In Dark Trees- Acrylic on panel, 11″x14″, 2012
My first new painting since returning from the road, for Another Green World, a tribute show to Brian Eno’s seminal album of the same name. The show consists of different artist’s interpretations of a single track from the album and I was lucky enough to get my favorite song, In Dark Trees. The show is up at BeepBeep Gallery in Atlanta, GA until February 25.
Stephen Mather Plaque at Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park, NV
These plaques could be found at all the National Parks I visited:
Stephen Tyng Mather / July 4, 1867 – January 22, 1930 / He laid the foundation of the National Park Service, defining and establishing the policies under which its areas shall be developed and conserved unimpaired for future generations. There will never come an end to the good that he has done.
Unknown Cemetery Off HWY 487, NV
I’ve really enjoyed finding these tiny unmarked cemeteries scattered around the desert. Such a fitting location for one’s final resting place. I’d like to reserve a spot.
Snake Range, Great Basin National Park, NV
HWY 93 from Caliente was an amazingly solitary drive that took me through the center of the Great Basin region. The Great Basin is a 200,000 square mile natural “sink” surrounded by mountain ranges located primarily in Nevada and western Utah. The basin drains internally, with all precipitation in the region evaporating, flowing into rivers or lakes, or sinking into the ground. No bodies of water located within the Great Basin flow to any gulf or ocean. Heading north, I drove along the Egan mountain range, tall barren slopes that were more grey than green, scattered with clumps of sickly brush that made the peaks look as if they had undergone chemotherapy and were in the final stages of losing all their hair. I soon headed east on HWY 50, and the lonely desert landscape began to change as the Snake Mountains rose from the horizon ahead, bringing me closer to Great Basin National Park, one of the least-visited parks in the National Park system. Great Basin National Park hosts a variety of environmental zones, with elevations ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 feet, providing deserts, mountains, forests, lakes, springs and caves, and creating multiple environments hospitable to a diverse array of plants and animals. At the apex of the Snake range, Wheeler Peak towers 13,063 feet above the park, partially covered by the Wheeler Peak Glacier, measuring 300 x 400 feet and located at the base of the peak, 11,500 feet above sea level. The glacier’s extreme elevation and it’s location within a circular enclave has allowed it to survive the desert climate of the Great Basin, but scientists have predicted it’s disappearance within the next twenty years due to environmental warming.
As I drove towards the park entrance, low-lying pinyon and juniper forests gave way to mountainsides blanketed with a vivid green patchwork of ponderosa pine, white fir, Engelman spruce, quaking aspen, douglas fir, and a multitude of other conifers. I could see Wheeler Peak standing tall and bald over the lush green mountains, a bitter old man refusing to conform to the bright colors that surrounded him, stoic in his enormity, the king grown old and alone high above his kingdom of trees. I arrived at the visitor’s center to inquire about camping, but had to wait as the ranger spoke on the phone with someone making a reservation for the weekend and inquiring about the many dangers found within the park. “No, the rattlesnakes here are actually non-agressive. Yes, there are mountain lions, but they stay far out in the wilderness, and you’ll be camping in a crowded campground, so no worries there. I wouldn’t be too concerned about scorpions, mam. No mam, there are no bears in Great Basin. Coyotes are nothing to worry about, unless you’re traveling with a small dog, which we don’t allow on the trails. No badger attacks this year, or any year that I can think of, mam.” After the call, the ranger told me that all of the main campsites were full because it was Labor Day weekend. Yes, the world around me was still moving along right on schedule. People were still working Monday through Friday, still camping on the weekends, still celebrating holidays with short excursions into the wilderness. I had neglected to consider that the summer was ending, that all the parks would be crowded with families getting their last hurrah before school started up again. I had neglected to consider that the real world still existed, that I was just living a fantasy that couldn’t last forever, no matter how far I hiked or how long I drove. I had a little more than 2 months left. My trip was half over.
