The

Dune: A
Photo
Essay

Shane Matheu Ryden

PREFACE
 I’ve owned a journal for some years now, originally a gift from my mother. It’s a small
but heavy thing - thick, cream lined pages and a faux leather exterior. On its cover was once an
ornate, metal owl, its Barnes and Noble decoration, something to catch the eye. But about two
years ago, a 16 year old self pried it off with a jack knife and tossed it. I remember covering the
open face in clear tape, hating the end result, and finally settling after binding its entire face in
several layers of gray duct tape. The same day I’d amend the thing again, haphazardly stapling in
the pages of a blue booklet I’d carried through Europe.
But I’d already had the journal for about six years before I added on its latest facade. And
leafing through the pages, it bears the intermittently imposed scars of other past selves. Its first
few pages have been ripped out. The first entries carry frustrated, contemptful marginalia. Harsh
criticisms. Older turning on younger. Of course implying to a vague extent that that
communication channel was still open. And that it ever was.
But time has granted the writer some sympathy - passing compassion. And amongst the
disdainful rhetoric of a boy intent on screaming at a child not so much more naive than himself,
there are pleas for tolerance. In small print, I implore myself to consider that past voice a lost
one, separate and distinct from that of the present. This is ironic - really obviously so. Because
this fantasy group dialogue is much more akin to talking to myself in a mirror than attending any
kind of church-basement group therapy. My own dull mutterings break what would otherwise be
silence. But I still talk, because in a way, even in the space of my own head, I’m in a mode of
necessary expression, Still angry. Still frustrated. And desperate to be apart from the past, and
separate the selves.
It’s a more obvious dilemma when I’m speaking about a prior conflict. Some small
problem like a sibling argument. A weird and stressful dialogue with my mother. But it’s a
different thing altogether, seemingly, when looking on the nostalgic events of something
wonderful. And the specific example I’ve been thinking upon is the most important trip of my
life thus far, a four day trip to Death Valley leaving on the morning of my birthday. I bound
toward the desert the morning of December 18 with my two best friends, Phillip Hancock and
Quest Couture, and spent four days and three nights indulging in the freedoms of our newly adult
independence.
I journaled everyday, described the moments of hardship in frigid cold, and triumph at
the top of a 700 ft tall sand dune. Surreal fear in the winds of a miles-wide dust storm and bliss at
75 mph on the black asphalt of a quiet desert road in the central Valley. And what’s differed is
my response to the conclusion of that reflection. I’ve not left the journal to rest on the coffee
table of an armchair - I’ve carried it around, brought it with me, typed the entire thing into a late
night manuscript, had those aforementioned friends annotate it of their own memory, compiled
video and recorded audio of telling this important story in my life, this long and twisting
narrative about a phenomenal experience. And when I look at these notes, these entries full to
the brim of passion and feeling and love and heartbreak, my own, I feel shame. Disgust and
shame.
 A pious and pretentious account insubstantial to convey what has been the most
meaningful thing I’ve done in the past months. The hopeful precedent of a life lived similarly.
And I was angry. At myself, but more specifically at whomever wrote this document. This was a
standstill anger, which has stopped me for several months from telling the story in print.
December to April. Because it will never be what it was. What I tell you, how I tell it - regardless
of the means of expression.

It seems terminal.

But they linger together: the ever-present urge to tell this story and the coterminous self-
denial. And all the while, I wonder where it comes from, this visceral, unconscious urge of
criticism which wants so badly to invalidate my notes. I wanted to tell the story and share the
anecdote with all the meaning it carries within me. I wanted to create. But it’s a hard thing. Very
hard. And I felt tired. And when I began to write, I think I might’ve felt jealous. Because the
three boys who exist with my notes and in my photographs occupy a different world than mine.
When I finished the trip and returned home, I had a fear: that I would lose the experience
with time, and that its impact on us would wither, and I would become only what I was before.
But I think the realization I’ve come to is that I should never have doubted or feared for the
strength of its impact. It pulverized me, jolted my natural will.
What I’ve come to realize is that the true danger of the trip, what should’ve been the
object of my fear, was what would come to be the reality of life afterward. So affected, the mold
of my benign reality at home never fit quite so well again. I’m without the will to conform to its
shape and without the energy to find another here.
I’m stuck. And I’ve been stuck. Intrinsically shifted. But in the manner of overcoming
what is this profound existential crisis, I’ve decided to bear down and take another departure
with choice.
I write this story in reconciliation, if for nothing more than to express the past in the
present moment. Worlds juxtaposed.
This is an account of travel between Quest Couture, Phillip Hancock, and Shane Matheu
Ryden, as composed from note and experience. Los Angeles to the Eureka Dune of Death Valley
National Park.

