East Jesus on a Slab

Look at a map of the Coachella Valley and you’ll find a plethora of wonderful side trips to educate and warp the mind. The Colorado high desert and Joshua Tree are just an hour North. Swing the other way around and you can be in the artist community of Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. Drop south and things get really interesting with the Salton Sea, Salvation Mountain and ‘The Slabs.’

If you take a right at the Salton Sea, you’ll end up in East Jesus and West Satan. Unlike the posh country clubs and rarified Aire that is of Palm Springs legend, this is a ‘lost world’ replete with fascinating characters, RV vagabonds and a few stragglers who look like human residue scrapped up from the bottom of civilized society. It’s a step back in time and void of any semblance to a world that vacationers have come to expect of Palm Springs.

East Jesus is next to West Satan which is just a stone’s throw away from Salvation Mountain. I passed the Fountain of Youth trailer park on the way into town. I think you get the drift.

The Salton Sea was cloaked in a shroud of mist and smell and dead fish on the day I ventured there. Fortunately, it was cool in the morning so the smell wasn’t overwhelming even if the rotting carcasses of Tilapia was a bit disconcerting to walk on. Further down the road past the trailers of Bombay Beach was the sad remains of Camp Dunlap, a World War Two Marine base lost in the desert. Appropriately named Slab City, the Quonset huts are gone now and only the concrete slabs remain.

Just down the road from Salvation Mountain, two former guard huts announce the entrance to Slab City. It’s estimated that there are about one hundred and fifty permanent residents (squatters) who live in the Slabs all-year round. Some live on government checks, others just want to live ‘off the grid’ and a few come to stretch out their retirement income. The camp has no electricity, no running water, no sewers or toilets and no trash pickup service. Sounds like a dry run for the apocalypse.

Despite the free shoe tree on the way into town and the free library, most of the residents have sectioned off their trailers, tents and sleeping bags with tires, pallets, or barbwire. Free is free unless it comes to their piece of heaven in the desert then even the squatters want their personal space recognized.

The library is an eclectic collection of cast-off books and magazines all free for the taking. The floor was dirt and the ceiling clear blue sky or sheets stretched between sections. The reading lounge was mainly occupied by lizards, tarantulas, and small droppings of a questionable nature. When I was there, the proprietor encouraged me to visit the art gallery at East Jesus which is next to West Satan. A request like that couldn’t be ignored.

East Jesus has been described as an experimental, sustainable, habitable, art installation. I was told that East Jesus is a colloquialism for the middle of nowhere beyond the edge of services. Made from discarded material that has been reused, recycled, or repurposed, East Jesus encourages visitors to imagine a world without waste in which every action is an opportunity for self-expression.

I think West Satan is a simply a suburb of East Jesus. The art gallery there was fascinating and mind-expanding. My wife, ever the one to encompass clear insight into as few words as possible, simply called it ‘bad art.’

Either way it was a fun trip that gave birth to other mind images that are still whirling around in my head. Someday they just might start leaking out my fingertips into future storylines. My visit challenged the notion of ‘what art is’ and dragged us out of our comfort zone for at least one afternoon.

It was at once fascinating, intriguing, sad, mind-expanding, and challenging. It was finding iconic and cultural-pop treasures in the middle of nowhere California…just a stones-throw from Palm Springs and the flip side of reality there.

It was tripping out without the acid and a glimpse into the lives of those who don’t want to be a part of ‘any scene’ here in fantasy land or the rest of the world.

I get it. They got it…and want to keep it that way.

An Evil Wind Blows

One of the rude jokes among residents of the Coachella Valley concerns the aroma sometimes pushing up from the South. Once again, it’s another fish die-off at the Salton Sea. Over the years, there have been enough newspaper articles about the fish kills, rank odors and morbid housing scene along its shores that no one would want to venture down there at any time.

That’s too bad because the Salton Sea is a fascinating area teaming with wild life and tired old relics of a bygone era of oceanic fun. It’s well worth a trip south from the refined communities that make up the greater Coachella Valley area. Of course, speaking like a native, in the twenty-four years we’ve been coming to Palm Springs, I hadn’t ventured down there myself for the first ten years. Ignorance was bliss and I was blissful…and wrong.