Johnson Lake Trail 1, Great Basin National Park, NV
The ranger at the visitor’s center pointed out a dirt road down along the southern edge of the park boundary, where there were primitive campsites along Snake Creek. I jumped in my car and sped down there, hoping to find a vacant site before it was too late. Luckily, this area seemed a little too rough and out of the way for most park visitors, and I was able to find a perfect site along the creek. I set up my tent under a leaning pinyon pine, then headed to the end of the dirt road to take a late afternoon hike to Johnson Lake, 7.5 miles round trip, about 4 hours of hiking. It was after 3, but I figured I could make it there and back by dark, so I set off along the trail, gradually ascending through a pristine grove of quaking aspen. The trunks looked like bandaged limbs, mummified relics of a disappearing forest. I began to notice strange dark patterns in the trunks, and soon realized many of the trees were marred with graffiti, names and dates carved into them, and not just single names. Some trees had entire families names: Mandy, Mom, Dad, Aug 94. Others had names from the 30′s: L H Larsen, Jan 31, 1939. Everywhere I looked in this grove, I found more and more names and dates, indecipherable symbols and messages, but let’s be honest here. Who gives a shit what any of it said. All that mattered was that throughout time, decades before this place was even established as a National Park, people were here being assholes. My blood boiled with the thought of someone taking a knife to one of these majestic trees and vainly carving their name into the soft white bark, and for what? Was the memory of visiting such a resplendent place not enough? Had nature not provided an experience worthy of fond memories? Must one always desire to leave a trace, a mark proving that they were here, that they stood amongst these silently swaying trunks, a gash in a living thing that can be revisited in the future, to be shown to sons and daughters and grandchildren? I felt ashamed to be a human being, for belonging to the only race of animals on earth that could be so stupid, so obsessed with one’s own mortality that the only reasonable solution would be to carve one’s name into the trunk of an aspen. And with aspens, the gashes deepen and grow wide, like scars, guaranteeing that the words scraped into their trunks will never heal, never fade away, until the tree dies, falls, and rots back into the earth. But that’s where all these people had failed, for a quaking aspen’s life is much shorter than that of most other trees, 100-200 years due to a heart rot fungus that plagues them all, so though they provide the perfect blank palette for the traveler’s knife, they also provide the least archival material, like writing your will on toilet paper. And as time moves forward and future generations see more and more forests disappearing, maybe people won’t be so quick to carve a name in a tree trunk. Maybe a memory will suffice.
Carved Aspens, Great Basin National Park, NV
I emerged from the aspen grove still perturbed, but the beauty of my surroundings soon overtook any thoughts of murder that still swirled around in my head. The foothills spread out ahead of me, wide open fields of grey-green sagebrush, inviting me out across their rolling slopes, up into the denser groves of ponderosa pines that covered the higher elevations. A red-tailed hawk called out above me, circling in wide rotations and scanning the mountainside for a meal. The sun seemed less agitated, relaxed and almost gentle, and I felt this was one of the most mild days I had experienced thus far. The hike ahead looked perfect, and I pushed forward up the mountainside, but soon the path grew more steep, and I was stopping to catch my breath repeatedly. For some reason, I was feeling especially winded, and I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest, inside my skull. I leaned heavily on my walking stick, and fatigue was slowly overtaking me. As the air thinned and I gained elevation, I had to take off all my gear and just sit back in the sage along the side of the trail. The hawk was gone, and I felt like shit. I gathered my gear and continued up into another patch of aspens, now trudging along a dark path that seemed to lead infinitely upwards, always winding gently ahead, never giving me an idea of how far I had to go, only allowing me a view of about 200 feet. I felt as if I had already hiked 7 miles, but that was impossible. It was almost 6 in the evening, and I felt like I had made the slightest of progress. I felt I had achieved so much with my hiking, I had pushed myself so far, through life-threatening situations, across deserts and through rivers, around a herd of bison, over rattlesnakes and under giant arches… But I couldn’t go on. I just couldn’t do it this time. Why? Elevation maybe? All I knew was that I was exhausted, and I’d never get back before dark if I continued on at my current glacial pace. I headed back down the way I came, passing once again across the open foothills surrounded by deep green mountain forests, back through the scarred grove of aspens, and along the dirt road to my campsite. I cooked a steak as the sun set, and was set upon by a horde of meat-eating wasps who repeatedly landed on my food and tore chunks out of my steak. I reluctantly killed two of them, whacking them with my park map, and eventually had to pull the picnic table into the smoke from my fire in order to keep them away. I sat under one of the darkest skies to be found in all of North America and stared up at the brilliant Milky Way, more visible than I had ever seen it before. On this day I had failed with what I set out to do, but I still felt so lucky to be given the chance to even be out here, under the stars, in the middle of the Great Basin. I had made it so far, even when I was turning back… And for now, that was enough.
