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After Trona, the road suddenly becomes terrifying. One moment I am on a reasonably flat minor highway and the next I’m driving along the top of a mountain and below me a narrow and unbelievably steep road winds its way down to a flat mesa which I will later discover is the Panamint Desert. At this point, I believe I am descending into Death Valley. Wrong. Nowhere near it.
For the first time, I’m frightened by the prospect of driving and to make matters worse, my knees have now turned to jelly. I can’t guarantee that I can manage the controls. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Why had I not expected this? Why had it not occurred to me that if I went to the mountains I would have to do mountain driving? Am I that unrealistic? It seems like I am.
There is nowhere but go but onwards. With the windows closed against the desert wind and my eyes squinting against the glare, I continue doggedly. Past the turn-off to Ballarat Ghost Town (pop. 1) and past another to Panamint City (pop. 0). The view is stunning as I cross this flat plain skirted by mountains on every side, but by now I’m too nervous to enjoy it. I’ve moved from one extreme of imagination – an unreal optimism about what the desert is like – to the opposite extreme of being too afraid to stop and get out in case the car won’t start again or I get bitten by a rattle-snake.
Today my sister sent me a link to this very descriptive article by Glen Helfand in Artforum about the work of British artist Jeremy Deller. Like me, he became fascinated by California, but he seems to have been much more realistic about the desert than I was.
