Desert Gazette

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  • Afton Canyon

    Afton Canyon

    At the mouth of Afton Canyon, it may be easier to visualize a great lake, Lake Manix, breaching its shores and its waters carving this terrible and yet beautiful gorge through the layers of the millions and millions of years of earth that have gone before. At least at one time, it was believed this all occurred rapidly, over the course of a few weeks, raging in colossal destruction. Now, I believe, the evidence shows it was not just one seismic event that provoked this tearing of the landscape, that it took place over thousands of years driven on by multiple events and changes in climate.

    Afton Canyon

    Lake Manix

  • Saltation

    Thin clouds of purest white streaked through the crystalline sky miles above the dune as it glistened and glittered in the morning’s golden sunlight. The ever-present wind swirled out of its invisibility high above grazing the crests of each swell, placing a yellow halo at the crown of each and every rise. Soon, these phenomena broadened and covered everything leeward. Never just one grain but nearly an infinite amount of particles bouncing and flying over the top. The sandscape vibrating and flirting with focus and vision. Wave after wave, all as if it were applauding itself, this audience of at least trillions upon trillions upon trillions of its own. This is the way sand dunes travel and comfort themselves.

    Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes – Death Valley

    There is no apparent grand purpose other than subtle providence, yet, that is grand in itself.

    After all the commotion, Bug, the darkling beetle, emerged from its hiding place an inch below the surface. Rat, arrived first, however, and it ate Bug. Then Hawk also swirled out of its invisibility high above in the crystal sky and snatched Rat with bloody talons flying off home to its ravenous brood.

    Rat knew he had come to his end, for all rats die as does everything else that lives. Rat was pleased that it was Hawk that would consume him. Coyote or Snake would not honor him with such an aerial showing of the vast world he lived in before he was killed.

    END
    w.feller

    END
    w.feller

  • Harry Oliver’s Argument Starters

    horned lizard, desert wildlife
    Horned lizard

    Roadrunners kill rattlesnakes.

    Desert turtles live a hundred years.

    The loudest noise in the world is thunder.

    The horned toad is not a toad; it’s a lizard.

    The Vinegaroon is half spider and half scorpion.

    Animals are wild because man has made them so.

    The largest gold nugget ever found weighed 630 pounds.

    A cubic foot of gold weighs more than half a ton — 1203 pounds.

    There are many kinds of cactus that will not grow in the desert.

    A lightning flash lasts approximately one-millionth part of a second.

    Horsehair rope as a barrier to stop rattlesnakes has been proved a myth.

    One pound of honey represents the lifetime work of more than 1,000 bees.

    A mule knows three times as much as a horse, and a burro is smarter than a mule.

    The Indian population in the desert is steadily growing — from 8,000 to 45,000 in 60 years.

    Needles of the prickly pear cactus are cut to size, shaped, polished, and sold as phonograph needles.

    Each rattlesnake helps man by killing off between 100 and 150 rats, mice, gophers, and ground squirrels every year.

    The dried stalks of the desert yucca are gathered and sent to a factory in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacturing of artificial limbs.

    Horned Toads sometimes lay eggs and other times will give forth living young. It seems that the mother can’t quite make up her mind.

    Over 3,000 different herbs and plants for therapeutic use were grown in Montezuma’s Mexican botanical gardens years before the discovery of America.

    It is estimated that half a million snakes and twice that number of lizards were killed for their skins and turned into shoes and purses last year for milady’s fancy.

    The department of education in Mexico wants the children in that country to look to the old Aztec god, Quelzaoatl, for their presents each Christmas, rather than Santa Claus.

    Barrel Cactus

    Many old prospectors have been saved from thirst by the water contained in the famous barrel cactus. Today this barrel cactus furnishes the base for some of the noted cactus candies.

    Wrinkled inhabitants of the desert shake their heads and whisper startling exaggerations when you ask about the Jumping Cactus (Cholla); nevertheless, it does jump, but only when stirred by the swish of your pant leg or coat sleeve.

    INDIAN NAMES. In the matter of geographical names, the contribution of the Indian is conspicuous. At least twenty of the states comprised in the United States bear Indian names, while for rivers, lakes, and towns, the list of Indian names is in almost equal proportion.