DAY ONE: DEPARTURE

“One attains states of ecstasy or ravishment only by dramatizing existence in general.”
- Georges Bataille

By 4 A.M. on December 18, 2017, we were bound toward the low desert, packed
squarely within the crowded chassis of my grandfather's old pickup truck. We rode that morning
on a vague notion of self-discovery, and a loosely contrived dream of realizing adulthood while
stood barefoot atop the tallest sand dune in North America.
My memory of that morning’s departure began to dissipate from the minute I woke -
sharply, at 3:30 A.M., the exact moment of my birth 18 years down the line. It was all too early.
My eyes were thick with sleep, nail beds raw and lips bitterly cold from loading the truck before
dawn. But we’d be out of the city by sunrise if we were quick, and so we were.
Anticipation seemed to hang in the air as though if it were a fourth member of the
journey. It was an anxious thing, and demanding even moreso. Everything had to be felt, every
emotion, bad and good, fully realized, before we we were allowed to fully appreciate the
implication of our decision to leave. But slowly its hold weakened, and the morning’s fatigue
encouraged the dawn of a kind apathy.
When I think back on the journey as a whole, I remember a lot, but all in sporadic bursts.
I bear the mental images of a raging dust storm, a third day spent in escape. The feeling of
cutting wind on my cheeks. Bitter, disarming cold. Gay, drug-induced confusion. And earnest
travel. And this makes for difficulty of storytelling. Because was not one of a loud and boisterous
beginning. Ours began quietly, in reflection and quiet rote. Ours began with chapped lips and
runny noses. Terse dialogue and tissue paper. But soon the pin-drop reticence we’d established
was shattered, broken by the jarring noise of the engine, keys in the ignition jangling with the
vibration of the motor. We roared down my street, quickly jumping onto Highway 101, and
could begin to acknowledge, with excitement, the nature of our Beast. 4 days in the desert to do
whatever we wished and felt to be necessary. 4 days of infinite range. At blue dawn, we
repatriated what had only before existed as the extraterrestrial. A phantasm. Our dream. But all at
once, we were within It.
Our 2003 Toyota Tundra came to be a thing of odd comfort. Cramped as we were, the
stereo functioned and the heater kept us warm, and against the dark scenery outside, it was a
space that felt good. As we drifted further into exurbia, the black tar of the 101 began to melt. It
crawled across a faint horizon, a wave in void, smothering the light of every distant city, And
taking the 14 from the 101, each moment did pass as the individual township, a blur at high
speed, swept under the asphalt rug of the highway. Sleep caught Quest and Phillip intermittently,
and amongst only the sound of the engine and the wind, I began to understand what we’d
undertaken that morning as normal. This was Us. Our bond and this journey was the only natural
fruition to be expected. Life had arrived to us - a naive deliverance. And it truly felt as dramatic
as described. It was to be our grandest trip yet.
DAY ONE: ARRIVAL

“Every artist’s strictly illimitable country is himself.”

