Baker, California is the home of the largest thermometer in the world. I saw it as I sped by into the heat and dust bordering Death Valley. There it was, towering over the gift shop and the strip mall behind it. The ridiculous amount of red on the scale throbbed before my vision, weighing in at a perilous 108 degrees. At least it was a dry heat, the kind of dry that sucks all the moisture out of your body in a few minutes and discards you as a lifeless husk along the roadway.
There is much to be said for emptiness and silence, but Death Valley brand emptiness is something altogether different. I watched the engine temperatures rise, listened to the car wheeze and groan and knew that if I were to break down here that I would be crushed like a bug.
I stared blearily at the Joshua trees that lined my avenue into a hazy horizon. Nothing seemed to move. The mountain ahead remained the same distance for hours. I passed ominous signs that read “Last Gas for 70 miles”. I drove on, out of the dust into the valley of the Sierra Nevadas that spread out before me like lumps of dough baking in the sun, trees dotting their barren tops like chocolate chips. Still, the desert would not stop. Still the car threatened to melt at any moment.
This journey has definitely been one of extremes, both in nature and in mood. But it’s also been one of memories, of reliving choices, of examining the reasons why we do what we do, and of the consequences of those actions.
Sometimes on a journey like this, you can find yourself traveling roads you have already traveled, heading into places that are both of themselves and also of choices already made, echoes of another time. Touching the present and future you at the same moment can be a powerful way to gather up all the pieces.
During my trancelike state of wasteland driving today, I had a chance to reflect on and resolve one of those parallel courses.
Three years ago, I headed across the country from Columbus, Ohio to Las Vegas with thirteen other foolish people in a winnebago that sat fourteen but only slept ten. That’s one of those truths you learn a little too late. The drive took forty eight hours and was completed in one stretch.
During that trip, I distinctly remember waking up from my bed on the floor underneath everyone’s feet, amongst their trash and stinky socks, and raising up my head to look out the window. We had just passed Flagstaff, Arizona and the dawn was shining through the windshield, bathing all of us greasy, dirty, smelly travelers with the blistering sun of a fresh morning. My good friend had been driving all night, consuming No-Doz like they were Pez.
We went through Kingston and up the mountains to Vegas, passing Hoover Dam in a daze of heat-wavering asphault, shadow bridges, and the stench of what we’d learn later was a gas leak from the bathroom tanks. Somewhere along the way, my friend Lynne, said, “Hey, if we keep going, we’ll be in California!” I blinked and breathed deeply. California. Nothing at that moment sounded better to me, even though I had just traveled 48 hours in my own filth. All I wanted to do was to reach the California coast. But Sin City awaited and we had money to lose and so my coastal dreams had to wait.
A year later, I was back in Vegas for a trade show and had the opportunity to take a quick trip to the desert. While there, I climbed a tricky bit of cliffside, rising step by step, focusing on nothing but the next handhold. As I reached the top, a small bat emerged from a hole and sat next to me. Both of us gazed out at the blazing sunset that burned low in the West, knowing that if we just followed it, it would lead us to California. Well maybe just me, as I’m sure the bat was happy being a little bat in a hole.
Today, I retraced my steps, repeating the journey, through the hills to the city, but this time instead of turning into the garish Circus, Circus parking lot, I went onward to California, just like Lynne suggested three years earlier. I could hear her voice clearly in my head as I turned the wheel and brought the car around to face west.
Las Vegas became a hazy smudge in my rearview mirror and the California state line was soon breached. The parallel course, the alternate universe was closed.
Oh, and the path not taken? Once I reached the state line, I knew exactly what would have happened to us had we gone forward.
We would have died in the desert.
No joke. It was so mindnumbingly empty, so unbearably hot that I am sure we would have fallen to eating each other within minutes.
Route: 40 West from Flagstaff with a side trip to Las Vegas on 15.