Johnson Lake Trail 2, Great Basin National Park, NV
Cathedral Gorge State Park 1, NV
Another awesome state park that I knew nothing about, Cathedral Gorge just kind of appeared out of nowhere along desolate HWY 93. I had woken up early in the small town of Caliente, had a huge corned beef hash breakfast at the Branding Iron restaurant, then spent the morning washing my clothes at a tiny laundromat situated along the quiet main drag of the town. I began to enjoy my little laundry breaks, as it gave me time to just sit around some strange town and watch the locals go about their routines. At Caliente I watched a man with skin the color of burnt bacon working on a train track crossing gate, his mouth curled into a grave frown, looking like a surgeon who knew this patient was a goner. Up and down went the gate, over and over, cars passing by and honking to the surgeon as he fiddled with whatever intricate machinery was required to raise a wooden gate. He frowned as he waved back to his friends and neighbors. The day was mild and spectacular, a thin veil of clouds barely there, offering up absolutely no resistance to the strengthening sun. I had spent weeks in 90+ degree weather, hadn’t seen rain since somewhere in Colorado so many weeks back, a month maybe? Days had no meaning to me by now. Every day was the same as far as my planning went. I had no schedule, nowhere I had to be at any specific time. Time didn’t even mean much at this point, as my day was governed by the rising and setting of the sun. I was now living the life of a complete nomad, just moving ahead, always moving from one place to the next, following a route that only lead to general areas, places I wanted to see but never places I had to be. Absolute freedom.
I stopped at Cathedral Gorge late into the morning and decided to take a short hike. Nothing spectacular happened, I saw no animals, didn’t run out of water, didn’t fall, didn’t even trip. There was no moment where my life teetered at the edge of the Great Abyss. I just had a hike, a pleasant walk under the sun through a deep gorge framed by weathered cliffs of bentonite clay, very reminiscent of the badlands of South Dakota. Once again, I found myself alone in the heart of an unbelievable landscape, and I relished every second of it, just as I had done every day since leaving NYC 2 months before. I spent a good hour walking around, studying the insane cliffs that surrounded me, folded curtains of mud, rippled and cracked into a million tiny patterns, all created by the forces of heat and water. Out here, this was where you took a morning walk.
Cathedral Gorge State Park 2, NV
Extraterrestrial Highway, HWY 375, NV
85 miles north of Las Vegas, deep in the wasteland of the Nevada desert, lies the top-secret military test and development facility referred to as Area 51. The site is hidden in a valley surrounded by mountains near dry Groom Lake, within the Nevada Test and Training Range complex, 5,200 square miles of restricted access desert. The restricted area perimeter has been expanded numerous times to include peaks that formerly provided views of the site and the road leading up to the entrance is unmarked, unpaved, and heavily monitored. Established by the US Air Force in 1955 for the purpose of testing the U-2 spy plane, Area 51 has been in a perpetual state of expansion and has been used for the development of various other more modern Black Projects such as the B-2 Stealth Bomber and the F-117 Stealth Fighter. Many rumors exist about the testing and development of other secret projects, including the utilization of alien technology, though no proof has ever been found to substantiate these rumors. Today Area 51 is still very much active, with a dozen “Janet” or private airline flights transporting workers and officials back and forth between Las Vegas McCarran Airport and the site on a daily basis.
I had always been curious about Area 51, always wanted to check it out, to see if everything I read about the area was true. I knew Groom Lake Road was hard to find, but I had done prior research and had marked an area on my map where I thought it might be. I also knew there were hidden cameras and sensors everywhere along the road, that if I tried to find it my presence would be known long before I was anywhere near the entrance. Finally, I had read about and seen pictures of the “Cammo Dudes”, members of a private security force run by EG&G Technical Services Inc. who guarded the outer perimeter of the site. They drive unmarked white Jeep Cherokees or tan Chevy 2500 pickups, and they’re always around, ALWAYS. The one thing any curious visitor has on their side is that as long as they stay outside of the restricted access zone, the Cammo Dudes have no legal authority. Now if you happen to cross into the zone, however, they have the legal right to respond with deadly force.