- e.e. cummings

I can’t very well remember the quiet hours of that morning while the only one awake. I
lost a number of hours to myself that day, swallowed up in dusk. Beyond Mojave, California my
memory grays, to the extent that recollection feels like watching a spinning reel, a number of
similar images strewn together in allusion to a greater, simple narrative. I think I’d let go. In
trading a mirror for a window, I gained stability. Looking so long at one’s reflection, there’s an
overpowering dizziness. We become aware of our corporeality. We lose our footing. A long
drive has a way of reinstating metaphysicality.
But the morning returns to me in that desolate valley which divides the high mountains of
the Eastern Sierra Range and the low western foothills which border Death Valley. As sunshine
began to spill over the peaks, the full brown of the valley floor was cast in gold. Quest woke -
Phillip shortly afterward. Dialogue began to fill the truck once again. Now we were close.
The town of Big Pine has the only northern entrance into the valley for miles, and this
was important. Eureka Valley lies adjacent to the central valley, adorned with national park
signage, but is, itself, bare. It is not so frequently discussed. It has no formalized entry point. No
park aides or welcoming posts. One has to cut through miles of squat lime, and sandstone hills in
a slow descent to find a singular wood marker at the bottom of Eureka Valley, and by that point,
you’ve already said your goodbyes to smooth asphalt and began to creep onto course and rocky
earth.
But before we left for the valley, we made sure to stop in town. We ate in a diner whose
name I forget. French toast and black coffee. Purchased firewood. Amassed an assortment of
tapes for $2 from Inyo County’s most highly rated thrift mall, self-proclaimed. And a variety of
jerky - salt and pepper boar, something spicy, and a thick dried cow steak branded ‘cowboy
beef’. This was at Phillip’s recommendation, and in retrospect I can say that it was a good one.
I took brief pause in the town to stop and journal. I sat on a forgotten wooden bench on
the street with an empty dog bowl at my feet. I listened in on a stranger’s conversation, and I
began to think of how obvious we were, as three teenagers brandishing their newfound
independence, now loitering in front of a store we’d finished with. I wondered whether or not
anyone could see our desperation, if the profound longing to escape what few toils we’d had at
home was clear on our faces. Somewhere in my mind, I began to imagine that we smelled
pungent, and that as anyone could tell, it was the reek of our catharsis. And before I could
consider it any longer, we hit pavement, leaving the quiet and homely suburb of Big Pine for the
expanse of the low desert.
On the meandering path west, we began to experiment with the cassettes. Musical
accompaniment ranged from four centuries of Spanish guitar to romantic ballads from ‘the war
years.’ We intermittently slipped again into silence. I remember a brief comment Phillip made,
nothing a dream he’d had, a kind of premonition. His fantasy held an understanding that I’d love
this stretch, that it would be among my favorites. And he was right. We were absolutely and
completely alone driving toward Eureka. A cold wind carved through the narrow canyons at its
entrance, refreshing with the heat of the white, rising sun. Traveling further and further down the
grade, the foothills broke away to rocky slopes, made a colorful collage by the presence of
vibrant desert foliage. When the Joshua trees begin to line the road, the Sierra range disappears
from the rearview mirror. The expansive sands of the Eureka floor begin to open up, and finally
reaching the rocky path at its base, one can see a tall reach of white sand just at the horizon. It is
bold and excitedly recognizable against the blue iron tint of the Last Chance Mountains. We
were almost there, and the car overflowed with our excitement.

We took the distance at a 20mph crawl, avoiding the larger stones which dotted that first
desert road, fearing a punctured tire and a long, long walk.We’d speak naught of it. As large as
the Dune seemed, and as close as we felt, something we had to learn quickly was that distance is
near unascertainable in the desert. Product of its desolation, a stroll and a half-marathon appear
easily comparable at a glance. But we were lucky. We made it to the base of the Dune within the
hour, and even then I knew it to be time well spent.
Our camp would be standalone, adjacent only to a small, concrete picnic bench. Before
exiting the car, we paused a moment to look upward. Keys out of the ignition, without the
rumbling engine, there was an abnormal silence, something that existed in the place before and
after we’d entered it. We’d note that upon resuming our conversation out of the car for the first
time, unpacking our things, that our speech didn’t carry. From the moment of utterance, their
volume was diminished. There’s nothing in the low desert to ricochet sound. Words escape the
mouth only to fall to the ground and seep into the sand. The land enforced silence like an
authority, and I remember that analogy specifically coming to mind.
We were intimidated by the Dune. The unliving, abiotic thing, alone in a valley to itself,
seemed somehow to exude personality. And placing ourselves alongside it seemed a personal
abstraction. It was Us and It, left alone together by everything and everyone else. So the quiet
held.

Until the roar.

