“… But there was never any but Winnenap’ who could tell and make it worth telling about Shoshone Land. And Winnenap’ will not any more. He died, as do most medicine-men of the Paiutes.

Where the lot falls when the campoodie chooses a medicine-man there it rests. It is an honor a man seldom seeks but must wear, an honor with a condition. When three patients die under his ministrations, the medicine-man must yield his life and his office.”

~ M. Austin – Land of Little Rain – Shoshone Land

Often I have spent three, four days in the desert alone, without even seeing another human being. I love the solitude, the brush with loneliness. I don’t talk to myself. I already know what I’ll say in response. The silence, and then the wind, it’s soothing, I relish it.

And I’ll leave to return to my little civilization, anxious for an interaction with my fellow man. A word, a smile, I’ll go into a store, a matter of convenience. I fix myself a cup of coffee. go to the counter and grin like an idiot. The clerk asks, “Will there be anything else for you today?” I shake my head from side to side. I do not care for the first word out of my mouth to be “No.”

I pay and the clerk says, “You have a nice day.”

I’m still grinning like an idiot.

I go to say, “Yes, thank you, and you too.”

My lips form the first word, but nothing comes out. My vocal chords are relaxed from not being used. Nothing comes out but a small, deep rumbling building up as I continue. I finish with the word, “… too” in a dark tone, about four octaves deeper than usual.

I still have that foolish grin on my face.

The clerk has a puzzled look on his.

I flash him a ‘thumbs up.’ Then with one hand I act like I’m ‘signing’ something to him.

He still has that puzzled look.

I still have that stupid grin.

I go out the door–embarrased.

I get in the truck and try to sing “Sherry” by Franki Valli, in a high voice as I’m driving down the road. It comes out bizarre and awkward. It’s like the reverse effect of helium. It cracks me up.

And I still have that grin on my face.

~w

Check this out–I think it’s gold. The piece of quartz is very heavy for its size, and it sure looks like gold to me. I doubt it’s pyrite (fool’s gold). I’ll have an expert look at it next time he comes around, or I go over there. Until proven otherwise, that’s my story.

Quartz with streak which might be gold, might not too!

I’ve always been a bit leery of finding gold, so I don’t pay all that much attention. I figure if I found some I’d get the ‘fever’ and be good for nothing always looking for more. I like what I do out there and would rather keep doing it than be possessed by a never-ending search for the illusive yellow metal- That’s what happens sometimes.

So when I picked this up I brought it home and threw it in a box. That was more than a few years ago. I forgot all about it until going through the whatnot I keep in the darkest recesses of my patio.

I dragged the box out of the corner and looked inside. There it was. I picked it up and, man, was it heavy! I blew the dust off, got it a bit wet, and could see a somewhat speckled streak through it. “That’s gold,” I thought.

It has been so long since I found it, and I know that wherever I picked it up, it was legal for me to do so. Just can’t remember where I got it. I do remember there was plenty more of it where I found it–that stuff was laying all over the place! This was the smallest piece.

So, somewhere out there is a tiny fortune in gold, just laying there on the dirt. Amazing. I’m glad I can’t remember where I found it though. I still would rather take pictures than look around for rocks that would eventually break my heart not being what I thought they were.

Hard Rock Shorty of Death Valley

Hard Rock Shorty was in a talkative mood, and the dudes lolling on the leanto porch in front of the Inferno store were making the most of it. They plied him with questions and
Shorty always had an answer that amused them.

“The laziest man I ever know’d was slower than a sand dune on a calm day,” Hard Rock  was saying.

“Pisgah Bill an’ me found this feller sittin’ in his old jalopy which looked as if a flock o’ 17- year locusts had nested in it fer two seasons.

“We asked him where he wuz goin’. ‘Nowheres,’ he said. ‘Don’t need nothin’ so why should I be bustlin’ around Iookin’ fer somethin’. Got a can o’ water an’ a box o’ eggs. Yu don’t need much to eat and drink if yu don’t move much,’ he splained.

