A Mojave Desert Image Diary

Photos from the fringe

Jan 14

Note: For best photo-viewing results, please visit this post at LandDesk.org. The images in this email are compressed to avoid clogging up the inter-tubes, which renders them a bit fuzzy.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

The Mojave Desert is a weird and wondrous place—if such a large expanse even can be considered a “place” at all. The sheer vastness warps a Mojave wanderer’s sense of time and space; one could spend an entire lifetime attempting to reach a distant range on the horizon. The desert provides sanctuary to misfits and eccentrics. It lures, it deceives, it fosters dreams and crushes them, too.

I spent the last several days in the Mojave, mostly nestled up against the San Gabriel Mountains on the desert’s southwestern edge in unincorporated Los Angeles County. I think of the area, which includes the cities of Palmdale and Victorville, as Los Angeles’ backside, but not in a derogatory way. It’s L.A.’s sacrifice zone, a land of gravel pits and transmission lines, cement factories and power plants, sprawling subdivisions and prisons, and anthropoid Joshua trees waving their crazy arms at the blazing sunset. But it also provides a refuge from L.A. and its outrageous housing prices, crowds, car-focused culture, and $15 fried egg sandwiches. When I’m in that part of the desert, strolling among the cacti and mesquite, I fail to wrap my mind around the fact that 13 million people live just the other side of a small mountain range.

Our time visiting the area finished, I drove back across the Mojave to St. George, Utah, stopping along the way to capture images of what I saw. This is a diary of the trip.