 Setting up our tent, tent we encountered the only thing capable of penetrating the
isolatory, mute dome of Eureka Valley. The sound starts in the mountains’ canyons and begins
like like the first percussive blasts of an incredible crescendo. In the span of a minute, a passive
lull is broken, and everything suddenly vibrates with intense energy.
Our culprit was the modern American fighter jet. Solid steel. Faster than anything natural.
We’d learn afterward that our campsite laid beneath a fly-by point. Intentional or otherwise. In
that first afternoon, it felt so close Planes from the military base at Fort Irwin shoot like bullets
in practice drills across the expanse several hundred feet from the ground, stirring everything
beneath.
I remember the sound of the thing alongside fear and terrible amazement, a punctuation
to the realization that we were children there still, as we were everywhere else.
Nightfall came quick, an incapacitating thing in Eureka Valley. It brings the kind of cold
only the low desert can host, caustic, clinging temperatures which bite uncovered skin. We spent
the hours in between sleep and sunset in the car. Hotboxed. And resigned ourselves to infantile
giggling before escaping to the tent. We took our exit early, in anticipation of what was to come
in the days following.
At some point that night, I exited the tent looking for water. I’d left my glasses inside,
and still felt in a stupor, but I craned my neck to the sky and the image that hung there, and still
does. It was a sky full of stars, something I had never seen before having been raised under
millions of street lights. I remembered my parents describing the phenomena to me when I was
small. They’d look up, and it didn't matter whether or not we were inside or out on the back
patio. Their glance would seem transported. They’d be silent for a long moment. They’d breathe
out, and then they’d return.
So often I could recall looking to the night sky in the suburbs hoping for more than what
was, dreaming on the few stars whose light persisted. But that night, there were so many that it
was utterly overwhelming. I knew that even if I spent a lifetime with my gaze up amongst the
stars, I could never fully know it. And I would never remember this. The detail, the light and the
dramatic tableau - it was ephemeral. It existed nowhere beyond that moment. And yet it was
eternal. What I’d form was a generational memory, a subject link in the human lineage. It was
more than me.

DAY TWO: EVER-SHIFTING DEITY

“I believe religion to be deeply personal; I am a loner with my particular amorphous sense of

deity.”
- Ansel Adams
 Our first morning was a blunt force trauma. The cold hit hard. I was the first to wake -
consequence of a rapidly deflating pool toy. I thought would work as a sleeping pad. An
incorrect assumption.
We’d known there was cold to come. The forecast had
predicted nightly temperatures in Death Valley close to
freezing, in the 30s and 40s. We were mildly concerned, but we
were going regardless. We’d made a plan, constructed this trip
over the course of several months, and we were all willing to
endure. I just don’t think we’d properly had a sense of just how
much. I woke that morning breathing clouds. My nail beds were
raw and painful. My feet were ice blocks; I couldn’t feel my
toes individually. And the moisture had seemingly been
forcefully ripped from my lips and mouth. Thirsty as I was, I
reached for a water next to Phillip, and found it frozen upside
down in the bottle. My keychain thermometer read 20 degree
Fahrenheit.

9 of the 14 gallons of water we’d brought with us has

turned completely to ice overnight. It was disheartening to say
the least. And when Phillip woke, soon after followed by Quest,
there was the unspoken matter of whether or not we’d be able to
go through it again. Leaving, just after we’d begun -- I couldn’t bear the thought.
It would’ve been unreasonable not think on the matter. It was a visceral cold to us
southern Californians. But in the end, beyond a desire to feel warmth, I hoped for nothing more
than for the trip to live to the full extent of its assigned life. And within a few minutes, we’d
broken into a $5 box of VONS muffins and had chugged half of an icy gallon of 2%.
We began walking up the dune.
 We’d made it the mission of the day to summit the thing. Stepping up on the first sand
hills, you become acquainted with another side to the desert. There’s a kind of biological
geometry amongst the sparse, dead grasses. Small animals tracks, those of lizards and birds, form
a complex array of linear functions. The wind whistles upon all loose material, spinning between
the mountains, and forms perfect circles. We added our prints to the mix at dawn, but before
dusk, the slate was clean once again. It’s the kind of unforgiving amnesia of the Dune. Sand falls
and any narrative you’ve attempted to play out on the stage is forgotten before you’re willing.
It’s benevolent and cruel in different ways, but it doesn’t leave you. And neither does the sand.
It took somewhere around 6 hours for us to finish the climb. A long trek and a
monumental success.
We’d snacked along the way. Stale baguettes. Smooth Skippy peanut butter. Jerky. And
we drank inordinate amounts of water. We could’ve been quicker but these were necessary
luxuries (necessities?), and the task of working our way up the mountains of sand also required

frequent stops to dump our shoes so that we

could continue at a reasonable pace.
 The view from the top is
something beautiful. To one direction,
there is the single road we came in on.
Big Pine. It’s the only way in or out of
the valley. A red truck took down the
road while we were up, and it’s dust
trail hung in the air for what seemed
like an eternity. A woman had also
slowly tracked behind us, and she,
emblem of the unknown, standing
hundreds of feet below us on a smaller
dune, gave me a necessary sense of
perspective.

