Week 8: San Francisco to Grand Junction

“Here we are,” said Bill, as I pulled my Jeep slowly into the junkyard. Row after row of derelict cars, trucks and buses formed a dense, metallic covering over this corner of California’s Owens Valley. Somewhere amid these rusting creatures I was going to find a campsite and settle down for the evening. Bill leaned over and cautioned, “You’ve got a tent or something to keep out the rats, right?” Suddenly, his offer of tent space didn’t seem as attractive as it did a half-hour ago.

Bill had been transporting a series of crippled vehicles to his salvage yard when the final car’s transmission gave out. I rescued him from the highway because I needed to reciprocate for the 75 hitchhiking rides I’d received this summer in Norway and Iceland. Camping in a junkyard sounded unique, but after dropping off Bill and finding a suitable site among the wreckage, I made an unpleasant discovery: the area was plagued by not only rats, but mosquitoes as well.

Since I had already explored eight miles of mosquito-infested territory on the edge of Yosemite National Park earlier that day, I was keen on preparing dinner without any further loss of blood. So I reluctantly abandoned the junkyard and took myself to a dirt road on the Nevada border, where the only things that disturbed my meal were the lightning-like flashes emanating from the Tonopah Missile Test Range.

Now I was passing through dry country, heading towards Colorado, where I was expect to play flute at a friend’s wedding. Across the barren deserts of Nevada there was barely enough moisture to support sagebrush, and dust devils danced in the shimmering heat across the surface of dry lake beds. After the stifling humidity of central Norway, I was grateful for a respite from perpetual dampness. Few souls dwelled here, or even ventured to cross the lifeless plains, which in late summer had the sickly color of dead, dried houseplants.

Eventually, the landscape itself felt oppressive. When the sun is low in the sky, the mountains here appear black and evil, as if they have grown monstrous through centuries of neglect. Their silhouettes feel utterly alien… almost beyond human comprehension because these mountains are so antithetical to human life. Just the thought of being placed in that sterile landscape frightened me, for I knew I would wither quickly, all the while feeling I was being watched by a malignant, primordial intelligence which had no mercy for human souls.