I don’t like it when it’s too hot. I hated my sweltering apartment in L.A. It’s so much nicer up here in the Great Green Pacific Northwest!
I lived in the Antelope Valley during my teens and early-20s. The Antelope Valley is in Northern L.A. County/Southern Kern County on the extreme western edge of the Mojave Desert. Lancaster, Palmdale, Edwards Air Force Base. Those were my stomping grounds. Drive east for an hour or so, and you’ll get to Victorville, Barstow, Daggett. Keep driving through Baker (gateway to Death Valley) and you’ll wind up in Las Vegas. The old coach road is still there, between Barstow and Las Vegas. I’ve always wanted to drive it. (You need 4WD to do it.)
I like evergreen trees, and summers that only get into the mid-80s. Still, there’s something to be said for deserts.
Hot in the summer? Yes. ‘But it’s a dry heat!’ (<=== Obligatory remark.) Really, the heat in the desert is of a different quality than the heat in L.A. It’s most certainly different from the heat in New Orleans! I met this girl in New Orleans, and she came out to visit me in L.A. We drove up to the AV, since she’d never been in a desert. We didn’t have a/c, but the wind blowing through the open windows was enough. She asked how hot it was, and I said, ‘Oh, about 105.’ She thought it felt like 90. It’s really not so bad, once you get used to it. And I had my (first) '66 MGB and a motorcycle. Lots of breeze! (Not to mention the ‘breezes’ that are there naturally!)
And the visibility is awesome. One thing about not having trees is that you can see farther. The air was clean enough that you could see the surrounding mountains quite clearly. I learned to fly in the desert, and one of my favourite things would be to go up on a see-forever morning and fly out to the western edge of the valley. From a few thousand feet up, I felt I was King of All I Serveyed. Other times I would drive my old Willys up into the foothills and look out over the Valley. What a view! And skiing in Wrightwood, I liked to go to the tiny, retro-like, Snow Summit. There I was standing in the snow, and there to the north was the great yellow vista of the desert!
I flew helicopters there, too. Man, was that fun! I was about 400 feet off the deck. They bright yellow sand stretched all around, and the brilliant blue sky was like an inverted bowl over my head.
When you fly over the desert, you can see where the water goes.
Dad worked for the FAA on a rotating shift. I’d often take him dinner at the airport. Sometimes I’d wander around the virtually deserted airport in the dark, or just stand and listen to the silence. Very peaceful, the desert is at night. Or there was the time when I was on a student film crew. I got to the location – way out in the middle of nowhere – on a freezing December morning. No one else was there. I stood, as the sun rose, listening to the coyotes singing.
Many people hate the drive to Las Vegas. I love it. People who say it’s boring just aren’t looking. There’s yellow sand, and grey rocks. There’s also red rocks, and orange rocks, and rocks of many different colours. There’s the sage green of the sage, and the tan of the tumbleweeds. White and yellow and orange flowers bloom in the Spring. (People flock to the the Antelope Valley every year to watch the poppies bloom like an orange explosion of the the hills and fields.) There’s the blue sky, and sometimes there are white clouds. The desert is loaded with colour!
And textures. The desert floor may be soft or hard. There can be drifts of sand, or stretches of gravel. Look at those dark, craggy mountains slowly eroding! The rock is hard, dark and rough. Around their bases they have mounds of softer, lighter sand. I often wonder about these mountains and outcroppings. Some of them stand alone. Were these once volcanos that never made it to the surface to erupt, finally reaching daylight through slow erosion? Or are they massive chunks of stone that have been thrust up by seismic action? What did this place look like thousands of years ago, when it was a shallow sea? When the sea was half-evaporated? Three-quarters evaporated?
Yes, the desert is hot. The wind blows and dries your sweat and cools you off a little. The sand blows and sometimes gets in your eyes. But on a cool, quiet morning on a see-forever day, a desert is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.