Phillip noted the feeling well,

remarking on this behemoth we’d spent
hours climbing and months entranced
by: it was an ever-shifting deity. A god
in its own right, bearing the micah scars
of hundreds of years of cultivation and
change. Quest would promptly note the
cowboy beef jerky as the equivalent of
a meat lollipop and the moment was
gone. But we laughed. We’d made it up.
It couldn’t all be a reflection on being. And half the fun would come with the descent.
 Eureka Dune, on occasion, is also
described as a singing dune. This title comes
out of some curiosity. It’s not completely
understood by anyone, but in the right
conditions, with completely dry sand, walking
or running or sliding down at a fast pace, you
can start the Dune into song. The grains,
coarsely juxtaposed with one another, can
produce a low vibration, a rich, deep, low-
frequency hum which hangs in the air. It’s not
ominous. But it’s old. You can hear that. And I
remember reaching camp again, having made
quick work of the descent, with a kind of
religious appreciation for It. Older than I, and
more than Us.
When black descended over the valley
again, we lit a fire - burnt the bushes which
tumbled past. It seemed the benign biblical, we
ourselves in communion with a God. I still
know little of Christian mythos, but watching the bramble alight, its limbs contorting, I thought
what of Moses? And what of his Exodus? How was it all not related? I found myself in thoughts
like these a lot. Around a campfire, resisting the surrounding cold, present together in an
otherwise so barren place, I think the mind will always crave a greater scheme. An atheistic man
creates God in the desert because He is more than dust and wind and grass. An unobserved man
makes himself an audience when there are no other eyes to watch. We imagined Life in Death
Valley, because we found ourselves insufficient to fill its Void.
Sleep was indulgent the second night.

DAY THREE: DUST

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and
coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
- John Steinbeck

We were going to film a music video. A one-take. The imagined location was a ghost
town, and we knew of a couple in the surrounding area. We started early to make the most of the
day, and before the sun was high in the sky, we slipped in between the limestone walls of the
Last Chance Mountains.
There, an unrelenting wind began. It ripped around every corner, shaking the car while
we wound down the road toward a place we’d spotted on the map: Leadfield. It was an old
mining town supposedly, situated in a place called ‘Titus Canyon’. We were excited. Drove fast,
but frequently stopped too. I think we maintained a certain kind of urgency. The trip had been
incredible thus far, but we’d been searching for that golden moment, something which
punctuated our stay. We wanted an event that’d slip from the tongue first when telling our story.
We looked for it first in an abandoned quarry. We could see it from the road. Bent and
rusted industrial equipment stuck firmly from the Earth. I remember just how quickly I forgot the
warmth of the car, exiting to explore. We trudged through thousands of small pebbles, rounded
bits of concrete, limestone, sandstone, and brick. But I had no attention for them but a passing
glance. We wandered toward what looked to be the site of the old mine itself. The ground turned
into a thick white powder, covering our shoes, and it was all to no avail. It was a shallow thing;
time had filled any mining cavities originally carved into the stone. But, looking at ourselves in
the small pit, I had a moment to acknowledge just how bedraggled we looked. We wore our old,
unwashed clothes layer upon layer. Our shoes were covered in the powdery makeup of the
ground. And I realized that we hadn’t much thought of our appearances in the time between our
entrance and the present. We cared about our warmth, at a baseline the functionality of our
clothes. I can’t say I don’t wish the mentality had remained with me. But I left some things with
the Desert, and that was one of ‘em.
It was a nice outing. Gave us the opportunity for a group self-portrait. But it hadn’t
offered us the spectacular circumstances I think we’d all hoped for. No miraculous discovery. So
we moved on, past the stone thicket of the Last Chance mountains and into the great wide open
of the Central Valley. And it was truly barren.