  • Mojave Trail

    Mojave Trail

    Monument at Las Flores Ranch

    This secluded valley once bore primitive traffic and knew the lithe tread of native feet. The ancient Indian trail from the Colorado River to the coast led up the Mojave River into the mountains and climbed Sawpit Canyon to the summit of the range. The Piute Indians, using this trail, leaving a pathway that guided a Spanish priest, explorers, and pioneers across the desert waste and over the mountain barrier. When the Mormons came, in 1851, immigrant wagons wore a well-marked road through Cajon Pass. Thereafter, the old Mojave Trail through Summit Valley was little used.

    Billy Holcomb Chapter No. 1069, E Clampus Vitus

  • Thin Window

    Lucerne Valley cabin

    Through the thin window, I watch the torn-away sky
    clouds shredded and stolen as sharpened winds howl by

    Spinning wildflowers and tumbling weeds
    frantically, frantically spreading their seeds

    Two birds in a bush warbling in trills and quavers
    it is the lopsided melody the garbled song favors

    Trade rats somersaulting across the bare ground
    cartwheeling badgers angrily claw as they wheel round and round

    Stiff-legged coyotes hobnobbing in play
    catching jackrabbits and cottontails that can only jump up, not away

    and dust swirls into dust devils then dispersed above
    All of this, all of this, lonely, barren, wind-scarred, and loved.

  • The Fault Route

    Click the map to view a larger image

    It seems that people have made use of the San Andreas Fault long before automobile or even wagon roads were developed along its seam. Shown is a 1901 U.S.G.S. map where I have traced the route leading from near Blue Cut in the Cajon Pass, just about straight northwest to Valyermo. The dotted line portion shown at the Big Pines saddle may have been either a mule trail or a road possibly impassible or without increased effort by wagon or auto. Indians likely used the features of the fault as a footpath to do as we all do; go from here to there.

    • Lone Pine Canyon
    • Lone Pine Canyon Road
    • Mormon Rocks
      Mormon Rocks

  • Mr. Bubble

    The impending doom of Mr. Bubble

  • The Natural History of a Desert Raindrop

    They were brothers, airborne, spiraling to earth together. Brothers as brothers can be, they remained brothers until they fell on the divide together; one splashed toward the ocean, and the larger of the two trickled toward the desert. That large raindrop would do fine; however, the small one would have to find its own invent an ocean. Until then, the little raindrop did what most other raindrops do, and that is to fall.

    At this point, many raindrops would soak into the earth joining the stormwater underground. These rainshadow renegades would travel to the aquifers deep into the earth below to ancient, private, and murky waters.

    From sticks and dead leaves and rocks and out of crevices other little raindrops dripped to trickle together in intricate alpine streams hastily making way through a myriad of delicate and fragile waterfalls, into pools, then resting a few moments before being pushed out by the increasing deluge behind them.

    From these streams to creeks the raindrops gathered rushing rather blindly through boulders and fallen trees in the narrow canyon joined by other smaller canyons and joining itself to larger creeks coming from larger canyons until swirling and twisting, colored with mud and dirty foam, all of a sudden coming together to become a river.

    “Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,” thought the little raindrop. It had found its way–to a river that should by all accounts transport it to the sea.

    That didn’t happen, though. The river fell into the quicksands and disappeared into an eerie underworld layered below the clouded skies, under the sands of the empty river, and above the dark and mysterious aquifer.

    Later, there was the bright and sunny sky overhead when the raindrop, risking evaporation, surfaced for a breath then soaked back into the safety of the shallows.

    Again and one more time again this happened. Finally, there is no finally. The little raindrop simply never came back. After all, it was just a raindrop, and this river in the desert never reaches the sea.

    The end.

  • My First Fossil

    There it was–I didn’t even have to sweep it off with the little paleontology brush I just bought.

    Finding my first fossil was a much bigger deal than I thought it would have been. There was a lot of excitement and yelling. Running around, too–don’t know why, I mean, it wasn’t going anywhere. There were people from the museums, also. They were standing over in the shade grumbling in muffled mumbles. They coveted the find. However, smiling broadly with all rows of their sharpened teeth showing, they stood next to it for pictures.

    In a little more than a whisper from their dark huddle, one could hear, “It should have been us. We are worthy.”

