It is the things in the desert that do not take shape, may never come to exist, that can manage to feel more arresting than some of the things that do.

A decade ago, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy was on the prowl for desert land—-as solar developers generally are—-on which to site a proposed elephantine 500-megawatt heliostat farm. For reasons that do not on their face seem even faintly logical, the company landed on Broadwell Lake, five miles north of Ludlow, as a choice spot for this 5,130 acre (eight square miles, about the size of all of Santa Monica, CA) solar thermal power plant.

Broadwell Lake sits at the center of the Sleeping Beauty Valley, which has been described by one biologist as a “frontier that is poorly documented” and in which researchers “expect that additional inventory here will unearth considerable new discoveries to science.”

What drew BrightSource to this distinct transition zone between the western and eastern Mojave—-an area in which bighorn sheep migrate, an ancient plant (crucifixion thorn) that may live 10,000 years can be found, along with at least 350 other species of plants?

Was the company’s leadership attracted by the powerful and piercing solitude that can be experienced here? Was it how the dry lake sits between two mountain ranges (Cady, Bristol) and abuts one designated wilderness area (Kelso), offering a view so unfettered by even trace development? Was it this that made it seem a well-suited potential home to 200 foot-tall towers that would boil water? Was it that you can spend a full day here and see no body, no car, no thing, no structure—-for miles—-and almost begin to imagine the world before man?

BrightSource withdrew its bold proposal in 2009 not just amid objections from conservationists and scientists, but also because of the looming possibility of the area becoming part of a national monument. Seven long years later, in early 2016, the Mojave Trails National Monument was at last established. To be clear, Broadwell Lake would have been an absurd and destructive location for a power plant. Had the project been realized, one might travel here to experience sorrow over the works of man and their attendant consequences, from which there is seemingly no turning back. Fortunately, we can still visit to instead experience joy over the sublime quality of stillness available here most days, and with scant evidence of man for miles.

The Desert Research Station (DRS) is a Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) research and display facility located in the Mojave desert. If you happen to be in the Mojave desert or on your way to Las Vegas, Nevada from southern California, you should take a trip to visit CLUI’s Desert Research Station in Hinkley, CA.

The Desert Research Station contains information in a small trailer building about the land, wildlife, and geology around Hinkley. I had been familiar with CLUI and several of their sites for years before visiting the DRS. I have family in the Mojave desert so I pitched it as an informative art exhibition outside of Barstow to a few family members and they agreed to take me. Once we got off the freeway making our way toward Hinkley, it was pretty quiet. The town became known by many across the US in 2000 after the Oscar winning film Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts. The film is based on the real story of Erin Brockovich a Hinkley, California resident who helped build a case against Pacific Gas and Electric Company who were responsible for contaminating the groundwater in the area in the early 1990s. The town today looks like a ghost town with little to no people on the roads and abandoned houses throughout the area.

Like the CLUI site in Wendover, Utah, you will find a building painted beige and the formal looking CLUI logo out front. There is a padlock on the door and placard with instructions to call a phone number to retrieve the code to access the building. I wish I thought take down either number, but what’s the fun in that?! I did notice that the CLUI website states the DRS is open to the public by appointment so I would call the Center before making your way out there. Once you enter there is a knob on the inside that you turn to trigger the timed interior lights. The whole station is fairly self sustaining. Everything is a little dusty as most things are in the desert, but well maintained and full of valuable information.

In addition to the building, the station has an outdoor area with information about the area and land and large interactive sculptures. This is definitely a spot to visit for anyone with interest in land, environmentalism, desert wildlife, and or driving. There are also a number of other noteworthy sites in the area which CLUI recommends. Visit their website for more info: http://www.clui.org/section/desert-research-station-0

40083 Hinkley Road, Hinkley, CA 92347

Contact the Center: (310) 839-5722

How to live? In bursts of silence, I think, after a week in this place. Fellow campers busy themselves with touristic endeavour, embracing the eccentricities of this place whilst simultaneously staving off the gnawing anxiety of empty space (their words, not mine). I find myself resisting — I resist the chatter, the taking of trips, the seeing of sights. I find myself just being here, with this air, this rock, and this bush.

I am alone amongst the boulders. I listen to the wind advancing across the landscape, and to the footfall of little white lizards with curled tails in the sand. The anticipation of the unheard snake’s rattle is tempered by the metronomic pace of the asphalt-layers down on the road late into the night. It’s a punctuated silence, a silence-in-proximity.

We paint the walls alongside each other, sometimes in conversation, sometimes not. I realise that is the first time in nearly a decade that I’ve been able to spend more than one night alone, and the opportunities for not-speaking are outrageously enticing. As I paint my patch of wall I wonder how can I live with others and a simultaneous need for silence? Silence seems to frighten people. I don’t mean the kind of silence that requires explanation or discussion when one returns to the fold — what did you do in your silence? — but the kind of silence that just is. Undemanding and ordinary.

Today I’m driving toward Death Valley on a mad, mad journey. Out and back in a day. In the pre-dawn, I scamper across the boulders to the car so as not to wake my fellow campers. I’m driving out through Wonder Valley, Amboy, Mojave National Reserve, Kelso, Baker, Shoshone. There is no one around. I am in my element, alone, traversing this vast landscape in a haze of furious heat. Furnace Creek is just that — smoking and searing and evaporating everything in 110-degree heat. I do not think I have ever been so hot. I stand beneath my standard-issue Encampment hat watching the tourists set off across the valley and realise that this is the most essential element of human shelter in this place. It’s not architecture. It’s the hat.

