48 Hours For Art

Forty-eight hours after my alarm was set for 3:00 Monday morning, we were back in bed, exhausted. We had arisen (I always sleep badly before an early plane trip), flown to Las Vegas, driven to Alamo, Nevada, toured Michel Heizer’s City, and returned home on the red-eye, to collapse in bed exactly 48 hours later.

To break it down, and process all that: the first part of the trip was our usual get out of bed at o’dark hundred, dress, maybe eat, drive to the Marriott to park our car, shuttle to MCO, fly to wherever. We usually do this because flights are cheaper before 9:00 AM and we get a full day at our destination, especially if we head west to new time zones. 

Then it got weird, not just because we were about an hour’s drive east of Area 51, home of the famous UFOs. For someone like me used to subtropical foliage and now central Florida’s coverage of green, the starkness of the scrub north of Las Vegas seems so barren. Plus no cell service. I definitely felt I was in a twilight zone.


After getting our rental card, a Chevy Trans with no blind spot indicator, we headed north, stopping at a Smith’s to buy snacks and lunch, broccoli salad and egg salad for me; Cheeto-coated chicken tenders and slaw for Grant. Lunch at the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. Hot, dry. I saw 3 grebe and heard 3 northern yellow warblers and a ladder backed woodpecker. Merlin claimed it heard a red-faced warbler. I doubt that.

On to Alamo, a farming/ranching town with 2 motels, 1 gas station/grocery store, and not a lot more. A lovely elementary school and a combination junior and senior high, so kids must be bussed in from surrounding areas.

Even though it was before the 3:00 check-in time, we backtracked to the Sunset View Inn and hoped. Nothing else to do, and too hot at 98° to do it anyway. Joe checked us in. Not much to look at on the outside, this motel’s claim to fame is that each room has its own theme. Ours was Under the Sea with light aqua walls, turtle-print bedspread, mermaids and seashell silhouettes stenciled on the walls, etc. Very cute, and absolutely spotless.

After l tried to sketch the motel’s front and its sign (danged hot standing in the sun), we headed back to Alamo proper to find the Triple Aught’s headquarters, not easy with no GPS. Success, so we’re ready to do it again the next morning in the dark. On to Sinclair, the gas station, for fried chicken tenders and fries. The serving was so large we’ll have lunch the next day.

Alarm again set for 3:00 to meet the van at the office leaving at 4:00 for the hour and a half drive. Our fellow art lovers, Carla and John from Las Vegas, Jane from San Francisco, and Lauren from DC, were already to load up when we arrived. Coffee, snacks, one more bathroom break, we were off. Our driver Kitten, local rancher and butcher answered all our questions about the area but none about City. Heizer wants visitors to form their own impressions.

What to say? City is the largest sculpture on earth (over a mile long and 1/2 mile wide). A maze of rock/gravel of berms above ground level and snaking walkways below. Vistas of surrounding desert and far off mountains when we were on the raised areas. Nothing but rock and gravel edged by concrete curbing when we were down at the bottom. And silence. Loneliness. No nature except one garden of sage.

We spent 3 hours trudging around. Grant and I first quickly to the eastern end where port-a-potties were hidden outside the sculpture. The others went their own ways. The rest of our time there, we only saw them as tiny figures in the distance. I stopped and sketched a concrete structure. Then leisurely towards the west, past what reminded me of Mayan ball courts. Other places were like the many layers of intricate highway intersections: we could see the beginning of a path, but didn’t know where we would end up.

Weather was absolutely perfect. Mid 70’s. Rain off in the distance. The sun was mostly behind clouds. I was disoriented.

At 8:30, we gathered back at Kitten’s car, then rode home in silence, processing our experience. I am glad I went. In retrospect, it seems even more relic than modern. One with the pyramids, Chitchén Itzá, Machu Picchu.

I showered at the motel, we checked out and headed towards Vegas, lunching on our leftover chicken and fries. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bahia Honda State Park, Cabin 3

Image
Our trip to the Keys was marvelous, but hard on my bracelets. First, I realized my sweet little beaded one I’d bought the last time we were down disappeared from my arm. All I can figure is that I accidentally pulled it off when I tucked my hands inside my long sleeved sun shirt. Surely if the elastic had broken, I’d have had beads in my shirt. As soon as I noticed it was missing , I retraced my steps at the gas station and the bait shop, but didn’t find it. I’d restrung the original on elastic bead string, adding the glow-in-the-dark bead I’d found at our campsite. Ah, well, I hope someone else is enjoying now. When we got back to our house, I realized the one made for me by Rani, mom of our old congregation’s pianist Brenda, was coming unstrung. Fortunately, I have all the beads, including the one I stepped on in our dining room, which was amazingly not sucked up by our Roomba. In between jewelry loses, it was a good trip. We were supposed to be in the cabin Saturday, but that was ov...
Read more

A Month of Garden Club

Image
April seemed to be all garden club, all the time. I started with the zone leader’ walkthrough for Spring Fever on Friday, the 5th, then 2 whole days of that event. Whew. April 11th was the Windermere Garden Club’s monthly meeting, a field trip to Southern Hill Farm, a you-pick and wholesale blueberry farm. We were inspire to add blueberries to our garden. Friday, April 12th, I was the speaker at Bloom and Grow’s monthly luncheon, touting the value of becoming a citizen scientist, specifically, downloading the iNaturalist app and participating in the City Nature Challenge 2024: Orange County. I was pleased with my talk, the first one I’ve given in person in 5 years. I still attend EarlyBird Toastmasters, but we’ve been on Zoom since early 2020. Before that, we’d moved to Key Biscayne for a year, and I didn’t drive up to Fort Lauderdale often. On the 21st, we toured Jeanne’s almost-all native, completely grassless yard, a B&G social with the mandatory wine and lovely appetizers and d...
Read more

Cold Weather

Image
Brrrr, it has been 45° the last 2 nights. During the day, in the sun, it is comfortable, however in the evenings and early mornings, it has been chilly. Our Connecticut friends were not impressed. Fortunately, we finally finished repairing William’s hut the day the temperature dipped. It had been sitting in the garage all summer. Nothing like just in time inventory. Gracie helped while we decided what to do. To keep it warm, we had built it with a reptile heater big enough for an African spurred tortoise. It had to be hung on the ceiling of the hut because it is too warm for a small turtle. However, it was the only heater that could be outside. All the smaller ones weren’t waterproof. Overkill, but what was available. We took the sides of the hut off, and I cut them the same height. Originally the top had a slant to let any rain run off, but it doesn’t need that since our house eave protects it from drips. We added 1x4s on each side and along the back to make the structure more stable....
Read more