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At the Hotel in the Desert

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It Was Another of My Strange Dreams

It Was Another of My Strange Dreams

Don’t expect this to make any sense: It was another of my strange dreams. I was trudging with a friend across the sands of a desert when we came up on a hotel surrounded on all sides by sand dunes.

Naturally, the first thing we looked for was the check-in counter, but we couldn’t seem to find it. There were rooms, restaurants, pools, and lounges scattered almost randomly. We wandered down endless corridors, passing restaurants with sumptuous-looking fare. But we felt we had to check in first.

Like almost all of my dreams, it was well short of being a nightmare because of the dreamlike acquiescence with which we accepted the illogical design of the hotel. At any time, we could have asked someone where the front desk was located, but that possibility didn’t enter our heads.

As I write this, it strikes me that our wanderings through this hotel are a lot like life. We have to check out before we ever figure out where to check in.

The Land of Mordor, Minus the Shadows

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Beautiful Downtown Amboy

Beautiful Downtown Amboy

There are several places in Sunny California which I would compare to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mordor. You know he place I mean:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Except the places I would liken to Mordor are singularly without shadows. Curiously, they are all connected to dry lake mining operations. The grimmest of all is Amboy, on the original Highway U.S. 66. It lies a few miles east of Barstow, a hellhole in its own right, which is a rail junction and the gateway to Fort Irwin.

Today the population of Mordor—I mean Amboy—is perhaps four. Roy’s Coffee Shop and Cabins is no longer a going concern, unless someone is filming in the neighborhood. (Bagdad Cafe was filmed in Bagdad, a few miles west on 66.)

Amboy owes its existence to Route 66, but also to Bristol Dry Lake, which contains some 60 million tons of salt for your French fries.

Bristol Dry Lake

Bristol Dry Lake

Also in the area are mines containing Boltwoodite, a relatively rare form of uranium, along with gypsum, calcite, and fluorite.

I got to know Amboy when Martine used to work at Twentynine Palms at the U.S. Marine Base there (she was a clerical worker at the Naval Hospital there). A couple of times, I would pick her up, drive through the ghastly “community” known as Wonder Valley settled by veterans of gas attacks in World War I along a road which terminated at Highway 66 in Amboy. From there we headed to Las Vegas using the Kelbaker Road and the Morningside Mine Road. It’s a desolate area with sand dunes (near Essex) and some spectacular stands of Joshua Trees.

What are the other places in California I liken to Mordor? They’re right next to each other on the road from Ridgecrest and China Lake to Death Valley: namely, Trona and Borosolvay. Both are desolate but more habitable than Amboy. Yes, hell can be sunny sometimes.

Desert Interlude

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Sunset in the Anza-Borrego Desert

Sunset in the Anza-Borrego Desert

Before tax season gets too intense, Martine and I will spend a four-day weekend in Southern California’s Anza-Borrego Desert. Occupying the eastern third of San Diego County and stretching roughly from just south of Mount San Jacinto to the Mexican Border, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is the largest state park in the United States, and also one of the least known. And, for all its desolation, it is a place of surpassing beauty. Here one can actually sees stars at night—by the million.

If one goes at the right time of year, the desert can be a healing place. What is the right time of year? I would say from late October to late May. During the summer, temperatures can rise to 130 degrees Fahrenheit (or 54.5 degrees Celsius). Only emergency workers and German tourists try to brave the blast furnace heat of a desert summer.

As I do not have a notebook computer (nor do I want access to one at this time), I will not be blogging again until Sunday or Monday.