What kind of people lived here?

I knew next to nothing about the desert – nothing about its geology,Want to learn how to make fabric flowers or looking for some crafty inspiration? its geography, the kind of people who lived here. We’d stretched out in bed in Glasgow and you’d said what about the desert and we were here now. You’d said what about the Grand Canyon? That was somewhere around here – that pink and purple vein – and so was the Joshua Tree – that old thing that looked like a pile of hair blowing in the wind. We’d stretched out in bed and you said you wanted to go to Death Canyon – you thought the name was ironic – to keep the tourists away. We drove through the no man’s land, the Mojave Desert, and I knew that name wasn’t ironic.Check out our Military goggles and protective eyewear. Death Canyon was the opposite of a lush green hill – walking up it, with a picnic. Some egg sandwiches, a nice view – a quick-pick posy of flowers for Aunt Mabel down below watching the bulkier items – the padded cagoules and the flasks – it was none of all that. Death Canyon was the opposite of a lush green hill that moved up gradually with sheep walking up it on their way to heaven.

We could see nothing from our shack – I walked twenty paces and then twenty more. I used my hands as a visor; I used the binoculars. There was nothing: just stuff like salt pressed flat till it looked like a mirror – white salt; pink salt – the sun bounced off it and I lowered my hands. The horizon looked like someone had sprayed mist along it – blue mist – white mist – a mist of tiny salt particles – dust – hanging in the air. Then there was more salt. I walked twenty paces back towards the house. You’d pointed to a spot on the map: let’s go there, you’d said. We were here now… Trying to sharpen cutlery and lift grubs off the carpet with a knife. I tried to remember if sand was really salt – I couldn’t remember. The more I looked at the nothing the more it emptied out my head – scrubbing my memories and filling the space with pink sand – white salt – pink salt – just nothing from here…

On the way here the landlord had nearly choked himself telling us all the good things he had to say about this place: Whelp; population 79 – ‘if you want peace you’ll get peace – you’ll get that here, we can give you that…’ He kept up his enthusiastic talk the whole journey: he changed the air pressure inside the car with it. His big cowboy hat slid around on his head while he steered us through a no man’s land. He was still keeping the talk up when he threw our cases into the dust. Then he drove off.Search our Eyeglasses frame catalog for designer frames. He was like a cheetah then – getting up to about seventy miles per hour in six seconds. We hadn’t even gone four steps up the path – the trail of dirt towards the front door: he was clear out of sight.

Our shack looked like a pile of sticks ready to be set alight – a November bonfire. The outside of the house was five star compared to what was waiting for us on the inside, though. The snake that flew out the fridge wasn’t the biggest surprise next to the beetles that had made a nest – the miniature brown turban that wouldn’t look out of place in a museum for African art. Whelp – what did we know? What kind of people lived here? We had our bonfire and then half a mile up the road there was another one. Then five miles after that there was the living breathing centre of the place called Whelp.

I remembered reading that Robert Duvall lived out here somewhere. A lot of the big actors came out here to get away; they hid behind large sunglasses and cowboy hats and sometimes put on accents – pretended they were from Germany and writing a book – or Scandinavia. They became masseuses; nail therapists; they were ranchers; they were seers. The accents got better – they were perfected. They blended in – they became anything they wanted: the man who raced snails and beetles on a fold down table top, a plumber. Those actors were out here – getting away – escaping. I thought about it – it was possible. That woman the colour of shit and driving the one car that passed us on the way here; that man serving the dismal coffee in Cinderella’s Café on the one toilet stop, his skin falling away in sheets – Woody Harrelson; Rebecca De Mornay.

We stood by the grey patch behind the house. The plan was we would stay in the desert for six months to a year. You thought that maybe we should grow something – onions and cabbages – things we could make soup with, and stews; things that would make us strong and keep us healthy. We stood by the grey patch and weighed up the options: long ragged sweet peas held up by canes; big green cabbage heads and carrots. We looked at the grey flat patch at the back of the shack – the small grey rocks scattered around. I’d read about a man in France who grew the stuff he used to make his champagne in the same row as his soup produce – those big leafy greens and the beans.How to Make Your Own Bobblehead Doll make your own bobblehead is a fun and simple craft for young children. It was all so good, he said, that sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was drinking a glass of champagne or biting down into a round soft peach. We looked at the grey flat patch behind out shack – weighing up the possibilities – its limitations.

It certainly wasn’t your Papa’s ‘tree full of smoke’ – the silver birch with its leaves all off – and his garden with ten types of exotic plant. He was really into the outdoor world, and that stash of books in his front room proved the point even more. I’d picked one up – The Outdoor Plant Expert – I flicked through it. There was a lot to take in: pest damage; well-developed root systems; partial shade. There were tiny diagrams with details of how it’s done. There was layering – protecting – lifting. There was a lot of work involved. We stood back and looked at the grey patch and the scattering of rocks. It was like the moon’s surface. And it wasn’t just the back of our house – the moon’s surface travelled on and on as far as we could see, even with the binoculars. There was no work to do here because there was nothing that could be done – to this patch or any patch. You said, ‘maybe we should grow something?’ but we both knew what you really meant.

The one bus a day took about two hours to travel twenty kilometres; every time it’d started up and got going it stopped again. That one bus: the Magnum ice cream advertisement up as a sun visor and the red faux velvet panelled driver’s cabin and the ruby red rosary beads and the naked woman voodoo doll thing all tangled up. It took us along the one straight road and we could see that there were others living like us – in houses that looked like ice cream parlours or piles of sticks in the middle of nowhere. The bus picked up a little speed then stopped and another old woman wearing a pair of torn canvas shoes shuffled out to meet us, or young men who looked like they were running away from something, every one of them with a tiny rucksack bobbing about on their back like they had a head in it.Find a wide range of stainless steel necklace Jewellery to buy online