A New Month, A New Direction: Eastward, toward "Home"

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Up until Halloween I was running away from home, and I never had so much fun.  November 1 I entered new terrirotry – the desert of the American Southwest.  But I'm heading toward familiar territory – the DC to Boston Corridor, arguably (with a nod to China, to whom we are sunk in debt) the most powerful region in the world.

I’m sad that I couldn't go farther west, that there isn’t more room in the United States for me to run away in.  I ran out of land.  The Pacific thwarted my escape.

So I'm headed east.  The land just east of San Diego had some hills – great piles of boulders with dead plants stuck between them.  But mostly between San Diego and Phoenix the land was flat, with purple mountains jutting up miles in the distance.  The flat plains are dry, dusty, light brown, infertile.  Brittle plants the same color as the dirt bake in the sunshine.  All is dusty, barren, gray or brown as far as the eye can see.

A hill just east of San Diego.  Boulders and a few dead plants.  You can see the shadow of me and my camera on top of the bus.

And then we entered an area outside El Centro, California where farmers somehow coaxed the flat land to support the growing of a few crops – grass to make hay and one other plant I couldn’t identify. Some fields were plowed into empty, dusty rows.  The light brown, infertile-looking soil was prepared but nothing planted.  It was prime territory for wind to pick up the topsoil and toss it, as it did in the Dust Bowl of the Depression.  A cloud of dark brown smudged the horizon in every direction – a cloud of dust worse than Los Angeles smog.

And always the smell of pesticide and/or fertilizers, a metallic smell, an unnatural smell that irritated the back of the throat, the chemical smell you would get from a newly opened bottle of cheap vitamins.

The cheap, colorful goods on display in Calexico, California, near the border.

Another Calexico store.  The air was full of the smell of chemicals, probably pesticides or fertilizers.

My first sighting of a Saguaro cactus in the wild.

I couldn't get over the Saguaro.  These cactuses take 75 years to grow an arm; they can grow to be more than 150 years old.