Isolating at Ground Zero

When I saw my son Michael, I was hit with a wave of emotion that had the intensity of a punch to the center of my chest. I wanted to cry. Instead, I hugged him and Delilah. I had to force myself to pull away. 

Later, Jeff noted that he was shocked that I hugged my kid.  It had been more than a year since I saw them. I drove across the country for that hug. 

In January, only a few weeks from now, Mike and Delilah had been scheduled to get married at our little newly completed resort - PurUvita - in Costa Rica. The plan had been for a small destination wedding on the beach. But then, Covid shut down everything and the world changed. For months, we debated pushing back the wedding until the edge of rainy season in April - hoping it would be safe to travel by then. But we all know how that's going. Finally, they decided to put the wedding on suspended hiatus. Who knows when it will happen.

Jeff and I made it to Pasadena Tuesday afternoon. We have driven across the country to stay in Los Angeles County - which, as we pulled up, had the highest infection rate in the country.  I saw Sean Penn say on the news that a person was dying here of Covid every three minutes. (Can this be true?) 

I felt like we had done an insane thing. Driving to Ground Zero of the Covid Crisis? What responsible person does that? But on Saturday, I read reports from back home that Pennsylvania briefly held the title for highest infection rate over the past seven days. There is no safe place anymore.

But our Airbnb is comfy and spacious for isolating. We have beautiful pool, but highs are in the mid-60s and it is too cold for swimming. (Spoiled by my winters spent in Costa Rica, I had failed to account for the fact that winter temperatures in the American south are not typically in the 80s and 90s.)

But just like I noticed when we drove around New York state in August, traveling isn't an escape from the drudgery of being stuck at home. Every interaction comes with it a complicated series of cost-benefit analyses with so many potential exposures to consider that it just becomes easier to give up and stay in.

We took a hike at Echo Mountain. But the trail is narrow and crowded with fellow hikers. Although unlike back home, almost everyone wore a mask while hiking. A refreshing change. But still, the hike posed a significant risk of exposure - masks or no masks. 

Mostly, we drove across the country to hang out in a house, watch movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and stuff ourselves with takeout. With Mike and Delilah. Which, all in all, isn't such a bad thing.

After lengthy discussions about what movies to watch, we decided on a theme of survival movies to provide the needed selection structure - and to keep Jeff from subjecting us to Mr. Pickles and other Adult Swim shows that are simply weird for weird's sake and that absolutely no one else who has been forced to watch them by Jeff has found them the least bit amusing - even one 12-year old boy. (Ed. Note: Rick and Morty, the sole exception, is hilarious. Oddly, Jeff does not find Rick and Morty to be engaging. Go figure.)

We watched Backcountry, Everest, The Perfect Storm and Castaway.  We fought over the characters and who was brave and who was lame. We ate Thai, sushi and pizza. We played with the tiny puppy "Apple" that Mike and Delilah are fostering and got our faces repeatedly licked and covered in puppy kisses. 

One Sunday, our last day before leaving, we tried to come up with something to do other than watch movies and eat leftovers. After going over our options - I suggested driving to Venice Beach, but which Jeff felt was too risky to be driving distances with everyone in the same car. So, we decided, once again, on movies and eating leftovers.

I'm happy. This isn't a movie. I didn't come here for some grand adventure. My son and Delilah are doing well. They are safe. This is why I came. 

We are surviving. 

Right now, this is all that matters.

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20 Days on the Road

Hereford, Tx - Woke up in Clovis, NM at a Pilot Truck Stop bordering a feed lot. It was 16 degrees and I had to force myself out from under the large pile of blankets we depended on to keep us warm in the unheated van. As I walked back from the bathrooms in the pre-dawn, a frozen fog from the cattle’s bodies hung over the line of tractor trailers. The smell of urine hung in the air. Our van, wedged in a spot between the rigs, looked like a toy truck. 

It’s official. I’m over this. 

I want to be back home. It’s been two days since my last shower, with none planned in the immediate future. A week since I have washed my hair. I’ve been wearing the same sweater  - smelling of soy sauce and sushi - every day since I left Pasadena. News of the planned rightwing terrorist attacks across the country has me wanting to get off the road. I now feel vulnerable with every human interaction, not only due to Covid, but to violence as well. My hands are already numb from the short walk from the truck stop. I sigh and yank open the van door.

