Holy Hell

This morning was the first day I have thought this arid wasteland to be beautiful. The rain of the last two days has left a scent in the air unlike the usual dry aroma. I was awake and out of the house long before the sun graced the horizon. Sitting in the passenger seat of Dale’s truck I looked out of the window going through Jackhammer Pass out to the Fort and was amazed. Looking over the hill and down into the expansive valley beyond I could see that the dry dust bowl of a lake bed was full; absolutely full with an angry, crashing sea frozen in mid sworl.

The clouds had settled onto the ground. It was like an ocean that evaporated and froze in midair. The thick, dark clouds hugging the horizon and the strange row of cumulous arranged like teeth between the ground and the peaks of that pillowed range made a bizzare and picturesque base for the first light of morning creeping over them. The ground amidst the ocean was all but frozen. white in most places it gave the occasional rolling hill the appearance of a snowdrift. The brush scattered about the landscape had the appearance of huge frozen pineapples, adding a humorous cast to the view.

I just had to stare out the window as the sun slowly changed the colors and pitch of the world. The clouds along the horizon teased me like an underage stripper with hints at treasured blues and yellows my eyes couldn’t see but my mind knew must be there.

Coming up the hill to where I could see Gemini I was captivated. The Gemini site consists of two antennae, identical in every fashion cosmetically, but utterly different internally. One of them is fully functional at the expense of the other, for when the primary dish has a problem, the secondary dish is scavenged for parts to fix it. Two seemingly functional beings, one inside is humming alive with energy while the other is gutted and hollow; a shell after expending itself to keep another running. A metaphor for so many things in life, this morning the twins were barely visible by a thin outline and the lights at their apex. Two craft together in a tempestuous sea, all but lost beneath it.

The most halting of all the images of the morning was the flood. Crashing out of the Venus valley the moisture of the early morning came over the mountain wall of the valley like a tidal wave. Like some ethereal dam had been burst and all the hosts of hell had spewed forth in a vengeful army of liquid wrath. The mists rose high up the side of the mountain in mid collision spilling halfway to the valley floor that we were driving on. I shivered, and not entirely from the morning cold.

Leaving so soon as I am, I have learned to relax and appreciate some of the local quirks instead of simply looking to the east each day thinking of that solitary star so far off in the unseen distance. I won’t miss this place any more than anywhere else I have lived, and far less than most, but even it has had some small and beautiful effect on me.