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Published: October 18th 2008
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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, exactly where I had left it in parking lot.
After a couple hours making my way through a Saturday afternoon traffic jam and a long series of poorly timed lights in meandering sub divisions, Vegas finally gave way to the emptiness that will be my life for the next year. Some long hills in my fully weighted down and packed Toyota Tercel gave my engine a good workout.
The hills settled down into a long gradual decent into Death Valley. Covering the sky was a swarm of gray jellyfish with long wispy tentacles that tickled the
mountain tops, and through which painted beams of sun poked through and threw spotlight down on the salty valley floor. I believe I saw a drop of rain.
I arrived too late to the visitor's center to get my key. I drove around in the dark and looked for an adequate place to pull over and camp, but was met at each turn to no camping signs. Not wanting to be awaken in the middle of the night and meet my first coworker, I retreated to the campground.
The only open site was adjacent to the noisiest campers in the park, a group of 20 yahooing SoCal idiotic teenagers. I left my car in the space I payed for and walked away. I slept in a thicket of salt cedars near the visitor center. When I awoke in the morning, an old German couple were mumbling to each other and peering through the trees at me.
I promptly got my key at 9 AM and drove to my new temporary home: A long box built for eight. A brand new--paint-smelling, sticky doors and windows--building, starkly white on the inside. I had it all to my self for
the first two days. Alone on the hill over the main road through the valley.
Pahrump, the place I thought I might be living, is nothing more than a giant trailer park, a small,yet sprawling urban mess, a scummy fuckhole in the sand, with giant gaudy billboards celebrating gambling, guns, and smut. They have slot machines in Albertson's. Welcome to Nevada!
Luckily my strange position here, long term and low pay, gave me better odds at being awarded government housing and I won't have to live in Pahrump. They will be kicking me out of the dorms(reserved for seasonal employess only, even if there is plenty of space) and I will be moving to a small studio further up the hill in the little hidden employee village.
So far my job has been great. My boss is amazing and super nice. I made it through most of the piles of paperwork that were set before me and actually got out in the field twice this week. This job is going to be extremely challenging. My boss wants me to basically develop all of my own projects and enter all of my own data, which will involve lots
of GIS work, a program I've never used. I have a million new plant species to learn, including many invasive grasses. I'll also be spending a lot of time in the herbarium, checking the database against the collections.
So ends yet another upper 90 degree mid-October day. Wish me luck.
Steve
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Joe
non-member comment
Pahrump a pum pum
Enjoy my friend.