Just passed a citrus grove a bit back. Lemon trees or orange trees, some date palms around: this lone green spot in a landscape of tan, brown, sand, taupe. How queer and lush and so removed from its environment it seems.

This is what humans do when they feel foreign to the land, the environment in which they find themselves; they transform it into a place that is familiar and comfortable to them, hospitable to their needs, instead of appreciating, respecting it for what it is. In effect a judgement is made, and that judgment is usually that the land has no value, because we all want things that produce for us, and if the land doesn’t do that, well, we can’t for some reason see that the value of the land is in its uniqueness, that it is valuable simply as it is because IT IS, and so by claiming that it has no inherent value we are actually devaluing the very real value that it does have in being what it is in order that we may turn it into a machine, basically, that churns out things that we say are valuable (namely goods to be sold for cash, because in the world of humans very little is more valuable than money).

Coming up on the Algodones dunes now. The name implying what it is: a vast tract of sand…. Just sand. Mounds and mounds that go on for such great distances. I can see them from this hill I am driving along. It’s a beach that stretches out into nothing but more beach rolling, rolling along like great ocean swells. It’s, it’s an incredible sight. Mountain peaks in the distance. It does remind me a bit of Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, but I think this is on a vaster scale, though the mountains aren’t nearly so terrific and awe-inspiring.

Sort of a martian landscape, but up ahead it looks like there is a convoy of RV’s camped out in the desert. A common thing for retirees to come down and escape the cold winters, but I could be wrong. I can’t exactly tell what these are from here as its a good distance.

They’re trailers. Part of these dunes are used as a recreational area. The highway splits the area into two parts, left is the wilderness which I’ll be able to access further down, and to the right is the recreational area. Lots of people with ATV’s, dune buggies, lifted pickup trucks, etc. tearing around out there. It’s basically one big party, especially along the highway where everyone is camped out. There’s a party going on out in the desert too. Just a different kind of party. One fueled by adrenaline and gasoline. It’s not what I came for, but I’m interested….