Two hours later, we are driving across the Texas panhandle through Hereford - “Beef Capital of the World!” Feedlots stretch out around us to the horizon. We see almost no sign of human life, just cattle.

On April 14, 1935, this vast stretch of land was hit with the Great Dust Storm, one of many during the 30s. 

One of the causes of these dust storms - in addition to poor farming methods -  was over-grazing of cattle and sheep, which left the land bare of natural grass and vegetation. Fueled by an economic boom in the 20s, new farmers flooded the region. And in the grand American tradition, refused to follow the scientific evidence on farming and soil conservation. 

According to the Texas State Historical Association, “When the black blizzards began to roll, one-third of the Dust Bowl region-thirty-three million acres-lay ungrassed and open to the winds.”

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dust-bowl

God is Love: A Desert Prophet's Message This is an unpublished piece from my cross-country journey 10 years ago. Just found it in my drafts.

I’ve been on a cross-country journey for the past several weeks, in which I visited with theWestboro Baptist Church clan in Topeka, Kansas, and attended Ted Haggard’s comeback church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition, I’ve talked to many many people along the way about their faith and religion.

Most recently, I drove to Slab City, which is a forsaken piece of land out in the Colorado Desert near California’s Mexican border. People here say it’s the “last free place in America.” The site of a former military base, Slab City takes its name from the concrete slabs on which campers park. The state owns the land, but does not maintain it and people live here for free. There is no water, electricity or septic. Most of the people only come in the cooler winter months. But about 150 people, an incredibly hardy bunch, live here year round, braving temperatures that will climb to 130 degrees. It was 112 when I was there Saturday and Sunday.

At the entrance to Slab City is Salvation Mountain, an adobe mountain covered in bright paint and topped with a white cross.

Its creator is Leonard Knight, a desert prophet, an Elijah, who says God sent him here 30 years ago and commanded his Chevy dump truck to break down. While Knight was waiting to get his truck fixed, he thought he would spend a week building a little monument to God and Love. He never left.

Knight appears in Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild, as well as the movie by the same name, which is about Chris McCandless, a young free-spirit who spent time in Slab City. McCandless eventually starved to death in an abandoned bus in Alaska. Knight knew McCandless and he portrays himself in the movie.

Today, he is 79, still living on the outskirts of Slab City, hosting tours and providing his testimony for anyone who cares to listen. I think the fact that his message sounds so refreshing illustrates how crazy things have gotten in this country. He opposes war and he makes no judgments on anyone, but he doesn’t really want to talk about that. Rather, he just wants to talk about love. My favorite part of the video is when he tells me that his message is catching on - and that even some of the churches admit we should be talking about love instead of fighting.

Punching it for home

LOVES TRUCK STOP SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MEMPHIS AND NASHVILLE - Our final night in the van snuggled under the blankets. 

Temperatures in low 20s and our heater’s last canister just gurgled its final drop of propane.  

Tacos!

CLOVIS, NM - Searching for Mexican food for dinner, Jeff thinks briefly he has spotted a restaurant. 

Elida, NM

Photo credit: Allie Fox

Roswell, AZ...

...Where even the aliens mask up.

Knowing where to look

EL PASO - We climbed out from the blankets into the freezing air (29 degrees!). We had stayed the night in a Loves Truck stop, in between two tractor trailers that idled their auxiliary Diesel engines all night, but at least blocked some of the dust storm that was blowing in from the desert. I got up to pee and was was sand blasted with cold air and grit. We used the truck stop bathroom and pulled out at 6:37 this  morning without so much as brushing our teeth. 

Traversing across the American southwest, I have been catching the news of the insurrection and attack on our nation’s Capitol in snatches. (When I drove across the country 10 years ago, cellular service was still a luxury. Now there are only patches along the highways where I have been unable to get a signal.)

We fly through the mountain pass leading to El Paso, and I think of the Wal-Mart shooting there only a year and a half ago, in which the shooter targeted Latino families and killed 23 people. 

