Musings of a Desert Dweller

by Robert Drake

It’s not that often that I get to drive around in the middle of nowhere.  I’m not being completely random.  I know where I’m going…I think, but I’m many hours from home and many hours from where I’m going so I might as well be in the middle of nowhere. 

I rather like being on the road.  I’m north of Phoenix right now.  I’ve passed the valley and have made it into the part where the road rolls around the mountains as I get closer and closer to Flagstaff and its seven thousand feet elevation.  I’ve got the windows open and the wind is sending my hair blowing about.  I stopped combing it before my drives.  I shouldn’t drive so fast, but I’m just beginning to get into my Nirvana. 

Saguaro cactus make the desert worth going to.  It might be bordering triple digits out in this heat, but just look around.  Cactus taller than men stand guard as far as the eye can see.  I’m driving up a steep slope and all the tractor trailers are in the right lane with their lights flashing as they slowly pull themselves up.  My car is struggling too, but I don’t mind.  I’ve driven this road before.  I know what the summit will look like.  I parked by the side of the road once just to stare out.  There’s a little rest stop up there with a few picnic tables and that’s about it, but if you just look out you can see hundreds of miles in every direction. 

I miss that kind of view.  I certainly don’t get it in Phoenix.  I can’t look out my window without seeing a reminder of mankind’s superiority.  I don’t care for it.  I like looking over the wild untamed domain that is this desert wasteland.

Even more then that, I like traveling.  I have music playing.  I know the words and sing along, but I don’t know what I’m saying.  I’ve listened to these songs a thousand times and I stopped paying attention to the lyrics years ago.  Now the beats are all familiar and I’ve played the entire song in my mind long before the speakers quiet.  The music comforts me as I race along this desolate country.  As my consciousness begins to drift the music softens and my mind wanders… Then I enter my Nirvana. 

 

It’s now hours later and I’m stopped at another rest location.  It’s a small place, but fairly clean.  There are a few dozen big trucks here and a couple tourists with small children.  I don’t see any real travelers, travelers who are out here for the hell of it.  Sometimes there are sometimes there aren’t.  I don’t mind either way.

I wasn’t going to stop, but I needed to pull over.  My leg aches and I’m hungry, but I don’t care.  I entered my heaven.  I did what I drove out here to do.  It’s not like I drive around the desert to be completely random.  I always make sure to have a destination, but I couldn’t care less if I get there.  No, I needed to pull over so I could write a few things down.  I don’t know why, but I’ve never written so soon after my experience.

I guess no one has any clue what I’m talking about.  Have you ever done something so…passionately…that you don’t realize you’re doing it while you’re doing it?  My dad always called it Tao or the state of Tao.  I don’t know enough about that ancient religion to know if that name is correct or not, but that doesn’t matter.  You can call it whatever you want.  For those who know the experience trying to give it a name is as pointless as trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t.  Still I try.  I try to explain it.  Or maybe I just try to describe it.  I think it might be a feeble attempt to relive it. 

You don’t know you’re experiencing it until you’ve ceased.  When my dad tried to explain it I always thought it was kinda like sleeping.  You know you’ve slept when you’ve awoke, but you don’t know you’re sleeping while your sleeping.  It’s a lot like that except when you’re in it, you might not be aware you’re in that state, but you are aware.  That’s why I drive out into the deserts on the hottest days of the year, wasting gas and fighting traffic.

I tried telling people about my Nirvana once and I only got one question.  What do you think about?  That’s not an easy one to answer.  I slip into my conscious unconsciousness and I no longer feel anything but the heat that’s blanketing me and the wind that’s buffeting me.  Then I stop driving.  Not really of course.  My odometer is still counting mile after mile.  I’m still making the turns and avoiding fellow travelers, but not really.  I’m not.  My body might be, but I’m not.  I’m traveling the world. 

That’s what I really think about.  I’ve been traveling most of my life.  Actually traveling.  More than anything I wish I could travel for real to all the places in the world at the peak of health with as much money as I need and everyone around me when I want them and no one around me I don’t.  The world’s a big place.  For a man it’ll always be a big place, but it’s still shrinking.  It’s getting filled with cities like where I live.  Cities are very practical places.

There is a romance to cities.  They are civilization.  They are beacons of knowledge and order and triumph.  Everyone has their complaints about traffic and crime, but all but the most rustic villages have a bit of city in them, a bit of security and comfort.  They serve their purpose admirably as bastions of art and culture, but they are also prisons.

They are practical places for practical business.   That’s the flaw in their design.  They don’t encourage exploration.  They don’t allow nature to curl its cruel fingers around you and shake you up.  They are places of protection and order. 

