9 July, 1999

"When I'm ready to leave New York, I'll be ready to live in the desert."

"Is that so." Sean smiled, in a manner somewhere between bemused and nonplussed.

"Sure. Maybe we can have a place in San Francisco and a place in New York... but when I'm ready to leave here, it'll be a place in SF and a little place in the desert."

"How about a cottage on the lake?", I continued. "Owens Lake!"

I giggled. Owens Lake is a dry lake bed west of the Saline Valley.

I laid down on the cool, hardwood floor and closed my eyes. "A little house in the desert... I'll get all tan and wear white gauzy dresses. My hair will be completely white from the sun and I'll have a big straw hat. And my toenails will always be painted bright red!"

Glancing up at him, I caught a smile.

"Laurie can come out and stay with me for a few months each year. We'll do pottery! Wouldn't that feel good, spinning cold, wet clay on a wheel?"

"How would you survive out there?", Sean asked.

"Oh, I'll be OK. I'll have an internet connection, of course. I could get anything I wanted!"

"No, how would you survive?"

"Like running out of water? I'll have a basement and it will be full of water. Just five-gallon jugs, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling."

"What if something happened to you when you were going to get water. When you're driving home and you're still 30 miles away from anything?"

"I'll wait in the shade until the sun went down and then I'll walk!"

"You'd die from the heat, sitting in your car."

"No, no, no, no, no. I read about this before I went out there. You're supposed to sit in the shade until the sun goes down and then walk."

"But it's still 30 MILES!"

Silence.

"So I'll keep a bike in the back of the truck."

10 July, 1999

After our visit to the phone booth in the Mojave Desert, we spent some time camping up in the High Sierras. For our trip home, we chose to drive through the Great Basin Desert, down the Saline Valley, across Death Valley. What I was able to see of these drastically differing landscapes was the education -- and inspiration -- of a lifetime.

The vast expanse of Owens Lake took my breath away. The majestic mountain ranges beyond were overwhelming in their mystery.

I thought of my sister's home in Colorado, in the San Juan mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain range. Within the San Juans, smaller groupings have their own names, and each peak can be identified. She can name them all, while to me it was geological cacophony.

I imagined living in the desert, seeing the personality of each landmark emerge over the course of months and years... In the beginning, they must all look alike. After a year, ten years, they're as different as people are different. I want to know that.

^     ^     ^
Descending in elevation from 9,000 feet to sea level, we saw vegetation change drastically. The patterns in which things grow is infinitely telling. Approaching Death Valley, small shrubs grow in a pattern maintaining such precise distances between them... almost as if they were planted by a landscape designer. The radius between desert shrubs provides them with the absolute minimum and precise amount of space and water they need to survive.

Continuing south, our approach to the Mojave was marked by the sudden appearance of scattered and infrequent Joshua trees -- which grow in no other place on earth.

^     ^     ^
Admiring the exposed strata of brightly colored rock in the mountain faces, Laurie pointed out that the patterns woven into blankets by Native Americans were inspired by the layers of rock in their surroundings. That you can tell exactly where they lived by their textiles, since they almost serve as a map -- or postcard picture -- of where they're from, where they've been.

I would love to know this land well enough to recognize these differences.

^     ^     ^
New York City -- It Ain't Kansas, boasts the T-shirts sold to tourists who visit here.

The Mojave -- It Ain't Manhattan.

My struggle these days is the reconciliation of my new-found passion for the desert with my life up to this point:

Medical emergencies? Here, I'm less than five minutes from three different hospitals. Out there, I'd simply die if something happened to me.

Social interaction? I don't know... in NYC it's easier than anywhere to remove yourself completely from any contact whatsoever. I choose to forge a community within my neighborhood, but it would be just as easy to go through every day with no eye contact, no personal interaction. I believe that it's as possible to feel completely alone here as it would be in the desert.

Danger? The environmental risks are higher in the desert, to be sure... but how does it work out in the end, having removed 8 million other people, any number of them psychos. Take away the traffic, the terrorism (I live every day knowing that I'm in a prime target), the exploding streets, the muggings. You're left with the land, the sun, the storms. Could I bear it? Could I survive? I don't know... but I'd like to see what it feels like.

I live now in the land of convenience. Delis, bodegas, culture, cabs, friends -- all only steps from my door.

The desert would be a test of inconvenience. Driving miles for food and company. Living at the mercy of the sun and the rains. Roads washed out.

I'd have to own a car.

I hate humidity.

I couldn't live in a place with no seasons, and it winter precipitation in the high desert often appears as snow.

The desert is nocturnal. The city never sleeps.

^     ^     ^
Molly, who I met at the Booth, wrote a piece called "Desert Diva". I read it after I got home and was so moved... moved by her own story of the desert, moved by the fact that her decision to relocate to San Francisco was spurred in part by her desire to be nearer to the desert.

A calmness came over me, a peace about my inevitable move to the Bay Area with my husband, himself a born-and-raised Californian. I don't care to live there, nothing draws me to that place. But as Molly wrote, its proximity to the desert is hugely appealing.

I'm almost ready to go.

^     ^     ^
As I was preparing for this trip, I told Sean that I felt bad that he couldn't come along, that I almost felt guilty for going without him.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "You're going to go find your own California."

I could never have known just how right he'd be.

26 June, 2001

Tomorrow I load all I own into a big yellow moving truck and I'm driving west. On Saturday, June 30th -- two years to the day I set foot in the Mojave Desert -- I'll arrive at my new home, up in the high desert hills of Northern New Mexico.

The desert - it got me.

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." -- Edward Abbey