Phantom Seedlings: Salvation Mountain via the Salton Sea

I took a trip to the Salton Sea and nearby Salvation Mountain yesterday with out-of-town family.....wonderful. The usual stop at North Shore, the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. I'm pleased to find out that the bird map I co-authored, "The Palms to Pines Birding Trail," is smartly being picked up by visitors, that the usual winter birds are on and above the water - pelicans, grebes, all matter of winter birds - a little amazed at the high number of visitors, and most of all, anticipating bringing my canoe down here for a flat water float before it gets too hot again, drifting along on the shoreline of the Salton Sea is one of life's ultimates! February. The height of winter, early spring, visitor season. The sea brims with life. Today it's 60 degrees, not 120, as it will inevitably be this summer.

And, most excited that my new California desert literature anthology, No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California's Deserts, to be published by Heyday Books in Berkeley, will be in this bookstore by next year, and hopefully making great sales. I'm in the final steps of wrapping up permissions-getting, revising the preface, and looking forward to doing something paradoxical in nature, I have barely got it done - a desert crossing in mid-summer, a dangerous endeavor, gutting it alone and moving from water hole to water hole - resisting civilization and the ludicrious empire-building with pilfered water (from the Colorado River) on our Colorado-Sonoran desert in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys where I live (hence, the inland sea that they call accidental, which seeks an outlet and has none and is now doomed to its own salty repetition and possibly near destiny as a dead sea very soon by agricultural runoff.)

And yet, I realize I'm creating water where once was mirage. Still sustainable, filled with storied names and creatures - fragile and endangered, my anthology is and was. Making a book out of sand - a purported collection of a storied landscape where there should be very few, or none - bullet holes on our cover, and a stark beauty in the poem from which we derive the book's name. I can only hope I've done something honest, real, captivating, and good, where when you look back over your shoulder, after embarking on your own literal and figurative desert crossings, there may be nothing left at all.

And now for yesterday's highlights: stippling down Hwy 99 to visit Bombay Beach, which fought back the water with dikes....past the bizarre, Chocolate-Mountain-haunch hot springs settlements of the Fountain of Youth Spa - Canadian flag flying, place packed with thousands of winter visitors - nestled against an active US Military gunnery range - and on down to decrepit Niland, on the southeast edge of the Salton Sea, once the tomato capital of the world, and off towards an old army barracks and mud hillside where is configured one of the desert's Seven Wonders: Salvation Mountain, a folk-art and God-Visionary monument to the powers of the human heart when it wants to make beauty out of nothing, and imprint something good: the progeny of Leonard Knight, whose done it all from paint and abandoned desert trash and goods, for the past 24 years. In the name of love!

I was privileged and honored to get Leonard's tour (again) and this time he talked mostly about love, and why love is the most important thing we have, and how people in traffic jams in the cities should all call out to one another when stuck in their cars with messages of hope and love. I filmed Leonard for 7 minutes, interviewed him and promised to put on youtube (others already have, but he's always excited to pass along his message) - and walked away, with my parents and my mom's cousin's wife, a little better for the moment, and stunned, and reminded that love is really all we have. Left and right, below and above.

Leonard Knight surveying his life's work....Salvation Mountain. Honored by Congress in 2001 as a work of national folk art.

Talent show stage at Slab City....still resonating with fun from the music of the last night....

The Oasis Club at Slab City, including hot dog stand.

Mom and Dad (Joe and Beverly Nolan) on a partially-submerged toy at the old North Shore Yacht Club marina - what else but a play-submarine? Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains and Salton Sea in the background.