Yes, I know all about city violence.  I stand by what I said.  A city in anarchy is still a city of order.  The violence is caused by man.  There is no such thing as random tragedies in a city.  A bus crash, a lunatic on a killing spree, an accidental fire, a freak building collapse.  These are all the work of man in some way.  A metropolis is a collection of contained, reviewed, analyzed, mathematical acts of violence.  The more humanity in one location the more likely events are to happen.  They aren’t random.  An individual incident might be unpredictable, but nothing is random in a city.  Not really. 

 

I wish it was.

 

I’m not the only one.  People strive for it.  They strive for the unexplainable and powerful.  They strive for fear or when they cannot achieve it, they substitute it with something else.  Mankind is meant to feel fear.  Man is a creature of nature; a nature that supplies poisonous berries, ferocious beasts, and deadly diseases; a nature that has given us drowning and exhaustion and lightning and fire and tall cliffs from which to fall off; a nature that has given us a single life to lose at a single instant. 

That is what I think about in my heaven.  Look at how we cope.  The less sophisticated are contented with haunted houses and skydiving.  Others have sublimated their void with gambling and booze.  Still others take solace amongst mankind as they pursue money and power: practical pursuits that are assured to bring difficulty and a hint of danger.  Most find hobbies, simple tasks that take up time and create an orderly atmosphere that we all think we want.  Why would we want be out in the desert with no where to go when we could be home arranging baseball cards?

I don’t know.  I haven’t gotten that far.  I’m still out in the desert and I don’t own any baseball cards.  It’s not like I want my car to break down.  It’s not like I want to die in the desert.  It’s just that…it’s just that…I like seeing the desert.   I like thinking about what it would be like to find this and be amazed.  Imagine the Spanish conquerors looking over this.  Imagine being a man who has traveled across an ocean and across a continent fighting barbarians and then to come to a desert just knowing it is filled with danger. 

I think I understand a little better now.  Maybe writing is helping.  I think I know what it is about being so far in the middle of nowhere that I like.  It’s not being able to be home.  It’s not being able to be at my destination.  In the city if I collapse and yell loud enough there’s always that safety.  That safety that someone somewhere will find me and help me.  If that accident in the city doesn’t kill me flat out then I won’t die alone.  I might even live.  If I get a flat tire someone will help me.  I might have to scream for days first, but someone somewhere will.

Not out here.  Not in the desert.  Not where I like to be. 

Even here it’s not completely desolate.  I suppose any one of these fellow travelers would stop and lend me a spare tire if I needed it, but it’s easy to forget that looking around.  If I drive off into the desert there’s nothing for me.  I can wish I was home all I want, but I’d be truly alone.  I’d be dead and no one would know.

I try not to be morbid.  I don’t want to drive off into the desert and collapse by some cactus in the middle of nowhere or be bitten by a snake.  I just like knowing there is a place in the world where such a thing could still happen.  I think I’ve lived in the city too long.  I can’t appreciate its safety anymore.  I can’t appreciate being immune to the whims of nature.  I don’t want to be taken by nature, but I don’t want to be protected from it either. 

Imagine the life of a caveman.  Look past the hard life.  Look at the magic.  Every step forward was full of danger and full of promise.  Imagine the feeling of walking for a week without food and being on the verge of starvation and then turning a corner and seeing a fruit tree.  Just picture that.  What kind of euphoria would that be?  Is that truly the highest pleasure?  To be at the second of death and then have nature save you?  To truly be saved by nature?

I just don’t appreciate being saved by mankind.  Everyone is saved by mankind.  There’s nothing special about being saved by mankind.  If you’ve ever lived in a house you didn’t build, or ate food you didn’t grow, or worn clothes you didn’t weave, you’ve been saved by mankind.  If you’ve ever taken medicine you didn’t invent yourself, you’ve been saved by mankind.  But how many people are saved by nature.  Truly saved by nature.  I suppose a few.  I guess if you were hit by lightning and lived you’ve got good grounds.  After the pain and after the shock it must be divine to know that you lived.  You were at the verge of ceasing to exist, but they here you are.   

I can only imagine that kind of pure celestial happiness.  And I do.  That’s what I think about while driving.  That’s why I go out into the middle of nowhere in the beating sun and blowing wind.  That’s why I take my little trips and that’s why I live out in this wasteland.  That’s why I’m a desert dweller.

 

The day isn’t getting any younger.  I guess I should get back on the road.  I’m still hungry, but there’s nothing out here till I get to Flagstaff.  Enough of this writing stuff.  I’ve got a road ahead of me and I better get to it.  Perhaps next time I’m out here when the sun is high and the road is lonely I’ll stop somewhere and jot a few more words down.  Until then I guess I’ll just have to put this pen down and be on my way…Adieu.

Copyright 2005-2008 Robert Drake