On the radio, itself a curiosity in this desert place, I am told I am a mirror. We are all mirrors. The thing that binds us together is a blemish upon our mirror-surfaces — an inescapable, universal imperfection. Our goal in life, apparently, is to buff that blemish. To buff it and buff it and buff it and buff it in the futile hope that we might live better, we might be better, whilst all the while being conscious of the fact that the blemish will always be there and that ultimately, all effort is futile. I turn the radio off. Spontaneous combustion seems more and more likely. Perhaps it has already happened.

In the late evening, after this epic journey, I return to this place. To the chilly late-evening air whistling around the boulders, and the now-familiar sounds of the camp. I sleep to the sound of my towel flapping in the breeze, to the gravel-crunching of fellow-campers on the pathways, to the clinking of bowls and only bowls, to the distant calls of coyotes and to the occasional siren that is an unexpected and comforting kind of anchor through the night.

Before arriving at A-Z West, I had this idea of a lonesome, romantic desert experience, but there, I got caught up in the social life and practical preparations at camp. Once I got both my ideas and things together, I set out for Death Valley. Death Valley is a very dry, very hot, with lots of funky rock formations in all kinds of colors and shapes. Through the day, I wandered around in my Japanese rental car that was a little too low for the road conditions. In the evening, I searched for secluded camping spots far enough away from the main road. Once settled, I cooked my little meal on my mail order camping stove, staring at the big starry sky before crawling into my mail order tent to sleep tight through the desert night.

The Kelso Dunes are a collection of sand deposits in the Mojave Desert, locked into place by the vegetation that lives there. From a distance, the dunes look like washed up beaches amongst rockier mountain ranges. Clouds of sand make the dunes look like the tops of waves as they crash into the beach. The dry vegetation constantly traces small patterns into the sand to be quickly blown away by the wind.

Hiking the largest dune is as difficult a feat as it appears to be from a distance. It’s a climb through pure, smooth, fine sand at a near vertical elevation. Your feet disappear into the sand with each step, as the sand scales down the dune around your ankles. It’s easiest to climb the most vertical elevation on all fours, like an animal. Half way, you may feel like turning around. But if you can carry on to the summit, you will be rewarded with the patterns of the sand, not visible from below.

If you do make it to the summit, run down the dunes and the sand will moan under your feet in such a way that you can both feel and hear (when the dunes are dry).

To get to the Kelso Dunes, take Amboy road east out of Twentynine Palms and through the town of Amboy. Turn right onto the historic Route 66, left onto Kelbaker Road, and left onto Kelso Dunes Road.

This January I rode out to the 12th annual King of the Hammers, apparently “the largest off-road race event in North America.” Held in the OHV (Off Highway Vehicle) area of Johnson Valley, the home base of the festival is a trailer village on Means Dry Lake called “Hammertown.” My grandfather worked for TNT Motorsports in the 80’s, so I grew up going to see Bigfoot and Grave Digger monster truck shows in Kentucky. KOH isn’t quite the same, but it conjures the memory and interests me with its DIY wrenching culture and camaraderie between competitors. The enormous event seems so wrong and horrible for the environment in its use of resources and physical impact to the landscape, but it feels so right at the same time. Follow the dust cloud!

The Sunrise Mountain Recreational Area is composed of a very deep and large gypsum sedimentary deposit, pyroclastic rock, sandstone clays, sulfides and other mineral deposits. The area is also known to be called “Rainbow Gardens”. Pabco a gypsum board factory is North, Nellis Air Force Bases’ Storage Area 2, stocked with nuclear munitions, is north-east. East is a large expanse of walkable desert that reveals an incredible variety of diminutive plants that I have never seen elsewhere in the Southwest. It is an area crossed north to south by high tension wires owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that connects a Utah power plant to the Southern California power grid. The road leading to the area, Lake Mead Boulevard East, is scattered with memorials, the beautiful lands that surround you can be a great distraction. The often-stereotyped image of southwestern abandonment is present complete with mountains of broken glass, abandoned boats on the side of the road, metal burn offs (stolen copper wire melted down into ingots), bullet casings and other refuse. The meteorological conditions eat away at these remnants, a steady grind on a timeframe that humans rarely have patience for. To the West is Frenchman’s Bluff, the mountain that separates this serene postindustrial landscape from Las Vegas, Nevada. This space lies in perfect contrast with the spectacle, it strips away any glitter and reveals itself in profound humility, but only if you step out of your car. 

The best way to get to and from the Sunrise Mountain Area is to head East on Lake Mead Boulevard, through North Las Vegas. There is an exit past Downtown Las Vegas on I-15 North, you will drive through North Las Vegas, keep an eye out for one of the best Las Vegas neon signs, the Lawless Center on the left. Keep going all the way up the mountain, once you reach the top you will find several dirt roads on the descent to park your car, the best one is right before the high tension wires cross the road to the right, if you reach the Lake Mead National Recreational Area you’ve gone too far. On the way back you will pass one of the greatest Las Vegas look out points at the top of the hill. Lake Mead Boulevard is also known as NV Route 147.