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By chris Date: 2006 Jun 02 Comment on this Work [[2006.06.02.02.58.14500]] |
| Hightailing it out of Vegas, the first stop about fifty or so miles out is a place called "Lathrop Wells". Is it an actual town or just the name of the gas station there? We don't know. The government tested nuclear weapons around here, too, and Area 51 isn't too far off. You can't really visit any of these places, of course, and yet Lathrop Wells seems to be the "gateway" to these forbidden destinations - the one place you CAN go before you reach those you CAN'T maybe? But this is pure speculation. One thing I do know is that southern Nevada is coma-inducing: Every bend in the road (and there aren't many bends) brings a brand-new identical treeless mountain range with broad basin running down the middle filled with green creosote bushes growing uniformly about three to four feet apart. Any variation is strictly your imagination getting hyper. So that brings us back to Lathrop Wells, and the gas station - or what looks like one, anyway. We go in, buy beef jerky and water and whatnot, and then realize that what it IS is actually one of Nye County, Nevada's legal brothels. Cherry Patch or some such fruit-type name. Sweet. I realize you're Not Amused. I'm curious. But you're Sagittarius, after all, so you're curious too. Anyway, neither of us would ever actually partake, per se, but we take a picture of the sign at least and buy a postcard. Or two. The "menu" is on sale at the register for $4.50. I pass on that. I look in a back room and see a tall, lean blonde - hard as the Mojave desert ground out there - level a pool cue across a green felt table. Cigarette smoke curls around the light fixture over her head. We leave. Lathrop Wells is a town, it turns out, and it's also the official last chance for sodapop and pussy before Death Valley. Damn. We need to read those billboards more carefully next time. Speaking of Death Valley, that's exactly where we're headed. Las Vegas will be there for us when we get back. Civilization is fine. I'm all for it. But it's not enough. Walking the Strip, that wildness on the air that you sense isn't the free drinks and .99 shrimp cocktails and promise of loose slots. No, it's this - and the wind carries it south like radiation and tells of it to all who will listen. Besides, showing you Death Valley is one of the items on my "things to do before I die" list. And, since I'm still technically alive, here we are. So we continue north on the 95, through Beatty and Rhyolite (the latter a rather famous ghost town of the Amargosa Desert), finally up to Daylight Pass. At over 4,000' above sea level we begin our descent into the park - and also the state of California. The Yardbirds on the CD player are singing about a train that kept a-rollin' and we watch the rental car's outside temperature gauge rise steadily - 81 at the pass, then 93, 95, 99, 101, 108... Springtime in Death Valley - a beautiful thing. And you are, too, I think, as I look over at you, your face framed by dead mountain ranges and snow-capped peaks beyond those. Down below in the heat haze stretches leagues of white salt. And that's where we're going - the very valley of the shadow. I hold your hand, smooth as always and darker than mine. You're a child of the desert, and the salt beds down there look just like the snows from my northern childhood. They're not. But we know there's life down there, too - us for starters. This will be one story. We'll have many. |