Mid August Night - Report from Palm Desert

It's August 18 already - and it feels like we've fast forwarded into late September. My friend Phil and I just took a long, 13 mile bike ride in our coveted 7-9 pm time slot, essential in the summer sun and heat. In short, it's the only frickin' time of day when the sun won't induce stomach cramping nausea and heat exhaustion- because, to boot, I'm in my 5th or 6th week of paxil withdrawal, summer is horrific enough here without a sure-to-induce hyponatremia the big word for the symptom of "chronic dehydration," coming from a designer desert in this already heat-surrealized designer desert drug: and a word to the wise -

Medical warning from the source! SSRI medication can cause serious dehydration issues. I found out just last month, after a few years of wondering (ironically) if I was going insane, because every time I'd go out to do things I've done all my life - climb Mt. San Jacinto, for example, or take a long bike ride past country club walls and imagine what's going on behind them, or go camping with friends on sailing and river trips on the Colorado and it's funky lakes - well, I got really sick a few time and ended up in the hospital with sodium + potassium levels that made doctors cringe! Drink more water and gatorade, they'd say (no shit. I used to work as a firefighter for the CA Desert District, and am a desert native, and I know ALL the tricks.)

Anyway, my mystery problem seems to be clearing up, and I'm grateful, in part because I just happen to live in one of THE hottest deserts and places on the planet. Not good to be cut short from even functioning by a horrible drug, let alone the environment.

And so, I'm astonished by and taking advantage of this "cool" (relative term, mind you) lull in mid-August here in the low desert. I live at sea level, have traced the "sea level" line by checking out nearby sand dunes, over in "Bermuda Dunes' towards Indio, and having taken geology classes, spent several years researching vast amounts of desert and Native literature (and stories) and tracing that elusive sea line on Triple A maps - and, of course, wandering by road and bike beneath sea level, starting at Point Happy near my house and the magnificent Whitewater Wash, along the eerie submarine markings of Ancient Lake Cahuilla. Nothing like being deep into the bathtub of the geology and poetry of this place, with the water drained!

Yes, this is one hot topic. I grew up in Apple Valley, the high desert, 3,000 feet, and a world apart in the Mojave. Most people don't know how vastly different what we call the "high" and "low" deserts of California are. Palm Desert, Indio, Palm Springs, Coachella, Mecca, Salton City, North Shore: we're all in the super duper hot zone, and in geologic zones that aren't valleys, but trough/graben uplift and drop, which occurs on such drastic fault zones as we're in. We ride a low vibration, slung like an inverted hammock between the Pacific and Continental plates, and aren't even really on solid ground here. We are an ancient seabed, and the Cahuilla people have stories dating back countless centuries that record the cycle of flow and ebb - the sea would come, and it would go - sometimes, it would rise quickly. Was this when a big earthquake occurred? Are we going to see this happen again in our lifetimes? The more I've learned, the more the old "wife's tale" of "California is going to split off into the ocean" tales become extremely credible, and in fact, have been true already.

We zigzag across sand dunes - our mid-valley landfill. To the west, the imposing blocks of Mt. San Jacinto and San Gorgonio (old Greyback,) both over 10,000 feet high- with the usual narrow slice of orange smog filtering in from the San Gorgonio Pass and points towards L.A. These are the mountains that cause our "rain shadow" effect. Meaning - the Pacific storm system/coastal winter and spring rains all falls on their side, not on ours. What we get generally, and rarely, is a spillover from the huge monsoon effect that oozes up from the Gulf of California, and flooding Arizona every summer.

But us. Very far west and north from all of that, an odd finger of Sonoran Desert, without the saguaros, being west of the Colorado River, where they end - if I forgot to mention it, we're also a traditional overflow zone for the magnificent River, depending on its annual whims - not so much anymore, due to the several dams "taming" its forces, but our below-ground, overflow, old seabed multi-personality-status endures. We wander over and up from the Arizona lands, down from the Colorado's landhold, and buttress once and for all up against the big coastal fault-lifted mountains, where we end and rise incredibly sharp and steep up to the lands of shamans hunting the deer and mountain lions, where pines and different life zones exist. Right there, we can see it all, but it's a different world to us.

Bingo. Desert. To the southwest, the arch of the Santa Rosa Mountains, which begin from our floor as barren, dry, gospels of desert hills and grace their way up into pine forests that ascend to over 9,000 feet. To our north, the Little San Bernardino Mountains, the transition zone to Joshua Tree National Park, and the Mojave Desert - where our Western Colorado/Sonoran meet, kiss briefly, and go their separate north-south directions. South - empty land, rimmed by more desert hills, and the knowledge that water, however algae-blooming and salt-filled, isn't far at all. A weird relief. But the migratory birds know it's all good.

