San Miguel de Allende

…things I saw at the Tuesday Market: vibrant red tomatoes and mounds and mounds of fried pork skins…used lawn mower parts…shovels, axes, and hoes…psychedelic neon-color chicks (chicks with beaks, not hips)…sacks of corn, beans, seeds, and rice…jeans, shirts, and shoes…machetes and boiling pots of meat parts…tables of greasy tools and tables of gaudy cellphone covers…fish in mobile aquariums for pets and fish being filleted…strings and strings of chorizo…lechuga y otro verduras and mortar and pestles…tortilla makers and gordita makers…men walking around selling aprons, men walking around pulling carts stacked high with remote controls…tables and tables of vibrantly colored bunches of cilantro and green onions…pirated and dubbed DVD’s…pots, pans, pottery, and potatoes..peppers! and pots of camarones…taxis, and old, loud Americans…bags of tree roots; for the treatment of diabetes, and for the treatment of the prostate, and for the treatment of the bones (arthritis)…belts for cars and belts for waists…old car parts…sockets, socks, and sacks of seed…food kitchens, in niches between booths to feed vendors… young people, old people, fat people, small and really small fat young and old people…

The Alvord

Bumping over the last 50 miles of washboard gravel road, you arrive at the playa and drive onto the vast openness of a dry lake bed. It's unbelievably flat, and, giddy, you accelerate across the expanse. Eighty-four square miles of no lanes, speed limits, intersections, or ditches. You point your truck toward a notch in the distant cliffs, set the cruise control,  then take your feet off the pedals and your hands off the wheel. Steering isn’t necessary—there's nothing to hit. If you wanted to, you could crawl into the back seat and take a twenty-minute nap. Waking up, you’d still be on the same course, tracking towards the same distant cliffs. Eventually, you tap the brakes and roll to a stop. You unfold a chair and toss your sleeping bag on the ground. Your camp setup complete, you bask in the silence and solitude. You’re where you want to be, a dry playa lake—known as the Alvord—which lies in the northwestern-most corner of The Great Basin. Water that falls here disappears, evaporating long before it ever sees a river that reaches an ocean.

It’s important, you think, to find a place in this world where you can sit and not hear a single sound, except, maybe, your own heart beating. This is why, a few days ago, you gathered a handful of necessities, gassed up, and headed inland. You drove up and over the Cascade Mountains, then south across the Columbia River Gorge, then southeast across the rolling wheat fields of eastern Oregon, through the Painted Hills and dinosaur graveyards of the John Day watershed, and finally, into the expanse of the Oregon Outback. You’ve arrived in an area where phones say "no service." Your truck radio’s scan feature searches and searches but can’t find a station.

People are scarce here. The Alvord Playa sits in a county that has a population of less than one person per square mile and encompasses an area almost ten times the size of Rhode Island. This is why you make a pilgrimage here every September. The solitude is intoxicating; the sightlines are long.    

This evening on the playa, a tired sun falls into the folds of Steens Mountain, a fifteen million-year-old basalt anticline which dominates the western horizon. A few small snow patches cling to its upper reaches. Long shadows race across the intricate patterns of the playa as the sun disappears and the last light fades. You settle in for an evening of astral theater: watching the planets travel along the sun’s ecliptic. Jupiter follows Venus, Saturn follows Jupiter, Mars follows Saturn. An ancient path around an ancient star. You see satellites, and this time, the International Space Station. It’s silent and still. Occasionally, the silence is broken. The braying of a wild burro. Coyotes yipping to each other. The whinny of a mustang in the surrounding hills.

During the days, you walk. Any direction. No need to wear shoes. The soft, warm, powder-like dust of the playa feels good on your feet. Clothes are an afterthought; it's warm, there's nobody here. After an hour or so you stop and sit. One day, two Yellowjackets venture across the playa to investigate. On another, a lone bird flies through a shimmering mirage and lands nearby, hoping for a handout.

The luminosity and luster of light on the playa evolves as the days progress. The sliding low-angle light of dawn turns into the searing and brilliant light of midday. The early evenings turn into half-light which paves the way for the grandest light of all: Belt of Venus light—a pastel mix of orange and pink and blue—which flows up and out and over the top of you, and backlights Steens Mountain.

On another day you walk to a small boulder-sized lava outcrop that sits below a basalt rim on the playa’s edge. As you get closer, you see something shining in the sun. You’re not the first to walk here. Nestled on the boulder is a makeshift altar from visitors long past. A small wire with a silent jingle bell, a quarter, a penny, a shiny rock, a metal slug, two beer caps…There’s a quiet calm here—Buddha sits nearby, meditating, staring out across the expanse of nothingness. You’re thinking about something you read that morning. Both creativity and sanity have been linked to the ability to perceive reality differently.

Yesterday, you drove off the playa and crossed over the southern decline of Steens Mountain and drove along the basalt escarpment of the Catlow Rim. You saw no people and no cars. You did see two coyotes sitting on their haunches in a field. They watched you watch them. You saw 30 or 40 mule deer and a dead badger. When you crossed the pass on your return back to the playa, you saw a Bighorn ram mounting a ewe. Bighorn sex made you happy. A good thing for a magnificent species whose numbers are declining.

