She adjusts her sunglasses as I ask where the library is, and points to a road that leads to the left off of the road we are on.
The library is new looking, as if it did not exist yesterday. I am once again reminded of this aspect of Pahrump. The town seems to have been suddenly thrown down onto the desert like some instant shake and bake colony that exploded out of a tossed canister onto the surface of a strange and alien land.
There is definitely an awful lot of construction underway in Pahrump, but some of the apparent raw newness of the place is illusory. Scars left on the landscape decades, or even centuries ago, look almost as fresh as if they were made yesterday. Mounds of bulldozed dirt pushed here and there to make way for construction projects look like they were piled only a short time ago, but could be twenty or thirty years old in this dry climate where five inches of rain is considered a good year.
I was born and raised in a land where eighty inches a year or more is the norm. Coastal Oregon is smothered in cloaks of wet greenery that quickly erodes and buries abandoned artifacts of civilization. In contrast to those wet lands, the desert preserves the past rather than burying it. In some remote locales entire towns that have been empty for a hundred years still stand, the wood bleached and cured by dryness and hot sun, empty windows staring out at the desert in timeless mystery.
In the Pahrump library I find a row of archaic computers, at least two years old, and amuse myself by surfing the internet while enjoying the building's cool gloom.
By the time I grow bored with the library I decide to check with the motel. Fortune has favored me and my room is ready an hour earlier than expected. Compared to most motels I have frequented, the room is opulent. I haul my ice chest in from the sweltering car and pack it full of goods from the supermarket. There is fried chicken and a sub sandwich, a pack of imitation crab meat and fruit juice, two large bottles of Perrier water and a half case of cold beer.
A cool shower is invigorating as I sluice off the dust of the Amargosa desert. Afterwards I sit at a desk, writing in the glow of a green shaded bankers lamp. My window curtains are pulled tight against the noonday brilliance as the air conditioner pumps cold air into the room. A Star Trek marathon is showing on television and I am safely coccooned to wait out the hottest part of the day.
By 5 p.m. I am sufficiently rested and cooled to face the desert. This is after all, why I am here. Behind the motel an unbroken tract of desert stretches for miles to the base of the low mountains, dominated by Charleston Peak which stands just under 12,000 feet in elevation.
Studded with small yuccas, bursage, creosote bush and various cacti, the bone-white desert has acquired a golden glow from the westering sun that will continue to intensify until sunset.
The first thing to capture my attention is a small spherically shaped bush a bit smaller than a basketball. The wavey leaves are tinder-dry, greenish gold in color and remind me of holly. The plant is indeed known as desert holly, but whether it is actually a member of that particular botanical clan, I do not know.
A ways farther on I find a pile of cans, the labels of which have long since rusted away. They have the look of beer cans and they have been here a long time. There are crimped seams forming the bottom of each can rather than the smooth and unbroken surface of modern day injection-molded aluminum. The triangular holes in the tops were punched through the metal with the "church key" style of can opener.
I find myself imagining a group of young men standing here by their pickup trucks forty some odd years ago, drinking beer while gazing at a crackling campfire and talking about their hopes and dreams, their girls. Desert stars twinkling above them.
I am sure that Pahrump would have looked much different back then, much smaller, perhaps much quainter, without the hastily rebuilt appearance it has today.
A movement catches my eye and I see a small leopard lizard dart into the shade of a creosote bush where it warily watches me with glittering little black eyes. I attempt to edge closer for a photograph, but the frightened reptile vanishes in a burst of incredible speed.
A small cholla stands near a cluster of dead and dried hedghog cacti, its nest of wicked needles shining golden in the evening sun. A ways beyond it I pause to examine a four foot tall yucca, its spiky leaves reminding me of a palmetto.
I look about at the hot, quiet beauty of the lower Amargosa desert. The gravelly plain shines in pastel colors of yellowish white with just a hint of rose, darkening to reddish brown in the rugged eastern hills. For a moment I close my eyes, tasting the brimstone essence of the land with my nostrils. Unable to resist, I wet the tip of my finger and touch a sample of the sand beneath my feet to my tongue. Harsh, gritty, it tastes of gunpowder, the soul of the desert.
I felt a familiar tugging at my heart. For all of my life I had desired nothing so much as to be in the desert. Eastern Oregon had been a Mecca in my youth, while the hot deserts of the southwest had been fabled wonderlands that I had only dreamed of visiting. I had been perhaps 11 or 12 years old that summer when my parents decided to take my brother and I on the long road journey from Oregon to Wisconsin to meet grandparents that I had never known. To this day the sage and greasewood plains of Idaho and Wyoming are sharp in my memory. I had stared out the window in fascination at bounding jackrabbits and clumps of prickly pear cacti while father told bawdy cowboy jokes and tales of the old west. Mother spoke of noble Indians and recalled with fondness, the life they had lived on the Montana prairies years before my birth. I mark that trip as the beginning of my love for the desert. It was a profound love that would forever affect my life.
I am reminded of the many reasons for that love as I squat to admire a cluster of red spined Mojave barrel cactus. Harsh and defensive, the cactus nevertheless has a unique and functional beauty which goes well with the spare loveliness of the land it inhabits.
To the west the sun sets in a blaze of glorious fire. Streaks of red and gold sweep across the sky and a huge and gaudy American flag flying over city hall glows with the light as I watch from the desert. There is something vaguely unreal about the scene.
Back in the air conditioned comfort of my room, I put down a sandwich and a chicken leg with a quart of carbonated Perrier water. Then I enjoy a long shower, staying under the cold water until I am comfortably shivering. Now I am able to lay upon the bed, luxuriating in the sensation of goose pimples upon my flesh, dozing off into a short nap.
Ten o'clock. It is a relatively comfortable eighty five degrees, p
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