Loop Through Southwest

Though the Desert Southwest may be seen as one single enormous hellhole, best traversed holding one's nose and driving as fast as the Arizona Highway Patrol will allow, it is well-known to its residents that even within a desert, there are regions of plenty and regions of... not-so-plenty. Take the Sajuaro cacti - God's version of a dick joke. If you find yourself in a desert in the Southern or Southeast part of Arizona, you will be surrounded by plentiful gargantuan phallic monuments, like alien retirees, standing around in mountainsides basking in the Arizona sunshine, stretching out their arms like they're in retiree pilates, congregating in huge clusters in the shady spots inside the walls of canyons so they can hang out slothfully all day in the shady heat. All of the open deserts in the region are plentifully filled with Sajuaro cacti, are teeming with wildlife, both permanent and migratory, thirst being relieved by a season of rainstorms, albeit brief. These regions contrast wildly to bone-dry western Arizona, or the desert oases that cropped up along the fertile Colorado River, which enabled large ecosystems to develop, and humans to establish agriculture, a feature that's been central to the contest for water in the Desert Southwest.

Each highway winds through different parts, with different characteristics.

Every road that cuts through this area has its own feel, its own characteristics. Interstate 8 passes through the lonely, desolate stretches of a desert void of green. It is long and straight and travels through the desert like a thousand-yard stare. What little green does exist along this interstate is scrubby and low, creeping and clustering on the ground. "Greenery" around Interstate 8 is as brown as it is green. The plants blend naturally into the desert landscape, like shadows.

Interstate 10, passing through Arizona further to the north than Interstate 8 (interstate travel trivia: even-numbered interstates pass west-to-east, with odd-numbered interstates proceeding south-to-north; enumeration of west-to-east interstates proceeds south-to-north, with enumeration of south-to-north interstates proceeding west-to-east), snakes through Phoenix to the east and links up with Los Angeles; Interstate 8 similarly links the California city of San Diego, on the California-Mexico border, with Yuma, on the Arizona-Mexico border, and eventually Tucson). The 10 passes through comparably barren and depressing land, scattered with occasional mountains that occur with the frequency of dog droppings in a neighborhood with careless neighbors.

"The [Mojave] Desert. Where God took his dog for a morning constitutional."

95 o course,j ll earl, tracves its humbe way up the mojave/kofa basin something, the watershed whast river, lakes and where there are lakes there are people, and where there are people there are vehicles, and where there are vehicles there is infrastructure and noise and gas stations and RV hookups and dumping stations and and and

[its like they are a zombie army following the orders of Edward Abbey - "get out of your damn RVs", &c. - and there they are, feeling every bump and every hill of the desert, tasting and breathing the dust of the earth, eating it in their dinners at night, mouthfuls of sand.]

running south, west of highway 95, west of the ypg, west of the arizona california border, highway ___ traces the San Andreas fault east, passing through a manmade freak-show of Nature playing itself out in a perpetual toxic apocalypse, occurring within and beside a filthy watering hole in the California desert.

What, didn't you know about the Salton Sea?

John Waters, in his documentary _____, describes the Salton Sea as _____. The documentary explains the original purpose of the Salton Sea, and the dreams, sometimes mad, that water can inspire in the desert. An entire resort community was planned along the shores, roads for housing developments paved, land bought up and marked up for sale to land prospectors or retired suckers.

Fast forward ____ (explain what happened):

[photo] decay.

[photo] desolation.

[photo] ruin.

[photo] death.

The Salton Sea smells salty and sharp, like the recently-dead, newly-rotting corpse of a dehydrated sea. It is a weird place; the seashore is covered in the bones of dozens of generations of dead fish. Wiped out each year, when temperatures and salinity in the sea drive oxygen out of the water and literally suffocate tens of thousands of these fish to death, their bones are an eerie, ever-present reminder of their Biblical annihilation.

The actual liquid of the sea is far better than anything I can imagine serving as the liquid broth in the cauldron of the three witches of Macbeth. It is an incredibly salty brew, olive green and covered in a natural biofilm with the consistency of mucus, forming bubbles uncannily akin to snot bubbles, chained to meter-long strands of Salton Sea mucus, and it would be the perfect broth for such a cauldron. The salinity of the Salton Sea is the product of a number of rivers of the Southwest emptying into the Salton Sea [____], plus runoff from nearby farms, which contains a large amount of salt, and rivers of a more malign nature - rivers like the New River, a border-crossing stream of raw sewage and runoff from California's southern (and higher-elevated) neighbor, leaking down into the below-sea-level basin, in the middle of which the Salton Sea sits, catching runoff. The dream of the Salton Sea, the luxury getaway, full of exotic beach resorts, the Southwest response to Florida, a little piece of paradise within reach of Los Angeles, in the midst of sunny Southeastern California, has [disappeared/gone] down the drain; the Salton Sea has become a giant, man-made toilet for the Desert Southwest.

There are some places of incredible beauty in California, where you want to stop your car, get out, look around, take a deep whiff of that piece of California. If you do this along the beaches of the Salton Sea, you'll wonder for hours afterwards whether it is possible to catch cancer from the air, because your head aches, and your mucous membranes don't seem to be working, and now your hair is falling out... Rather, when driving through Highway ___, you desperately hope that Highway Patrolmen look the other way while you rip through the most macabre strip of land in our country.

[ caption of sick face: should've listened to the yelp review. "Do not take deep breaths. Do not hold your breath any longer than 5 seconds Do not engage in strenuous activities." ]

So much for a day at the beach. But then again, maybe the need for a day at the beach is a central thread running through this whole region.

[the central thread]

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after a long and extensive loop around southwest arizona and southeast california central thread in the character of this area is small, dusty, run-down farm communities surviving on dregs of water rurual areas, truck stops, shanties, small towns clustered together brawley, imperial, el centro, holtville, heber they're all the same f**** city narrow, winding highways through obscure scenery, RVs everywhere, it's a weird personality type that thrives here, a weird trait in common among everyone out here

grizzled, stand-offish, friendly but guarded

all these people with RVs in quartzite - obsessives, eccentrics

what does it take for someone to open a rock shop in quartzite, and collect all of those rocks? stay in business?

what does it take for someone to be a regular at the beer belly bar?

what does it take for someone not just to give lip service to, but actually go through the motions of, buying an RV, driving all the way down here, and working out the logistics of living in Quartzite, AZ for the winter?

what kind of people are these?

what kind of people are living in these small towns, packed into suburban housing developments, centered around a single gas station, a liquor store, a diary queen? what keeps these communities going? what keeps these people sane? (maybe that isn't the right question.)

what keeps these sun-baked desert rats content enough to stay in place?

that's what I don't understand. or do I? isn't it something that I would potentially see myself doing? if I only knew how?

i don't know if i would do it. i'd pay lip service... it seems fun to live out in the desert, in an RV, there's some element of attraction to be off the grid, unplugged from society. but would anyone ever actually go through with it and do it?