On your last evening, you pour a glass of wine and watch the sun sink into the horizon. A storm is developing to the south. It’s a spectacular sight—updrafts from a line of towering cumulus sweeping across the playa lifting curtains of white dust into descending tendrils of virga. Branch lightning flashes in the distance. It’s moving your way and the potential for rain worries you—will the dry lake suddenly become a wet lake leaving you miles from a shoreline? The storm moves north and eventually, it hits—a wall of white dust, a haboob—that engulfs you and smothers the long sightlines you cherish. Big raindrops start to hit the ground. Initially, you let the rain fall on you, cleansing after days in the desert dust without a chance to bathe. Your chair and footstool and wine glass blow over. You rush to grab your sleeping bag and pillow before they fly across the playa and out of sight. You throw everything in the car and fall into the front seat. The car starts to shake and tremble. The wall of white only lasts a few minutes, but the lightning continues to strike all around you.  You’re the only metal object and the tallest protuberance in the middle of 84 acres of flat nothing. You sit hunched in your seat in a fetal position, making sure your hands and feet aren’t touching metal. Your heart pounds in your chest. This, you think, would be a weird way to die. 

Eventually, the rain subsides and the wind dies down and the storm continues north off the playa. When the lightning stops you open the door and step out. The smell of ozone permeates the air. The tops of the surrounding clouds are brilliant white. Crepuscular rays spotlight the intricate patterns of the playa minutes before the sun disappears below Steens Mountain.

Shonto Trading Post

A week or so into my drive, I leave Bluff, Utah, and head south into the vast expanse of the Navajo reservation. Highway 161 takes me through Mexican Water and then up a long stretch of road that weaves its way through the iconic red bluffs of Monument Valley. Along the way, I pass a smattering of roadside pullouts where natives are selling silver and turquoise jewelry. I pull off to take a look. Business is slow. Beautiful pieces of jewelry that I can't afford are on display on some of the tables, while others display cheap mass-market trinkets that are made in China. Near the outskirts of Kayenta, I pull into the parking lot of a mini-mart. I buy a soda and some beef jerky and eat in the shade of a ramada. A large and loud diesel truck with oversized tires that appears to have no driver pulls into the parking lot. A boy, no more than 10 or 11 jumps out of the truck and turns around to push the door shut. Five minutes later he trots out of the store with a case of RC cola. He throws the soda into the bed of the truck, pulls himself into the cab, starts the truck, and pulls away. Someone on the road waves and a little hand waves back. 

Later in the afternoon at an intersection a ways past Tsegi, I pick up a hitchhiker. He tells me he's been trying to get to the next big town—almost 50 miles down the road—for several hours. 

“I was trying to get to Tuba City to buy a few things," he tells me by way of introduction. He speaks in the soft, rhythmic, gentle lilt of the Diné. 

"But all I really need is SPAM and laundry detergent."

Having given up on his original destination, he asks if I would be willing to take him to Shonto Trading Post, which he assures me, is not far down a gravel side road a few miles ahead, near where he lives. I hesitate—it means I would have to travel in a different direction, but my only destination is "further," so I agree and take a right at the intersection onto a highway that has an arrow pointing to Shonto. Ten minutes later we turn onto a gravel road and begin to descend into a shallow canyon. The bottom of the canyon is a sandy wash filled with rows of enormous cottonwoods in full fall color. There's a small community hall on the near side of the canyon, and the trading post on the other. I pull up to the trading post to let him out, but before I can pull away he asks if I’d mind waiting a few minutes so I can give him a ride up the road and back out of the canyon. An old man with long white hair in braids sits on a bench under the porch of the trading post and watches me. I get out, lean on the hood of my truck, and watch some kids playing in the shade of the trees. A young woman selling fry bread sits behind a folding table in front of a makeshift post office haphazardly attached to the trading post. Soon, my passenger reappears carrying a plastic bag and gets back in the truck. He empties the plastic bag on his lap to show me his purchases: one bottle of laundry detergent and one tin of SPAM. As we climb back up and out of the canyon I offer to drive him to his house, which is nearby. Soon we come to a group of small gray travel trailers, set amongst six or seven dilapidated cars. 

“Some of them still run,” he says. 

As he gets out of the car he tells me he would like to give me something and asks me to follow him up to his trailer. It's a tiny trailer with flat tires and tall grass growing along its sides. He opens the screen door and looks for something inside. I stand on the steps in the bright sunlight and peer into the darkness of his tiny home. He gives me a couple of key chains that he's woven out of plastic cord. It’s a nice gesture and I thank him. It's quiet for a bit.

“I just make these key chains for something to do,” he tells me. 

I walk back to the car. He waves from the steps of his trailer as I drive off. A few minutes down the road I look over and realize his bag of SPAM and detergent is sitting on the passenger side floor. I turn around and head back to his trailer. He’s outside and greets me.

“I forgot my SPAM. I was hoping you’d come back,” he says. 

He takes the bag and tells me to wait for a second and goes back into the trailer and then comes back out, holding something. It’s another key chain.

“I wanted to give you this too,” he says. “I used glow in the dark cord on this one.”

I thank him and drive up the dirt track away from the trailers and cars. I look in the mirror and see him waiving.