And so, on our bikes. Through the Palm Desert Country Club, where I live. To Hovely Lane, and past the sad wall of what was 4 square miles of ancient and incredibly intense and powerful sand dunes - the reason I bought my house, which used to shore right up against their waves. Not long ago, 2002, 03, I'd find big white scorpions in my house, take walks and see countless sidewinder rattlesnake marks, find myself magically on my back, soaking in the healing of ancient ocean and sand. The dogs loved 'em, too. Not anymore. The city of Indian Wells put in another aberration of golf, grass, fake lakes, multimillion $$ homes, and a general eerie sense of "no one is home." I got literally sick for a few years when that construction was going on and in, with a terrible cough and malaise that I swear I am still getting over - who knows what ancient dirt and dust they stirred up - it was fog-thick for weeks on end, with that wind blowing, talk about an environmental disaster and air-quality regulations being violated, big time, and you'd better believe I was on the phone 24/7 calling the posted "violation" phone #, and get this folks - the number I reached was the fucking construction company themselves! Whining about how yes, they were trying to water the site down, but the water was costing them a fortune......what about the price to the ancient sites there, and nearby peoples' health? I learned from inside source that the project, Tuscana Country Club, with 2 golf courses, ran the investor, Mr. Bone, around $800 million in investment capital. Think of how many starving and homeless people that outlay could've helped.

Anyway, I do my best. I bought a house, for the now-gone sand dunes (really, honestly, I mean it!) and I can't entirely claim to be sad that my prop value virtually doubled almost overnight and is holding pretty solid even in this greed-evoked real estate recession we're in. We turn and take a connecting road on impeccably landscaped, curving and rising sidewalks, El Dorado to Country Club (aptly named = yep, there's gold here, and yep, there are country clubs, one after the other with their surprising fountains, gates, and hiddenness.) How many thousands of plants - bouganvellia, smoketrees, desert willows - can one place sport? Imagine the water it takes to keep this stuff looking pretty and perfect year round. The number of gardners. And we're just talking the outside of the grounds.

We cross Cook Street and ride slowly past the granddaddy of 'em all, the Marriott: with its ridiculous lakes in front, five restaurants, pink flamingos, giant palm trees with their lacy jewelry lights - and it's August, and the snowbirds aren't even here yet! Right on Portola, past the public golf course for our humble town, Desert Willow, then right on Frank Sinatra, towards the new, unbelievably posh UCRiverside and Cal State San Bernardino extension campuses (expensive art on the grounds, state of the art buildings, they look like high end mausoleums, not schools, and the weird thing is, they look like ghost towns! Hey, I can make fun of them, because I teach extension courses for both campuses!)

We ease slowly back towards home. A long bike ride, and Phil, being cocky 23, has not brought water. I offer some of mine to him; I've already gone through a few liters. It's getting darker and darker, and the temperature cools even more - into the 80's, a god-relief and high-desert, high altitude miracle at this time of year. We're not Joshua Tree, which gets cutting cold winds through April and May, and sometimes even snow then. They are cushioned from extreme temps most of the time, at nearly 4,000 feet. We don't have a running river, like the Mojave, by whose shores I once lived - at an historic guest ranch - and in whose vast cottonwood forests I'd walk coolly on summer nights, savoring the high desert sweet, cool summer evening climate. In fact, summer on the high desert of the Mojave, backsiding the mountains as do Joshua Tree and Apple Valley, is beautiful. It can be hot in the afternoons, but evenings are deluxe, mornings are a joy, and generally they only suffer through maybe 2 weeks of air conditioner weather a year.

Not us. We've had days over 100 degrees in March, for godsake, and well into October, since I moved here in 1999. Every year, every year, I say, "it's time to move." And again, this year I find myself here. Day trips to the beach, crashing in Riverside at a friend's house, I'm a teacher, and I have the summer off - wonderful, eh? - and also have time off from my regular paycheck, so I can't exactly rent a house in the mountains. My first year at COD, I remember being appalled and overwhelmed by the first two weeks of school, when temps were routinely 115+ degrees. I thought I'd landed in hell, and felt sorry for the sagging date palms on the trees on our campus, wondering what was up with the cloaked jackets their fruit wore (to guard against monsoon rains, I later learned - and we've had our share of them this year, another "run out of the house and rejoice and drop everything till it stops" rain) -

But summer has become my down time. I read, I sleep, and I do a lot of stuff indoors I normally wouldn't. It sucks, to be stuck inside, like we're in some kind of reverse North Dakota for the summer when the rest of the country is rejoicing in summer sports and fun. This year, I've found the time to actually get a major dent in completing an anthology project that, in its fun and excitement for me, couldn't compete with the balmy beach weather we get here from November through April - an the craziness and crowding from the sudden 10 million people who show up (damnit!) the minute the weather gets "good."

I have to realize - as I cruise my way home on the very dark streets, back in my country club - ungated and no fees for me, to my relief - that there must be something to what I generally think of as a godforsaken land, a part of the California and southwest deserts I know so well, and for the most part love- in my mind, with so much to compare, this isn't the golden land. This is a certain form of premature hell - but not tonight. It's tolerable, and the pool water will profer its summer-warm, perfect for late night dipping (which I'm about to do now) and the best thing is in a crazy way I feel special blessed. The low desert gods, sporting their invisible water spouts from beneath our imaginary sea, have taken pity and given us refuge, a breath of almost-beach, of almost-reprieve, and it feels like sleeping in the sand while the sea lions call to their mothers, and I know it will be good sleep tonight under the softened stars. Below 90 degrees in August - in the narrow hours of short night - thank God, thank God, thank you God!