wantonly. I saw a herd of pronghorn antelope grazing on the wild plains today. I imagined the days when their numbers, as well as deer, elk and bison were abundant and almost became teary thinking about what we have done in our headlong rush to self-destruct.

The last tree
The last tree

Speaking of self-destruction the lonely roads are in beautiful condition, the speed limits are often up to 75 mph which of course are well exceeded.  My little truck and trailer chug along at 55, 35 on some of the high steep grades. Heavy trucks rocket past me and leave me feeling as vulnerable as the squashed rabbits on the pavement. There are plenty of crosses planted along the shoulders of the road; I suspect many folks probably fall asleep at the wheel as they hurtle along the long straight miles. Certainly, many people wave from their vehicle when we meet on the road. It is that lonely. I’ve often spent more than an hour without meeting anyone as I drive along.

The long way
The long way

I turned into this motel after I could begin see the vivid red glow of Las Vegas against the high clouds. It’s still a little over one hundred miles away! It looked biblical.  ‘A Tale of Sin City, sod ’em and go for more!’ I have no interest in seeing the place. Dreading having to pass through on my to visit friends in Arizona, I have found a sneaky little route around the place which takes me right by Hoover Dam. If this blog gets posted, I made it through.

Hoover Damn! What incredible engineering.
Hoover Damn!
What incredible engineering.

On a final note of bizarre desert contrasts, the owner of this motel calls himself an ‘Aviation Archeologist’. With all of the military airbases and test facilities out

No comment!
No comment!

there in the vast desert, there are crashes. These guys go off into the outback to find bits of the wrecks. I held some interesting airplane bits in my hand tonight including a turbine

Find the sheep
Find the sheep

blade from the famous crash of an S-71 Black hawk. These past days leave me feeling a bit alien.

It seems all roads lead to downtown Las Vegas, like it or not. Fortunately the signs are good and soon I’d swirled through the spaghetti network of overpasses and swoop-de-loops and found myself heading toward Hoover Dam. I was stunned to realize that monster casinos go on and on and on. I saw a church that at first appeared me to be a casino with a hundred acre parking lot but then the god-botherer name was displayed in a monstrous neon sign. Las Vegas doesn’t do much for me but it draws folks from all over the planet. Hoover Dam is a project that makes you want to call it DAMN! It is an incredible piece of technology, especially considering the completion date of 1935. I was surprised to have to pass through a security inspection, but then paranoia is far reaching and Al Queda would, I’m sure, love to have this place on their resume.

I caused a minor distraction when I noticed a bighorn mountain sheep ewe who had managed to get herself trapped below a high cutbank. No one believed me at first because the critter blending so well with the rocks, but eventually my credibility was confirmed and the wildlife department was summoned.

I drove on southward and through the town of Bull Head City. I thought it would be another whistle stop but it proved to be yet another mega center of gambling temples and huge facades. It is located on the Colorado River and I made my way south through an endless strip mall that is filled with geezers. Tens of thousands of them. They teeter along on their Harleys, stumble over the crosswalks, lurch along in their vehicles which include everything from huge motorhomes, ATVs and bicycles to fabulous hot rods. They’ve all come to expire in the warmth and everywhere, businesses cater to them. Geriatrics is a massive industry. Scooter shops, hearing aid stores, clinics, hospitals and everything geriatric within imagination is part of the shameless enterprise. Trailer parks and Rv resorts of massive acreage are endless. It is bizarre. Even out of town in the open desert, “Dry” Rv parks cover massive expanses of raw desert. I stopped briefly in Lake Havasu to confirm the madness of being where the London Bridge was shipped and reassembled in the mid-sixties. It was intended to be the navel of a new city and it worked. The American seem to be the masters of the incongruous and bizarre.

Falling down...falling down.
Falling down…falling down.

Interestingly, the bridge is sagging between its footings. This is the actual bridge that the nursery rhyme was written about and truly it is “Falling down, falling down!”

Eventually I arrived in Parker, another community crowding the banks of the Colorado River.

I made a surprise visit to some friends from Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, who live there in an Rv Resort for a good part of each winter. It was a wonderful surprise but unfortunately the miserable jerk who owns the place began pounding on my trailer at 06:30 and evicted me with no uncertain threats. Despite my intention to pay him, he didn’t want any of “Your Kind” in his “Private resort.” Walmart is apparently the navel of the Rvers world and you can park there welcomely, “Jest go on in and buy something.” I left and posted my last blog this morning from the Parker MacDonalds.

I drove on south, stopping on the roadside to put on shorts and a summer shirt as the day warmed. Taking my camera across the road to record the ever-amazing vista I promptly fell through the ground into an old gopher colony’s burrows. Suddenly I realized how alien I am in this country. At home, with just a pocket knife and a lighter, I came survive in the woods. Here I’d be doomed without a lot of good local knowledge. I want to learn, it fascinates me.

The Rig
The Rig

In Quartzsite I missed my turn because the place is overwhelmed with Rvs and motorhomes. In January, there is a massive orgy of Rvers, a trade fair, swap meet and general love-in for those who follow the Rv life style. The intersection where I needed to turn was clogged, heaped and snarled with motor homes, all towing something, wanting to go in opposite directions at the same time. It was the most amazing traffic jam I’ve ever seen and all at a quaint little cross roads. I finally managed to escape dead ahead and ended up driving to Yuma through a beautiful piece of country. Unfortunately a large piece of it is reserved as a proving ground for the US military and I wondered what covert skulduggery goes on out there in the cactus forest. Tonight I’m writing in Ajo Arizona a few miles above the Mexican border. The country is beautiful and by what and who I see here, it may as well be Mexico.

Beyond Yuma
Beyond Yuma

I must mention the clearly massive effort by the Americans to defend their border. There are checkpoints, helicopters and patrol vehicles in many places. It is interesting to note that the

Yuma Pastoral
Yuma Pastoral

Agricultural industry and other labour intensive industries in the US southwest would collapse without the sweat of the Mexican immigrant. The vast farms around Yuma are all supported by Mexican workers who clearly live in worker’s compounds like ants. Old buses, painted white and towing plastic outhouses on trailers were parked everywhere the fields were being worked. There may be billions of dollars of Rvs and other hi-tech toys in this part of the world, but some things have a long way to go yet. Chatting with locals, yes more geriatrics, who run the Rv park where, where I stopped last night was an affirmation of oxymoronic values. They hate Obama, are sincerely born-again, but thank you Jesus, “I don’t go anywhere without my pistol. It makes me feel better.”

Another neighbour here told me about his interest in finding wrecked aircraft in the desert.b the aftermath of WWII there is a plethora of crash sites throughout this region. It is, I’ve learned, a popular hobby. He described finding human skeletal remains. He claimed the corpse had Mexican identification.  I was again admonished not go out into the desert alone.

Just to the north, I passed through the Barry Goldwater Military Gunnery Range, of course it’s absolutely massive, where fighter jets rumble and scream all day and night. It’s a shock to have them pass fifty feet overhead with a thunderous roar. In the tent trailer next door, four young men, working on a job nearby, watched TV until they fell asleep, snoring loudly. The same program went on and on. It was all about guns, ammo and shooting. The dialogue was interspersed with the same damned bango tune. I used to like banjos. The boys are off to work now, the TV is still on. Now it’s endless game shows while the fighter jets practice with their ugly thunder overhead. The din never ends.

Beneath the thunder of fighter jets, doves cooed softly in the sunset.
Beneath the thunder of fighter jets,
doves cooed softly in the sunset.

In God we trust.” Now pass the rocket launcher. I’m gone to Mexico.

Posted in Ajo, Arizona