I have shared some pictures here but I’m still trying to figure out the balance between words and photos. I don’t want to bore you with vacation slides, droning on and on. And since C showed me how to balance my pics for better exposure, they should be getting better.
Some of the pictures I’m taking for later, to illustrate ideas I know I’ll want to express. Like the dandelion in the forest outside Flagstaff. There is some idea there about weeds and belonging. Eventually, I’ll sort out my thoughts on that but they are thoughts that were brewing before and will be interesting later; it isn’t part of this adventure other than it happened on the trip.
Sometimes the pictures I didn’t manage to capture are the most interesting. When I miss those pictures, it is more of a loss than the lovely, here-I-was-and-it-was-pretty shots. A thousand words aren’t enough to capture the goal ethos of these non-vacation photos.
One photo that I foolishly thought I’d get another chance at keeps haunting me.
We were headed into Barstow. Earlier, we’d driven though California’s breadbasket, seeing the poetry inspiring vineyards, acres of almond trees and the never ending fields of crops. It makes me more of a even more of a locavore to see all that food, even in April when the plants are just waking up.
Then we’d hit the desert after Bakersfield, all that open space. It was the tan, dry desert with not much alive, just an occasional yucca tree and not-quite-brown shrub in the distance. It was the sort of place you could look at and know you wouldn’t survive an afternoon in. I like the clean, rawness of it but it is clearly vicious. The admonishment to carry a gallon of water per person seems like too low of a bar, particularly as the air wavers from the heat, clocking in at more than 100F.
I thought when I saw the bright green, Irish green, it was an odd mirage. But the house near it was not shimmering. They were growing something leafy and low growing in a neatly plowed field. Whatever it was, it looked ripe. The rows were visible but the plants were nearly touching. It looked lush. It made me crave a crisp salad and ripe tomatoes.
California has a lot of water issues, there just isn’t enough of it. Throughout the central corridor, there are billboard decrying the new laws and the rise in food prices they will cause. The propaganda repeats about every mile so clearly it is an issue someone cares a lot about.
So how can the Barstowians be growing leafy greens in the desert? This isn’t the edge of the desert but the full-on scary desert.
I should have taken the picture of the ragged edge of the wild dry sand with scrub brush and the neat, green farm.
I want the image where the home of the rattlesnakes meet a blithe humanity adapting their surroundings to their comfort. I want other wonder what the rest of the story is: is this some wonder crop that grows without water, poised to feed a new world? Or are these humans truly unaware that actions have consequences? I could have used that image to show a lot of things. But I missed it.