I stare out onto the expanse of federal land and private ranches, seeking some kind of hope amid the yuccas and the sagebrush. 

I got nothing. 

On my last cross-country trip a decade ago, I stopped in a mini-mart in Quartzite, an RV town in western Arizona and one of the hottest places in the U.S. where summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees. 

As I lifted water jugs onto the counter, I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter. Or rather, he struck up the conversation with me. 

He told me how he used to visit Quartzite with his wife when she was sick, because her body adjusted well to the warm winters. He said she loved it there. After she died, he moved to Quartzite permanently to be closer to the happy memories he had shared with her. 

He told me that despite the vastness of brown baked earth, sand and grit around us, there are springs in the mountains that create micro-climates, where life thrives. He said his wife loved searching for these micro-climates.

“Beauty is all around here,” he said, starting to cry. “You just have to know where to look.”

Stunned by this revelation, I turned to the couple in line behind me, hoping to share this moment with others. 

They caught my gaze and rolled their eyes.

Civilization!

APACHE JUNCTION - For the past three nights since leaving Pasadena, we have slept on Bureau of Land Management land. 

I have zoom meetings tomorrow, so we decide to speak the next two nights at a private campground, basking in running water, electricity for our heater and hot showers!

Saguaros Dancing

We are driving south from Phoenix to Tucson, through a desert that until a few minutes ago was filled with saguaro cacti. Now, as far as we can see, the land is marked with chollo, prickly pears and mesquite. The saguaros have disappeared. It is a marvelous thing to see how slight changes in elevation reveal new landscapes. However, I just read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and it is sobering to take in all this beauty, realizing that many of these plants - and the animals that evolved to depend on them - will not be able to adapt to the increased temperatures of anthropogenic climate change unless they can migrate to the higher elevations. That is, if we humans haven’t already taken over the desired habitat. 

Thirty years ago, driving through these deserts at sunset with my family, my sister Lynn told my then 5-year-old son Mike that the saguaros dance at dusk and if you try hard enough, you can see them out of the corner of your eyes. For the rest of the trip, he stared hard into the disappearing light of the desert trying to see them swaying in the twilight. 

So far so good

Woke up at the Amboy Crater, which sits on Bureau of Land Management land off old Route 66 in California side of the Mohave Desert. Three days since we left Pasadena. (BLM land has been an instrumental resource in our attempt to safely isolate.)

After driving through the vast Mohave National Monument (Thank you Obama!) we had hiked for a sunset dinner of tofu on baguettes, overlooking an extinct volcano. 

As we hiked back, we imagined trying to outrun a lava flow, coming up with a strategy in case we heard rumbling. Pro Tip: make sure you know where the keys are before getting back to the van. 

When we reached the parking lot, the last light was slipping from the desert and the first stars were registering their appearance for the record. Another van was parked a short distance away.

We eyed the BLM bathroom facilities  - a pit toilet with no lights inside a concrete structure, (And cellular service too!) - and decided it was a luxuries we could ill afford to pass up. After charging our cell phones for a while, we cast our eyes around the crowded van, triying to come up with ideas to entertain ourselves. We got nothing! “Why didn’t you bring a deck of cards!”  We called it a night and crawled into bed at 6:30.

 I tried to read the news of the days attempted coup in D.C., but my hands were freezing. The temperature would drop to 47 degrees. I tried reading with my head under the blankets until the stale air put me to sleep.

In the morning, after squabbling over who would climb out from under the warm blankets and start the van (Me), we used the bathroom and started driving at 5 am. (As of this writing, it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I have still not yet brushed my teeth.) Sunrise was still two hours away and we watched as light revealed the silhouette shapes of the mountains around us. 

I’m torn between loving the moments of sweetness - sharing a sandwich alone with my husband on the lip of a 10000 year-old volcano - and this waking up cold and grumpy every morning, unable to take a shower.

Still, our plan is working so far. Fourteen days on the road and no symptoms of Covid. Most promisingly, it’s been 10 days since our altercation with Trooper Anti-Mask - our likeliest exposure on the trip. 

So, I guess, so far so good. For that, I am grateful. 

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