I'm lying on a warm sandstone slab in a desert wash. The winter sun warms my face. Utter stillness is occasionally shattered by the sounds of billionaire-laden private jets overhead.
Follow me into Joshua Tree National Park, a necessary, solitary prelude to a Rancho Mirage confrontation with the Koch brothers.
I start hiking to Willow Flat, surrounded by a forest of Joshua trees with a snow-capped mountain in the background.
Water's shadow can be seen in the shape of the wash, the vibrant green grasses that sprout under a tree, the lizards scurrying away from a mudhole. Distracted by my thoughts - why do people wander into the desert alone, if not to distill and bottle the essence of crazy? - I take a wrong turn, then another, and lose myself scrambling among boulders for just long enough to feel a tendril of fear brush against my neck. This non-trail must be christened with one drop of my blood. But I make my way back to the main trail, and soon enough I'm seeing the artificial glint of sunlight on automobiles.
Back at the trailhead, I feel vaguely unsatisfied. Seven miles is good, but flat is bad. I head two miles up a "moderately strenuous" trail to Lost Horse Mine. In places, the ground sparkles (fool's gold? mica?) and glows, softly translucent with a rose quartz rock. Further up the trail, fire leaves its mark.
The mine itself is so perfectly preserved that it feels Disneyesque. It's fenced off; being a law abiding citizen I enter through the hole in the fence graciously provided by the Park Service. I wonder at the need for gold that drove men to this stark, isolated moonscape.
"Fraser & Chalmers, Chicago, Illinois" is still clearly imprinted on some of the machinery, reminiscent of an era in which America made stuff. Did the laborers go mad working in barracks in harsh living conditions? Did the heat affect their sanity? Or did the desire for gold, and a decent wage, trump all? And has anything really changed in a hundred years?
The gold mine stands as a monument to one era of resource exploitation. Tomorrow I'll be protesting the era of oil and coal exploitation. As I travel from the park to my Palm Springs area hotel, the future spins merrily, laughing a little at the folly of billionaires who think that empires last forever.