Outside, the heat builds until raging dust devils meander through the upper valley. They arise from the playa and vanish where brown morphs to blue. Waves of air shimmer upwards, radiating from the hard alkaline earth. Unfortunately, I find myself retreating more often here, to my white-walled cave, than to the ridge of the Panamints. Here, I avoid all light and heat. I Leave the lights off. Open the blinds only to let in the sunset. Its cooled off a touch. But still, hot is hot. Summer is over. Yet, I was never sure that it really began. Three months have [View Full Entry]

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When I come home from work on a 128 degree day like today, and enter my apartment, I often feel relief. I forget that I've left the swamp cooler off for the last 10 hours and eventually realize its 95 degrees inside. Thirst has become a constant here, where drink is now likened to breath. Unfortunately, the water from the faucet on cold is too hot to take a shower under, let alone drink. The water from the hot water tank is slightly cooler, now that we've shut it off. When I'm home, I keep my apartment at a tepid 85 [View Full Entry]

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The Air Condtioned Daydream When people I don't like ask me about Death Valley, I tell them it’s hot. A horrible place. A lifeless hell. When people ask me what I did to deserve a job and life in Death Valley, I nod my head in no particular direction and smile. Similar to the nine or so adjacent mountain ranges, misconception enfolds this place with the ominous name, Death Valley. In many ways I am glad that there is such misconception. Besides simply being overlooked and forgotten, it's this misconception which so often gives an entire canyon, mountain peak [View Full Entry]

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Lying on a gray foam mat on a patch of desert pavement in a wide wash in the Owlshead Mountains. Flashes of chemical light had preceded the dawn. Bomb blasts glided across the salt pan. Only a mountain range separated me and the war games being had, while the scorpions and tarantulas fought over space in the bottom of my left boot. I was sleeping and not at the same time. Machine gun dreams. Slowly, the stars turned blue. Thoughts of instant coffee, powdered milk, and quaker oats, drove me up. A trail of smoke rose on the horizon. Jet [View Full Entry]

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Now and then life dips its greasy hands into the belly, through an incision in the universe's ether, and thus into the void. Every once in a while my heart races with each balanced step on the edge of a steep scree slope, as if it mattered. Today I stared at a computer for ten hours, while nibbling on pretzels, digitally drawing my life experience and perceptions over a 2D map, with satellite accuracy(DOP<1m). Yesterday I climbed to 8000 ft above the sea of this tiny planet, to the top of a mountain ridge(<1/3 skin of apple), then back and down, [View Full Entry]

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Rocks, Sand, and Twisted Metal. 90 miles an hour out of Shoshone. Midnight. 20 gallons of gasoline in the trunk. Loaded pistol on the passenger seat. Too much to drink. Uninsured, expired tags... Car burning through the night. Its remains, the only warm place to sleep. Sun rises. Watch it slowly climb, waiting. Stash gun under rock. More waiting... Hitch ride back to Pahrump. So the story goes. I was begged to pull over one day on the way to do some surveys in my government issued Ford Explorer by two concerned men in a truck. They told me there was [View Full Entry]

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We woke up on a strange barren planet. We were in a valley covered in salt, which was inhabited by creatures much like ourselves, but whom oddly had no sense of their own nakedness. Overcome with confusion and slight disgust, we sought escape. Marty, the 5-foot tall, 55 year-old BLM Wilderness Manager led myself, 5 SCA volunteers, and a certified chainsawman on a death defying trek into Cougar Canyon. After dropping into this sharp little incision in the Inyo Mountains, we found ourselves trapped in a thick and tangled Tamarisk jungle. This vicious vegetation was growing before our eyes, c [View Full Entry]

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Yes. Pathetic. I have nothing to say. Nothing worth saying. My words are utterly crushed by the weight of what they attempt to convey. 1 conscious being. Trapped. Solipsistic. But I go on... My thoughts spiral out of a colorless void in the center of my spaceless being like thirsty bats from an abandoned mine. They flap around in the dusk and die in the encroaching darkness. Die just as desperate as when they emerged and then again, cycling repeatedly, fluttering in futility. Someday I will die, yet life in Death Valley continues for me. Quickly time is slipping away. Irretrievable [View Full Entry]

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Today is last night. Now is tomorrow. Seconds ago will be coming soon. Each day has the same differences. Somewhere over 90 degrees, ground temperatures much higher than that, the sun hanging heavily in the sky with its dense rays completely unobstructed. Displaced clouds occasionally wander though. The mountains no longer merely smile, but rather laugh: spitting, drooling , fracture-toothed cackles. At night it gets dark. This doesn't happen anywhere else but here. Don't delude yourself. There are stars and such things standing out in all that black, but nothing more. Without the wind the [View Full Entry]

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8664 hours to go... The mountains that trap me in this vast plane of salt and sand smile down upon me. Sometimes sinister, always coloful, inevitably stark and empty smiles. The wind is panting and hissing. The moon is rising over fading hills, blotting out the stars. I arrived back in Vegas slightly hungover on Saturday morning. I rolled my bag full of what remained of my life in Portland out into the smoggy air under the overpasses that ring the airport. I waited for a shuttle. Thankfully, I found my car, though slightly faded from the week of unobstructed sun, [View Full Entry]

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