Endless Highway, Groom Lake Road, NV
I headed along HWY 375, officially designated by the state as the Extraterrestrial Highway due to numerous reported UFO sightings in the area. All around me was nothing but desert, barren and vast, as lonely as you could imagine a landscape to be, but also immensely delicate and splendid. I passed over a small mountain range, looking at a few small dirt side-roads but nothing that really stood out to me. Eventually I came to another side-road with a stop sign and multiple tracks in the dirt, signs of a road recently in use. This road was wider and seemed well maintained, so I turned onto it and headed west across a wide flat stretch of emptiness. I was kicking up a huge dust trail, and any chance of going undetected was completely out of the question, but I still wasn’t sure if this was Groom Lake Road, so I continued on. The road lead through a expansive grove of Joshua Trees, their serpentine branches making them look like spiny tentacled aliens, all gathered out in the desert to watch the Air Force test-flying their crashed spacecraft. The road was slowly becoming more narrow, and I passed a 45 MPH speed limit sign, then further along a 35 MPH sign, then a 25 MPH sign. By now any doubt I had about this being the right road was gone, and I knew that somewhere up ahead, beyond the approaching hills, lay the infamous Area 51.
Area 51 Entrance From Groom Lake Road, NV
I had driven about 13 miles, and the formerly pin-straight road began to curve between the hills ahead, and as I followed it I began scanning the hilltops for surveillance cameras and vehicles. I rounded another curve and there ahead of me were two large warning signs and the beginning of a paved road that continued ahead and curved around another hill. To my right, about a quarter mile away was a tan pickup on a hill overlooking the tiny corridor I was in. The signs warned of no trespassing and the use of deadly force in addition to a warning about the use of photography. Up on a hill to my left I could see what looked like two surveillance cameras, and I stopped at the signs and considered my options, of which I had only one: Turn around. I lingered for a moment and took a picture of the entrance from inside my car, then drove back a little ways and off the road to a gravel patch where I could get out of the car and just look around. Through my binoculars I could see the Cammo Guy inside his truck, a shadowy featureless form in the driver’s seat, most surely watching me watching him. I began to feel a little vulnerable, as deep and far out into nowhere as I could be, on the border of some top-secret military base, being watched by a guy who was authorized to kill me if need be. I took a picture with my long zoom, scanned the area one final time, and began the long drive back to the Extraterrestrial Highway.
Cammo Guy, Area 51 Entrance, NV
About 5 miles from the Area 51 entrance I pulled over and got out to take a piss beside an unlucky Joshua Tree. I had heard of hidden sensors all along the road, and I began hiking around looking for one. The sun had set and the sky was a brilliant hue of coral pink that reflected soflty on the pastel Pahranagat Mountains. I was expecting to find a rattlesnake or something, a lizard scurrying around, but there were no signs of life other than the twisted Joshua Trees, which looked dead themselves, though they certainly were not. Such an exquisite place for an army base, a waste of such a pristine landscape, now bordered and guarded. Who knows what beauty resided beyond those warning signs, what splendors were hidden out of view beyond those hills?
I turned back towards my car as the trees were became dark silhouettes and was startled by what I saw down the road towards the entrance. A large plume of dust was being stirred up, floating gently out across the desert, growing steadily closer. Someone was driving towards me from Area 51. Instantly I ran to my car and jumped in, peeling out in my own cloud of dust and hauling ass down the road. I could see headlights about half a mile behind me, keeping up with my high rate of speed. The first thing that came to my panicked mind was my photos, a weeks worth of pictures in my camera. They were going to take my pictures. I pulled my memory cards out of both my cameras and hid them as I drove, then replaced the memory cards with new ones and shot some pictures of the desert from my window. My thinking was that if they checked my cameras they would only see desert shots and not any of the base or the Cammo Dude. I wasn’t thinking rationally, had no real reason to be afraid, but at that moment I was alone and in an isolated area. Anything could happen, and I didn’t want to wait around and see if anything DID happen. I checked my rearview and could still see the headlights at about the same distance as before, but all of the sudden there was another set coming from the south, through the desert (!). What the fuck!?! How the hell was this other vehicle coming through the desert, seemingly out of nowhere? Now I was shitting myself, and I floored it, fishtailing through the dirt as I hit almost 90 MPH. I saw something reflecting my high beams up ahead, thought it was another vehicle blocking the road, but let out a gasp of relief as I realized it was the stop sign for the highway. I took one last look in my rear view and skidded to a halt. Only darkness behind me and a slowly dissipating cloud of dust about a mile back. No headlights. Nothing. The entire landscape had disappeared behind the shroud of night and I pulled out onto the highway and disappeared into it with no hesitation.
Joshua Trees at Dusk, Groom Lake Road, NV