  • Timeless Rainbows

    Ancient rainbows

    I like to watch the very end of the day–the last slivers of light seen while everyone has gone home to have their dinner and watch the television. Those last shreds of light must be mine, at least as far as my eyes can see. I see how lovely this light is, nearly, nearly an invisible veil as shear as color. There are final bits of sunlight delicately pulled away from jagged edges in order to begin the evening properly. And here, especially where rainbows once beautiful and bold, now faded and wicked, tear the low light trying to hold on to the day, these olden days past . . .

    Rainbow Basin

  • Cerro Gordo

    Cerro Gordo, The “fat hill,” produced silver, lead, and zinc for a century. At its peak, over 1,000 people lived here working in mines as the San Felipe and Union. At the time, the smelters were the best there were. Silver was roasted and formed into bullion, sent down the Yellow Grade road by a mule team, and shipped across Owens Lake by steamboat. From the lakeside port of Cartago, the bullion was loaded onto Remi Nadeau‘s freighters and hauled into Los Angeles.

    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel
    American Hotel

  • Mojave River Photos

    • Mojave River Bluffs, West Fork
    • flash flood
    • Mojave River, Victorville
    • Mojave River sand dunes
    • Mojave River at Afton Canyon
      Mojave River at Afton Canyon

    Photos of the Mojave River from headwaters to termination

    Mojave River Posts

    Photos of the Mojave River from headwaters to termination

  • Hole-in-the-Wall

    ***** PICNIC TABLE GEOLOGY PRESENTS *****
    30-second seminars — by Some Guy

    Hole-in-the-Wall – Mojave National Preserve

    About 18.5 million years ago one day everything was blah, blah, blah and then all of a sudden . . . POOOM!

    Hot, suffocating ash buried every living thing in the path of the blast. An area of over 600 km2 was covered with ash and rock fragments so hot that they welded together after they reached the ground. The toasted and fossilized remains of birds, mammals, and plants lie entombed beneath the volcanic tuff that forms the colorful cliffs of Hole-in-the-Wall.

    https://digital-desert.com/a/hole-in-the-wall/

  • Bottle Tree Forest

    Elmer Long’s place — Historic Route 66 – Helendale, Ca.

  • Patrick – Age 20

  • 100% Reality

    Superior Lake circa 2000

    Sometimes you get out there to do what you do whatever it is you do when you are there but it just doesn’t look real and something is not quite right. Well, you are correct because nothing is quite right or real 100%, but what are you going to do? Cry?

  • New Beauty

    Someday all beautiful things will have been worn away and become mundane and undesirable to view. Then, I imagine all the ugly stuff will become unique and beautiful because they are different and exciting. I imagine.

  • Ungated

    The scribbled road escapes through a broken gate tearing across the rumpled and scratchy desert.
    Zig-zagging hastily along the narrow and dusty trail.
    Traversing the rise, and disappearing, then a cloud of dust and disappearing again into the far horizon.

    Under the dull gray-white skies of this heartless Mojave valley
    Nothing moves and stands fast until dark.

  • Invasive Species

    Ekphrastic Surrealism

    Under the Metallic Sun: Invasive Species
    (Mirror sun and stucco flower by Dennis Rudolph)

    El Mirage, Ca.

  • Hear the Wind

    Coyote Lake

    Mike was alone now. It was just him and the wind in the desert. He wasn’t scared. He would listen to Nature. It would speak to him–tell him what he needed to do. In fact, the wind was trying to touch base with Mike at that very moment. It was saying, “Hey Mike? Mike? Can you hear me, Mike? Mike?” Mike, however, was preoccupied with trying to get a signal. Without water or shelter, Mike was a goner. Too bad for Mike.

  • Mojave River’s End

    It is the strangest thing; the river; I follow it downstream and it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. With every step, it becomes less and less and less. The water diminishes and depletes until it is just a trickle, until a glisten, until just a wet spot surrounded by damp sand, and then nothing. That is how this river ends–not mightily at an ocean, but quietly, subdued in the sand and rubble and stone becoming as if it never were.

    Mojave River
    https://digital-desert.com/mojave-river/

  • Lucerne

    Various photos of Johnson & Lucerne Valleys

  • Trees

    There are three ravens in the sky above the oak on the left. The raven on the far right of those three flew in front of me after first cawing and catching my attention. Over the years I have learned when this happens there are two ravens flying safely and quietly behind me. I like to believe they do this as a strategy to distract potential predators.

  • Veristic Surrealism

    Veristic surrealism; an abstraction of a reality created through free thought.

