Wild Side Walk: Pt 19.

(Unexpurgated) 1982: Report from the astronaut

Truck & trailer,
Great Salt Desert, Utah (1982)
©1982 www.stuartpage.com

A little while later I was driving along the edge of the Trinity Range, it was starting to get dark, (I had just swallowed down a mysterious looking mushroom, real desert dessert, and a bit more snow), and it occurred to me how beautiful the desert was becoming. The greyness of the daytime had transformed into a wide range of olive-tones, while a giant orange "not quite" full moon floated across a sky of lilac rose parfait amour. The moon was the only source of light apart from the car headlights dotted out in front of us, but the moonlight was sculpting the desert surface into weird shapes like skulls and dinosaurs, the ground was alive with a peripheral animal kingdom and then I noticed the sky coming alive as well. The road ahead was alive with thousands of racing snakes, and pursuing them were large winged pterodactyls and other large beasts from the heavens surrounded by geometric colours and shapes filling the sky, and it all seemed to be connected to the mighty moon, the huge balloon.

The interstate highway consists of a pair of two-lane freeways, with about 25 metres of dirt separating the traffic moving in opposite directions. There were mostly large truck and trailer rigs on the road at night, and I could see them coming towards me, each one having a distinct personality, it's face highlighted by small orange lights, and rows of red and green navigation lights down port and starboard. I grew very fond of the trucker’s who were exceptionally courteous drivers, and they created such a spectacle, skull-like faces that grew bigger and bigger as they approached and then whooshed past consuming the whole car. All the road signs were coated in an emerald green glass mixture, the surface of which was incredibly reflective and seemed to fluoresce from within as they too swept past like burning asteroids. Wow, what a space voyage.

Kid was all this time sleeping, but I didn't even feel like stopping when we reached Elko, Nevada at some early hour of the morning. It must have been early, cos the Motel proprietor was squinting through sleepy eyes when he gave us our room key. I really could have stayed up all night, so I went for a walk and noticed all these trucks parked up around town, several of them with sleeping drivers perched in front of their steering wheels. What a lifestyle I thought, driving continuously back and forth between Los Angeles and New Jersey: East West, West East, a distance of almost 3000 miles. And en route, stopping at little truck-stop diners in the middle of nowhere for eggs, bacon, coffee and flapjacks. A moving community with friends and contacts spread out right across the continent.

Elko, Nevada, was one of the towns that I'd read about in Mailer's Gary Gilmore tome. GG's girlfriend spent part of her tragic teenage motherhood here, and in the morning I could see it was a small town surrounded by mountains, the air was so fresh and clean, and the sound of clip clop cowboy boots and various farm vehicles filled the air. I felt surprisingly fresh, despite a night full of Technicolor dreams and my mouth tasted good having just cracked a vial of Kid's Ginseng Royal Jelly.

(To be continued).

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