A few days ago, I just returned from one of the most fulfilling road trips I have ever taken, to Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley. To be fair, I haven't taken very many road trips, but this one was exceptional in many ways. For one, I only had my husband and six year old daughter with me. We did not meet or travel with anyone else, and as family vacations go, this was probably the longest time we have spent with only each other as company. We survived, flourished even. But the point of this post is not how we managed this as a family or even the value it brought to us collectively. Instead, it's rather more selfish, because as I travelled to these places one after another in the span of two weeks, I found myself pulling in ideas from books I had read and witnessing things around me that I never even knew could happen. It was an intense mental tumble of thought, too many things dashing around, and a fear that if I did not put them down soon, they would be lost to me forever.
This is probably a difficult thing to explain, but imagine, if you can, being a child and drawing a rocky, barren landscape, where you can see every crack, every dust speck. This child was me. The ochres, reds, browns and blacks in this landscape are vivid. Imagine those sketches come to life. There are rocks, and rocks upon rocks, placed as if by someone's hand in precarious positions as if waiting for a signal, upon which they will roll to the desert floor. A distinct line divides these granite faces from the electric blue sky. It is captivating, this line. It feels so near, that you feel, if you walk just a little bit, you will reach it. It looks like a concrete place; as if on one side you would be surrounded in tan and on the other in blue. But like many other things in this place, it is an illusion. In reality, that imagined 'concrete' place is a gap, and even a leap of faith will not get you from one side to the other. Outside, it is dry and you can feel the hot air on your skin. It feels like you are closer to the sun than you have ever been, and that if you stay here beyond the time you are supposed to, you will dry out like a piece of leather, become tough and wrinkled, worn, and maybe stronger. Or, perhaps the opposite will happen, and you will slowly become thin, like old paper or a leaf pressed too long in an encyclopedia and disintegrate, becoming nothing in the breeze.
In some places, if I stood still, with my eyes shut, I could hear the silence. Silence, in this case had a weighty presence. It stood with me, even in the company of others. There was nothing around as far as the eye could see in terms of human inhabitation, just a vast space, spotted with short scrub and an occasional, exceptionally tall cactus plant. To me, the desert measured time like the folds of an accordion. Sometimes time came quickly and compressed together and at times, it stretched almost to the point of breaking, almost to the point of 'no-time'. In those moments of 'no-time', there was exceptional clarity- I saw myself as I really was, a small grain in the vastness of a desert that had existed long before me and would continue to do so long after. I marvelled at the history I saw in it's striated walls, it's deep convoluted canyons, in it's dust, that I am sure had once been rock and perhaps been birthed miles under the surface of the earth.
With the terrain in both places being fairly uniform in their material composition, it is the air, or rather the way the air made it's presence felt, that I started to analyse. I remember closing my eyes at dusk in Joshua Tree National Park. It took exactly five seconds to feel that familiar floaty sensation I always get when I meditate. There was a hum in the air, but a silent hum, if a hum could be silent. It was like an electricity that filled me up completely. I remember not being able to sleep that night, I was so full of energy. The spiny leaves on the arms of the Joshua trees almost felt like neurones, discharging signals to each other and we happened to get caught in the synapses, feeling the jolt as it passed through us onto it's intended destination. And we benefited from being caught in it's path.
On the other hand, the air in Death Valley was dense. It pressed against you, despite how arid it was. It felt still, even if there was a breeze around. It is a difficult thing to describe. It was almost like the heat and frequent rain has petrified everything around it. It has become crusty and brittle, or rope-like and difficult. It is everything in it's extreme form, even the air. I remember an incredible excitement when I first saw the salt flats at Bad Water. It was adrenaline that carried me out onto the salt as far as I could go. When the sun felt too strong to go further, I turned back to what seemed not too far a distance. However, each step back felt heavy and difficult. I could feel my heart rate soaring and my desire to reach the car magnified every second. A mountain up ahead which looked like a five minute sprint, was actually far far away. Again, an illusion of space, time and distance....
A very persistent thought entered my being around this time. I knew as an urban dweller I would not survive in this ancient environment. I simply did not have the skills and knowledge. In fact so few of us might be able to endure it over a period of time. I also knew that the stillness, the raw majesty of this place triggered something primal that soothed my heart. It gave me a feeling that a city cannot. I had had this place in my mind's eye since I was a child. I had drawn these imaginary landscapes repeatedly on the backs of old calendars. Seeing them before my eyes as a vague sketch come to life was unimaginable. The fact that living there is impossible and living a city seems in comparison unnatural- and I mean that as not a 'natural' space, but as something manufactured- left me feeling confused. In a city I have all the comforts but not the uniqueness of 'land'. However this unique land would only have me on her terms. One place is needed for contemporary life to continue and the other place is needed for my internal life to continue. Which is more real? Which is needed more? Ultimately, which is more important?
I pondered all this in the midst of a major thunder storm in which the electricity went out for hours and the lightening sliced the sky repeatedly. On my right, my daughter sat on a rocking chair on the outside of our humble room, giving me a blow by blow account of what was happening, even though most of the time, all we saw was the inky black sky. While it was a sticky 100 degrees F inside our room, the temperature outside had dropped considerably. Occasionally, a flash of lightening so bright would illuminate the sky and the few palm trees in our hotel oasis would stand out. That evening I had watched the storm roll in- ominous clouds from three sides, not one looking like the other, in shape, colour or texture. There had been a storm the night before as well, but nothing like the one we were going through now. I recalled, as I sat there, how this morning when we drove out to see the salt flats and dunes, the roads had looked different. I realised that no two moments are the same. The dunes had shifted, there was no road where there had once been and somewhere else a new unpaved road had appeared, along with cracks, ravines and towering cliffs to it's sides. Old, dead trees, like sculptures with arms raised to the sky had moved their places, abandoned their homes to settle in new spots with different views. The sun had reflected off of the striated hills throughout the day, changing their appearance every second, striking my cornea in a new and novel way each time. If a place can change so visibly before your very eyes, and still be the same place, surely it must be magical?
Perhaps it is that places are real and unreal at the same time. They exist for that one second that they are witnessed and then they pass on, never to be the same again. I understood that in the desert. We exchanged something. I left something behind there, maybe just my phantom presence, maybe that one stretched moment of time, an elastic moment, that has me still walking those crusty salt flats. I'd like to think that. Nevertheless, I am most definitely in the city too. Maybe something from there has wormed it's way inside me and now lives eternally within- somewhere in the cavern of my chest is a big wide desert with no limits, always changing, ephemeral and beautiful.
* All images below and text are copywrite of Maya Bhalla 2016