    ~ Now playing at the El Rancho . . .

    Questions to ask yourself;
    Do you like it?
    Why do you like it?
    What does it represent to you?

    Veristic – positive, life, moving forward.

    And if you do not like it; it does not exist.

  • Meaning Nothing

    All of a sudden nothing made sense. Not that there was nothing or that anything in the nothing meant nothing but that nothing with nothing in it did indeed, not mean nothing.

  • Broken Lands

    There is a broken land where mountain ranges rise like angry tidal waves in turbulent, slow-motion seas, senselessly wrestling in convection.

    Occasionally, countless battalions of clouds march briskly right to left without leaving a drop of water, all saved for a brutal assault on a faraway fire.

    adapt or die–that is all that can be said.

    Broken animals and plants living in uneven symbiosis.

    and above; thrown into the wind, birds fly incorrectly and confused
    and tumble from the sky in mid-breath.

    tiny fish in the broken river’s warm water quietly dance an intricately choreographed ballet.

    Trees are not trees . . .
    and the rabbit is not in charge as he would have you believe.
    remember that.

    Bragging coyotes arrogantly bark and yap after a kill
    Then they eat.

  • By-Passing Barstow

    Bits from an interesting 1961 article about by-passing downtown Barstow and modernizing transportation infrastructure at the geographical descendant of ‘Forks-in-the-Road‘ of pioneering times. Speaks to the morphology of the transportation corridor from the classic Route 66 to the modern Interstate 15 Freeway. Also, see Sidewinder Road for maps between Victorville and Barstow.

    On July 5, nine miles of the Barstow Freeway, known locally as the “Barstow By-Pass”, were opened to traffic by construction contractors Gordon H. Ball and Ball & Simpson.

    The project is an extension of the 24-mile freeway from Victorville to Barstow which was opened in January 1959. It makes available the improvement to full freeway standards of an important link of Federal Interstate Route 1 S (U.S. 91) and the first step of freeway improvement of Interstate Route 40 (U.S. 66) toward Needles.

    California Highways, Sep/Oct 1961.
    Modern ‘Forks-in-the-Road’ junction at Interstate 15 & 40 Freeways
    Forks-of-the-Road – Where the Salt Lake Road and Mojave Road come together and become the Mojave River Trail

  • Historic Victor Valley Wagon Roads

    Primary regional road network — USGS 1901

    Not all-inclusive, this 1901 map shows basic transportation routes between the Cajon Summit on the west and east from there through either the San Bernardino Mountains or Lucerne Valley to where the two roads meet in the Big Bear Valley.

    This map below was made in 1883 and shows an earlier and geographically expanded version of the routes.

    1883 map of route network in the upper Mojave River region (note; no railroad)

    The 1883 map is more inclusive and contains a couple of items I want to keep track of. There are differences but the road segments look about the same.

    I made a copy of the 1883 roads layer and made it red to stand out better.

    There are some nuances between the two maps, and right now the Oro Grande Wash area seems considerably off, fiddling with it some I can get a better fit–but not at these rates. The 1901 would be the more accurate depiction of what went on out there even if it were 35 years or so after the fact.

    Williams USGS survey map 1853

    Note that in the above map the variations of trails from across the valley leading to the Cajon Summit seem not to have been developed at this time and instead the trail along the Mojave River is shown.

    1901 trail routes transposed over modern street map through Hesperia

  • The Northers

    Then there were the “Northers,” which the heavy winds that swept down the Cajon Pass from the Mohave desert were called. They were much more severe then and sometimes very cold, blowing for about three days at a time. Many people treated them as they would rainy weather, and by way of derision, they were sometimes called “Mormon rains,” coming as they did by way of San Bernardino. They often came before the rains and when sheep had been pastured in the early summer the surface of the ground was cut into fine dust and we would have a dust storm which would cover the inside of the houses with dust. Since the land was planted and roads oiled, the “Northers” have lost most of their disagreeable features. Being dry they clear the atmosphere and are one of the beneficial features in our healthy climate.

    History of San Bernardino County – John Brown Jr., 1922

  • Savan Navas

    What happens when one’s reflection takes charge?

    Savan wakes up and gets ready for the day ahead

    The sunlight coming through the window felt good on his back. This was a pleasant way to wake up. Savan Navas felt great. He shaved, showered, and then made breakfast for himself.