The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake measuring more than 35 miles long and 15 miles wide in spots. It has a surface area of over 380 square miles and sits at 332 feet below sea level. The sea was created back in 1905 as the result of an accidental break in a canal cut into the Colorado River. For 16 months, the river ran unchecked into the lowest area around; the salt basin which became the Salton Sea.

But it wasn’t the first time that the area had seen a large body of water. Thousands of years earlier, Cahuilla and other California Indians occupied those lands. When they first arrived, the Salton Sink held a much larger body of water – ancient Lake Cahuilla. Geologists estimate the sea has appeared and then disappeared about every 400-500 years.

After the Indians, came the first settlers and railroad men who built a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad through a part of the sea. Nearby agriculture began to grow in what is now the communities of Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.

By the mid-fifties, the Salton Sea had become a major recreational water resort area for Southern California. But two hurricanes; Kathleen in 1976 and Doreen in 1977, caused such wide-spread damage to neighboring farm lands that the runoff caused a major increase in the salinity of the sea. That, in turn, caused major fish-kills and bird-kills and created such a major issue with noxious odors that residential development came to a stop.

Today the salinity level of the sea stands at 45 ppt. Only the tilapia fish is able to survive in such waters. While fishing is still good for the tilapia, fish kills continue to plague the area with their harsh smells.

Along the northeastern edge of the Salton Sea lies one of the world’s most important winter stops for migrating birds traveling the Pacific Flyway. The migration begins in October and by January more than 400 species of migrating birds fill the skies above the sea. By the end of May, the birds have moved on.

Like any other large natural area in California, there is much more than just the sea in the Salton Sea area. Over the centuries the fragile ecosystem of the area has provided sanctuary to an extremely diverse collection of wildlife and the critical habitats that support and nurture them.

For example, the sea holds millions of fish that feed the masses of wintering birds, including herons, egrets, brown and white pelicans, and kingfishers. In the fall, birds of prey arrive. Among them are peregrine falcons, osprey, and ferruginous hawks.

The fields and wetlands adjacent to the sea support huge flocks of snow geese, ducks, sandhill cranes and California’s largest population of burrowing owls.

Plans to reclaim the sea and turn it back into a major recreational area have begun and stalled dozens of times over the years. But in 1998, Congress finally passed the Salton Sea Reclamation Act directing the Secretary of the Interior to prepare a feasibility study on restoration of the Salton Sea. Slowly but surely, progress is being made to turn the tide in that direction.

The Salton Sea and its immediate vicinity have many recreational activities to offer, including: camping, bird watching, fishing, hiking, boating; use of personal watercraft; hunting and off-roading.

It will take years, perhaps decades before the sea might possibly return to its past glory. More feasibility studies are being made, more funding is being sought and grand schemes hatched. The possibilities for commerce, recreation and development are enormous. Talk of Lithium fields suddenly discovered have a lot of politicians licking their lips. Time will tell.

Until then the Salton Sea is a magical place for walk the shoreline, observe the birds, and time your visit to avoid the smell. A small price for a wonderful watery treasure in the middle of the desert.

High Lonesome

Far from the crystal-clear pools of Palm Springs and its emerald green golf courses lies another world. A world of vast nothingness peppered with the sad remnants of past lives and etchings scratched in the rocks. It’s a place where stillness thunders louder than the wind and God did some of his finest work. High and lonesome.

Sharon and I have been traveling to this wilderness mecca ever since the kids were still in school and offspring weren’t even a part of the equation. We’ve taken friends there as part of the Palm Springs experience when they’ve come to visit. It’s part and parcel of the Southern California magic. Joshua Tree is a world unto its own.

This world-renowned national park and its surrounding communities embrace another form of existence; all of which is surrounded by endless horizons. The area is a mecca for aging rock stars, artists and modern-day bohemians along with ordinary people all in search of a new beginning. It’s the place where people go to get lost and then forgotten.

The high desert of the Morongo Basin is like a modern-day outback of more than 9.5 million acres of public land in the California desert. Its home to old walking trails first used by Native Americans between seasonal encampments then followed by Spanish explorers and finally 19^th century gold seekers and pioneers.

1.7-billion-year-old rocks compete for attention with the ancient land mass of Rodinia and King Clone and 11.000-year-old creosote bush that began its life during the retreat of the last Ice Age. It was a desolate wilderness and home to cowboys, outlaws, roaming Indian people and Mexican traders.