“I seen he wuz parked right in the path o’ one o’ them marchin’ sand dunes, an’ I warned him he’d better not stay there too long ’cause a big wind storm’d bury
him.

” ‘Let ‘er march,’ he says. ‘If camels and tortoises can live buried in the sand, so can a
superior bein’ like man.’

“Me and Pisgah figgered we’d done all we could fer the crazy galoot, and we went on an’ left him sittin’ there with his box o’ eggs. It wuz five weeks before we came back that way agin, an’ there wuz that same good-fernothin’ sittin’ in the same spot where we left him. That sand dune had marched right over him and wuz jest leavin’ an the ol’ feller wuz shakin’ the sand outta his hair.

“He told us he wuz- glad things happened the way they did. He’d had a nice long rest. He’d proved that man is as good as them hibernatin’ things like turtles, an’ that box of eggs had hatched out the finest batch o’ fluffy little chickens yu ever seen — which wouldn’t ‘ave happened if he had et the eggs in the first place.

” ‘Sure beats gallopin’ around the country,’ he says.”

– Desert Magazine – Jan. 1958

The story of a Boy who just Disappeared one day …

Everett Ruess was not the first human being to vanish in the grim desert wilderness—nor is it likely he will be the last. But because of the unusual character of this young man and the strange circumstances of his disappearance, there still remains after four years of fruitless search a widespread interest in this desert mystery.

“Say that I kept My Dream“

Hard Rock Shorty of Death Valley

“This place must be a great deal like the Sahara desert,” remarked one of the tourists who had stopped at the Inferno store to ask about the location of Death Valley Scotty’s mine.
“Do you ever see any ostriches or camels wandering around over these barren sand dunes?”

“Not any more,” said Hard Rock Shorty. “Usta be some ostriches here, but Ol’ Pisgah Bill got rid of ’em. They wuz too dumb to do any work, an’ they kept eatin’ up his grub. He finally gave ’em all to the zoo down in Los Angeles.

“Bill had a good idea—only it didn’t work. It was back in the old days when the wimen wuz all wearin’ ostrich plumes on their hats. Ostrich farms wuz springin’ up everywhere. Bill read in the papers about a big ostrich ranch down in Phoenix which sold $60,000 worth of feathers in one year.

“So Bill sent to the gov’ment printin’ office an’ got all the information he could about ostriches. The more he read the more certain he was that them big birds ‘d thrive in Death Valley. ‘They eat anything,’ he explained, ‘an’ they don’t drink much water. Death Valley’s just the place fer ostriches.’

“The next winter Bill hit a purty good pocket in that gold mine o’ his over in the Panamints, an’ as soon as he got his returns from the mill he sent down to Phoenix to buy a couple o’ them ostriches.

“Bill’s idea wuz to make ’em work fer a livin’. He’d train ’em to pack out ore like a burro, an’ when pluckin’ time came he’d gather a few feathers—and that would be an extra bit o’ profit.

“Trouble wuz, them ostriches did jes what all the books said they’d do—they ate everything. Second morning after Bill got ’em into camp up in Eight Ball crick one o’ them big birds stuck his head in the window o’ Bill’s little shack an’ swallered Bill’s can o’ coffee. The other bird saw what wuz goin’ on and it reached in an’ took the coffee pot in one gulp. Bill had to keep the house locked, the windows closed, and all his tools out o’ sight, cause them birds jest gobbled up everything layin’ around.

“An’ to make it worse, the only way Pisgah could get ’em to pack rock wuz to walk ahead of them carryin’ something to eat. They wuz too dumb to learn, an’ the burros didn’t like ’em either.

“The final showdown came  one mornin’ when one of them ostriches walked into the mine tunnel and swallered three sticks o’ dynamite. As it came out it passed close to one of the burros, and the animal hauled off an’ gave it a kick. The explosion killed the burro, blew down the shack, an’ the bird was sick fer a week. That wuz the last straw. Bill gave the ostriches to the zoo.”

~ from Desert Magazine – June 1958