into the night

a drive into the mojave, late at night, down a winding, hilly, very dark and totally deserted road at the wheel of a sports car is one of life's unique pleasures.
i went up over sunrise mountain and down into lake mead national park. nobody out there, and if they were, well then you could see their lights from 2 miles off, but tonight there was nobody. just me, putting the slk through its paces, listening to growl of the pipes and feeling the grip on the road, running north along the western edge of what used to be the colorado river but is now lake mead. in the great mojave desert, under a witches' moon in a hazy sky and 40 miles from anybody. the sky clears and the stars seem close enough to touch. the road winds and climbs and drops and twists and turns and the headlights are swallowed by the blackness ahead. It is a night for a drive.

the mojave, at night, in the winter, is beyond quiet and into the rhelm of the silent. during the summer, if you can turn off the conversation in your head and let yourself be aware of the great what-is, then you find you can hear the desert; what once seemed to be a special kind of quiet is, in fact, full of small but distinct sounds as the creatures of the night go about their business of life and death and food and reproduction. in the winter night, however, not a creature is stirring ( to borrow a phrase) nor doing anything else above ground and the silence is rather stunning. i stood there and let the night engulf me and draw me out of myself and into it.

they say that only prophets and madmen come out of the desert. in that silent darkness one sees what's coming and the other sees what is.
i had a very nice drive.