Out of the bordering foothills, the road lengthens. The asphalt, a temporary luxury, is
traded again for rocky, compacted earth. For a long time, travel is raucous and bumpy. You’re
surrounded by nothing but low shrubbery, and time becomes abstract again. The minute and the
hour pass the same.
But civilization dots the Central Valley. Riding long enough, the asphalt resumes,
signage begins to decorate the roadway, and the abandoned Grapevine Ranger Station rises from
the valley floor. A breath of modernity in desert dominion.
70s cinder block wall finishings. Porcelain toilets. A wooden phone booth. A shelf
carrying a tattered and dusty book of local service numbers and hiking pamphlets. A metal
flagpole with withered ropes. It was an incredible spot, the height of luxury compared to our
camp. It was a welcome place to stop. We used the facilities, at one point tried to use the phone -
to no avail - snacked, and sat simply for a while. The few gusts which carried across the valley
bore the white heat of the desert sun. It felt kind.6 But already with a sense of how long the
journey’d take, we were off down the road again, our eyes trained at the foot of the mountains
for ‘Titus Canyon’. And we found it shortly afterward.
The painful realization that came with it, parked at the entrance to the small ravine, was
with a sign. LEADFIELD: 5 MILES IN - NO EASTBOUND TRAFFIC. 7 words and our plan was
flipped. We had two options: carry the instruments, food, and camera equipment five miles in
and five miles out, or find somewhere else. And it took us no time to decide on the latter. We
resecured everything beneath the tarp in my truck bed, and continued toward a backup: the town
of Rhyolite. In my notebook I’d describe it bluntly as a “ghost town and strange art gallery.” It
met the need, but it’d be a significantly longer drive. We’d have to cross over into Nevada and
from there follow a back road very loosely-indicated on the map. But we figured it’d just mean
we’d have to be more conservative with our time - get in and get out, and we hoped it’d be a cool
sight just the same.
We took off fast. Making up for lost time and chasing a thrill. Roads you’re able to gun it
down are few and far between in Death Valley’s adjacent canyons, so we took full advantage.
We rolled down the windows, and turned the music up high to overcome the rushing influx of
wind. I felt an indescribable exhilaration, the kind of intense feeling which wells up inside of you
and forces your body into a physical shudder. It was electricity in shared liberation. I loved it.
And we rode that feeling for a long, long while, over the precipitous hills of Mud Canyon and
into Nevada, onto the straight and rolling Highway 374. And before long, Rhyolite was there on
the horizon. We veered off the highway and bound toward its tan structures, the same color as
the dirt and sand. But a few structures stood out.
Rhyolite, old as it is, is marked by modern artists. Near its entrance, there is a naked
cinder block woman, A group of figures bathed in white cloth. We parked between them. And by
quick investigation, we spotted the rusty shell of an old ford. Quest and Phillip thought it’d be
perfect for their video. It was “A Wasteland Christmas,” their own song, and singing of
devastation and ruin, the landscape proved wonderfully appropriate.
We made quick work of setting up. I had the tripod set in minutes, and I sat quietly
behind it as the boys scooched onto the hood of the decrepit car, and started into the lyrics. It was
only a few minutes, and one-take, but my eyes eventually drifted, past our small set up and
toward the rest of the town we’d yet to explore. There was what appeared to be an old bank,
small houses, and a few discarded train cars. But larger still in the distance was a group of
clouds, past the town, seemingly quite a bit farther. It seemed to be a storm on fast track. A gray
precipitate hung below it like a wall, and I remembered the transient monsoons of our past
summer in Utah. Fast winds carried them across the plane in an instant. One moment the sun was
out, and you could stand in an incredible heat, and the next, you were bathed in cold and heavy
raindrops in a torrential downpour. But they never lasted. The sun would always return in quick
fashion.
So as the boys concluded their song, I made mention of it.

Rain.

I couldn’t elaborate before it snapped cold, and dramatically picked up speed. It was
freezing. Tendrils of cloud hundreds of feet high began to approach closer, and we realized in an
instant.

Not rain. Dust.

We piled in the car in frenzy. Shut up the guitars in their cases, grabbed our extra jackets
from the bed, and started down the road to the old bank. We’d accomplished the task we set out
for, but none of us had ever experienced a dust storm. I think we wanted to be consumed. We
quickly were.
The car shook even in the short drive. And the whistle began, a high pitched and constant
whine around us. And alongside it came regular percussive blasts, the sound of rocks and
pebbles shot from the ground like bullets. We wanted to run about within it. I wanted to be torn
apart by the wind. Trying to exit the car was even in and of itself a labor; the storm pushed
against the car with human force. But we made our way out with enough pushing, holding
handkerchiefs against our mouths. It’s all a very fast-paced blur in memory. The sun was
swallowed, and the memories I have are all bathed in the surreal, orange light that resulted. We
ran against the cutting wind like playful children. It spanned across every horizon. We only
seemed to sink further into it.