    Savan dressed and stood looking into the mirror and tied his tie and adjusted the knot in exactly the position he preferred. A final inspection– He stood back a bit. He looked great. He smiled. What a wonderful day this will be, Savan thought. He took a breath then watched his reflection turn and walk out the door.

    That was so strange, Savan thought.

    Savan’s reflection walks out the door.

    Savan was shocked; he froze. What did he see his reflection do? Should I follow? Savan wondered. He smiled at the thought although feeling an anxious cringe. Savan could hear the deadbolt slide into place and lock. Did I just lock myself in? He chuckled.

    He could not remember something like this ever happening before–his reflection walking out the door.

    I wonder if he knows where he is going.

    This was entirely new to him.

    What happened and to who?

    That can’t happen, and yet it did happen. How could it have happened? Maybe it was him who walked out the door. It couldn’t have been him; he was right here.

    This must be a dream. There are some dreams we swear aren’t dreams that real–but we are dreaming. There are some realities that are dreams, and we may find out later that we lived our dreams.

    There appears to be reality and something else, possibly our reality is our point of view.

    I wonder if he knows where he is going.

    I wonder what the reflection does when I leave the room. I suppose it exists until I am out of view. I presume the reflection exists as long as I am there to be reflected.

    This has never happened before. At least, it has never happened in reality that I can remember.

    The reflection got ahead of me.

    Here the story changes as Savan realizes that he may be the reflection rather than the being.

    Leaving the room seemed easy enough–however, for some reason, he could not remember leaving the room before. He was not sure if that was what he did every day. He could not remember.

    If I go, what do I do? I do not remember!

    Savan could not remember any of these things. He could, however, remember that he just saw himself walk out of the apartment.

    He could not remember anything before the sun on his back woke him up. There was no night before, no day before, no weeks, months, or anything. There were no memories other than the sun on his back and the events that took place until now.

    What is beyond the door? Where do I go? What do I do when I get there?”

    Since I cannot remember, does this mean I am the reflection, and the real me left the room?

    Savan ponders his feelings — if he were just a reflection, would he have any feelings at all? Is feeling nothing feeling?

    What does all of this mean? Is this existence? What will/may happen from this point?

    A subtle agony overtook him as he realized he may be nothing more than a reflection of a man, and if so, this was his existence in total. If he turned around there may be nothing–he would cease to exist.

    “Nowhere,” Savan thought “Out there is nothing.”

    Then, indeed, he would cease to exist once he altered his state, even if only by one particle, or a photon as it may be—surface tension.

    Let go of the past.

    “Is this what happens every day? “

    He could not remember.

    If it were his destiny, to be ephemeral, he fretted, he may cease to exist once he turned, and looked away from the mirror. To move on his side of the glass–to try to leave the room and enter a future.

    There is no future; there was no past

    Since he could not recall a past, there was nothing, and he could not imagine a future without a history to gauge it by.

    He felt cold and empty.

    But he was conscious of himself. He was self-aware.

    “Do I exist at this exact moment?”

    Not to my reflection.

    Am I in the mirror or looking into the mirror?

    “Certainly, I do not exist to the version of me that I believed to be a reflection of me who left the apartment.”

    “It would be safe for me to remain here just like this if I wished to continue to exist, although this existence would be unwhole without dimension.

    Or do I exist as long as I am aware of myself?

    I would think that once, I also may have left the room while my reflection stared in disbelief. However, I cannot recall, at this moment, anything that would lead me to believe I should remember anything about a reflection acting out of character for a reflection. Generally, reflections have no future, as their reality is dependent on their subject.

    Do my reflections exist when I look away? Are they always there?-Waiting for me?

    As long as I am conscious of my reality, I am real. I am looking into the mirror and do not see my reflection, which may indicate that if I look away (turn around) I may no longer be capable of maintaining my reality, and that may mean that I am an ephemeral reflection and not the real me.

    That I am only real outside of reality.

    Descartes – “cogito, ergo sum” (I think therefore I am.)

    Or can I walk through that door into an uncertain reality, a future, and live from this point forward free of preconceptions and learned behavior?

    The only way to know is to turn around and walk out the door. I may cease to exist; however, I did exist as I chose to see if I did, indeed, exist.

    Savan turns around to leave the room but finds himself looking in the mirror and sees himself coming in the doorway.

    —

    The end

    Instantly, there is nothing.