The Wondrous World of the American Southwest, Part 1

On Route 93, somewhere between Phoenix and Las Vegas, is a town called Nothing, population: 4. The remains of a roadside market are roped off by barbed wire and countless NO TRESPASSING signs. The faded sign reading “NOTHING” towers above, casting a wide shadow across the barren gravel lot. I walked around the perimeter of the town and wondered if population: 4 was humans or lizards. Whichever it was, I didn’t see either; only two dilapidated buildings and a fitting town name.

They say the Midwest is hundreds of miles of nothingness but, in fact, it has nothing on the stretch of highway through Arizona and Nevada. When you’re driving down those single lane highways in Iowa or Missouri, the endless farmland is like visual white noise, lulling you to sleep, but you can take comfort knowing that these lands are owned by someone so if you crashed your car during a brief snooze, someone would find you sooner rather than later. Out in the desert of the Southwest, you are traveling through no man’s land, where you’d only be spotted by other road trippers such as yourself, similarly lost in their own daydreams brought on by the monotonous lullaby of the endless browns and greys rushing past their windows.

Eventually you’ll see the signs for Hoover Dam and perhaps your curiosity will be piqued – as mine had been – assuming this wasn’t the purpose for your trip to begin with, in which case, why? I have obviously heard of the Hoover Dam but never had a geographical location for it in mind. The brown highway signs announcing its approach began as simply part of the scenery but, after a hundred miles, they started calling out to me like a siren song, beckoning me to turn off and visit the national landmark.

When I arrived and finally built up the courage to leave the comfort of my car’s air conditioning, I climbed the steps and moved amongst other tourists, both domestic and foreign, who evidently felt the same compulsion I had to pull over for a dam. I wondered if they had heard the same siren song as me or if this stop had been on their itinerary all along. As I approached the viewpoint and was able to see the dam for the first time, I wondered why this was a landmark at all. The heavy rush of the water was so far away, it barely made a sound amongst the hustle and bustle of the visitors around me. A sight of nature - blue skies, turquoise water, and tan mountains - which would be stunning under any other circumstances, was obstructed by the dam, the attraction we were all there to see. The smooth face of the cement reflected the sun and made this man-made marvel nearly impossible to look directly at. It acted as a bounce board for the sunlight, so the rays beaming directly down on us were also being projected at our faces, and the heat was nearly unbearable.

I wondered why people travel so long and so far to see a simple dam. I wondered what made it impressive, because it wasn’t visible to my naked eye. (On further research I have discovered that the power generated by the dam supports Nevada, California, and Arizona, and – as it was built during The Great Depression – it is seen as a symbol of what American workers are capable of, even during the darkest times.)

I snapped a few obligatory pictures and began to observe the other people around me, who all looked so thrilled to be here. I wondered where their excitement came from. I wondered why I didn’t feel it too. A Chinese couple next to me spoke in excited Mandarin and pointed at the dam, at their guidebook, back at the dam, and nodded vigorously at each other. I wondered what they had just learned. A family next to me noticed me standing alone and asked me to take their picture.

“Isn’t this so cool?” the young son asked.

His parents looked at me expectantly, so I pasted a wide smile on my face and said, “Yes, so cool!”

They stood facing me, with their backs to the marvel they had come to see, with looks of sheer excitement on their faces, and I wondered what someone’s life has to be like for this to be such an exhilarating endeavor for them. Either they live so sheltered that a dam is the most interesting thing they’ve seen or they have such a positive outlook on life that they are able to approach everything with a childlike enthusiasm. I found myself staring at them for longer than I should have and decided it was the latter: the father wore a Yankees hat and the son wore a Miami Beach shirt so I decided they must have at least traveled to New York and Florida, which are both way more interesting than this dam in the middle of the Nevada desert. I decided they are just happy to be wherever they are. I decided I envied that.

The mother cleared her throat, pulling me from my thoughts, and reached out her hand for her camera. I walked back to my car, the entire visit spanning maybe fifteen minutes. As I descended the staircase I wondered who decided to make the Hoover Dam a tourist spot in the first place. I wondered why so many people listened and followed and stood and stared at a mass of concrete and some water. I wondered how many other places are famous just because someone decided they should be. I wondered if everything is famous just because someone decided it should be.