Reminders of past human lives are everywhere. Abandoned mines litter the area with their relics of past hopes and dreams scattered about the ground. A restored railroad depot stands alone with its tracks still leading nowhere. Ramshackle old cabins planted amid miles of sage and scrub brush, sit isolated and lonely in the desert. The evidence is all here if you can look past the dust and dirt and castles made of boulders to imagine all the past lives that once past through this place on the way to a better life.

Before and during the 1950s, the high desert was home to simple shacks on homesteaded land. No water, electricity, or amenities. Initially L.A. outlaws, urban rebels and the adventurous few gravitated to this Spartan existence. Over time, the elements took their toll and many shacks were abandoned and forgotten. Most reverted back to the Bureau of Land Management.

Then in the 1960s and 70s, artists, musicians, urban castaways, and bohemian rebels found the high desert a perfect refuge from the craziness that had overtaken most of the coastal cities. These new explorers flocked to the area in their VW pop-up campers, tents, sleeping bags and simple woolen blankets. It was like an unorganized gathering of like-minded souls each of whom was lost inside their own head.

More recently, high architectural drama followed in the form of classic modern dwellings. Gradually, there grew a vibe, an undercurrent of interest and excitement about high desert living. VRBO and AirBnB locales began sprouting up everywhere.

A whole new generation of architectural aficionados, Gen Xers, boomers, urban pioneers, and retirees are reclaiming the desert and rebuilding those dilapidated shacks into something more attractive-only this time with all the amenities. A lot of the Airbnb listings are remodeled versions of these old shacks that used to be part of a homesteading craze decades ago.

Right from the start, we wanted to introduce our grandchildren to this playground for the imagination. Much like the high-altitude cerebral vacuum of the San Jacinto Mountains, Joshua Tree is the perfect setting for letting their minds wander and bump into thoughts and ideas and feelings they never knew were lurking there.

It means nestling into a large boulder, resting your head on its warm pillow of granite, looking up at the pure blue flawless sky and listening to your surroundings. The stillness will batter your eardrums with a quiet so loud that all you can do is retreat back inside your head for peace and serenity.

The high desert is a cornucopia of images, lifestyles, attitudes, ambitions, and dreams from a plethora of characters; real and imagined. It’s where you go to lose yourself and perhaps find the unexpected. It’s where the ghosts of past rock and roller stars still play their mournful ballads for no one to hear but the wind.

And it’s where writers go to ask ‘what if.’

Back in the Wash

It’s an easy place to get lost. A quiet and serene sweep of desert scrub brush, shifting sands and soft whispering winds. It can change its appearance in subtle yet curious way on almost a daily basis. It’s a perfect capsule of silence capped around your ears. Everything around you seems dead and yet is alive in a hundred different ways.

There’s usually a small muddy creek meandering by. The scrub brush is usually full bloom except in the dead of summer. Nesting birds’ flitter about endlessly. The stillness there can be deafening with only a few fleeting sounds floating by. All is peaceful until every couple of years when the rains come and wash that complacency away with astounding fury and force in just a matter of moments.

After the storms, the leftover residue slowly settles into the newly formed crags and crevices and the wash goes back to its dormant life once again.

I experienced that here in the desert several years ago. A record three and a half inches of rain fell in one day. Contrast that to an average rainfall of five inches for the entire year and one can understand the magnitude of the hard rain pounding on concrete soil.

Before the rains, the wash was alive with horseback riding, mountain biking and hiking.

Horse trails become mountain bike meccas. Hikers wander the wash, meandering back and forth as the rutted grounds give way to dry beds. Arroyos cut in the corners and debris lies crumpled up in distorted jumbled piles randomly deposited everywhere. Then after the rains, new trails are forged on a totally altered landscape.

Fortunately for me, the wash isn’t the only place I’ve found for tranquility and peace in his part of my world. The best views of this ever-changing tapestry of desert landscape are from the mountain trails that climb up to the summit.

As a fellow hiker commented the other day. “It really is one of the best playground for adults in the world.” I’ve also found a host of other newly discovered venues to get lost in around the Coachella Valley.

Whether it is walking the berm and scaling the heights above, they are all magnificent escapes just steps away from my home. Places to meet and greet and at the same time go solitary if I want to.

Its heaven’s confessional where I reveal my earthly sins; the good ones, the bad ones, and the fun times in-between to nobody else but me.