When the wind and sand became too much, there was The Rhyolite. An old casino of
creaking wood and rusted metal. Its dilapidated porch was as perfect a shelter as we could hope
for. Leaning on its rotted railings, you could look in every direction to an illimitable country of
dust, miles-wide. It resisted comprehension.
 S
epara
ted
from
the
worl
d as
it
was,
we
were
cogni
zant
to the
fact
that
time
was
passi
ng
aroun
d us.
The
sky
took
on a
darke
r
ambe
r as
the
sun
sank
lower
to the
horiz
on. And it was with that shift that we realized a dilemma. We’d run out of propane at camp,
which meant without it, we’d not be able to run our tent heater for another night. And as
miniscule as the change might have been, none of us were prepared to deal with a cold harsher
than we’d already endured. That morning we’d spoken of retrieving some in the town of
Stovepipe Wells - but that was only a practical option in proximity to Titus Canyon. Here, east of
the Nevada-California border, our option was limited to one town, a place we’d seen posted of
on the way in: Beatty.
Without a clear expectation of where we were headed, we piled pack into the car and
took our first clear breaths of air. It was refreshing, But the storm hadn’t passed. In fact as we
drove further down the 375, I actively had to keep the car from swerving side-to-side. The winds
held strong. It seemed aggressive, like this Entity had a frustration with our presence there. But
of course it didn’t. Because the Dust Storm is utterly apathetic about all within its path.
And it was a strange and surreal surprise we arrived upon. We’d taken with the mood of
the storm. Our perception of the universe within the storm was dreamlike, fantastical and apart
from the rest of experience. The further we drove, the deeper we traveled down the rabbit hole.
Our ultimate fate was this town, with its lonely streets and beaten, dark storefronts. I wanted to
embrace it. I felt that there was a depth to the place that was spiritual, not in the object but with
the subject.
That urge had me pull me off the road. I forced Quest and Phillip to accompany me on a
temporary outing within the storm. Off the main road, I’d spotted a sign for Cottonwood
Community Park, and a childish craving within me sought that narrative. To be on a swing set in
muted suburbia, propelling myself back and forth in the midst of a vociferous, imposing storm
massive to an incomprehensible extent - it was a moment in time rested so finely between
fantasy and reality that I thought we might be the only ones to occupy it. A loss not to immerse
ourselves in the bubble of its possibility.

So the minute we parked, I ran from the car like a giddy child. And I was there. I spun on
the carousel. Slid down a large metal slide. Ran about in wood chips, and for a minute, I forgot
the stinging of the particulate wind on my cheeks. But daylight disappeared alongside it all. I
dismounted from the swing set only to lose my footing. My jeans ripped; my knee bled. We
hadn’t the time to dwell on it. We packed in the car once more and began toward food and fuel.
At that point, we could laugh. We could giggle, driving down Beatty’s main avenue.
We’d set course for a Denny’s in the area. It all felt so imagined, and yet it was physical.
Sometimes that felt funny. Other times it felt scary. And on a few other occasions, there was
nothing to be felt at all.
We found Denny’s nestled inside a casino. El Sueno de la Familia. The Dream of the
Family. And it felt very appropriate. As we exited the car back into the storm, white particles
began to rain from the sky.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be snowing.
 It was a freezing wind. Yes. But not cold enough for snow.
And it wasn’t. When the snowflakes began to hit our noses, craning upward, we realized
that the Nevada snowfall was of white gravel chunks. A construction sight across the road had its
‘snow’ thrown from the Earth and pelted back down upon it with the raging winds. Nothing was
made sense of easily.

It felt no more a grounded place inside the casino itself.