Though not part of my initial plans, that evening I spent the night on the Vegas strip after discovering, by sheer coincidence, that an old friend was in Las Vegas. (The phenomenon of coincidences like these will be explored in a future blog post, stay tuned.) We met up out in the middle of the Nevada desert at the Seven Magic Mountains, an art installation built in the middle of nowhere about twenty minutes outside of Vegas. The rocks, painted in bright colors, were piled atop one another, reaching towards the sky, in seven asymmetrical pillars. We stood and stared at the pile of rocks and I wondered why this place had become such a draw to tourists. Simply because of its Instagram fame?

The following morning I got back on the road and headed vaguely in the direction of northern California. Somewhere on Route 95, with nothing but desert and mountains as far as the eye could see, I saw the formation of a pretty wicked storm. First I watched the clouds turn from white to grey and as the sky got darker, it made the frequent lightning bolts along the horizon that much clearer. As I ventured deeper into the storm, I saw a swirl of dust whipping up in a cyclical formation on the road ahead of me. It was still far in the distance, but with every mile I drove, it grew closer and closer.

Suddenly the skies opened up. First with heavy rain and then, just as suddenly, with large hailstones crashing into my windshield. My windshield wipers worked overtime, vigorously clearing my view of water only to be immediately obstructed again by more rain and hail. My air conditioning pumped through the car because, despite the tremendous rain and ice outside, the desert air was still hot, almost suffocating.

As I drove, I noticed my view becoming a strange shade of green, and then brown, and then gone, and I realized the green and brown tint was spreading across my windshield. I reached out and tentatively touched my finger to the glass. The brown substance cleared instantly, leaving no trace on my fingertip, and I realized whatever was causing this discoloration, it was happening inside my vehicle. I wondered if it was the result of toxic fumes being pumped into the body of my car. I wondered if the fumes came from the car itself or the air outside. After all, I wasn’t far from Area 51, and who knows what kind of shady practices are going on there, possibly contaminating the surrounding areas? I wondered if this was the moment I died, the last interesting things I saw being a mass of concrete and a pile of rocks in the middle of the Nevada desert.

I pulled over to the side of the two-lane highway, turned on my hazards, and reached my arm into the backseat to root around for the Kleenex box I knew was hidden somewhere back there. Finally I found it and used a tissue to wipe away the brown grime on the inside of my windshield. It cleared instantly and I could see through the window again to the storm outside. I looked at the tissue in my hand, which came away just as white as it had been in the box, just slightly damper. I called my parents, wondering if they would have a solution to this seeming malfunction, or if it would be a goodbye call as I was being slowly poisoned by the fumes in my car. Getting out of the car wasn’t an option to me because, well, it was torrentially raining and in the face of certain death, I couldn’t fathom the idea of also getting wet.

“So, don’t freak out,” I said aloud, the car’s Bluetooth picking up my voice and transmitting it nearly 3,000 miles to my parents in upstate New York, “but the car is doing something weird.”

“What’s happening?” my dad asked, panicked. He’s perpetually panicked, being one of the most paranoid people on the planet, always hoping for the best but expecting the absolute worst.

I explained the brown substance that had overtaken my windshield and my mother, who could hear me through my dad’s speaker phone, shouted, “Make sure the air conditioning is using air circulating in the car, not pulling air from outside. It’s probably just dust being unsettled and floating through the air because of the storm.”

In that moment I remembered the cyclone of dust I had seen earlier, which had completely left my mind amidst the rain and hail. I decided I must have driven through that and the dust was sucked up into my vents, coating the windows with dirt and condensation from the air conditioning. I gave a sigh of relief now that I knew I wasn’t going to die from fume inhalation. I thanked my parents, hung up the phone, and pulled back onto the highway, the sound of my hazards and then left turn blinker clicking continuously.

I wondered, if I had died back there, who would have found me? Another sojourner, such as myself, who had lifted their thoughts from their daydreams long enough to notice me? Or a police officer whose attention was brought to the car parked for too long on the side of Route 95? I decided it didn’t matter, because I was alive, and had never been in any real danger at all. Except for whatever shady business is happening at Area 51, of course.

As the Nevada scenery turned from monotonous browns to brilliant shades of green – something I didn’t know Nevada scenery was capable of – I thought of that family at the Hoover Dam who were just happy wherever they were. Now, in the wake of my near-death experience, I decided I too would make a point of being happy wherever I was. And so, as I drove through the trees and farmlands, my thoughts lifted above the clouds and I was lost in daydreams once again, with a smile on my face.