Nehaveigur

The number of weird things that happen to a person in the wild is directly proportional to how much time that person spends in the wild

Steven Rinella: American Buffalo

Desert solitaire

I was backpacking through the landscapes of arid southern California while reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. One day, I was taking refuge from the noon sun under one of the bridges that span the dried-up arroyos. There, in the cool shade, I resumed my reading. One phrase I stumbled across was “Poetry and revolution before breakfast”. It didn’t immediately make sense to me, so I put the book down and looked up to think about it. I noticed someone had scrawled some graffiti on the underside of the bridge. The letters were faded, but once I deciphered them, I realized that they also said, “Poetry and Revolution before breakfast”. Someone else had felt the weight of those words and immortalized them there.

Desert encounters 1

While we stayed in Palm Springs, I’d drive out to the desert to go for solitary runs. I’d drive the Ford Expedition off the highway on unpaved side road until I found a spot that looked interesting, park it off the road, and run the desert trails for an hour or so. I never saw anyone and hardly any animals either.

One day I returned to my truck and, after drinking some lukewarm water, started driving back. After a few minutes, I noticed someone standing by the side of the road flagging me down. As I approached, I could make out that it was a man in his fifties, unshaven, in shoddy clothes, overweight and in poor health. I stopped my truck and leaned out of the window. He told me that his car had gotten stuck in the desert, and he couldn’t get it out, and he was very glad when he saw me approach in my truck because I would surely be able to pull him out. It wasn’t something I could say no too, as we were still far from the highway and no-one else was around or would likely to be drive by anytime soon.

I was only slightly concerned that he’d try to murder me and bury me in the sand, but enough to inform him that I’d first need to text my wife so that she’d know I’d be home late. He didn’t object, which reassured me about his intentions.

He said his car was just a short distance from where we were, so I followed him, him walking ahead, me carefully driving the truck in all-wheel drive down the sandy two-track. Soon we reached his car, which turned out to be a battered Toyota Corolla stuck in a sand dune up to its bumper. I was amazed how he had managed to get it stuck so deeply, and he replied that he had tried to turn around when he realized the road was too rough without realizing how treacherous the sand was off the two-track.

I had a tow rope in the back, and while I got it out, I again wondered if I should be worried. On the one hand, while he was clearly desperate he seemed harmless enough. On the other hand, if turned out to be dangerous, I would on my own. I quickly dismissed those thoughts, thinking that if he made any moves that I didn’t like, I could always just drive or run away. Considering the state he was in, he wouldn’t be able to catch me.

Having found the tow rope, the next question was where to attach it. My truck had hooks for this purpose, but his car didn’t have any obvious attachment point. I knew that the manual would specify the best point for towing, but when mentioned that to him, he replied that he had lost the manual long ago. In any case, he knew how to attach the rope. He opened his trunk, and I realized the situation was trickier than I had thought.

His trunk was full of plastic crates, and the plastic crates were full of liquor bottles. I didn’t ask about them and he didn’t volunteer anything. The word blinking in large, illuminated warning letters in my mind was “ALCOHOLIC”. It explained his mishap and the state he was in.

He wound the rope through the trunk, out the rear side door, and around the back pillar of the car. I was doubtful that was the right thing to do and told him so, but he told me not to worry about it. When I gently started to put the truck into gear, the frame of the care immediately started to deform, and I stopped.

Now we tried to untie the knot he had made in the rope. He tried to untie it, and I tried, but it was too tight. Without warning, he took a large knife out of his pocket. “This is where he murders me” I thought, but all he did was cut the rope.

We didn’t know what to try next. The underside of the car, where I thought an attachment point may have been, was buried in the sand. I offered to drive into town and get help, but he vigorously objected that wouldn’t be necessary. He suddenly seemed to be quite keen to get rid of me and told me not to worry and that he’d figure it out. I did worry about him though, but he insisted that he’d be fine, so I drove off.

That evening I went back to check on him, but he and the car were gone. The tracks in the sad suggested someone else had pulled him out.

Desert encounters 2

Another time, camping along under the desert stars. I was just about to fall asleep when a bright light suddenly appeared, hovering in the sky. It didn’t move, it didn’t make a sound, and it was bright enough that the shrubs cast shadows. For a few minutes it was just hanging there, until it slowly started to move until it disappeared behind the horizon. I couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t a helicopter as there was no noise, it wasn’t a comet since it was too bright, and it wasn’t a plane since it didn’t move. Trying to fall asleep again, I wondered if I had just witnessed a UFO.

The next day, I continued hiking, and after a few hours I met a couple backpacking into the opposite direction. I told them what I had seen and asked them if they had seen it too. They had seen it, and they knew what it was: A rocket launch at the distant Vandenberg Air Force base. And just like that, my alien encounter unraveled.