Past its heavy wooden doors, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Its few customers
droned on at the slot machines without acknowledgement for our entrance. Down through the
gambling floor, Denny’s rests at the back right wall. As with the rest of the place, there are no
windows to allow a sense of time. Only adding to the illusion was its multi colored tinsel.
Orange lights. Twinkling garland. The place was full of it. But not the extent that you could
judge the implied holiday.
A waiter took us to a booth in the back, and finally we sat. There was little to do but
think. Scan the room. And for a while - a long while - we just sat there. Each of us occupied
chambers of reflection - distinct, dead silent. It was a tense peace.
It all felt so dramatic. Like we existed in a bubble uniquely our own. Transcendental. But
I have a tendency to slip into that space. I remember this story a lot differently than Phillip or
Quest. In a lot of ways, we found our balance because of each of us went somewhere different.
I spoke with Phillip about the trip the other day, over lunch and a drive, and he spoke of
age and adulthood, and what it meant in the Desert. Phillip turned 18 at home. His passage
preceded the trip. I turned 18 the moment we began onto it. Quest’s would come at the end of
January. It punctuated the phrases of our lives differently. And as strongly as it existed in my
mind, an entity in and of itself, to Phillip, to Quest, it was not the same experience. Of no less
weight, but of different meaning.
Our food came shortly after ordering it. Chicken strips. Burgers. Coffee.8 We broke into
it quickly, and were back on our feet before we’d completely finished. We poured back into the
lobby of the casino, and escaped back to the car. I filled up at Eddie World Gas Station/Nut
Shop/Jerky Shop/Convenience Store/Ice Cream Parlor/Candy Store. We scoured Beatty for
propane fuel, eventually finding it in a mobile home park convenience mart. The storm had left
the town while we’d been inside. It was something fast. On the highway back, it was at the
horizon line, its gray tendrils pursuant of the setting sun. Before long, we were in pitch black. It
was such a long drive back. We followed our route back exactly, but it seemed an eternity
longer. The highway, to the twisting roads of the central valley, to the dirt road to Eureka, and
finally onto the path toward the Dune’s base. It took us a long time to find the tent again. The
sparing light of the stars didn’t catch on our tarp, so we scanned blackness with the truck’s
brights until finally we caught a glimpse. It looked broken.
We rolled up and unloaded quickly. The wind had pressed it down, ripped the rods from
the ground. Opening the tent, we realized that the storm had passed through our camp after
hitting us originally. There was a thick layer of sand that covered everything - our sleeping bags,
our backpacks, our suitcases - everything. That was a slap in the face, and a wake up call that the
night ahead would be difficult. And it was.
But descending once again into drink, and brandishing a cabernet given to me as a gift,
we were able take it light heartedly. Laugh at what had truly seemed one of the most surreal
experiences of our lives.
The night was long. We tried to clear our sleeping space of sand, but fruitlessly. I could
still shake a pound from our supplies, and I write in the present, four months later. It was
uncomfortable. It was freezing cold. It was our last night - and I couldn’t cherish it. I wanted
morning. Craved it. It meant leaving, but it meant warmth. Sometimes the physical precedes the
emotional in me. It did then. And sometimes I force it now.
The morning was fast-paced. As sluggish as we were, we managed to pack the tent up
quickly, and get the truck ready to take off down the highway. The drive back was insignificant.
We stopped in the same towns for food and drink. We stopped for gas. We passed the towns on
the back of the major highways, and again, they were a blur. I dropped Phillip off. Quest. They
took their things, and I headed for my own home. The end was not spectacular. It was grounded
and modest. I walked in my house exhausted, gave my family some of the details, but was
quickly asleep in my own bed. I wrote sometime that night or in the morning following. I wrote
that I still carried the perspective of the desert. About how, even as far as I was, the Dune’s
influence never weakened. I felt the physicality of my home more strongly than before. I felt the
temperature, noticed the color of the sunshine, admired the Earth, smooth and paved beneath my
feet. I saw shadows I hadn’t noticed. And I had the feeling dawn on me that I was discontiguous
with the silhouette of my place.
Words rest at the tip of the tongue. Some come off and some don’t - some slip into the
chest and stay there until they produce a dull but present warmth. I wiggle my toes in my shoes
from time to time to admire a feeling I didn’t always have. I hear a loud roar start up over the
hills, and I crane my head to the sky. I remember the jets.
Now it’s far away, that trip. Now I’m here, back where I’ve been, and I don’t think on it
all the time, but it slips into my head when I dream on Freedom. The images make their way into
my mind when I want more than this. I imagine the Road. The Dune. The Dust.
I meet them now for the Entities that they were. I wonder then.

Have we been estranged?

ORIGINAL NOTES: